In all more than 6000 people had participated in the food hearings.

The major conclusions:
1. A number of people have been left out of the government enumeration of affected people. The definition of who is affected needs to be more inclusively. There are 3 categories of people left out:
(a) Entire sections - people who have been working on fish related occupations - fish workers. Fish loaders, sellers, conch pickers, etc - there are about 91 different occupations that seem to be present in this category! Almost all the people who discovered this were zapped by the variety of related occupations that depend on fishing.

(b) Entire sections in non-fishing occupations but living near the coast. Agricultural areas, dalits, irulars, etc. who have been left out in several places.

When the Govt representative from the Agriculutral department presented the Govt view point in response, it was very interesting to see. He talked about how they were planning to supply gypsum to the lands affected and were given compensation to the land owners. Then the people in the hall asked "what about agricultural labour". He said " Oh Coolie labour! That doesn't
come in our department. We only deal with people with lands." The people asked which department will agri labour come in.

To this there was no answer! There really is no department that deals with Agricultural labour - about 40% of our country's people! An insight into how the state recognizes only people with property. People who are without property can be easily excluded from various programs as they are "nobody's business".

(c) Individuals within communities enumerated: There are several individuals within communities that have been left out. In several villages widows and women headed households have been left out - they are not part of the fishing coperatives. One case was very poignant. An older man from an affected area near Chennai had gone to Nagai because 15 of his relatives had died there. After the cremation, etc - he came back 15 days later - to find that he has been left out of the enumeration because he had gone away. But his livelihood here has been destroyed. There are many such cases.

All these people came and said that without NGOs providing them with food and releif, they could not have survived so far - and this has prevented incidents of starvation deaths - but at least now it is the Government's duty to provide them with releif.

This is a common problem in any Govt enumeration and we suggested that the Govt should publish the lists of affected in each village notice boards and ask for complaints and corrections for a period of 15-20 days - and a task force can verify the claims and make the changes.

Secondly we looked at the long term needs - in terms of releif cards and livelihood.

After the state hearing, a few of us (Harsh Mandar, Suresh, Chitra, Venkatachalam, Me and the food advisors from other states) went and met the Chief Secretary, Revenue Secretary and Releif Commisioner - to present the main findings of hearings.

We asked them to publish the lists and invite modifications - to which they agreed.

We then asked them to initiate a food/cash for work - on which there was some debate as to the feasibility and finally it was agreed that the state can try and do something in this direction.

We discussed the question of releif cards - on this we could not reach an agreement.

We asked the Govt to direct NGOs to use local labour in house construction and not to use machines. We also informed them that people can be trained on mud block making and these can be used in the construction.

Finally we discussed the question of the vulnerable sections - widows, orphans, disabled and older people - and special support for them from various schemes and this was also tentatively agreed upon.

But the first step now is to get the lists published and to ensure that people can ensure all the left out people are added in.

After the meeting some of us also decided to convert all the government GOs into popular language and circulate it so people know their entitlements.

Anyway - there is a lot more work in this direction that needs to be done. This hearing was a good first step and we will be continuing our work in this direction to make things more transperant and to ensure that the state releif and rehab efforts reaches all the affected people.

Thanks.
Balaji Sampath