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It has been 8 months since earth’s orbit
was rattled by the Sumatra quake. Since then, the earth has traveled
a long distance almost 470 million kilometers. But, how far have
the survivors traversed towards normalcy? What is normalcy? Is it just
getting back to where they were prior to December 26, 2004?
“Now that we are making a new start, we have to remove
some of the inequities that were existent before, we have to do better
than what was there before …” envisioned Dr Mohan Bhagat, Director
of the Association for India’s Development, on Jan 15, when asked about
AID’s role beyond supplying immediate relief needs.
In a June 21 New York Times article, Bill Clinton, the special
envoy for tsunami relief for the UN, informed that the UN strategy
was to “… help the Tsunami generation build back better.”
Indeed, “build back better” has been the mantra
of our Tsunami rehabilitation efforts from the very beginning.
“Within a village the rich may have lost their mansions
while the poor may have lost their huts. We should not see rehabilitation
as merely rebuilding lost mansions for the rich while providing huts
to the poor. This approach is unfair to the poor who have suffered most
in this tragedy. What we can do is to provide community resources that
are beneficial to both parties,” says Balaji Sampath, our Jeevansaathi
from AID-Chennai.
But how do we go about it?
Guided by our partners and needs of the beneficiaries in the
villages we worked in, we realized early on that our work needed to
respond to some really hard questions – questions that are on fore of
the development paradigm our work is housed in. The foremost aim of
our approach has been to aspire for holistic and sustainable community
development and ensure greater equity in the distribution of resources
within the community.
We are picking the baton of development where others have stopped.
The Build Back Better (B-cube) paradigm will have to go beyond just
providing boats and nets. This multi faceted approach includes empowering
the women to be an integral part of decision-making, connecting the
Dalit community to mainstream developmental programs, helping farmers
in reclamation of agriculture lands, eco-protection of coastlines, so
on and so forth.
Besides providing updates on the work done and plans laid out
so far, this newsletter provides snippets on how the B-cube approach
is being implemented in different spheres in Nellore, S.P. Nallur, Chennai,
Cuddalore and Nagapattinam. In addition, an interview with Chandra
Anil, an AID-Saathi from Chennai gives us a first-hand account of the
initial relief efforts and helps us gain a proper perspective of the issues
involved in the rehabilitation of the tsunami-survivors.
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AID rehabilitation work going on in full swing, even
7 months after.
A children's activity center under construction
- such centers were not present in the village before the Tsunami.
- Building Back Better.
AID is about
Asking the Right Questions
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