Sreelatha Menon: Half-baked relief

EAR TO THE GROUND

Three years after the monster tsunami hit parts of coastal India, one would have expected homes for the homeless to have been constructed by now, especially with funds flowing from all over the world.

But a UN report on its own efforts says only half the number of homes that were to be built have been completed so far.

Lack of funds is the least of problems here. The UNDP, in its report, "Tsunami India: Three years after," says the UN agencies had $44.51 million at the disposal, including contributions from funding agencies and countries. Of this, $5.30 million was for housing, water and sanitation.

The largest amount was for health, hygiene and education, though it is not indicated how many schools or hospitals were destroyed by the tsunami or how many were re-built.

On the housing programme, the report says out of 53,323 houses planned to be built as part of the first phase of reconstruction, 29,446 have been completed to date, while 23,879 are in the process of being built.

Only 20 per cent of the total 214 sites have complete infrastructure, meaning electricity and water. The report goes on to say that while the Tamil Nadu public-private partnership model has been innovative in many ways, it has faced many challenges.

First, although the work of constructing houses was given to a large number of organisations, the progress has been slow. To date, only 50 per cent houses have been completed. Second, the government faced the dilemma of ensuring that the people were not displaced to places far away from their earlier habitat and source of livelihood. There were difficulties in acquisition of land as the size of the land required was often large. As a compromise, in several instances, land not suitable for constructing houses was identified. Third, there have been delays in provision of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, water, sanitation and roads. Some delays can be attributed to limitations in the coordination between various departments responsible for providing infrastructure.

Fourth, there have been limitations in monitoring construction, leading to poor-quality housing in some places in terms of materials used, designs, construction methods and techniques. Fifth, with a few positive exceptions, the approach has been building houses, rather than developing habitats. The housing programme would have benefited from a more holistic approach if various dimensions of housing such as community infrastructure, water, sanitation, environment, conservation and livelihood had been addressed in a more integrated and timely manner. Indeed, in several sites, it has been observed that houses were handed over to beneficiaries without infrastructure and services readily available.

This is the UN way of saying that the entire housing programme has been a fiasco.

The UN report next goes on to identify the main culprits. It says : "The fact that a major part of housing reconstruction was done by NGOs who work at the the grassroot level helped improve the beneficiary participation but not to the level desired.''

"While initial consultations were often made with the beneficiaries, the participation has been minimal in follow-up planning, design and quality monitoring. This affected not only the level of satisfaction of the beneficiaries but also the quality of habitat development as well as the level of ownership and sustainability of the programme."

Ultimately, the government emerges as the angel here. The report goes on to say: "The government is taking measures to improve this in the second phase of reconstruction and the state housing policy, to ensure that the beneficiaries participate in all stages of housing reconstruction. To be successful in this, it is essential that the beneficiary participation takes place within a clearly defined and standardised institutional framework, which is embedded in local governance structures and involving strong and representative NGOs to facilitate the process of community participation. In isolation from existing legal frameworks, such as panchayats, the beneficiary participation will lack accountability. This necessitates the delineation of role and powers of panchayats in the implementation of rural housing.''

The conclusion is that the entire housing programme was undertaken without the participation of the affected people and this annuls the advantage of all the funds at disposal and all the do-gooders available to use the funds.

The report does not hint at abuse of funds but it does suggest that they have not served the purpose of bringing relief to the communities who have been so severely tested by nature.