The Asian Tsunami and Post-Disaster Aid

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxix

   PDF

2. The Asian Tsunami and Post-Disaster Aid: Critical Perspectives

   • Sunita Reddy

   Pages 1-24

3. Aid, Conflict and Differential Distribution

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 25-25

      PDF

   2. An Ethno-political Accounting of the Sri Lankan Tsunami Impact and Recovery

      • Randall Kuhn

      Pages 27-50

   3. Learning from Nature: Responding to Natural Disaster and the Need for a Multi-faceted Approach in Law

      • V. T. Thamilmaran

      Pages 51-63

   4. Social Interfaces in Disaster Situations: Analyzing Rehabilitation and Recovery Processes Among the Fisherfolk of Tamil Nadu After the Tsunami in India

      • Sunil D. Santha

      Pages 65-78

   5. Disaster, Development, and Water: The Reconstruction and (Re)Fabrication of Hazardous Waterscapes in Post-tsunami India

      • Luke Juran

      Pages 79-99

   6. An Applied Anthropological Perspective on Localizing Post-disaster Aid: Lessons from Post-tsunami Aceh, Indonesia

      • Patrick Daly

      Pages 101-119

   7. Land, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development in Aceh, Indonesia: Confronting Inequalities Through Post-tsunami and Post-conflict Recovery

      • Jane Dunlop

      Pages 121-139

4. Build Back Better? Relief Materials, Livelihoods, Shelters and Discontentment

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 141-141

      PDF

   2. The Sustainability of Humanitarian Aid: The Nicobar Islands as a Case of ‘Complex Disaster’

      • Simron Jit Singh, Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Willi Haas

      Pages 143-165

   3. The Tsunami and Its Aftermath: Resilience and Rupture of the Social Fabric Among the Nicobarese

      • Mohammed A. Abid

      Pages 167-186

   4. New Andamans: The Aftermath of Tsunami in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

      • Sunita Reddy

      Pages 187-209

   5. Post-disaster Housing: Lessons Learnt from the 2004 Tsunami of Sri Lanka

      • Nisha Arunatilake

      Pages 211-232

5. Coping Strategies, Systems and Aid Effectiveness

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233

      PDF

   2. Aid, Religion and Recovery in Post-tsunami Thailand

      • Monica Lindberg Falk

      Pages 235-251

   3. Memory Interventions: Gujarat and Sri Lanka

      • Edward Simpson, Malathi de Alwis

      Pages 253-269

   4. Conflicting Paradigms and the Danger Discourse: Re-thinking Indian Disaster Management Framework in the Post-tsunami Era

      • Pravin Kushwaha

      Pages 271-287

   5. Tsunami Recovery Impact Assessment and Monitoring System (TRIAMS): Methodological Approach for Recovery

      • Lakshman Dissanayake

      Pages 289-303

   6. Tsunami Aid and Its Effectiveness

      • P. G. Dhar Chakrabarti

      Pages 305-330

Through the lens of the Asian tsunami, this book problematizes concepts that are normally taken for granted in disaster discourse, including relief, recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation. The unprecedented flow of humanitarian aid after the Asian tsunami, though well-intentioned, showed adverse effects and unintended consequences in the lives of people in the communities across nations. Aid led not only to widespread relief and recovery but also to an exacerbation of old forms of inequities and the creation of new ones arising from the prioritization, distribution and management of aid. This, in turn, led to the incongruity between the needs and expectations of the affected and the agendas of aid agencies and their various intermediaries. This book examines the long-term consequences of post-disaster aid by posing the following questions: What has the aid been expended on? Where has the aid primarily been expended, and how? And what were the unintended consequences of post-disaster aid for the communities? 


This topical volume is of interest to social scientists, human rights and law researchers and environmental scientists interested in disaster studies.

• aid and its consequences
• rehabilitation after Asian tsunami
• ethnic impacts of tsunami on Sri Lanka
• humanitarian aid
• post-tsunami foreign assistance
• epidemics in Sri Lanka after tsunami
• Andaman islands after tsunami
• multiple actors in disaster relief
• conflict and tsunami in Aceh
• safeguarding indigenous populations during tsunami
• dispossession and loss
• post-tsunami housing
• fishing communities in south India
• tsunami recovery assessment
• community recovery after tsunami
• development aid

“This book will prove to be an important resource for scholars and practitioners alike. Scholars trying to understand the complexity of post-disaster recovery will derive great insights from the book, and the practitioners would be warned of the pitfalls of an inadequately conceived and hurried reconstruction programe.” (Kamal Kishore, Current Science, Vol. 116 (9), 2019)

• Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health and Adjunct Faculty at the Special Centre for Disaster Research, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

  Sunita Reddy

Sunita Reddy is Associate Professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi. She is an anthropologist specialized in medical anthropology, and teaches public health in JNU. She has researched various issues related to health, violence against women and children, migrant women workers in construction and domestic sectors, medical tourism, surrogacy, and has published various research papers in national and international journals. She has delivered lectures in many Indian and foreign universities for the past two decades. She has also done research on disaster issues from a social science perspective and published a book Clash of Waves: Post-Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands (2013). She has been in the core group on the formulation of guidelines on disasters in India, and is also a core group member in starting the Special Center for Disaster Research (SCDR) in JNU. She is coeditor of Marginalization in Globalizing Delhi: Land, Livelihoods and Health (2017, Springer). She is a founder member of ‘Anthropos India Foundation’, a trust that promotes visual and action anthropology (www.anthroposindiafoundation.com). She is active in sports, co-curricular activities and is involved in social service through a community-based organization called ‘SATAT’.

Policies and ethics