Thiruvananthapuram: Is BJP trying to overrule the constitutional principles of federalism? The recent news may make people believe so. The Kerala government has received a bill of over Rs. 33 crore to be paid to the Controller of Defence Accounts, and this includes the airlift services provided by the Indian Air Force during the massive deluge in August this year.
 
Kerala, which suffered a loss of Rs 31,000 crore during the floods in August, Thursday wanted the Centre to expedite the promised assistance to enable it to rebuild the state, a report said.
 
Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the state had received only Rs. 2,683.18 Crore in its Distress Relief Fund and was finding it difficult to gather resources for the ‘re-build Kerala initiative.’ He said the state has to pay Rs. 290 crore to the Centre towards the rations received and rescue assistance provided during the floods.
 
“Air Force have asked the state to pay over Rs. 33.79 crore as the charge incurred for the rescue efforts during the deluge,” Vijayan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.
 
Kerala had sought assistance of Rs. 5,616 crore through two memorandums. And Rs. 2,000 crore as an emergency fund. But, the Centre has allocated only Rs. 600 crore as an emergency fund, the Chief Minister wrote.

 
 
Obvious bias
It is not the first time that the NDA has ignored the plight of natural disaster survivors. It even went ahead and refused the aid given by UAE and Thailand. Union minister K J Alphons had appealed for a “one-time exception” to the 14-year convention to allow overseas assistance, notably from the United Arab Emirates(UAE) in August.
 
“Kerala has contributed huge amounts of foreign exchange through remittance in the last 50 years. In fact, in the last year itself, it had brought Rs. 75,000 crore… For these reasons, as a junior minister I am appealing to my senior colleagues to make a special consideration for the state. I appeal to them to make a one-time exception to the policy,” Mr Alphons told PTI in Delhi.
 
The flood relief granted by the central government is still proving to be inadequate. The centre has sanctioned a paltry Rs 100 crore, a minuscule amount compared to what was given to Jammu and Kashmir (Rs 1000 crore in September 2014 and Rs 426.83 crore in February 2015), Bihar (Rs 500 crores in August 2017), and North East (Rs 2350 crores including Rs 300 crores and Rs 250 crores for Assam in 2017.)
 
There was a delayed response in the release of funds for rescue and relief operations in the state from the central government.
 
“The Centre is assisting the civilian administration in rescue work through the deployment of 52 rescue teams of central forces, including units of the Army and the Navy, and has pressed 339 motorised boats, 2,800 life jackets, 1,400 lifeboats, 27 light towers and 1,000 raincoats into service,” a report said.
 
The Rs 100 crore relief fund released by the Centre when the state asked for immediate assistance of Rs 1,220 crore was not enough when the first appeal for help was made.
 
Relief for Gujarat, Assam and Bihar but not for Kerala and Bengal
The same central government gave a better package to Gujarat, Assam and Bihar, all three where the BJP is a part of the government when they were struck by floods.
 
“Flood waters swept across several places in the country on July 25 last year, killing two in Rajasthan and forcing Gujarat to declare a high alert. A week later, the heavy deluge would kill another 222 people. Prime Minister’s reaction to the disaster in his home-state (Gujarat) was prompt. A day after the deaths, he announced an interim relief package of Rs. 500 crore and he undertook an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas with Chief Minister Vijay Rupani,” a report by News18 said.
 
“From June 13 to August 3 this year, Assam battled floods that came in two waves and killed 41 people. Nearly 11 lakh people in seven districts of the state were affected. Jitendra Singh, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, PMO office, announced Rs 340.4 crore as an interim flood relief package for the state—Rs 239.40 crore by way of the first installment of central share of State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and Rs 101 crore as the contribution from the Ministry of Northeast (DoNER),” the report said.
 
“In Bihar, flash floods in several rivers—Gandak, Burhi Gandak and Bagmati, Kamla, Kosi and Mahananda—killed as many as 514 people and affected another 1.71 crore people across 19 districts of North Bihar from August 12 to August 20 in 2017. The deluge was a result of torrential rains in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and other adjoining areas in the catchment area of major rivers in the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted an aerial survey of four affected districts—Purnea, Katihar, Kisanganj and Araria—with the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and announced Rs 500 crore as immediate relief for the state besides Rs 2 lakh each to the kin of those who died in the flood,” the report said.
 
It only released less than 10 per cent of the estimated damage in Kerala. The flood was one of the worst since 1924 and the death toll in August had reach 370. 20,000 houses were damaged and 10,000 kms of roads destroyed. 15 bridges were reported to have collapsed and 211 landslides had occurred due to the heavy rain and floods according to a Sabrang India report from August.
 
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati accused the Modi government of giving a step-motherly treatment to flood-hit Kerala and demanded that the calamity be declared a “national disaster”. The centre also dragged its feet in declaring the floods a national disaster.
 
“The BSP leader said that Kerala was suffering huge losses, both of life and property, in the worst floods in nearly a century. But despite demands for more funds and help, the central government was turning a blind eye to the crisis. “The BSP condemns in the harshest words such petty politics by the central government and the BJP,” she said in a report.
 
Past strategies
In addition to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam and Odisha are among states badly hit by floods.
 
Leaders in several of these states have sought more funds, but central government sources said many are yet to use the money they already have.
 
The Trinamul Congress and the BJD separately accused the central government of giving preference to the BJP-ruled Gujarat and Assam in providing assistance for damage caused by floods while remaining apathetic to the case of Bengal and Odisha.
 
In a report by Sudhir Patnaik in Sabrang India in 2001, a super cyclone ravaged Odisha but was not provided aid equal to Bhuj, Gujarat after the earthquake there.
 
“The Orissa Disaster Mitigation Mission has estimated the total loss to be not less than Rs. 20,000 crore, the same as the officially estimated loss caused to Gujarat now. However, the Orissa government, while appealing to the Centre made a request for an assistance of Rs 7,000 crore only. How much did the Centre actually pay? So far, only Rs 828 crore and 15 lakh. It may sound unbelievable but that is the truth,” the report said.
 
“Prime Minister AB Vajpayee issued almost a blank cheque to Gujarat. At least this was the version the media carried. Immediate assistance of Rs 1,300 crore was released to Gujarat by the Centre. Besides, the Prime Minister made an appeal to FICCI, CII etc to adopt all affected villages in Gujarat,” the report added.
 
“The most significant initiatives of the Centre were the 2 percent surcharge on Income Tax and Corporate Tax and the temporary removal of Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) provisions by the home ministry to enable free inflow of foreign funds for earthquake relief. The other policy initiatives of the Centre included, the formation of a 39–member Central Disaster Mitigation Authority, (which does not include anyone from Orissa), steps towards a Disaster Mitigation Act and the formation of a Disaster Mitigation Commission on the lines of the Election Commission of India,” the report said.
 
“This brings into focus the point that the BJP leadership of the Centre has made a direct assault on the spirit of Indian federalism and democracy by behaving differentially in similar situations. Since the super cyclone of Orissa has become part of history for those who neither witnessed it nor experienced its painful aftermath, it may be useful to recollect what was it all about,” the report said.
 
Punishing states that didn’t vote BJP?
“Indian central government is inhumanely using this crisis as an occasion to settle political scores and boost the obscene propagandist agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They are explicitly punishing people of Kerala for not allowing their divisive and communal hate agenda to get hold in this small state,” Pramod Puzhankara wrote in Sabrang India.
 
To deny the people help in the time of their greatest need is cruelty.
 

The post Is BJP refusing disaster aid to states that didn’t vote for them? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Volunteers like Jasmine Paulfin (left) and Sajitha (extreme right) helped ensure chlorination of wells and inform residents about consuming doxycycline tablets during their house visits. Reethamma CA (centre) is a junior health inspector.

Three pregnant women had gone into labour at the hospital which also had 25 bedridden patients. Pathanamthitta was one of the one worst affected districts in the floods that devastated Kerala in August 2018, leaving an estimated 5 million people displaced.

Sushan had to arrange for the immediate evacuation of the three women and their transfer to the Pathanamthitta general hospital. “Luckily we were able to summon ambulances,” he said. A contingency plan was drawn up for the evacuation of the other patients in case the waters rose further.

This was just one of the many medical crises averted by quick thinking and action by state health authorities in Kerala. A deluge on this scale usually brings with it fears of water- and vector-borne epidemics such as cholera, leptospirosis (rat fever), hepatitis A, and malaria. The July 1998 floods in Malda district in West Bengal, for instance, had ended in a cholera epidemic, followed by a diarrhoea outbreak which had left 276 dead.

Besides, Kerala was faced with another potential health crisis post-floods–it has the highest number (5 million) of diabetes and hypertension patients in India. Many chronic patients had been left homeless, without access to their daily, critical dose of medicines. Non communicable diseases (NCDs) have also led to an increase in kidney ailments in Kerala. About 100,000 dialyses are conducted in the state in a year and number of dialysis centres increased six times in the last five years, Mathrubhumi reported on April 29, 2018.

Kerala is known for its robust healthcare system–maternal mortality rate here is 61 deaths per 100,000 live births (India average is 167) and neonatal mortality rate is 6 deaths per 1,000 live births. But the floods had inflicted a loss of nearly Rs 325 crore on its health infrastructure, crippling it.

So how did the state cope? Our investigations found that planned monitoring and surveillance of disease and medical issues at state and district levels helped to minimise deaths and contain an impending crisis. Volunteers played a critical role in this effort as did the state’s determination to bypass red tape at critical points.

“The scale of the disaster was unprecedented,” recalled Rajeev Sadanandan, additional chief secretary, health and family welfare, and the officer credited for containing the Nipah outbreak. “With Nipah we were handling a virus we did not know, which was stressful. Here, we knew what to expect which helped us stay ahead, although the scale was massive.”

The state established a control room in capital city Thiruvananthapuram to coordinate the logistics of providing manpower and medicines statewide. Communicable diseases were to be contained by providing access to clean water and ensuring close monitoring at camps. Health volunteers were to ensure that those with non communicable diseases would be provided medicines, care and monitoring.

Source: Directorate of Health Services (here, here, and here)
Note: Data for 2018 is as of September 2018

In this concluding part of our three-part series (you can read part one here and part two here) of how Kerala is rebuilding itself after the floods, we investigate how the state managed to prevent a major health crisis though eight of its 14 districts were in the ‘heavily affected’ category.

IndiaSpend travelled to four districts, three–Pathanamthitta, Ernakulam,and Alappuzha–of which have been categorised as ‘highly affected districts’ by a DHS report, to understand how the state managed to stave off a health crisis.

How daily monitoring and surveillance worked
It was a little after lunch time at the directorate of health services in Thiruvananthapuram on September 10, 2018. A nationwide hartal (strike) had left the building empty. But on the first floor, a team of more than 60 people, mostly doctors, were hard at work, handling post-flood surveillance and monitoring at the 24×7 disaster control room set up on August 18, 2018.

A review meeting including the nodal officers, minister of health, and senior officials in the health department at the DHS office in Thiruvananthapuram.

At the control room, doctors had been appointed as nodal officers for 10 teams that dealt with public health, drugs and logistics, damage assessment, human resource management, documentation, media surveillance and so on.

“The teams meet in the morning to plan for the day, and again in the evening to review and evaluate,” said Sarita RL, director of health services. “The review meeting in the evening usually has the health minister and the secretary of health who evaluate daily reports.”

During the initial phase, it was imperative that medicines, medical assistance and clean water reached the camps and affected homes as per need. The drugs and logistics management and human resource teams ensured that the scores of doctors and volunteers pouring in from different regions were directed to relevant locations. Stocks of medicines and consumables were maintained at district levels based on local inputs and reports that reached via email by 4 pm each evening.

Rajeev Sadanandan, additional chief secretary, health and family welfare, said that with Nipah the government was handling a virus it did not know. But with the flood, they knew what to expect despite the scale.

In Ernakulam, the district health services set up a control room with five desks including a call centre. (Initially, the call centre was operated from Kollam which was not affected by the floods.) “The calls would be colour-coded based on urgency after screening and volunteer doctors attended calls,” said Asha Vijayan, a nodal officer for the control room.

In the five days to August 22, 2018, the helpline received 4,266 calls of which over 72% were addressed successfully, noted a report accessed by IndiaSpend.

The team also received 3,411 WhatsApp messages. “It was a WhatsApp-managed disaster,” said Sadanandan. There were so many officials from across the country volunteering to help that at one point people were asked to exit a WhatsApp group because it was getting overcrowded, he said.

In addition, a team of doctors from Tamil Nadu provided technical support based on their experience of the 2015 Chennai floods.

There were fears of a leptospirosis outbreak
Preventing an outbreak of leptospirosis or any other water-borne disease was high on the agenda of the health mission. This was because there were high chances that displaced people could come in contact with infected water.

Flooding facilitates the proliferation of rodents which shed large amounts of leptospires (bacteria) in their urine that cause the disease, noted a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. Outbreaks of leptospirosis had occurred post-floods in Brazil (1983, 1988 and 1996), in Nicaragua (1995), Krasnodar region, Russian Federation (1997), Santa Fe, USA (1998) Orissa, India (1999) and Thailand (2000).

Between August and September 2018, Kerala did report 1,084 cases of leptospirosis, of which 39 proved fatal, and 568 cases of dengue of which two led to deaths, according to provisional data available in the DHS website. But the crisis did not spin out of control.
In Ernakulam, nearly 2.3 million 100 milligram doxycycline tablets–that prevent leptospirosis—were given to flood victims and cleaning volunteers, recalled Shibu Balakrishnan, medical consultant with WHO India. This prophylactic programme for leptospirosis probably ranks as the largest in world, he pointed out.

Ten teams, including medical and non-medical staff, were assigned across the district specifically in highly affected regions around Ranni including Chittar and Seethathode. “We would go to camps in the morning and the afternoon to ensure doxycycline tablets were provided,” said Anil Kumar, a junior health inspector (JHI) in Ranni taluk hospital. “We were constantly in touch with community members we had identified to report on any health related events.”

Patients who visited the taluk hospital were supplied with doxycycline tablets and were instructed to consume it immediately if they had been in contact with water. “We were concerned that people who were returning home to clean their homes could be infected,” said Vaishakh VR at Ranni. “We did not wait for instructions to prescribe the tablets.”

The health team in Ranni taluk hospital including Vaishakh VR and Anil Kumar,  junior health inspector, who went to camps to ensure doxycycline tablets and other medical needs were available.

“By the time I got involved in Ernakulam on August 21, the system had handled the challenge well, especially ensuring that water and doxycycline was provided extensively,” said Shibu Balakrishnan, medical consultant with WHO India.

How the volunteer network was put to use
Volunteers played a significant role in the measures to prevent a leptospirosis outbreak. Jasmine Paulfin and Sajitha are members of Kudumbashree, state poverty eradication programme, which played a big role in relief and rehabilitation work, as we reported in the first part of the series. The duo work in Gothuruth in Ernakulam and are a part of Shradhha, a post-disaster monitoring programme devised in the district.

Under the programme, each volunteer–from the same neighborhood–is assigned about 40 homes to monitor cases of leptospirosis and its treatment. “We have been visiting homes to ensure that wells are chlorinated, provide information on rat fever and enquire about doxycycline availability and consumption,” said Paulfin.

They visited the same homes again after three days to repeat the process. “If we find persistent fevers reported in an area, then we focus closely on those cluster of homes,” said Manju KS, medical officer at the primary health clinic (PHC) in Gothruthu.

The checklist created for health volunteers to ensure household-level measures and precautions were taken avoid a health epidemic.

“In the initial phase, it was difficult to find volunteers, as everyone including me were affected,” said Reethamma CA, PHC’s junior health inspector. “But a Rs 5 incentive for visiting each house was helpful.”

But communicable diseases weren’t the only challenge for Kerala.

Ensuring insulin, medicines and dialysis for diabetics
Diabetics on insulin therapy were facing a crisis in Pathanamthitta during the floods: Cold storage systems had broken down because power supply had been disrupted. Insulin needs to be in a temperature-controlled environment to prevent protein breakdown that would render it ineffective. Patients identified in camps were given oral hypoglycemic drugs by medical officers. “Although it is not most effective for patients who are severely diabetic, but under the circumstances we had to opt for it,” said Sushan.

Dialysis was another critical area of patient care crippled by power breakdown. Patients were identified at camps by staff like JHI, junior public health inspector (JPHI), ASHA workers and health volunteers. With a total of 18 dialysis machines in two hospitals, patients were treated in three shifts of six hours each. Purified water needed for dialysis was ensured by the authorities which pressed reverse osmosis equipment.

Treatment was resumed for patients whose medication had been interrupted based on the guidelines provided by the state health department. In Ernakulam, palliative care nurses helped identify people with NCDs like hypertension, kidney ailments, and diabetes.

When technology came in handy
Kuttanad in Alappuzha is located at the lowest altitude in India. A low water table makes it vulnerable to water-borne diseases. “We had used KoBo application [field data collection tool] on mobile phones here earlier to check for communicable diseases,” said Anil Kumar, block medical officer of Veliyanadu. “It helps us locate the homes by geo-tagging and identifying hotspots. We have continued it for post-flood surveillance also.”

They have had a monitoring mechanism where volunteers, mostly women, inform health staff about any health issue in the neighborhood.

In Ernakulam, the health administration used KoBo to report data from private hospitals. Most of the data in the integrated diseases surveillance programme were from government hospitals.

An interdepartmental coordination mechanism was established with the district health officials and private hospitals, said Balakrishnan. “Medical officers were given the responsibility of liaising with private hospitals to report communicable diseases, especially leptospirosis, using the app,” said Balakrishnan of WHO India. They would go through medical records and registers among others to pick any probable cases, and sensitise private practitioners about reporting any suspected cases immediately.

Note: An earlier version of the story showed the chart on cases and deaths due to disease erroneously. We have now corrected this, and we regret the error.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post How Kerala Staved Off A Health Crisis That The August Floods Could Have Unleashed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Despite a loss of nearly Rs 850 crore and damaged offices and substations, the Kerala State Electricity Board restored power to nearly 2.56 million consumers in less than two weeks.

“We were lucky that our home was not damaged,” said Cherian, who moved back to Kerala in 2014 from Kuwait where he had worked for 20 years.

But the flood waters had left Chengannur without electricity. It was the worst-affected division in the state with six of seven sections flooded. By August 16, 2018, its sub-station–an electricity distribution point–had been switched off.

The Zachariahs were struggling to tend to the needs of the dozens of volunteers who slept over at their home. “Not having power was the biggest problem, especially for cooking and the use of toilets,” said Neelina.

The disaster left 2.56 million homes statewide without electricity. How the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) restored power in these homes under a fortnight by mobilising and deploying every human resource at hand, including retired KSEB staff, engineering students and private electricians, doing away with red tape and questions of hierarchy and communication could be a model for every disaster-stricken state grappling with a similar problem.

The KSEB called its plan Mission Reconnect.

“The situation was unprecedented,” NS Pillai, chairman and managing director (CMD) of KSEB, told IndiaSpend. “We had to ensure that requests for materials and personnel on ground were provided without the usual delays of following government procedure.”

In the first part of this series on how Kerala is rebuilding itself post-flood, we looked at the role of a poor women’s collective. In this second part, we tell you how KSEB, which suffered a loss of nearly Rs 850 crore during the floods, dealt with the crisis. The flood waters damaged nearly 16,158 distribution transformers, 50 sub-stations, 15 large and small hydel stations, according to the KSEB data we accessed.

IndiaSpend traversed four districts–Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta, Ernakulam, and Thiruvananthapuram–to understand how the KSEB pulled off its mission.

Swimming, wading through mud, riding a boat: How wiremen reached work
The KSEB set up a state-level task force (SLTF) at its headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram consisting of a 24×7 control room. “Our primary role was to ensure communication to and from district level officials was seamless,” said Suresh Kumar C, deputy chief engineer leading the SLTF.
The challenge was to make human resource and material available at all levels of its functioning–from the control room in the state capital to section offices–and also ensure coordination between different wings of the board and between the board and external agencies.

The focus was to ensure that materials and personnel for power restoration were provided without delay: NS Pillai, chairman and managing director, KSEB.

But what ensured the mission’s success was the doggedness with which workers and volunteers made sure that they reached distressed homes and submerged villages.
“I am set to retire soon, and have never seen anything like this,” said Manikuttan, a sub-engineer with KSEB at the Chengannur division office. It was his day off but he walked into his office in a white mundu (sarong) and brown shirt. At 55, he is fit, just a few strands of grey giving away his age.

In the three days following August 15, 2018, he travelled to work in a milkman’s boat from his home around 5 km away. “Although my house wasn’t affected, I had to wade or swim till I could access transport,” he said. “For a few days we stayed in office to restore power in different parts of the sub-division.”

Source: Kerala State Electricity Board (As of September 3, 2018)
Shyam Kumar, an assistant executive engineer, is a part of the project management unit (PMU) in Haripad circle. With senior officers stranded at home or in relief camps, he and his colleagues had to coordinate the restoration of infrastructure and supply to 120,000 consumers in Haripad. “We assumed charge under the circumstances,” said Shyam Kumar.

In order to ensure efficient coordination and communication, the PMU decided that seven nodal officers would be in-charge of each section office and local electrical installations would not be activated without their knowledge. This ensured that there were no transmission issues once sub-stations were resumed and activated.

Teams of line staff, supervisors would patrol the 11-KV high transmission lines and inform nodal officers about their status and repair requirements. The officers would then communicate the information to the circle and the control room.

Retired wiremen, electricians, engineering students roped in
Volunteers from engineering colleges, retired KSEB staff and wiremen visited individual homes to check installations like meters and wiring. “Considering Onam was around the corner, we were expecting establishments to be shut,” said Kumar. “We ensured that electrical supplies, line materials, transformers and so on were moved here from other circles.”

The priority for restoration was given to hospitals, railway stations, water pumping station and the telephone department in Chengannur.

Laila NG, assistant executive engineer at the Chengannur sub-division office, could only join work by August 22, 2018. Her home was a shelter to more than 20 neighbours hit by floods. “When I joined I realised it was a matter of managing resources, both human and material,” said Laila.
Just before the floods, 11 line staff had been transferred to new locations. This meant that the new people who had joined had little knowledge of the area and the distribution network.

“During a meeting, we requested that overseers and line staff be temporarily moved back so that they could help complete the restoration works quickly,” she said. The orders were passed immediately by the board in Thiruvananthapuram.

In Alangand too, a flood-hit section of Ernakulam, line staff and supervisors were transferred back to ensure that their familiarity with the region would hasten restoration work.

Pile of electricity meters that were damaged or have been replaced in Chengannur sub-division which was among the worst affected by the August 2018 flood.

In some areas of Chengannur and Alangad, electric poles and lines had fallen into water-logged fields and wires were sagging. A team of eight KSEB staff with experience in working in water-logged areas helped resurrect the installations and pulled up the wires.

Transformers which were not damaged were charged, their oil replaced, and fuse removed to restore transmission. Nearly 99% of the 16,158 affected transformers had been restored as of September 3, 2018, as per KSEB data.

“It was the effort of our own staff, volunteers that helped us restore power within few days despite our 33 KV substation tripping due to the flood,” said Anil Kumar, assistant engineer in Alangand section.

In homes where it was not possible to supply power immediately due to structural damage, simple connections were provided which included safety device to prevent shock, a power socket to use motors for cleaning or other purposes, and a bulb holder. Nearly 700 such devices were provided.

The Kerala Electrical Wiremen and Supervisors Association, a private association of electrical workers, were vital in ensuring that homes were safe for power restoration.

“A group of 3-4 people would check the wiring of close to 150 homes a day, ideally in the presence of the homeowner,” said Jose Daniel, a member of the association in Chengannur. These men were among the first to wade through the slush and mud to damaged homes, often working late into the night.

A team of wiremen like Jose Daniel would check around 150 homes a day to ensure safe wiring wiring before power restoration. They often had to wade through mud and filth to reach homes.

Low-lying areas like Kuttanad, which routinely experience flooding during rains, were even tougher po ckets to restore power.

Restoring power in Kuttanad, below mean sea level
Barely a couple of metres away from the backwater, files and papers lie strewn outside KSEB’s Kainakary office in Kuttanad. With an average elevation of 1 metre above mean sea level, it has the lowest altitude in India.

Kuttanad is used to annual waterlogging during monsoons but this was unprecedented, said locals.

During the July 2018 flood that hit parts of Alappuzha, including Kainakary, the damage had not been severe, said Anandan NK, assistant engineer, electrical section in Kainakary. “Water rose a foot inside the office in July,” he said. “But in the August flood, water rose five-feet inside the office and the strong currents damaged installations.”

The KSEB office in low-lying Kainakary, a couple of metres from the backwaters, was flooded. The substation was switched off for nearly four days.

Six of the 98 transformers in Kuttanad submerged and many others affected. The substation was switched off for nearly four days.

Small motor boats with teams of line staff and contractors cut supply to homes due to the rising waters. “With almost all the inhabitants of the region having been evacuated, patrolling at night in pitch dark was tough and dangerous,” said Ashok Kumar, a contractor with KSEB for 24 years and a flood-affected resident of Kainakary. “The clearance between the boat and the electric line was so low that we could be on the boat and check the wires in some places.”

The staff at the Kainakary office that helped restore power in low-lying Kuttanad.

In the districts IndiaSpend visited, rescue teams new to the area used electric lines to identify roads and pathways.  

Volunteers helped identify unsafe homes with damaged installation like meters or wiring. Wherever possible, they marked meters using stickers–red for damaged and green for undamaged–and created a checklist for reference. The entire 58-km stretch of 11 KV lines in Kuttanad, 86% of which is on paddy fields located a few metres below mean sea level, was restored in five days.

Single point connections were provided to homes where wiring was damaged or those with issues of structural stability.

“Usually, the motor pumps are used in paddy fields to deal with monsoon water-logging but most of them were damaged,” said Anandan. The need for boats also slowed down the progress. “Even now, close to 200 homes that are situated in the water-logged parts do not have power.”
Pathanamthitta and Ernakulam experienced similar issues.

Neighbouring states helped with men, material
“While the staff did an exemplary job, we received a lot of support from volunteers wiremen, and electricity staff from other state governments in the south,” said Pillai. Nearly 120 state electricity board board staff from Andhra Pradesh arrived with their own equipment to join Mission Reconnect.

KSEB received more than 20,000 electricity meters and transformers from Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Since the board was implementing the Integrated Power Development Scheme and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana–central schemes to improve power distribution and supply–it had a stock of electrical poles, meters and transformers it could put to use in restoration work.

“We received around 125 transformers from Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation,” Santosh K, executive engineer in Pathanamthitta, told IndiaSpend. “More than 220 transformers were submerged here, but we were able to either replace or fix them within five days it thanks to the availability of replacement.”

The infrastructure loss alone in the district was Rs 33 crore. The KSEB has decided to not collect electricity dues till January 31, 2019, to give people time to tide over the financial distress caused by the floods.

This is the second of a three-part series. You can read the first part here.

Next: How A Robust Health System Is Preventing Outbreak Of Diseases In Post-Flood Kerala  

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post How The Lights Came Back In Kerala’s Ravaged Homes appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Nearly 405,000 women volunteers of Kudumbashree helped clean around 200,000 homes and cleared more than 12,000 public roads and offices across 10 flood-affected districts of Kerala

“The water nearly reached the ceiling, and left behind nearly two feet of clayey mud and dirty water,” Thomas told IndiaSpend. “But I had help.” A team of eight to 10 women volunteers arrived at the couple’s home after the flood waters receded and within 48 hours cleaned out the mud and filth so the couple could return home.

The volunteers belonged to Kudumbashree, Kerala’s women-centric poverty eradication mission set up in 1998. Its 4.4 million women members are from poor families–their average monthly income in 2015-16 was Rs 3,064, according to a 2017 report. At Kudumbashree, women members run income-generating activities, including micro enterprises, horticulture, animal husbandry, handloom and handicrafts.

They were among the first to join the mission to help flood victims. In Pathanamthitta district, the mission has more than 28,000 women volunteers. Many of these poor Samaritans were themselves flood victims, their homes destroyed and their families in distress.

Nearly 405,000 women volunteers of Kudumbashree helped clean around 200,000 homes and cleared more than 12,000 public roads and offices across 10 flood-affected districts of Kerala, the mission’s data showed. Around 40,000 flood victims with psychosocial problems were helped by its counsellors. The women also contributed Rs 9.7 crore–roughly 1% of the funds received by the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF)–according to the mission’s reports.

IndiaSpend traversed four southern and south-central districts to explore how the people and government of Kerala are now rebuilding the state. We report our findings from Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha and Ernakulam district in a three-part series.

In this, the first part, we report on Kudumbashree and its work. In the second part, we look at how Kerala State Electricity Board, which suffered a loss of nearly Rs 850 crore and damaged offices and substations, restored power in the state through Mission Reconnect. In the final part, we investigate how the state’s health system and bureaucracy averted a post-flood health crisis.

Record rainfall and the deluge that followed in Kerala caused 493 deaths and a loss of Rs 25,050 crore, the Indian Express reported on September 28, 2018. All 14 districts of the state were on red alert for flooding on August 15, 2018.

‘Those who have suffered understand the suffering of others’

The mission has a three-tier federated community structure: Neighbourhood groups with 10 to 20 women, area development societies, which include all the neighbourhood groups in a ward, and community development societies, which include all ward groups in a panchayat.

The clayey mud and dirt in the Thomases house in Pathanamthitta was removed by volunteers from Kudumbashree.

“The members are service and community-oriented,” said S Harikishore, the executive director of Kudumbashree. “A person who has suffered can understand the suffering of others.”

On the morning of August 15, 2018, Sujatha R, chairperson of the community development society in Mulakuzha panchayat of Chengannur taluk in Alappuzha district, received a frantic call for help from the vice-president of the panchayat. Chengannur, where 16 died, was among the worst-affected regions in Kerala.

Waters were rising fast in one of the low-lying wards and volunteers were needed to help those who had moved into a relief camp in a school, the panchayat official told her. “Instead of a couple, we sent 11 members within an hour despite the heavy downpour,” said Sujatha.
The team found women, children, and a 40-day old baby at the camp, most of them drenched to the bone and asking for warm water to stave off the chill. “We managed to quickly heat some water and make kanji (rice porridge) by noon using whatever provisions were available,” Sujatha recalled.

Some clothes that the team had collected earlier for those affected by floods in Kuttanad came in handy at the camp. But more areas in Chengannur were going under and more people were pouring into the relief camp.

Thanks to Kudumbashree’s wide network, Sujatha could ensure that women who were not too badly affected by the floods contributed packets of poddichor (packed curry-rice) to feed those who had sought refuge at the camp. “I requested people to provide usable old clothes and cooked food and made my way through the waters to collect these,” said Sujatha whose own home had been spared by the deluge.

By the fourth day, Sujatha had convinced people that food must be cooked in the camp where the numbers had swelled to 600. Kudumbashree staff would pitch in and help.

But the flood waters did not spare the home of community development society head Usha Sasi in Pandanad panchayat, around 10 km away. All 13 of the wards she administered were affected. “Water still seeps through the floor of my house, and the stench still hangs in the air,” said Usha.

Wading through neck-deep water, they kept the old and infirm safe
The home of Shippi Sebastian, who headed the Chendamangalam panchayat’s community development society, nearly 130 km north of Pandanad, was among the first to be flooded. Her house is in Gothuruth, just 50 metres from the backwaters.

“My son and I managed to put the TV and refrigerator on top of a cot but the water still damaged it,” she said. It took five days for the water to recede. “Although many of us were victims of the flood, Kudumbashree members like Rukhiya itah (as the elder sister is addressed in Muslim families) provided great service.”

A couple of kilometers from the Kudumbashree office, 57-year-old Rukhiya Siddique gave Sebastian a hug and smile as she adjusted her headscarf. Her spacious double-storied home, laid with marble flooring, sparkled but the sofa cushions and mattresses are all stacked up in the living room. “I’m sorry but the flood has completely damaged the furniture and we’re still cleaning up. I wish I could offer you a proper seat,” she said as she pulled out a metal chair.

Siddique had volunteered at the government higher secondary school where nearly 250 people were camped on August 15, 2018. As the flood waters rose over 10 feet, she and a few others had to move everyone to higher floors.

“It was painful to see the disabled, especially the elderly, in such discomfort,” she said. “We made the best use of the available material to cook. Luckily I had requested some people around in the area to store water from the well.”

Over the next five days, Siddique and others worked through the day, wearing the same set of clothes, often drenched, wading through neck-deep water. They were among the last to be evacuated from the school.

Festive season of high sales washed out
In Ernakulam, nearly 95% of community development societies in 96 panchayats of the district were flooded, according to an interim report accessed by IndiaSpend at the district mission office. But members in the unaffected regions of the district, including Ernakulam city, chipped in: In the four days till September 27, 2018, they packed and despatched 27,500 vegetable kits and 8,500 of 5-kg rice kits.

The community development society in Mallapuzhassery even managed to provide more than 1,000 packets of meals with payasam (pudding) on Onam. “We are glad that we managed that at a time of such distress,” said Unnikrishnan, district programme manager, Pathanamthitta.
“We distributed 38,000 food packets in the affected regions of the district,” said Sabir Hussain, district mission coordinator in Pathanamthitta.

Onam is normally an important period for Kudumbashree when there is a huge demand for its products such as handicrafts, organic food and soaps. This year’s rain crisis came as a huge blow to the collective’s finances. “Last year, we had sales of nearly Rs 30 crore. We now need to restructure our plan and prioritise livelihoods for members,” said Harikishore.

After the deluge, the cleanup
In Pathanamthitta, Ernakulam, and Alappuzha districts, 185,000 volunteers–46% of  volunteers–cleaned over 75,000 homes and 7,500 public roads. The collective used whatever resources it could find in this task. The heavy mud that seeped into homes was removed by the male relatives of Kudumbashree members or other male volunteers; the women did the scrubbing and cleaning.  

In addition to the cleaning, Kudumbashree members also cooked and packed food for victims of the flood in relief camps.

In Pathanamthitta, 28,000 volunteers from Kudumbashree cleaned nearly 12,000 homes and public roads. The priority was to clean public roads and homes of the poor and the elderly who were living alone, said Hussain.

It was hard work that left many volunteers exhausted and ill, unable to return the next day. “We had to arrange another group to clean the next day,” said Sheeja of Mallapuzhassery. “The stench of the water was nauseating and some of us developed allergies.” While cleaning a school in Chendamangalam, volunteers had to deal with eight snakes that had crept in.

When small savings became a big help
Neighbourhood household groups of Kudumbashree gave money to the CMDRF from their thrift fund. These are small regular savings of these groups that are normally pooled and given out as internal loans to most deserving members. The amount is decided by the group on the basis of its income.

Five of the 14 districts transferred more than Rs 1 crore to the state mission which was transferred to the CMDRF. Kannur in north Kerala contributed the most–nearly Rs 1.28 crore.
But the distress caused by the devastation affected people as much as material loss. In three districts, community counsellors from Kudumbashree counselled more than one-third of the nearly 40,000 persons.

Rebuilding through counselling
During a routine house visit after the flood, Srija Mahesh, a community counsellor in Mallapuzhassery, found a woman there hostile and angry. When Mahesh sat her down and patiently convinced her to talk, she opened up.

[Counselors in  Alappuzha] Nearly 40,000 persons who are battling the psychosocial trauma of the flood have received counselling from Kudumbashree’s community counselors.

“All the the money that she had saved to repay a loan slipped from her hand while she was trying to save her son’s speaker which he had bought after a long wait,” said Mahesh. “The shock of it and not knowing how she was going to repay the loan was unbearable for her.”

Kudumbashree community counsellors normally provide counselling services to the parents of elderly, adolescent students, children, women who are survivors of violence. But the floods had brought a different set of problems altogether. Not just the elderly, even children, some of who had been separated from their families during rescue efforts, were traumatised, said Sreelatha I, a counsellor in Pandanad.

Since the floods abated, Kerala’s health department has worked with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) to train 16,671 volunteers to provide psychosocial first aid to people afflicted with disaster-related stress, Scroll.in reported on September 30, 2018.
This is the first of a three-part series.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

The post How A Poor Women’s Collective Is Helping Rebuild Flood-Wrecked Kerala appeared first on SabrangIndia.

When the deadly monsoon wreaked havoc in Kerala, it didn’t spare even the schools where little kids come to take their first steps in formal education. The Government Lower Primary (GLP) School at Kurichyarmala in Vythiri in Wayanad district was one such school to suffer heavily during the floods. But the school rose from the calamity like a phoenix, setting a new example of community feeling and social responsibility.

Wayanad had to face the wrath of nature even before the rest of Kerala began to face them. In the landslide of August 13, mud, rocks and other wastes covered nearly half the GLP school at Kurichyarmala. Roads and bridges leading to the school were washed away, and a big crack was formed in the ground making it impossible to access the area. Such circumstances made it nearly impossible to run the school.

The first helping hand for the school came from the Muslim Mahall Committee of the area. When the school authorities approached them, the committee offered to give the hall above its madrasa building for the school.  The committee met officially and handed over a document to the school authorities allowing to run the school in its building; only 10 minutes were reportedly needed for the committee to take the decision. The document was submitted to the district education authorities and permission received. The school was temporarily shifted to the madrassa.  Soon after, schools were given holidays all over the state due to the incessant rains with landslides and floods.

But the people of Kurichyarmala were not ready to give up. If they lost this school, there was no government school nearby for the nearly 100 young kids studying in pre-school to class 4.  The school authorities went to the Collectorate to discuss the matter, from where they met a group of young men willing to help, who were focusing on the rebuilding of schools destroyed in the natural calamity.  They visited the area, saw the destroyed school and the madrassa building arranged to resume the classes temporarily.

When the local people and teachers were determined to bring back the school, others also came in. The young men from the voluntary organisations like the Green Palliative, the Human Beings Collective and the Malabar Flood Rehabilitation Forum decided to stand with the initiative of the teachers and the local people.  Schools were to reopen on August 29 after the Onam vacations.  And it was already August 25.  They announced in all the media possible about the condition of the school and the mission to rebuild, inviting volunteers and contributions.  Around 50 volunteers from Kasargode to Ernakulam turned up to rebuild the school.
 

 

Students from the Aligarh Muslim University donated learning equipment.  Toys came from the students of the Pondicherry University.  Those from the Jawaharlal Nehru University helped financially. A sum of Rs 3.5 lakh was spent on the school.  The library was sponsored by the Kerala School Teachers Association.

The new school was built on top of the madrassa building in 72 hours.  The volunteers served day and night to carry bricks and cement, to paint and decorate, to set everything right. There was no wall on one part of the building. They built the wall of more than 70-feet length in one and half hours. The walls were decorated with paintings and colourful pictures. They also set up the play area for the little kids with toy horses, see-saw, ball pool etc.  While the men were busy with the work of the school, food for the volunteers was cooked and served by the women in nearby houses.

“We offered our support, and they took up the project. However, the most important thing is that the youth of this place joined them, including the parents and local people.  The reason for the success goes to the formation of a good collective here.  Actually, the main works were carried out in three days, ie a building was decorated and transformed into a school within a mere 72 hours,” Sashi PK, the headmaster of the GLP School, Kurichayarmala, told TwoCircles.net on phone.
 

 

The school needed everything from chalks and blackboards to benches and desks, tables and chairs, shelves, toilets, kitchen to cook food, projector, other equipment etc.  The school now has a pre-primary classroom, four classrooms for the students of classes 1 to 4, a staff room and a room for the headmaster.  The new school reopened along with all other schools on August 29, but with a difference – a grand function was held to mark the reopening.

CK Saseendran, MLA, inaugurated the re-opening function and promised to give Rs 1.5 crore to the school from his MLA fund.  District Collector Keshavendra Kumar, sub-Collector Umesh, DDE K Prabhakaran, parents, Mahall authorities and local people were present at the function.
 

 

There were motivational sessions and entertainment programmes for the students who had witnessed the fury of nature, many of who had been in relief camps for days and had suffered losses.  In fact, there were only motivational classes for three days.

“This is an initiative of the local people”, said Anees Nadodi, art director in the film industry and volunteer of the Green Palliative, to TwoCircles.net on phone.  “We only helped them. The parents of the students carried out the electrical, plumbing, carpentry, masonry and welding works, under the leadership of the headmaster and the president of the Parent Teacher Association. Our involvement was only providing creative support to the community initiative of the people of Kurichyarmala. We had interior designers, artists, architects etc in the team, and thus we could finish the works in time.”  The bank account of the Green Palliative was used to raise funds for the initiative.

Another school at Makkimala, around 55 km from Kurichyarmala near Mananthavady, also faced similar situations of having lost the school building to a landslide. The school didn’t get a fitness certificate as there were cracks in the building itself, and so it couldn’t be opened on August 29. Inspired by the act of the madrassa and Mahall Committee at Kurichyarmala, the Mahall Committee at Makkimala also offered their building for the school there. The mosque was on the ground floor and the school could function on the first floor. On September 1, when the volunteering team at Kurichyarmala was about to return after the rebuilding and three days of motivational classes, the imam of the mosque urged the local people in his Friday sermon to move to Makkimala and rebuild the school there. Accordingly, the experienced local people went to Makkkimala and rebuilt the school there in two days, and the school was reopened on September 4. And this time the local people of Kurichyarmala did it all with the support of the people at Makkimala, without any help from the volunteering team from outside. “We rebuilt the school at Makkimala in cooperation with the local people there, and now we are ready to undertake such works anywhere,” said Aslam, president of the PTA at Kurichyarmala school.
 

 

Setting a new example of community service and social responsibility, the Kurichyarmala GLP school has entered its special name in the records related to the rebuilding of Kerala after the calamity of 2018. The old building of the school cannot be used, and the area also is inaccessible.  So the school needs a new building which, the headmaster informed that the TATA group has promised. It needs a suitable piece of land now, which also will be acquired with the joint efforts of the school and local people, as is evident from the unmatched activities that have been accomplished now.

 
Courtesy: Two Circles

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I write to you as a citizen, so unlike the many eulogies and appeals you have received recently, this will not be sugar-coated. You have received much praise, which is indeed well-deserved. But most of us have done, and are still doing, our duty well, but there is no need to indulge in any more self-praise.

I write to express my misgivings about how we are now dealing with this crisis collectively. First,  let me point out that the disaster has hardly receded, except in a narrow way: the waters have receded, but not wholly everywhere even today. And the terrible deluge of waste — emerging from our clogged drains, from the roadside heaps, household piles, dumping yards, the horrendous pollutants from the factories in Eloor, all carried by the waters and admixed in them, and now from homes that are being cleaned — is upon us now, and we do not know where to go. Much of this waste is not perceptible to the naked eye: they will erode us slowly.  Thirdly, the return monsoon will arrive in October and there is no guarantee at all that the Bay of Bengal will be free of cyclonic formations then. So, yes, the disaster is not over.

I read your interview in The Hindu. It displays exactly the same sort of denial, of environmental destruction, that environment psychologists talk about discussing responses to climate change, of people continuing to be in denial even though they agree with its reality in their rational minds.  You agree that ecological issues exist and they must be addressed, and also quote the familiar phrase associated with reconstruction, about building back better, not just building back. But then you go back a few paragraphs later to assert that it had to do primarily with the heavy rains! This is not your personal fault, nor is it any individual’s Malayali’s failing. But I fear that however unintentionally, your commitment to ecological wisdom in development is shallow. If we are really committed to ecologically- secure futures, then we must begin by becoming aware, once again, of the rhythms of the natural world we live in and acknowledging that they need to figure in our planning.

Slowness may be a virtue for other reasons too. Is it not more important now to deal with the terrible psychological shock that people have endured? There is a terrible blankness one encounters in the eyes of people whose future — even the immediate future — has all of sudden turned invisible. Should we not pause to heal that? Not for a moment would I say that mobilizing finances is unimportant. Yet can we afford to accord less attention to the task of healing searing psychological wounds that may have the most terrible consequences in the long term? Shouldn’t we slow down now to pay attention to our wounded people and indeed wait for the return monsoon to pass before we start the search for finances full-swing? This is not merely about using the services of counsellors, as many of us tend to think. That is a terribly individualized solution. This is about providing immediate material comforts and facilities in the affected areas — which many are working on, but which is also failing in key respects. Was it necessary to end the relief camps so soon? Was it necessary to refuse relief claiming that a surplus was available when even basic relief continues to elude many of the relatively remote areas? Was it necessary to reinstate party control over many camps when civil society was playing a stellar role? Should we not pay attention to re-directing the energies of civil society towards the new deluge, of waste, and not reducing that challenge to the immediate one, of cleaning affected houses? So much of Kerala’s visible ‘prosperity’ rested on credit, and people with loans are now sick with worry about why and how they should pay back loans for now-non-existent things. About how they can never get back to normal life without becoming a debtor of some sort or the other. There are youngsters planning to get out of school because they cannot see their secure futures anymore, with parents — often single mothers — losing everything they had. We need our anganwadis restored and functioning again, immediately so that our children can have normal lives again. So that women’s burdens do not triple. We need comfort and assurance for our men who may plunge deeper into alcoholism unable to deal with the psychological trauma.

Slowness is not tardiness. It is the willingness to accept that it takes time and patience for planning anything long-term.

Among your colleagues, especially among bureaucrats, one cannot help noticing the exact opposite: a terrible hurry to get back to the road we were travelling on earlier. So much so that we refuse to be circumspect about accepting an invitation from an organization like KPMG. Please do see that right now, slowness is a virtue. Such hurry, Comrade, that it appears that you really don’t care anymore even for that mere fig-leaf of the claim of being on the global political left! Your deputy here the other day proclaimed that the KPMG was ‘quite alright’ as though childish insistence on being right all the time was important, and not his leftist credentials.

I agree that many figures in the Opposition are quite unsavoury, but the manner in which your deputy proceeds, as though the Opposition can be summarily ignored seems to be a huge deviation from the maturity you displayed when the waters were still pounding us. Please do remind him that the days of the disaster are not yet gone — and anyway, democracy needs an Opposition. Please also remember the Constitutional obligation to start the new planning processes from the Grama Sabhas. Let us not be blinded by our speed, so that we end up sacrificing our well-embedded institutions of local democracy to the most tedious labours and denying them the centrality they deserve in our planning. Please call for mobilizing our panchayats, renew our collectivities. In times of danger, only collectivity works, and we have seen it.

And there is no harm in admitting one’s mistakes. It is very hard to believe that dam management was not flawed, and it is really now time for us to introspect truthfully — taking time — if we are not to be wiped off by the waters again.  Indeed, we can no longer treat truthfulness as an avoidable quality — self-deception, we all have been warned, is the road to self-destruction. It is not enough to oppose the BJP and Modi; you have to show that you are different from them.

Money is important, I agree. But if we think of that as primary, too much will be lost. In sum, I beg you, please make the future visible again to people who grope in the dark, between the terrible sea of loss and the gaping abyss of debt. Please light it with hope and not with increasingly-hollow paeans to human triumph.

First published on kafile.online
 

The post Restore Our Vision of the Future: A Letter to the Kerala Chief Minister appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Malppuram district Collector Amit Meena recieving contributions for the flood relief. The elderly people gave their old age pensions and the woman gave the money she had set aside for Umra pilgrimage.

The state rose from the initial confusion of the hard-beating floods with a courage and determination unprecedented in history. The rescue of Kerala became the mission of all strata of people, from the fishermen on the coasts to the IT professionals in the cities.

The young generation, which the elders used to laugh at saying they are always on phones and the internet, suddenly rose to the occasion. They utilised the internet on their fingertips to coordinate the rescue mission. Unofficial control rooms opened up on social media such as Whatsapp and Facebook for the rescue mission. Emergency numbers were announced on the social media for the aid of those caught up in the floods. The people stranded on rooftops and isolated buildings in the heavily flooded areas sent audio and video messages on the social media which were widely shared, and thus reached the rescue teams. ‘The Compassionate Kerala’, a group formed by former Kozhikode Collector Prashant Nair (commonly known as Collector Bro among the youths) was at the forefront to coordinate things, by collecting data on the rescue needs, sending information to the rescue teams and updating on the happenings.

The tech-savvy young generation created new apps to aid the rescue mission. The NRIs in the Gulf, Europe and elsewhere coordinated from their respective countries too. The Kerala government also rose to the occasion by creating a new website solely for the rescue and relief activities connected with the deadly floods – www.keralarescue.in.  Now, Google could not wait on the sidelines.  The internet giant began a move to mark the safety of people.  People were asked to mark if they were safe in the Kerala floods or not. Websites like www.microid.in came up with maps to mark the flooded areas, which was useful for both rescue workers as well as those travelling with relief materials.

The leaders of the state-led from the front.  They did not give orders and sit back in their comfortable homes.  Instead, the ministers, MLAs and other political party leaders were in the front of the mission to save Kerala working from their own respective constituencies.  Finance Minister Dr Thomas Isaac and Agriculture Minister VS Sunil Kumar were seen in the forefront of rescue and relief activities. Collector and sub-Collector of Wayanad carried sacks of rice on their backs when trucks came to the relief collection point at night when other volunteers in the camp were taking rest after a tough day.  Several district Collectors and IAS officers were in the forefront to lead the rescue and relief mission. Notable are TV Anupama of Thrissur, K Vasuki of Thiruvananthapuram, and Amit Meena of Malappuram, as well as other IAS officers Rajamanickam, UV Sumesh, and Prashant Nair. “You are making history. You are showing the world what Malayalis can do. In my opinion, you are working like soldiers who fought for freedom.” Though these words were said by K Vasuki to a cheering crowd at a relief camp in Thiruvananthapuram, whole Kerala took her words as an inspiration to move forward in the difficult times.

The Chief Minister, who was known to have a difficult relationship with the media, managed the grave situation wisely, with not a single negative tinge in his press meets.  He convened press meets regularly and informed the media of what was happening. Even when the whole state was rallying against the centre for not providing an adequate number of army and navy personnel and helicopters for airlifting, the CM maintained that the Centre was helpful and that it had offered more help.  He always carried a positive note in his press meets. And his office worked 24×7 in those days.

The bureaucracy worked along with the political leadership, and the local population also joined them.  Nobody waited for directions to come from the top as to what to do. The local self-government bodies and its representatives acted as guides of their respective areas to identify and rescue each and every one, and they also supervised the relief camps.  Local youth clubs and small groups also played their part in the mission to save the state. They are still active in the field with relief activities in remote areas where the government officials and aid may not reach.
Similarly, the role of the opposition parties also is commendable.  The highly-political state of Kerala saw its ruling party and opposition going together in the mission to rescue the people.  The opposition stood firmly with the ruling government and kept away from making accusations sensing the gravity of the situation.

The Kerala Police and Fire Force were responsible for the warning and evacuation of people from the affected areas before the waters rose, and they actively involved themselves in the rescue operations once floods came in. They also assisted the central forces and fishermen towards the end. The role of the NDRF, the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force cannot be sidelined; they were in the forefront for rescue by water and air, as well as airdropping food to those stranded in the flooded parts.

Perhaps, the most important part in the rescue mission was carried out by the fishermen. The centre had provided helicopters to airlift those stranded on rooftops in the areas where water had submerged even two-storey houses.  Several dams were opened and water was flowing heavily into the 44 rivers all over the state. The rains were incessantly falling too. When Saji Cherian, MLA of Chengannur, broke down on an interview with a news channel, it was clear that things were falling apart.  It was then that the new saviours came to the forefront – the fishermen. Fishermen from Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha and even Malappuram went all the way to the flooded parts with their boats and initiated the new phase of the rescue mission. In fact, they chose on their own volition to risk their lives and row their boats through the heavily-flowing water to save people.

Though the Navy and the NDRF followed in, the death count would have probably gone up substantially, had the fishermen folk not turned up. And the state did recognize the efforts of the sidelined section of the society. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan hailed the fishermen as the ‘Army of Kerala’, which in a way serves as a befitting reply to the centre which refused to send in more army men for the rescue.

Even as the rescue mission was going on, contributions were flowing in from different parts. The government requested people to contribute to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund. Other states in the country offered great help, financially and materially, which amounts to a total of around Rs 150 crore. When the state announced the primary estimate of loss as Rs 20,000 crore and requested for Rs 2,000 crore as immediate relief, the centre gave Rs 600 crore. Countries like UAE, Qatar and Thailand offered help, but the central government has taken a position not to accept foreign aid.

Tales of love in the time of floods
A fisherman from Tanur in Malappuram district has become the symbol of love and sacrifice in the deadly floods. A group of fishermen saved some women from the floods and boats were ready to transport them to a safer place. But a woman was not well and sensing that she might find it difficult to climb onto the boat from the water in which they were standing, Jaisal did the unexpected. He knelt on the ground covered by water so that the women could step onto his back and get down into the boat. The video of the same went viral on the social media and even the international media took notice of it.

While celebrities and big businessmen are contributing considerable amounts to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund and relief works of other small groups, there are also tales of love and sacrifice from those who cannot pay much. Malappuram district witnessed one such expression of sacrifice last day when a bunch of old people approached the district Collector and offered their old-age pension amount to the relief fund. Another woman handed over to the Collector the money she had kept for the Umrah pilgrimage. Over 350 inmates from the prisons across the state have been cooking and packing food for the flood victims, to be airdropped or sent to relief camps and stranded houses. They fed the flood-hit people with chapatis, upma, idlis, bread and jam etc.

The volunteers of the Ideal Relief Wing, the disaster management wing of the Jamat-e-Islami Hind were active in the rescue mission in all parts of the state. And now that the rescue has been completed, the IRW is active in running relief camps and in the cleaning of houses, other buildings and public places. There have been reports of the members of the IRW cleaning up a church first and then offering prayers inside the church itself as there were no mosques nearby. Different teams of the IRW have moved to different parts of the states with relief kits comprising of cleaning items, food and essentials etc for the relief activities. The state coordination office of the organization in Kozhikode is managing the activities.

Muslims offering jumuah prayers in a church after cleaning up the church and premises

In another example of love and harmony, a temple in Thrissur district opened its doors to the Muslims of the area to offer their Eid prayers since all mosques in their area were covered with water. Another report says of a group of people including women in a village who were shifted to a mosque nearby as the residential area was under the threat of a landslide. Mosques that allow women inside have specific places allotted for them normally. Hindu temples do not normally allow non-Hindus to enter. But all those restrictions flew away as they saw people suffering.

Mosques and churches turned into relief camps, temples opened their doors for Eid namaz.

Eid Namaz being conducted in the hall of a Hindu temple in Thrissur district

A group of 200 people from Malappuram are at the forefront of cleaning activities in Aluva in Ernakulam district on Saturday.  The team under the banner of ‘Mission Flood 2018’ went to Aluva with cleaning equipment, medical facilities, clothes, food and drinking water etc. They cleaned up houses, public places and temples alike. The team also had plumbers and electricians, snake-catchers and doctors for the mission.

There have also been reports of little kids contributing to the flood relief. A little girl who had been saving money to buy a bicycle broke her piggy bank and gave all her money to the CMDRF. On knowing the incident, the famous cycle company Hero Cycles has got ready to gift her a bicycle. In another incident, a brother and sister decided to donate the land they inherited from their father to the CMDRF.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

The post How Kerala faced and fought the worst floods in a century appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Residents of Pandanad sit in a bus stop surrounded by flood waters, in Kerala, India. Manjunath Kiran/AFP

In the mountainous Coorg or Kodagu district in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, thousands of people have been marooned because of torrential rains. Exacerbated by landslides in hilly terrain, flooding has led to the destruction of homes, bridges, road networks and industries.

Far from being a surprise, the possibility of such devastation was highlighted several years ago.
 

The need to change our development approach

In 2011, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, chaired by the internationally renowned ecologist Madhav Gadgil, submitted a report to the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. The report warned that an ill-thought focus on development was impacting the sustainability of the Western Ghats hill chain, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas that runs along the west coast of India. The expert report urged a number of states, including Karnataka and Kerala, to adopt an approach of thoughtful conservation, limiting activities such as quarrying, dams and construction near protected forests in hilly areas. The report was rejected by the Ministry as well as by both states.

With the experience of hindsight, it is clear that the worst flood damage took place in those regions where the Gadgil committee recommended protection.

The Nasa released the video of Kerala in South India hit by heavy rainfall.

In Kodagu, for instance, tens to hundreds of thousands of large trees were felled in 2015 to construct a high-tension electric wire line. Uncontrolled sand mining has constrained river flows, while the rapid spread of high-rise buildings on unstable hill slopes has weakened the soil. This unplanned development has left the area susceptible to flash floods and landslides, caused by a combination of tree felling on steep hillslopes and heavy rainfall.
 

Airports built on water bodies

The flooding of the Kochi airport is another example of poor planning leading to disastrous outcomes. The airport was built on the paddy fields and wetlands adjacent to the Periyar river, and extends up to the banks of the river on one side.

The longest river in Kerala, it has a number of dams – some of which had to be opened to release water during the rains. The airport was badly hit, with estimated economic costs of at least Rs 500 crores because of its forced closure for several days.

Kochi’s International airport apron is seen flooded following monsoon rains in the Indian state of Kerala on August 15, 2018. AFP

The Periyar river is not the only one that has been dammed. The state of Kerala has 44 rivers with a total of 61 dams. Many had to be opened across Kerala as they were dangerously full – a step that, while essential during a time of emergency, contributed to the heavy flooding. A 2017 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India warned that not a single one of these dams had an emergency action plan in place for disaster management. Pre- and post-monsoon safety inspections had not been carried out for any of these dams either.

Given how likely it is that coastal and riverine cities will experience flooding in coming years, you would think we know better than to build airports near bodies of water. Yet Kochi airport is not an exception. The runways of the Mumbai airport have been built over the Mithi river, and the airport is located on a reclaimed pond. One of the runways of the Chennai airport extends over the Adyar river, affecting its long-term safety and stability.

It is no surprise that these airports, which are among the busiest in India, frequently flood when the rains are heavy – leading to large-scale economic losses. Yet the new Navi Mumbai airport is coming up in an equally unsuitable location on coastal wetlands.
 

Reversing the trend

In the era of climate change we have just entered, extreme rainfall events are going to become increasingly common. Uncontrolled growth at the expense of the environment will severely exacerbate the impacts of climate change. Our cities are simply not prepared for extreme weather events. The recent collapse of a bridge in Genoa, killing at least 43 people, is linked to poor maintenance, but also to heavy rainfall.

Rescuers work at the site where the Morandi motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa on August 14, 2018. At least 30 people were killed on August 14 when the giant motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa in north-western Italy. Valery Hache/AFP

Certain types of infrastructure may be less suitable to some contexts in a changing climate scenario. Wildfires in California cause extensive damage to private property because many cities are extending their boundaries into forest areas. As local climate becomes hotter and drier, with fires becoming more likely, new homes are being built in areas that are highly susceptible to fire instead of less exposed locations.

Some cities are seeking to reverse this trajectory of unplanned construction. Nairobi is in the midst of an extensive demolition drive, uprooting thousands of buildings built on riparian land that choke the flow of water and contribute to severe annual floods.
In Seoul, between 2002-2005, the city municipality tore up an elevated highway that had been built over the Cheonggyecheon stream. This internationally famous urban-renewal project reduced traffic, reduced air pollution and cut the urban heat-island effect. In Yonkers, New York, an ongoing project aims to restore the buried Saw Mill river.

Millions of dollars have been invested to rehabilitate the Saw Mill River in the state of New York and bring nature back in the city, August 2016. Jim Henderson/Wikimedia, CC BY-NC

Similar urban river daylighting projects are gaining traction in cities around the world. Zurich has been an early pioneer, developing the Bachkonzept (stream concept) to create, restore and uncover a number of streams and springs. London, which built over a number of famous rivers, has now uncovered and restored a number of these waterways, while Sheffield, having experimented with daylighting, is now considering uncovering sections of the local Sheaf river.

The demonstrated ecological and environmental benefits are clear – as are the social and economic returns. For example, Seoul’s iconic Cheonggyecheon stream restoration led to a more than six-fold increase in biodiversity, a 35% decrease in air pollution and a growth in property prices that is double of that in other parts of the city.

Investment in the Cheonggyecheon stream is amply repaid many times over in economic security and growth, local health and quality of life. riNux/Flickr, CC BY

The restored stream attracts tens of thousands of visitors daily who contribute significantly to local economy. Such ideas of restoration need to become more widespread, and embedded in routine climate change and disaster management planning. The investment made is amply repaid many times over in economic security and growth, biodiversity, local health and quality of life, and resilience against future disasters.

Once the emergency relief is attended to, Kochi and Kodagu would do well to use their recent experience as a warning of future disasters to come in a world of increasingly uncertain climate.

The focus must be on long-term restoration projects that can reverse some of the environmental and ecological damage that has led to the current situation. But such learning need not be confined to the areas that have experienced the worst. The rest of the world has much to learn as well.
 

Harini Nagendra, Professor of Sustainability, Azim Premji University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Kerala’s monsoon: lessons from recent floods in India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I am making a few suggestions in the wake of monumental tragedy caused by floods in Kerala. Apart from whatever the administration is doing to contain epidemic of water borne diseases, stress should be on two very simple steps:

1. The Kerala government could announce and initiate on a war footing ‘Operation Chlorine Tablet’
2. The Kerala government could announce and initiate on a war footing ‘Operation Bleaching Powder’

These should be distributed at the relief camps/medical centers so that it reaches every household. If implemented these two steps alone could save thousands of lives in Kerala. The chlorine tablet would take care of the water being made drinkable; the bleaching powder would ensure that the surroundings are disinfected. These two steps are very cost effective & could be done even by financially strained municipalities.

Of course the services of WHO, UNICEF and NICD (National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Delhi) could be availed of, but their advice should be questioned on scientific grounds before their prescription is implemented on the masses.

These suggestions emanate through work in areas/situations where water borne diseases become imminent. I was a member of one of the first medical team which reached Indo-Bangla border in 1971 where almost ten million refugees had landed. The camp where I worked had housed twenty-five thousand refugees. The stress was on vaccination against cholera and typhoid, use of bleaching powder as a disinfectant and distribution of Sulfaguanidine tablets at our makeshift clinic. Those in severe dehydration were given intravenous glucose saline solution – which was always a scarce commodity. Since we worked during the months of June, July and August the monsoon rains as also the overflowing small nearby rivers played havoc in the spread of epidemic diseases.

During the 1988 cholera epidemic in Delhi half the citizens were vaccinated by the Rajiv Gandhi government even though WHO had concluded by then that vaccination is both useless as well as dangerous once the epidemic has started. Over 1500 people had died in this epidemic. It is well known that governments resort to mass vaccination since those in power want to appear to be doing something during the crises – and vaccination offers the best mask as if something effective is being done for the masses. Majority of the deaths had occurred because people were being shifted to infectious diseases hospitals whereas they should have been treated right at the local treatment centers at the relief camps.

(In recent years the WHO has again changed its stance and is now seen to be advocating cholera vaccination even when there is a full blown epidemic; perhaps the WHO, too, wants to be seen to be doing something just as politicians in power do worldwide.)

I had a chance to work among the tribals in Nilgiris in 1973 where Dr. Narasimhan Rao had devoted his whole life for the cause of the tribals. He impressed upon us through experience that where intravenous glucose saline solution is not available, one could directly inject green coconut water; all one needs is the intravenous tubing set. In fact this method is of use in remote areas of some countries along coastal areas. But its use is limited to severe dehydration cases.

Dr. P.S. Sahni is a member of PIL Watch Group Email: pilwatchgroup@gmail.com

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org
 

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Image: AP

Nevertheless, many of us have been scrambling to assemble and transport relief supplies; young people in local areas have banded together to rescue their neighbours and others from the surging waters; others have been assisting the rescue teams by identifying exact locations of the marooned and attending distress calls; school children have gathered in large numbers as volunteers in collection centres; IT professionals and students have set up communication networks; housewives have prepared thousands of packets of food and clothing for the affected; merchants and service-providers have been rising to the occasion with exemplary alacrity; local governments, health department personnel and revenue officials have been available round the clock. In other words, Kerala’s citizens have come together in an extraordinary way to deal with this great leveller of a flood.

Yet the greatest danger, it seems to me, is not the flood but the dirty human maggots that try to fatten on it: the minions of Hindutva in Kerala.

There is much that this calamity has revealed. First of all, the reality of Kerala’s post-1990s ‘new’ capitalism lies bare before us for all to see. It seems clear that what was sold to consumers by the construction sector was hardly use-value — it was, well, ‘disaster value’. The manner in which construction proceeded without sparing a single thought for nature, a tendency shared by all players, big and small, producer and consumer, in construction has exacted an impossibly high price: clearly, it will be impossible to go back to the older ways of life, we have to really change, we have to realize that this land and these waters cannot be taken for granted. This is of course what the environment movement in Kerala has always been saying but all they got for their concern was the tag of being unrealistic/cynical/’anti-development’. Even I, who has been with the environment movement all through, truly and fully understand only now a phrase which I heard as a child, used by a  working-class woman to refer to the massing of monsoon clouds to the east: kizhakkottu mudi azhicchittu nilkkunnu. Roughly translated, it means ‘there she stands, tresses flying wild and ready for battle’. The monsoon wreaks havoc like never before, and  my utterly humbled eye sees only now its full fearsome might, the way it obliterates at the mere flick of a wrist the many mistakes that we committed, often fully intentionally, which we hypocritically referred to as ‘development’.

Yet this is not the time really to begin our analysis and apportion the blame. Compassion demands that all our resources be now devoted to alleviating the enormous suffering and the danger. In all fronts, people of all faiths and castes, of all genders and ages are working together in the face of the common tragedy. Many realize how shallow, how hollow, the belligerent calls of religious bigotry sound. Surely, the waters did not discriminate — this time, they did not spare the rich.

But in social media, there is vermin who have set out to ‘analyse’. Their evil imagination connects these events to the recent decision of the Supreme Court permitting women of menstruating ages to worship at Sabarimala. Or it spreads the lie that the waters were deliberately released by the Kerala government to submerge Hindu temples. What is worrying is that the first superstition often strikes a chord with many of the sufferers who still cannot see how the truths and commonsense of Kerala’s new capitalism of the post-1990s have led to this calamity.  Given that the deluge was totally unexpected and frighteningly sudden to many, the divine hand might seem like a plausible explanation. Then there are the cunning Whatsapp messages that tell you that the Christians who live in the highland districts are responsible for the rejection of the Gadgil Committee Report and that this is the price for ignoring Hindu ecological wisdom. Many of us see through this evil. Where is the ‘Hindu ecological consciousness’, I wonder, in the BJP’s systematic destruction of environmental governance in this country, and in their open dalliance with crony capitalists?

Let us guard ourselves from these maggots who thrive on the fear that the catastrophe has ignited among people. These scum who claim to be of this land but have no real sense of belonging, have to be exposed, isolated, and condemned. Just like we must guard against virulent infectious germs as the waters recede, so must we stay vigilant against the Hindutva rabble who hate everything that democratic Kerala stands for.

Courtesy: Kafila.online

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