From Changemakers.net's October 2001 issue:
At 8:26 a.m. on January 26, 2001, entire areas of the western state of Gujarat in India were flattened, and numerous villages vanished from the map in the space of minutes. Gujarat heaved and shuddered with the impact of an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale while the rest of India was busy celebrating the nation's 49th anniversary as a Republic.
In Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat, skyscrapers collapsed like cards, leaving some 1,000 dead and 600,000 homeless. Days later, the final toll was stupefying in its sheer magnitude: more than 80,000 people were dead; an estimated 150,000 were injured; and more than 800,000 homes destroyed or severely damaged.
It is almost inconceivable that anything positive could emerge from such terrible disaster. Yet, amazingly, this horrifying event has become a turning point for some of Gujarat's most underprivileged, oppressed people, giving them the opportunity to begin liberating themselves from centuries of social and economic injustice.
This transformation began when a group of social entrepreneurs adopted a unique approach to disaster
management. Suchitra Sheth and her colleagues at Setu (the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action)
responded to the earthquake and its aftermath by looking beyond the horrors of the tragedy and the immediate needs of those affected. Looking at the rubble and devastation, they saw potential to create a better future for some of India's most disenfranchised, marginalized peoples.
Sheth has been a dedicated human rights activist, and was awarded an Ashoka Fellowship in 2000 for her work to transform Gujarat's prison-like state homes for children into vibrant and professional social rehabilitation centers. Through Setu, Sheth is spearheading a movement to change the way Gujarat cares for its youth by introducing new attitudes, ideas and activities throughout the system.
Sheth and her colleagues' response to the earthquake was shaped by their work as social entrepreneurs: their recognition of an urgent social problem in the brutal, dehumanizing environments of juvenile homes; their innovative, systemic approach to this issue; their ability to leverage existing resources and mobilize new ones, and to engage in networking and strategic partnership building; their attention to detail and organization; their long-term vision; and their ability to recognize an opportunity, however faint.
As a result, their style of intervention stands apart, even in Gujarat's crowded arena of disaster management following the earthquake. It is unique as a program that transformed relief work into sustainable community development.
Even Disaster Discriminates
Within hours of the earthquake, the army, civil sector organizations (CSOs), ordinary citizens and national and international relief agencies were swinging into action, responding to rescue needs, and later to calls for shelter, clothing, first-aid, food and water. It was truly a heroic effort, and one that contrasted sharply with the slow, lackadaisical response of the state machinery.
But this tremendous show of human spirit and social dynamism was not immune to the ugly side of India's social structure. As aid poured in, and relief organizations fanned out into the affected areas, entire communities were simply ignored when distribution followed the paths defined by traditional demarcations of caste and communality.
Gujarat is India's second most industrialized state, contributing 11 per cent of its national income and one-fifth of its total industrial investment. But beneath the surface of prosperity, enterprise and modernity lies another Gujarat.
This other space is inhabited by tribal peoples like the Kolis and Rabaris (indigenous people of Gujarat), Maldharis and Jats (nomadic pastoralists), Dalits (the lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy), and by minority groups like Muslims. Each of these communities has its own rich culture and identity, but they share the common burden of being totally marginalized.
Women from the nomadic Muslim Jat community in Jamnagar – one of the many marginalized groups that Setu works with
They are victims of prejudice, fuelled by a caste system that discriminates on the basis of religion. These peoples are proscribed from sharing in the state's development, and their very existence is barely acknowledged by officialdom. In normal times, they survive tenuously at the periphery of social security systems. During periods of upheaval, they simply fall through the gaps.
Making the Invisible, Visible
These pockets of population failed to make the lists of most aid outfits in the aftermath of the earthquake, but Sheth's organization made them its highest priority. Since it was founded in 1982, Setu has been working with dispossessed, marginalized, and minority communities in rural and urban Gujarat. Setu helps empowers these peoples through mobilization, organization, and training, while developing local leadership and institutions that can address local issues and challenges.
Setu's activities have fostered the emergence of several grassroots organizations in marginalized groups such as the Dalits (the former "untouchables" and lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy), the Maldharis (forest pastoral people) and landless laborers. Setu's training has encouraged and supported the emergence of leadership within these vulnerable communities.
In many cases, these organizations were the first of their kind in their area. Until as recently as the 1980s, there were no such groups in districts such as Sabarkantha, Panchmahals. Today there are organizations of Dalits, Maldharis and fisherfolk in these areas, and they are actively pursuing a rights-based approach to community organizing.
Women from the nomadic Muslim Jat community in Jamnagar
Setu has made a conscious and concerted effort to focus its efforts on women in these communities, who face the added social disadvantages of their gender. Setu's empowerment activities have fostered several women-led organizations and movements such as the South Gujarat Tribal Women's Organization, and milk cooperatives run by Sidi women (a tribe of African origin).
Setu has helped create a place in public discourse where these groups can articulate their concerns by providing platforms for them to interact at regional and national levels. Setu means "bridge" in several Indian languages, so it is particularly appropriate that it provides a link between members of marginalized communities, activists, academicians, media persons and policy makers.
A Unique Response to Disaster
Like many other aid organizations, Setu's first response to the earthquake was to make a preliminary assessment of the damage and needs, and then to use this information to send hundreds of emails to contacts in India and abroad, appealing for funds and in-kind donations. Setu's practice of emphasizing vigorous networking, and forging strategic partnerships as crucial strategies for bringing systemic change, played a prominent role in this stage of its disaster management response.
Thanks to its practice of maintaining links with a number of national and international human rights organizations, Setu was able to connect with strong partners for its relief and rehabilitation work, including ACT (Action by Churches Together), CRY (Child Relief and You) and IOM (International Organization for Migration). This is testimony to Setu's reputation, because in all cases these organizations solicited Setu to be their implementing partner.
Setu's networking activities also made it possible to bring in architects who are specialists in earthquake and cyclone-proof housing. With their help, Setu has thus far completed building temporary shelters for more than 3,000 families of five to seven members. These homes will last for two to three years, and are built from material that can be dismantled and used to construct permanent homes.
Building the infrastructure for a new future: villagers help build temporary homes in Kharrachiya village
Having initiated these critical tasks, Sheth and her colleagues departed from the path followed by most other CSOs and began energetically seeking out those whom the relief machinery would ordinarily bypass. As a result, many "invisible" peoples were brought into the relief and rehabilitation effort, including Dalits, Kolis, Maldharis and Muslims of Joriya Block in Jamnagar District; the widows of these communities who are proscribed from making public appearances; and the entire population of five villages in the Rapar block that were razed to the ground, but overlooked by national and international aid efforts because the death toll was not high.
"In the two decades of its existence, Setu has carried out relief work in the state a number of times – during droughts, communal disturbances, floods and cyclone," Sheth said. "Each time, it's been clear that the constituencies we work with are the most vulnerable. During disasters these are the groups who are the most brutalized, and the human rights issues concerning them take on a critical nature.
"These are people who struggle at the most fundamental level – to prove that they exist," she continued. "The system is such that they are denied the very basic evidences of citizenship, like ration cards and land deeds. This puts them at risk at any time, but when something like an earthquake occurs, these documents become essential because not having these documents means you virtually cannot access any help. The whole relief and rehabilitation mechanism is founded on persons being able to provide proof of identity, residence, property and so on."
While identifying the vulnerable groups and starting the distribution of relief material in villages, Setu initiated a rapid process of pinpointing the factors that hinder delivery of proper aid to these communities. It then responded, informed by its experience and knowledge of the media, government bureaucracy, and law.
From January 30th onwards, Sheth and her colleagues launched an aggressive public advocacy campaign, conducted through the media and Internet, to focus national and global attention on the relief effort's discrimination against marginalized communities and minorities.
An early report on the situation by Action by Churches Together (ACT), an international CSO, applauds this effort. "Setu moved rapidly into the interior areas of eastern Kutch and northern Saurashtra to assess the situation where there were hardly any media reports till 1 February," according to the report. "This helped Setu bring the concern of the victims to the media and the State. Press releases along with meetings with local and international media was another initiative by Setu to bring the concern about the relief operation and the neglect of the weaker communities, particularly the minorities and backward communities, to the notice of the State."
Setu also met with government bureaucrats and elected representatives to call attention to the inequitable distribution of relief supplies, and the manner in which building material and land for temporary shelters was being coopted by dominant communities.
Tiles being distributed for shelter construction
Through Public Interest Litigation filed by eminent lawyers, Setu struck down a government rule that discriminated against marginalized groups by demanding that they have ration cards to receive government foodgrain assistance. "There are thousands of marginalized, poor in Gujarat who do not have ration cards, or there may be others who have simply lost them in the debris," Sheth said. "This can't mean that they be denied government assistance."
Sheth and her teammates noticed that within the marginalized communities, some were made even more vulnerable during times of chaos by their age, gender or social standing in the community. Orphans and widows were particularly threatened in the wake of the earthquake. They were in danger of being cheated out of property rights by relatives who were taking their property on the pretext of looking after it.
Children without guardians faced the additional trauma of being displaced by (largely) well-intentioned,
but unthinking, foster care services that moved them away from their native areas without any thought to the long-term consequences for the children. "Gujarat can be divided into three distinct cultural zones: Saurashtra, Kutch and Gujarat," Sheth notes.
"Within these areas, there are sub-zones. Kids from Kutch, for instance, would feel totally disoriented if they were placed in a home in Saurashtra because even the language would be completely different. Along with the psychological issues, we were also concerned about the long-term impact of a loss of identity that such moves involve because inevitably, with time, these children become alienated from their native cultures."
Setu solved the first issue by active lobbying that forced the Advocate General of Gujarat to recommend suspension of all property transfers until proper safeguards were enacted. At the same time, Setu spearheaded a campaign that forced the Gujarat Government to declare that children who are orphaned by disasters henceforth will be considered wards of the state, and it created a fund for this purpose.
The second problem was countered with vigorous advocacy. "We fought, not only to keep these kids from being sent to other states, but also to keep them within their native districts," Sheth said. Setu's persuasive arguments against uprooting kids from their native environment prompted the Gujarat High Court to reconsider its policies regarding these orphans, and led to a concerted effort to arrange for their care within their cultural own contexts.
Helping Communities to Help Themselves
"Relief often goes to the most visible, not the most vulnerable," notes Bob McKerrow, a disaster management expert and head of a regional delegation from South Asia for the Red Cross, referring to the Gujarat disaster. Setu's determination to ensure that relief reaches the "most vulnerable" is not the only thing that sets apart its intervention.
As Setu moved into rehabilitation, the second stage of disaster recovery, Sheth and her colleagues approach was guided by the same mission and principles that generally defines their work: the long-term goal of empowering marginalized communities to take leadership in issues that affect them by facilitating their mobilization, organization and capacity building.
In keeping with its standard practice, Setu adopted a community-based approach. "After we entered a village, the first thing we would do is talk with people in the community and set up village level committees," Sheth said. "The Setu team and the committee would then collaborate in drawing up lists of beneficiaries, with special emphasis on the poor widows and pregnant women in the community. And throughout the process, all work would be done in the same manner: every decision that affected the villagers would be a result of the village committee's deliberations and our inputs."
For the villagers, who all belong to the most oppressed social groups, this unique opportunity to determine their own fate was both exhilarating and empowering. For many, it was their first experience of organizing themselves around a common issue that affects the entire community.
For Setu, this coming together and mobilizing around specific issues (in this case, relief and rehabilitation) marked the community's first step on the long road towards self-determination and asserting their rights. "When we work with oppressed/marginalized communities, our aim is always to help them realize their own potential and be decisionmakers on issues that affect them," Sheth said.
Women with food packets in Taga village
Setu's goal of nurturing grassroots leadership was accomplished through these encounters with the village community. As Sheth points out, "Setu's aim is to catalyze leadership within these groups, and then support them until they can function as independent grass-roots activists. Working closely with the village committees on disaster relief has given us the opportunity to identify potential activists and leaders. The next step will be to select the most promising of these for capacity-building workshops, training them to gradually take leadership in the issues that concern their community and become the facilitators for community participation in development."
Rigorous documentation is another operational strategy for Setu and it was used in its disaster management work to good effect. The copious records maintained by Sheth and her team, while they worked with the devastated communities, produced a number of immediate benefits. However, like most strategies employed by social entrepreneurs, it also produced several long-term benefits.
For the purposes of relief and rehabilitation, the records were "a practical necessity to ensure the integrity of the distribution process," Sheth said. Other immediate benefits included the reinforcement of Setu's credibility in the eyes of local authorities and all donors: "The local officials were very impressed with our records – they appreciated our organized approach and the fact that we could account for everything down to the last rupee and blanket," Sheth said. "As a result, they were extremely cooperative and helpful, providing us with essential data, and also with logistics problems.
"We built a fund of goodwill with them that we continue to benefit from. All our donors too – from India and abroad, individuals and organizations – were similarly appreciative, and were relieved that their donations were actually reaching the needy."
However, Sheth emphasizes that such meticulous data maintenance also produces long-term benefits. "The notes became part of our information system, and a resource that will prove invaluable as we work with the community on a long-term basis," she said. Documentation helps Setu's continuing effort to create and expand knowledge systems about issues that affect India's marginalized peoples through participatory research – a mission fueled by the organization's firm belief "in the dictum 'knowledge for social transformation'."
Setting up Power Cells for Change
Activity Centers are undoubtedly the intervention that most dramatically illustrates Sheth and her colleagues' ability to catalyze long-term systems changes in the face of disaster.
In Kharachiya village, six-year old Parul laughs delightedly as she recites the barakhadi (the Gujarati alphabet) before running off to join her playmates. It is difficult to identify this vivacious little girl with the insecure, apathetic waif who could barely be persuaded to come to the local Activity Center when it was first set up.
Children dress up and celebrate the inauguration of the new Activity Center at Kharachiya Village
Parul had been inside her home when it literally collapsed around her. For weeks afterwards, she withdrew into a shell, fearful of noises and strangers and refusing to participate in any activities. But the Center's routine of fun-filled activity, nurturing environment and an ambience of normalcy gradually worked its magic on her, and she came out of her shock. Parul is one of more than 3,000 children helped by the Activity Centers established by Setu.
The Center were a response to the urgent need to provide traumatized children like Parul with a sense of security and normalcy. Nearly 2.5 million children age 14 and younger were severely affected – young people who lost family members, homes, schools, and their sense of security, according to UNICEF reports published within a week of the earthquake.
Some 15,000 primary schools in Gujarat were damaged, according to a UNICEF perliminary field assessment – half of all those in the state. Maria Calivis, head of UNICEF's India office, urged the community to make rebuilding of classrooms a priority, in a public statement issued soon after the earthquake: "Both children and teachers have suffered. Getting back into classrooms, even if in tents, will help restore normalcy for everyone."
Sheth echoes these sentiments with on-the-ground experience. "All day long, kids would be running loose in the rubble with no sense of structure in their lives," she said. "This could only lead to the trauma they were already suffering being compounded, and it was imperative that these kids be provided with a sense of routine and normalcy. At the same time, we realized parents needed a child care system that would allow them to undertake all the running around that getting relief and compensation involves."
The solution: Activity Centres were erected in tents and temporary shelters in 31 villages, operating on two shifts daily. This enabled as many as 100 children age 14 and younger to use the centers on a daily basis.
Power cells for change: the first Activity Center in Kharachiya village
Sheth's work with the juvenile home system stood her in good stead here as she drew on the stimulating, joyful learning activities she had introduced in those institutions. Once again, she was making a difference in scarred lives. But this was not just the magic of psychological healing: with characteristic insight and vision, Sheth and her fellow changemakers expanded their scope to transform them into power cells for fundamental social change.
The first revolutionary step was to insist that, in addition to upper-caste children, those from marginalized backgrounds should also attend. "We were adamant that children from marginalized communities attend, however resistant the upper-caste villagers were to the idea of their kids mixing with these other groups," Sheth said.
In these Gujarati rural communities, where caste distinctions are stringently maintained, Setu's strategy created an opportunity for children from different worlds – the privileged and the underprivileged – to partner for the first time, and to realize that the Other was not so different after all.
It is too early to judge the impact of these interactions. But it is a small and significant step forward that children were given a space in which they could experience for themselves the irrelevance of their social divisions in the course of fun-filled activities like singing, painting, puzzles and games.
Classes at the Activity Center in Manamora village
The proactive inclusion of marginalized children in the Activity Centers also brought children, who may never have had an opportunity to receive any kind of education, into a learning environment. And because Sheth and her colleagues insisted that the girls from these communities attend, the centers dismantled the traditional barriers that prevent women from learning in these communities.
Today, many villages' schools have reopened. But the Activity Centers are no less busy, and in their continued existence, their role as catalysts for social change is even more pronounced. The joyful learning activities continue: the pre-school curriculum for children age six and younger occurs in the morning. Older children come for arts, crafts, and games after the regular school hours.
This has two important consequences. First, the Activity Centers have introduced the value of education to several poor families. Parents, who before the earthquake had regarded children's education as unnecessary or irrelevant, have chosen to enter their children (including their girls) into local schools once they were re-opened.
Parents of children who are too young for school are choosing to send them to the Activity Center's pre-school sessions until they are old enough to enter the regular system.
Second, in some cases this new influx of school students has changed the school's social composition, making it more heterogeneous. (Sheth, however, stresses that this is a very slow process because there is stiff resistance from the upper-caste families).
Samiba, the facilitator of the Bhimkata village Activity Center (purple dress, left), oversees learning activities
For many of the villages where schools have reopened, the traditional curriculum of the regular education systems is being supplemented (and greatly enriched) by the activity-based learning of the Activity Centers, which children continue to attend outside of school hours.
In villages where Setu has helped rebuild the schools, the social entrepreneur in Sheth prompts her to dream about the possibility of creating new systems of education along with the physical reconstruction: "We would very much like to explore these as opportunities to bring about changes in the existing education systems – introducing child-centered, activity-based curriculum; creating a space in the schools for children of marginalized communities, and so bringing together kids from different backgrounds."
Besides having a profound impact on children, the Activity Centers are also designed to be agents of change in another critical area of rural development: women's empowerment. Twenty-four-year-old Meena was born into the pastoral Bharwad community, and like most girls of her tribe, her education was cut short by social and economic pressures that demanded her life revolve around domestic duties: grazing the family sheep and goats, and supplementing the home income by working as a daily laborer in construction sites.
Meena (right) and colleagues from other villages examine new teaching aids at a training session
Today, however, this vibrant young woman is an education facilitator with excellent administration skills who can confidently draw up an effective teaching plan for pre-schoolers, create imaginative teaching aids, and hold her own in discussions on the value of education.
It was Setu's conception of the Activity Centers as opportunities for social change that enabled Meena's transformation from wage laborer to informed, motivated education facilitator. When they established the Centers, Sheth and her colleagues insisted that they be run by women from marginalized groups.
Women who had some minimal education were selected and trained by Setu staff. The training itself is an ongoing process that continues today. It focuses on equipping the women to become barefoot teaching professionals, and goes further to empower them through awareness programs on a variety of issues that affect them, such as health, reproductive rights and economic independence.
These trainings bring the women together on a common platform where they can share their experiences and ideas, draw sustenance from each another, and build their solidarity. The courses often require women to travel outside of their local areas – a novelty for most – and this exposure reinforces their self-confidence and broadens their outlook.
Flower Power plus Women Power: Women demonstrate their skills at a craft during a training session for faciliators
These women are becoming role models in their communities for both their peers and for young girls. They are striking examples of what is possible – daring others to dream of a future, and showing them how those dreams can be translated into reality.
Meena believes that one of the most important things she has learned since she started working at the Center is the liberating potential of education. She sees the Activity Centers as "an opportunity for children of all marginalized communities to move towards an education and a better future."
She and her colleagues in the other Activity Centers are taking the initiative to ensure that children from marginalized groups, who would never have been sent to school, are actively brought into the education system. "Meena actually goes into the homes of tribal and other backwards groups and persuades parents to send their children to school!" Sheth laughs.
Lennart Skov-Hansen, a relief coordinator for DanChurchAid, which is a funding partner for ACT, wrote an assessment of Setu's work after making a field visit in the early days after the earthquake. "It was obvious that Setu workers enjoyed the confidence of the people, especially among the women," she wrote. "Setu benefits from its local knowledge and can really get to the heart of the problems. This is of great importance in the coming phases of rehabilitation and reconstruction where there is potential for new neglects and discriminations of the disadvantaged communities."
Some ten months after the event, Gujarat has now moved into the most difficult phase of disaster management: rebuilding communities. This is a crucial phase, yet typically this is when the much-needed support mechanisms start faltering, or simply are not there.
Building a new future: housing construction
By this time, most international disaster aid agencies have removed their support as their agenda takes their resources to other parts of the globe where immediate relief is required. With the wind-down of relief work, community resources and enthusiasm also dwindles.
But for Sheth and her colleagues, this is just the beginning in their long commitment to the communities that they have been working with. "The immediate disaster of the earthquake is over," Sheth notes. "Now it's time to work with the ongoing disaster of human rights abuse and disempowering factors that plague these marginalized groups."
The far-sighted strategies with which Setu has approached its disaster management work allows it to smoothly segue into the long-term objectives of strengthening communities and empowering them towards self-determination and greater control over their futures.
Lessons Learnt
Most of all, Sheth asserts that the experience with the Gujarat earthquake has confirmed "that we are working on the right issues. The earthquake and its aftermath was yet another demonstration of how critical it is that marginalized and oppressed people are guaranteed their basic human rights; the urgent need for empowering communities to realize their own potential and be decisionmakers on issues that effect them.
Mapping social change: Sheth (seated, in brown dress) at a training session for facilitators
"You realize with new emphasis how crucial it is to have systems in place that work – such as the public distribution system; the need for laws that protect the vulnerable and the will to implement these; and how essential it is that the concerns of the marginalized impinge on public consciousness."
Piles of rubble still mark the dusty landscape of Old Bela village. But amidst the remaining debris stands the Activity Center, resonating with the happy voices of Dalit, Muslim and tribal children as they play together under Meena's vibrant supervision. The debris is a grim reminder of the tragedies that have scarred the village forever, but Meena and her charges are symbols of hope, of a better future, and of what is possible, even in the wake of the most terrible disasters.
Needs:
While there are no requirements for the
earthquake-related work, there is ongoing work with the marginalized people –
facilitating their empowerment, and long-term development. In this
context Sheth said, "I would like to hear from
readers/practitioners who in their own areas, have addressed such issues and
their transition processes."
On January 26, 2001, a crowd gathered outside part of the Mansi apartment complex that collapsed in the Vastrapur area of Ahmedabad during the Gujarat earthquake. This horrific scene is reminiscent of the recent earthquake in Kashmir.
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