After the Tsunami, the Power of Vigilance

By Caroline Brennan

When a bulldozer plowed through a village in Cuddalore, in southeastern India, during the heat and wet of the South Asia monsoons, it was a sign that a larger storm was brewing — and one that had nothing to do with the weather.

The people of Cuddalore were tired of waters rushing into their homes, soaking their bedmats and clothes, damaging their clean drinking water, and forcing them to sleep in damp spaces. The district is regularly inundated with water from three river deltas, along with several backwater canals. Months of consistent rainfall, along with the annual monsoon, means homes are caught in the overflowing water's path, and life is a mess. Families, struggling to cope, felt that nobody in their local government was taking notice.

This year, though, things would be different. Cuddalore now had Community Vigilance Groups, with mobilization teams ready to live up to their name.

Community Vigilance Groups are part the Catholic Relief Services-supported Suraksha ("Future") program, which evolved out of the Bavishia ("Transition") programs for people's recovery following the 2004 tsunami. Over the past three years, CRS has worked closely with partners, including the Pondicherry Multipurpose Social Service Society (PMSS), on trauma counseling, back-to-work and back-to-school initiatives, local libraries, parks, puppet shows, and street plays to help communities rebuild their lives from the ground up. Suraksha is the latest chapter in the progress of this long-term tsunami recovery effort.

"If you take Indians' history 20 or 30 years back, there was a good vibrant neighborhood. People used to share, they used to invite each other for social and family functions — all the good and bad — and the fellow neighbor was considered a priority, a friend, a brother. Of late, with the economic condition of the country improving, and some people falling while others are elevating, the status of people also has changed. We are trying to revive the old neighborhood concept," relates Ram Kumar, project manager for PMSS.

Empowered to Act

Suraksha supports people to come together in forums built around a community, school, neighborhood or issue. The role of the partner and donor organizations is small — staff may suggest the concept and support the group with capacity-building workshops, but the communities set the priorities and do the work themselves.

The project has played an important role in peaceful community relations. Suraksha is taking place in areas where people moved into new homes built for survivors of the tsunami. Already they had lived in transitional housing, with new people and a strange environment. Now they had to move into their new houses, with yet more new neighbors and new people with whom to build a community.

"Communities disintegrate during times of transition, moving from transitional shelter to permanent shelter. Your neighbor in one place might not be your neighbor in another," says Kumar.

The concept wasn't an easy sell at first and field partners and staff faced resistance.

"You see, with Suraksha, we don't give away any 'goodies,' " explains Kumar. "In the other tsunami programming areas — where fishing nets, school materials, loans and other support were an essential part of restoring aspects of life — Suraksha is removed from that. This is about dialogue, mobilization. So, just imagine how it was for us going to a community that had been on the receiving end of such [tangible] humanitarian aid, and bringing up ideas for problem-solving and improving their quality of life. Their immediate question was, 'Who are you to talk about this?' "

To encourage a community-based approach, field staff first reached out to people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives who are considered important in the community — retired government servants, panchayat (local village council) leaders, religious leaders, primary health care administrators, teachers, police officials, postal workers, and ration shop employees.

"We took these people into confidence. We went to these people one by one, talked about this concept, formed them into Community Mobilization Teams, and discussed the potential of the Suraksha project," recalls Kumar.

In those discussions, the team members talked about the changes they wanted to see, capacities they needed to strengthen, government relationships they hoped to improve, and self-sufficiency they planned to attain. Based on the team members' priorities, PMSS staff took them on visits to related projects, shared resources (including documentary films) about those topics, and carried out an orientation. After trainings and dialogue, the Community Mobilization Teams then went back to their villages and introduced the concept of the Suraksha program.

Today, hundreds of Community Mobilization Teams have been established across the Cuddalore district. Meeting at least once a week or more if required, they tackle shared problems and build a network for the common good.

It was a Community Mobilization Team that was behind the bulldozer during that day of the monsoon flooding. With no response from their ward counselor and indecision by the public works department, the team members brought in the bulldozer themselves and built banks that would stop the flooding. The act created such an embarrassment that the government representative promised it would not happen again.

"Now when water is not coming into the taps, people say, why don't we knock on the doors of our government representatives? They have promised so many things, let them deliver. Now they have the power of going; previously they didn't have the guts to ask. Now they have the power to ask," says Kumar.

Caroline Brennan is South Asia regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. She is based in New Delhi, India.