When the French ceded their Indian colonies to the Republic of India in 1954 they left in place a system of waterworks and flood mitigation strategies that had antecedents traceable to India’s ...medieval period. Faced with the process of integration into the Indian democracy the new administration of what was to become the Union Territory of Pondicherry let languish many of the infrastructural improvements built by the former French colonial government. Over the course of the following half century a series of narratives developed within the administration surrounding French water control and flood mitigation mechanisms. Rooted in a flawed understanding of the colonial history of flood control in the French territories of India these beliefs ossified and have negatively shaped development aimed at flood mitigation and resilience across the post-colonial Union Territory of Puducherry. This paper uses a category defined by Gary Alan Fine and Barry O’Neill to explore how “policy legends” about French water control infrastructures shaped both popular and official understanding of flood vulnerability in the administrative unit made up of the former French territories of India.
This paper interrogates how Paṭṭaṇavar fisher communities in the Union Territory of Pondicherry, India, imagine their relationship to their environment and examines what the author calls their “flood ...imaginary”, or traditional mechanisms for understanding, mitigating and coping with seasonal flood. The Paṭṭaṇavar flood imaginary will be put into conversation with GoPY (Government of Pondicherry) efforts to rehabilitate tsunami-affected communities and the development ideologies upon which such projects are based. The author critiques the stark shift from traditional coping mechanisms to government-mandated “improvement” strategies and argues instead for a policy that integrates external expertise with local/traditional knowledge.
Legendary deluges such as those said to have over-swept the Tamil lands or the flood waters that appear in popular religious and folk tales have long been a part of Tamil folk experience, and they ...serve as the backdrop against which contemporary flood is experienced. In this light, this dissertation explores the development and of disaster management policies in the Union Territory of Pondicherry from their origins in colonial-era policies to the significant re-orientation that followed the 2004 Asian tsunami. Conclusions are based on 14 months of ethnographic research in coastal fisher communities and government relief agencies in the Union Territory. Historical data collected from archives and interviews with territorial officials and NGO workers complement insights gleaned from extensive participant-observation and field collection among deep-sea fisher populations in the former French territories of the Coromandel Coast. Part one defines a Tamil “flood imaginary” by exploring myth-historic instances of flood in the Tamil-speaking region of India. The study then examines flood in the French colonies of India during the 18th and 19th centuries. Together these provide the background for better understanding the policies and beliefs about flood in place prior to the 2004 Asian tsunami and the effects these had on preparedness and resilience at both community and administrative levels. Part two focuses on the ways in which these affected how the territorial government and at-risk communities responded to the 2004 tsunami. Tensions that arose between government and community post-tsunami are examined through the interrogation of documents of agencies that undertook rehabilitation. “Official” narratives of relief and reconstruction are balanced against the perspectives of recipients of government and voluntary aid and the local panchayat leaders who are agents of first resort for lodging requests and grievances. Through a comparison of relief efforts taken within a single state, this research higlights the efficacy of an approach to disaster relief and mitigation planning that appropriately integrates outside expertise with community metis and demonstrates the value of policy informed by ethnography.
Nakon azijskog oceanskog tsunamija 2004. godine vlada indijskog Saveznog teritorija Pondicherry započela je opsežnu obnovu ribarskih zajednica Paṭṭaṇavara. U sklopu toga projekta poduzela je ...izgradnju više od 7000 kuća u zajednicama koje su stradale, ili bi mogle stradati. U mnogim slučajevima premjestila je ribarska sela s obalnih područja u predjele u unutrašnjosti, koje je smatrala “sigurnijima” i rezistentnijima na poplave. Prisilna preseljenja zajednica ugroženih poplavama na prostore koje je odabrala vlada imala su i nepredviđene posljedice, među kojima nastanak kratkoga spoja u tradicionalnim mehanizmima ublažavanja sezonskih poplava. Time su se u rubnim zajednicama, ionako već podložnima vremenskim nepogodama, zapravo izazvale sezonske poplave i stvorila se njihova rastuća ovisnost o vladinim programima pomoći.
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