6. Observations and Perspectives

The last 7 months offered me a unique opportunity to meet a large number of people – people affected, volunteers from different backgrounds, NGOs, donors, government agencies, media persons and also a large number of different businesses.  It was extremely interesting meeting people from these different backgrounds and to share their perceptions and ideas. Below I would like to share some observations.

Neighboring Villages: I also found the reaction of the people in the nearby villages quite enlightening.  The first ten days they were extremely helpful – going out of their way to help the Tsunami victims.  In many villages they helped to house the victims, fed them, volunteered in the relief camps and cleared the debris. But after a while I began to notice a slow change.  Many of these people who were helping the victims in the first few days were themselves very poor – often they were a lot poorer than the people in the fishing villages.  When they found their neighbors in trouble, they naturally began to help them.  But when they saw so much relief pouring in to help the Tsunami victims, while they were themselves starving, something else started happening. In several villages they asked “Why can’t you give some of the relief supplies to us? Our children are also hungry.  The Tsunami victims are affected now.  But we have never had 3 meals a day – how come no one has been helping us all this while?”

Donors and Volunteers: It was interesting how so many people came forward to contribute in such generous ways.  I interacted with a large number of people who had donated funds.  Many of them were already thinking about donating money for social causes - the Tsunami put a “time-deadline” on this thought process. It was almost as if it had said to people “If you don’t give now, then you will never give”.   It was the same with a lot of people taking time off to come and volunteer.  To many people the Tsunami was not a one-off thing – it was a beginning or continuation of work on longer term issues.  And this is to me the most positive fallout of the Tsunami.

Agencies coming in to help:  In the first few days most of the relief support was being done by the local people in neighboring villages and towns and by the Government.  Lots of local businesses and individuals pitched in. Many local NGOs also started working on basic relief.  After about a month, many of the local people had pulled out.  Many outside NGOs – drawn in by big funding organizations - started coming in to work in these areas.  The government slowly began to hand over most of the relief work to NGOs.  There were “auctions” going on the collectors’ offices every day – different NGOs were “bidding” to adopt villages for rehabilitation. 

NGOs cannot and should not take over the government’s role.  People can demand rehabilitation from the government – they cannot do this with an NGO.  An NGO can just wind up and leave. Governments and NGOs have different complementary roles. What the government cannot do well – things like mobilization, community education, awareness building or model building, pilot programs or innovative demonstrations – these things can be taken up by NGOs.  But NGOs taking over wholesale what the Government must do, throws into question the very purpose of Government.