Tsunami Recovery: Back on the Sea

	Wooden Boat with Engine after Construction

June 23, 2005—World Bank funding has helped fishermen in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh go back to the sea and resume their livelihoods. The funding has done more than just enable fishermen to earn a living again, it’s also helped them psychologically to deal with the effects of last December’s devastating tsunami. Here is a snapshot of how Bank funding has helped one family cope with the aftermath of the tsunami.

Pamanji Yadagiri and his three grown up sons are now back fishing off the waters of Nellore district in coastal Andhra Pradesh.

When the waves of water struck last December, their catamaran and its outboard motor had been badly damaged after being repeatedly dashed against a palm tree.

However the catamaran was repaired very soon after the disaster. The speed with which action was taken helped the traumatized family to get back on its feet very quickly. Just as importantly, it allowed Pamanji and his boys to make full use of the peak fishing season, which lasts in these waters from February to April.

For Pamanji and his family, it has been a blessing. He had recently bought his catamaran brand new with a loan from the village wholesaler. Any delay in setting out to sea to resume his livelihood would have hit the family extremely hard.

Selecting Net Materials

Pamanji gives credit to the village organizations and women’s self help groups which came to the family’s aid, even before government relief could reach them. Created under an ongoing Andhra Pradesh Government poverty reduction project supported by the World Bank, these groups have been trained to spearhead development from the grassroots upwards.

The strong networks fostered by the project enabled these groups to reach out to every fishing family in the shortest possible time. They were quick on the ground, rallying around dazed communities in the Krishna district by the morning after the disaster.

Organized and confident, and made up of villagers like themselves, these groups not only counseled the families but also helped them assess what they needed to resume their livelihoods.

“What we’re seeing on the ground now,” says  Parmesh Shah, World Bank Task Manager of the Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project, “shows that investing in social capital during good times pays off during crisis and enables communities to bounce back faster.”

For Pamanji and his fellow fishermen in the village of Kothuru, the community’s involvement in plans for their rehabilitation has been a new experience.

Earlier, after a cyclone had left its trail of destruction, the fisher folk remember receiving a hand out of food grains and a few hundred rupees to help them recover. This time though it was different. It was the first time their specific needs were taken into consideration.

The detailed assessments of the losses suffered by each family drawn up by the women’s self help groups and village organizations have enabled the district administration to streamline relief work in the disaster-hit districts.

	Wooden Boats Under Construction

“This is one of the first times in the history of natural disasters that damage assessment has been done through such intensive community participation,” said Vijay Kumar, CEO of Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty which implements the poverty reduction project. “This has resulted in greater accuracy in damage assessment. It has also arrested the chances of mistargeting, delays and the leakage of the funds.”

Payments have been made by the village organizations directly by check to the repairing agencies, once the village committees have issued a satisfactory report.

The close involvement of women in disaster relief has also ensured women’s physical needs and safety, often overlooked in the hurly-burly after a disaster, was taken into consideration.

“This was one of the rare occasions where women were in the forefront and the whole operation was done in a gender-sensitive manner,” says the World Bank’s Varalakshmi Vemuru, who leads the project from the New Delhi office along with Parmesh Shah. “The bonding between the women also helped greatly in the psychological healing of the trauma,” she says.

As fishing families in the state make efforts to put the disaster behind them, they stand to benefit from a longer-term association with the poverty reduction project implemented by the World Bank and the Andhra Pradesh Government.