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    BookReview Sunita11

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    The document reviews a book titled "Clash of Waves: Post Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands" which analyzes the relief and rehabilitation efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, finding that the top-down relief approaches clashed with local customs and undermined community resilience, exacerbating social disruptions in the tsunami-affected islands. The review praises the book for its ethnographic examination of how disasters impact societies beyond just physical damage.

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    BookReview Sunita11

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    The document reviews a book titled "Clash of Waves: Post Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands" which analyzes the relief and rehabilitation efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, finding that the top-down relief approaches clashed with local customs and undermined community resilience, exacerbating social disruptions in the tsunami-affected islands. The review praises the book for its ethnographic examination of how disasters impact societies beyond just physical damage.

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    The document reviews a book titled "Clash of Waves: Post Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands" which analyzes the relief and rehabilitation efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, finding that the top-down relief approaches clashed with local customs and undermined community resilience, exacerbating social disruptions in the tsunami-affected islands. The review praises the book for its ethnographic examination of how disasters impact societies beyond just physical damage.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    7 views3 pages

    BookReview Sunita11

    Uploaded by

    pablo.gonzalez.bravo
    The document reviews a book titled "Clash of Waves: Post Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands" which analyzes the relief and rehabilitation efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, finding that the top-down relief approaches clashed with local customs and undermined community resilience, exacerbating social disruptions in the tsunami-affected islands. The review praises the book for its ethnographic examination of how disasters impact societies beyond just physical damage.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

    net/publication/227626595

    Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response: How Private Action Can Reduce Public
    Vulnerability

    Article in Review of Social Economy · June 2011


    DOI: 10.1080/00346760902968512 · Source: RePEc

    CITATIONS READS
    11 46

    1 author:

    Sunita Reddy
    Jawaharlal Nehru University
    24 PUBLICATIONS 300 CITATIONS

    SEE PROFILE

    All content following this page was uploaded by Sunita Reddy on 14 December 2015.

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    Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 63(2) : (433-434), 2014

    Book Review

    Clash of Waves: Post Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands
    (2013), Sunita Reddy, Indos Books, New Delhi, pp xxi + 271, Hardcover, Rs. 485.00,
    ISBN 978-81-908972-2-8

    The disastrous Tsunami of 26 December 2004, which affected 12 nations including India,
    is still fresh in the memory of many people due to the unprecedented damage it triggered to
    the lives, livelihoods and emotions of thousands of victims living close to the coast. In
    India, the coastlines of Tamil Nadu, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands were severely affected
    by the Tsunami with loss of life, property and infrastructure. The wave of Tsunami-related
    disaster was further accentuated by still severe waves of post-Tsunami relief and
    rehabilitation measures and humanitarian aid, literally flowing from all over the world.
    This clash of waves prompted the victims and the government to the extent of appealing to
    the donors and well wishers not to send any more men and materials to the Tsunami affected
    areas. These waves of helplessness and rehabilitation clashing each other in Andaman and
    Nicobar Islands were the cornerstones of conceptualizing this wonderfully analyzed volume
    by Dr. Reddy, who happens to be a trained anthropologist. Hence, she has aptly chosen and
    justified the title of the volume, “Clash of Waves”. Nothing significant has escaped the
    ethnographer’s eyes in Dr. Reddy, be it the human and physical disasters caused by the
    Tsunami, the relief and rehabilitation measures by the government and the NGOs, or the
    plights and tribulations of the victims post-Tsunami, despite flow of cash compensation
    and efforts to bring life back to normal.
    Dr. Reddy is very right that anthropology has a significant role to play in understanding
    disasters and their fall out, precisely for the reason that disasters should not merely be
    construed as “physical phenomena with technical solutions”, but social, cultural, economic
    and psychological disruptions associated with them. She has vividly described how the
    temporary and permanent shelters built post Tsunami by the government clashed with the
    values and preferences of the people. For example, she has cited how the Nicobarese
    traditionally lived together in circular huts or ma pati tuhet with extended joint families
    and expressed their resentment in accommodating them in smaller shelters by the government
    after Tsunami. Dr. Reddy’s observation that the relief and rehabilitation measures post
    Tsunami were “demand-based” instead of being “need-based” with little grass-root
    participation were mere repetition of the top-down strategy of planning and development
    by the government. She further observes that this has completely undermined the resilience
    and traditional wisdom of the local people in putting their life and livelihoods back to the
    right track, thus reducing the most extensive and expensive rehabilitation measures to
    redundancy.
    Dr. Reddy has quoted Torry (1979) to convey another reality that “Disasters create
    privation; induce a competitive situation among various groups in the community in the
    wake of distribution of aid and relief material. Aid sometimes inflames the latent conflicts
    existing in the communities”. Andaman and Nicobar Islands being a cultural mosaic and
    mini-India with many different cultural and linguistic groups living under one administrative
    control, indeed, relief operations have generated inter-personal as well as inter-community
    434 Book Review

    jealousy and rivalry among the victims. Unfortunately, communal harmony, therefore, was
    disrupted due to these interventions.
    Although a decade has gone by, the ripples that the Tsunami created in disrupting the
    social, economic, cultural and psychological fabric of the inhabitants of Andaman and
    Nicobar Islands are yet to be completely healed, no matter how much money was spent in
    relief and rehabilitation of the victims. Dr. Raddy, therefore, observes, “... these [the relief
    and rehabilitation] efforts looked more of fire fighting and ad hoc in nature, leading to
    chaos and lack of coordination.”
    On the whole, Clash of Waves is an excellent account of how the relief and rehabilitation
    measures continued in Andaman and Nicobar Islands post Tsunami and the reaction of the
    people of the islands to these measures. I hope ethnographic study of this kind would
    encourage anthropologists and other social scientists to undertake longitudinal studies in
    understanding the consequences of disasters and the needs of the victims in right perspective.
    The volume is a welcome addition to anthropology of disaster management and would be
    of help to all social scientists, NGOs and policy makers interested in disaster management
    studies and planning.

    Kamal K. Misra
    Professor of Anthropology
    Central University
    Hyderabad

    Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 63(2) : (433-434), 2014

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