Lessons from Kuttanad

Operation Rehabilitation, a drive to make houses habitable and ensure the safe return of flood-hit people from relief camps to homes in Kuttanad on August 28-30, was arguably the biggest rehab mission undertaken in the state.

The immediate goal of the study we undertook was to examine the impact of the floods in the Kuttanad region post July/August floods but the long-term goal has been to suggest a protocol for the assessment of doing such an impact study. This study intends to provide a template for rapid assessment of flood impact.

The trigger for Kuttanad volunteer drive was Finance Minister Thomas Isaac's invite through media to all aspiring citizens to chip in; more than 65,000 volunteered to be part of the rehab-cum-survey campaign.

About 1.5 lakh people were evacuated when the floods hit Kuttanad and they all had to return to homes. Priorities were sanitisation of affected houses, support with electric, carpentry and plumbing work for damaged houses, electrical survey to assess the status of electrical connections in homes, safety for people by providing preventives for leptospirosis, tetanus and snake bites, and a combined socioeconomic and civil survey to study the impact of floods on the water and sanitation services.

A volunteering team of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, cleaning volunteers, snake catchers, surveyors joined the drive.

This short-notice mass mobilisation was made possible by the CANALPY (Can Alappuzha) team, already working on relief activities and conducting surveys in Kuttanad since July, during the first flood.

CANALPY was conceptualised late 2017 by the people to reclaim canals of Alappuzha town.  The tagline "canals are not drains" focused on cleaning, sustaining and inspiring people to take care of their surroundings and thus make a difference to society.

The campaign was propagated through social media and a dedicated website www.canalpy.com. It relied upon community institutions, collaborations/partnerships with government (urban local bodies, State Pollution Control Board, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad), academia (Cochin University College of Engineering Kuttanad, SCMS, IITB) and people, especially the local youth of Alappuzha in last one year.

This campaign adopted a participatory and decentralised approach towards waste management and aspired to tap the energy of youth and create citizen students, who could work as an interface between the people and the government and bring about transformation on the ground.

Students and youth volunteers were trained in concepts of water and sanitation, the conduct of participatory surveys and data collection, mapping and analysis tools such as Open Data Kit (ODK), QGIS (Quantum GIS), OSM Tracker (Open Street Maps).

These data collection tools were used multiple times in last nine months by students from colleges and schools in and around Alappuzha, who were also trained in using them to conduct surveys.

The social capital created by CANALPY team was helpful when the disaster hit Alappuzha and Kuttanad regions. The experience gained through previous surveys, interactions and on-ground work aided the team to mobilise people quickly as well as to do the design, training and monitoring questionnaire surveys. The local team also mapped relief camps, which helped in assigning volunteers, managing relief materials and planning access to relief camps.

As part of Op Rehabilitation, it was decided to include a rapid assessment of the impact of the flood on building structures, water, sanitation services and public health. More than 2,000 volunteers had showed interest in volunteering for this rapid assessment exercise.

Out of them it was decided that about 500 volunteers will be trained and can be part of the data collection and the rest to be assigned to each panchayat on the basis of requirement.

The volunteers were sorted and those interested in cleaning activities were tagged with panchayat authorities and arrangements for food and accommodation were done for those who came from outside Alappuzha. Out of the 1500 volunteers, 500 of them were selected to be part of the various surveys to be conducted across Kuttanad. Around 250 volunteers turned out for the training as part of the socioeconomic survey.

This survey was planned for households as well as public institutions by the CANALPY team and it was planned that the survey team will accompany the people returning to their flood hit homes from the relief camps.

The survey questionnaires for the household and public institutions were prepared carefully after consultation with various disaster management experts, civil engineers, medical experts, architects and people working humanitarian agencies so as to ensure inclusiveness and have specificity.

On health and diseases, it was made sure that except for fever and athlete's foot (a fungal infection that usually begins between the toes), reporting of any other disease will be done only if the disease has been confirmed by a doctor.

The day volunteers arrived they were given a short training on questionnaire and introduced to mobile app, Open Data Kit (ODK) which was to be used for the survey. There were sessions to introduce them to Kuttanad floods, about the CANALPY project, the survey etiquette and about the conduct of the civil survey.

Taking proper photographs was stressed at sessions as pictures formed the basis of the structural damage analysis of the survey. Later on the survey team was divided into 16 groups to be assigned to various panchayats.

On the first day of Operation Rehabilitation drive on August 28, people from relief camps and volunteers, including survey volunteers, gathered at SDV High School ground, Alappuzha. Buses were assigned to each of the panchayats and the survey volunteers along with other volunteers accompanied the people in each bus.  Boats were used to transport people, surveyors and volunteers to places not accessible by road. Panchayats were requested to provide food and overnight accommodation for volunteers for these three days.

As many public institutions were hit by the flood, a separate survey of civil structures along with water and sanitation facilities was also conducted. The survey covered public health centres/medical clinics, ration shops, anganwadis, primary, upper primary and high schools and banks/ATM facilities.

The rationale was that these important institutions had to be in working condition to ease the relief and rehabilitation process and help restore flood-hit villages to normalcy.

(The author is professor at IIT Bombay)