ABSTRACT
The chapter,‘Response and the Tsunami’, assesses the response to the Tsunami in the A&N Islands. The Tsunami Rehabilitation Programme was initiated in 2005 and it closed in 2011. During this period over Rs. 30 billion was spent in rebuilding the A&N Islands. The chapter analyzes the characteristics of response through the spatial and temporal pattern of post-Tsunami reconstruction of physical and social infrastructure and houses. Drawing from the reconstruction data culled out from the Right to Information (RTI) petitions to the departments engaged in post-Tsunami reconstruction, the chapter concludes that expenditure on reconstruction was 4.7 times more than the expenditure on social infrastructure. Again, the reconstruction was concentrated in islands dominated by non-tribal population. The chapter also traces the sequence of the response from day one of the Tsunami till the end of the Tsunami Rehabilitation Programme. When the data was analyzed, it proved that among the Nicobar Islands, four islands with significant non-tribal population accounted for 87 per cent of the total expenditure on reconstruction. The infrastructure reconstruction maintained a status quo and retained the pre-Tsunami vulnerability.
