India

India: Tsunami-recovery Construction
New houses built for tsunami-affected communities in India are approximately 310-square feet and made of brick with steel-reinforced columns and beams. They have poured-concrete roofs. The roof is accessible by an outside staircase and is enclosed by a parapet wall. Each has a toilet with an outside entrance.

Habitat for Humanity partners with other non-governmental organizations for its tsunami-recovery reconstruction work in India. Project components vary in different communities, depending on the strengths and capacities of the partners. Habitat provides funding, project management, construction supervision, volunteer management and community organizing.

In Muzhukkuthurai, Cuddalore district, Habitat completed 111 houses to relocate villagers to a safer site further from the sea. Their new houses are essential to many of the business ventures local women have planned. As members of self-help groups some have taken loans to fund making and selling traditional breakfast foods to returning fishermen. Others use their roof to dry fish to sell.

For most residents of the fishing village of Alambarai Kuppam, having a toilet in their house will be a new experience. But now that they are moving 500 meters inland from their beachside location, sanitation will become a greater concern. Community organizers will work with villagers to improve hygiene.

Repairs and Housing Improvements
The tsunami dealt a final blow to many substandard houses in coastal communities of India. People living in the depths of poverty in mud huts or 20-year-old government houses that had dangerously deteriorated were left without a roof over their heads. Other houses that were sturdier had damaged plaster or roof structures and their roof tiles washed away. With construction supervisors, local skilled labor and volunteer helpers, Habitat has restored 1,300 houses to a habitable state.

A list of project sites and donors is available.

India: Going Forward
Meeting the Need for Better Housing
More than 60 percent of India’s estimated 180 million dwellings are kacha structures made of insubstantial materials or in a dilapidated condition. Poor quality bricks and cement are common. In rural areas, shelters often rely on mud, grass, leaves, reeds and bamboo. In urban areas, the poor live under bridges, on train and bus platforms, as well as in crowded slums.

India needs some 2.5 million new homes each year, just to keep pace with its growing population. The current shortfall is more than 41 million homes.

Habitat works in partnership with social service NGOs and micro-finance organizations to reach people in need of decent housing. Through the Save & Build housing microfinance system, groups of families pool a portion of the savings. Habitat contributes to the fund and assists the group with construction management.

Businesses, NGOs, women’s groups, youth and government entities are joining with Habitat for Humanity India Trust to support indiaBUILDS, an ambitious campaign to house 250,000 people by 2010.

Next Steps
As part of its response to the tsunami, Habitat is establishing a disaster mitigation program through its Habitat resource centers that will help homeowners strengthen their houses in ways that will help the structures survive cyclones, floods and other likely disasters.

Habitat resource centers that were established as part of the tsunami-recovery program are being turned over to national staff for management, signaling the start of a transition to Habitat’s regular Save & Build program.

India: Family Experiences

Tsunami-affected Families to Relocate to Model Village

“We couldn’t stay with our relatives any longer, but we were all afraid to return (to the sea). My granddaughter screams in the night with fear,” says Muthulakshmi. Until their new house is finished, six family members live in a windowless, one-room mud hut with a thatch roof.

It’s dank and dark inside the family’s mud house. There is barely room to stand up. They stayed with relatives for months after the tsunami, but Seniyappan, Muthulakshmi’s 37-year-old son and the family breadwinner, needed to get back to fishing.

“We lost fishing nets and all the household things, and have just now been able to replace them,” said his wife, Selvi, as she cooked on a gas ring in a corner of the tiny porch.

Seniyappan fishes and Selvi carries fish to the market to sell. She walks about three kilometers to the crossroads at Kaddapakkam Kuppam with other fishermen’s wives and spreads her wares on the ground, both fresh fish and the ones her mother in law dries in the sun.

The elderly Muthulakshmi is frail and anxious. She wants to move out of the family’s mud hut, to get further from the sea, she says. She is very afraid.

“I cannot carry the children if water comes,” she says sadly.

With support from the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India (UELCI), Habitat is building 182 houses to relocate the villagers of Alambarai Kuppam, including Seniyappan’s family, further from the ocean. The houses are scheduled to be finished in October 2006. Fishermen will be able to bring their boats near to the village by a canal.

What Makes a Model Village
Village head-man Nagaroon foresees many benefits for the villagers in their new houses:

“A better house will improve the standard of living and have economic benefits as well. Mud houses require a lot of work. It takes an investment of about 5,000 rupees a year to repair the house and replace the palm thatch roof. And a stronger house will be safer during extreme weather, such as floods and heavy rain.”

Education is a great concern, Nagaroon said. Children should have the opportunity to choose other work besides fishing. Having a house with windows and electric lights that doesn’t leak is very important so that children can study.

“This could be a model village,” Nagooran says. He wants “real roads, street lights and trees.” As soon as the families shift to this new place, the community will plant trees and make a trash dump. “We will see that all is maintained to have a clean environment,” he said. With good drinking water and proper sanitation, it will mean better health, too.