Tsunami's neglected victims

Kaleswaran used to run a shop in Car Nicobar - until it was washed away by the 2004 tsunami.

Kaleswaran used to run a shop for government-subsidised food in the Indian Ocean island of Car Nicobar - until it was washed away by the tsunami.

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Immediately afterwards, the government evacuated him to Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and paid him 2,000 rupees ($45) compensation.

Shifted from camp to camp, his name has since disappeared from the official list of tsunami victims, and his efforts to access more relief money have drowned in a sea of bureaucracy.

"The soles of my shoes have been worn out making all these trips to the DC (district commissioner)," he said, clutching a plastic bag full of papers. "And it costs me 10 rupees on the bus for each trip. I spent the 2,000 rupees a long time ago."

Like many settlers who came to the southern Nicobar islands from the Indian mainland before the tsunami, Kaleswaran finds himself in limbo. Tribal leaders in the Nicobars don't want the settlers back, because they were "exploiting" the less commercially savvy Nicobarese.

The government, embarrassed so many mainlanders had settled in the restricted islands - many without the mandatory tribal pass - seems to wish they had never been there at all.

Thousands have been evacuated to the mainland. Thousands more may have died in the tsunami, their deaths not even recorded because there were no papers to prove they even existed.

In Port Blair, the surviving settlers feel like second-class citizens. They complain they received little or no compensation, have no jobs, no one to represent them and, despite decades in the islands, no place to call home.

STRUCK OFF LIST

Kaleswaran, who came from the mainland state of Tamil Nadu 21 years ago, wants to go back to Car Nicobar but has spent five months trying for a tribal pass, and the 13,000 rupees compensation due to those who lost their homes.

Shuttled from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, he is among a group of settlers who finally went right to the top, complaining to the islands' Lieutenant-Governor Ram Kapse about their fate.

The tactic backfired, he says. Another official seemed to resent their attempt to sidestep the bureaucracy.

"He told me 'you've got too big for your boots'. That is why your name has been cut off the list (of victims)'," he said.

Many settlers ran shops in partnership with tribals. Because by law the shops had to be registered in the names of the Nicobarese, they have not been paid any compensation.

Most Nicobarese admit settlers played a vital role in the island economy and some will one day have to return. But for now New Delhi seems to have little or no idea what to do with them.

In the Gref relief camp in Port Blair, many settlers are unhappy. Most lost their papers in the tsunami, including Sanathan Ojha, a government contractor who is also trying to return to Car Nicobar to collect money he is owed and get work.

He admits he and his employees did not have tribal passes, but hardly thought it necessary since they were doing construction work for the government. He has been offered a temporary shelter in Port Blair, but no help to move in.

"I locked it up and came back here," he said. "There is no food there, no utensils, no floor. They have given me a house, but I can't eat the house."

FRAUDULENT CLAIMS

Chief Secretary D.S. Negi has tried to inject a sense of professionalism into the islands' bureaucracy since taking over in February. Many officials were replaced after bungling the aid effort in the weeks following the tsunami, and Negi says his team is doing its best to sort through genuine and fraudulent claims.

He says the government paid the emergency relief package of 2,000 rupees to about 16,000 families. Since then, 82,000 families have claimed they are eligible for the 13,000 rupees. That is almost the entire population of the islands.

"Without proper verification, you can't give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry," he said. But it is easy to find genuine cases in Port Blair's camps, like Jogeshwar Rao, his wife and their three children.

He came to the islands as a small child 40 years ago and ended up working as a fisherman on the island of Katchal.

He lost everything but has so far been given just 2,000 rupees. "I would like to go back to Katchal," he says, "but I don't have the money to get there."

On Katchal itself, settlers brought from Sri Lanka to work on a rubber plantation in the 1970s feel neglected, with all the attention on the Nicobarese. Many want to leave.

"There is nobody to look out for us," said settler Kuppuswamy. "They pretend to take care of us ...(but) they only come here to put our votes into their pockets and then leave."

The Indian government says the tsunami killed just over 3,000 people in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, though the vast majority died in the Nicobars. Critics say the real toll may have topped 10,000.

A bureaucracy requiring everything in triplicate and determined not to acknowledge illegal settlers seems to have settled on a death toll it could prove.

But at least 3,000 illegal settlers did live on the Nicobar islands before the tsunami, Nicobar Deputy Commissioner A. Anbarasu admitted to Reuters. Asked what authorities had done, his answer seemed part obfuscation, part wishful thinking:

"I think the tsunami took care of them."

($1 = 43.5 Indian rupees)