April 2005

Mala: April 2005

A welcome change has taken place in Mala’s life this month. Her father, Manikkam, who nearly drowned during the tsunami, has been sick since. Now he has finally received medical care and is feeling a lot better.

He even feels that he could soon be going fishing again. But he no longer has a fishing net.

To eke out a living, Mala joins her mother at the groundnut fields. But work is scarce, for the peanut harvesting season is almost over.

If they had a net, Mala’s mother, Devi, could have hired someone to fish for them. "I don’t know how to swim," she says, "or else I would be fishing on my own."

The family is facing severe difficulties at the moment.

"We eat only porridge at home every day… with a piece of green chilli," says Devi. "We have no money for anything else."

Mala’s family isn’t the only ones to suffer from loss of livelihoods. There are many backwater fishermen in Tamil Nadu who lost their boats or nets – or both.

What made matters far worse is that most aid and recovery support programmes are focused only on the coast. Since Mala’s family and her community don’t live on the shore itself, their losses have been ignored – leaving whole families to starve.

It wasn’t just the fishermen who lost their livelihoods. Farmers found their land was ruined when salt water came inland. When they asked for help, government officials came and inspected their land – but nothing has been done so far.

"This land used to be very fertile. We grew many crops here," recalls farmer Murugavel. "We planted 10,000 Casuarina trees here. They were worth a lot of money. The tsunami destroyed our entire crop . . ."

For four months running, Mala’s village of Kottaikkadu village in Kancheepuram District has received virtually no external assistance – from government or charities. Some say that’s because no one was killed; but the widespread loss of livelihood seems to be overlooked by everyone controlling aid.

It has also been suggested that there could be another reason: the people are considered to belong to lower caste in the Indian social hierarchy. Is this why they are being deprived of any support?