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Journalism of Courage
P PALANISWAMY has to pay a monthly instalment of Rs 85,000 on the loan he took to buy his new fishing boat. But even that doesn8217;t explain the urgency in his voice as he exhorts the workers to wrap up rust-proofing the boat as it bobs gently at the Akkaraipettai harbour.
Like the owners of the dozen other boats that are also getting the finishing touches nearby, Palaniswamy is just eager to get back to work. It8217;s been a year since he8217;s been out to the sea in his own boat and, when he finally sets sail, it won8217;t be a day too soon for him.
Steel-strong resolution or a sense of resignation? It would be easy to attribute the determination to rewind to their pre-tsunami life to that celebrated Indian virtue of fatalism, but there8217;s something much more positive and pro-active happening in Akkaraipettai and Kichhankuppam.
With generous help from NGOs and the district administration, the two fishing villages worst affected by the killer wave on December 26 last year are not only getting back on their feet but also fast-forwarding to a brave new tomorrow. Heart-breaking, yes, but also heartening.
Total transformation
THE transformation, for anyone who visited Akkaraipettai immediately after the tsunami, is almost unbelievable. It8217;s not about the number of families who have returned to the village after living in temporary shelters for a few months. Or about the renovated and freshly painted houses where there were only wrecks a year ago. It isn8217;t even about the normal bustle of a village, drowning the silence of devastation that shrouded the region 12 months ago.
It8217;s about development. It took a tsunami to bring it here, but now progress seems to be gathering speed.
In the last few months, Akkaraipettai has seen a metalled road come up in place of the muddy stretch that connected the village to the coastal highway right up to Vailankanni. Parts of it are still under construction, but already it has cut down driving time and improved connectivity along the coast.
A flyover connecting Akkaraipettai with Nagapattinam is nearing completion. A new fish-landing point and harbour have been constructed at a cost of Rs 1.70 crore, right next to the old jetty, which was damaged by the tsunami.
New fish auction halls and drying centres are being built next to the fish landing centre by Metro Cash and Carry, a Bangalore-based agency. A concrete water-breaker wall has been erected to shelter the jetty. A huge cold-storage facility is under construction right on the new jetty, which will help fishermen stock fish for longer than 24 hours during a good season.
Once a fishing village, Akkaraipettai now resembles a boat-building yard. More than 400 big and small boats are being built on the shores as fishermen, flush with relief and rehabilitation package money and easy, subsidised loans, go in for their own boats. In fact, the sea shore is lined up with numerous new boats of all sizes as almost every family now owns at least one boat, if not more.
Generous loans and NGO donations have also put on the road brand new six-seater autorickshaws operated by drivers and conductors who earlier worked on private mini-buses. Inter-village transportation, thus, has improved vastly.
But the biggest and most cheering addition to Akkaraipettai is the modern middle and high school that has come up behind the village temple. After 53 students of the old school were washed away in the tsunami, the authorities had all but given up hope of the institution ever re-opening.
8216;8216;The parents and children themselves asked for the school to be started during our visits there,8217;8217; says Nagapattinam collector Dr J Radhakrishnan. 8216;8216;We spent Rs 1.04 crore to construct a very modern school with 10 different buildings. It has computers, an LCD projector and all the amenities that a school can desire.8217;8217;
Golden age
LAST year, the tsunami completely devastated both Akkaraipettai and Kichhankuppam, killing more than 1,600 and uprooting most thatched roof and brick-built houses. It destroyed the two schools, fish auction halls and drying centres, swept away more than 850 boats and rendered saline all the borewells and freshwater ponds.
8216;8216;Death and destruction apart, people have started referring to it as 8216;golden tsunami8217;,8217;8217; says K Kodimari, chairman of the Akkaraipettai Fishermen8217;s Panchayat. And he thinks this is just the beginning.
8216;8216;This village has seen more development in the last 8-10 months than in the last 12 years. Tsunami money has improved the standard of living of almost all the surviving families. The amount of money received as relief, subsidy or in the form of NGO donations has brought a golden period for villages like Akkaraipettai and Kichenkuppam.
8216;8216;Even daily-wagers, whom boat-owners hired to work on fishing boats, have got new boats now, donated by NGOs. Now, they have become boat-owners and are looking for labourers!8217;8217; Kodimari says wryly, and not without a sense of the irony.
For fishermen who lost their boats, the State Bank of India is offering soft loans of Rs 20 lakhs, of which Rs 5 lakhs is a Tamil Nadu government subsidy.
8216;8216;With bigger and better boats and hopefully good fishing seasons ahead, the fishermen are confident they will be able to repay the loans,8217;8217; Kodimari says.
With the livelihood ensured, the rest of the compensation and relief monies has gone into renovating the houses that survived or building new ones. 8216;8216;The new-found money has actually spawned a demand for electronic goods like television sets and audio systems and two-wheelers,8217;8217; says Jaykumar, who recently set up a small cold storage here. 8216;8216;All small fishermen have new boats, the big boat owners, too, have taken advantage of government subsidies and cheap loans to get new boats for themselves.8217;8217;After hours
AND there8217;s a bit of a spillover for leisure as well. At the Village Knowledge Centre, the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and Tata Relief Committee train villagers in computer programmes and disseminate information relating to fisheries, health, education, rural enterprises, agriculture and animal husbandry, and disaster management.
8216;8216;Villagers now learn web design and three youths have already started teaching the same in the local school,8217;8217; says a volunteer.
The principal of self-help has spilled over to the area of water supply as well. While a water purification plant is part of the reconstruction package, for the time being residents are happily paying Re 1 per pot of water from the Thirmalai Charity Trust8217;s 5,000-litre capacity desalination plant, since it saves them a 3-km trek. The token payment goes to clean and maintain the plant, which is expected to be functional for three years.
In Kichhankuppam, the Tata Relief Committee has set up another desalination plant with 25,000 litres capacity. They supply water to the village as well as those living in the temporary shelters nearby.
So total is the transformation that 8216;8216;visitors coming after several months get confused and ask for directions to Akkaraipettai while actually standing in the village,8217;8217; says Ratnam, owner of a petrol pump near the fish-landing point.
The opening of the 30-room Hotel Tamizhagam opposite the Nagapattinam railway station is also an indication of the change this area is witnessing. Work on the conversion of the Nagapattinam-Trichy metre gauge into broad gauge is also going on in full swing.
8216;8216;We have also started reconstructing many houses but the rains have hampered work right now. Akkaraipettai will be a completely transformed model village once reconstruction is complete,8217;8217; says Dr Radhakrishnan.
