Bill Clinton, the UN's special envoy for tsunami recovery, arrives Friday in south India where more than 6,000 died.

By Nachammai Raman | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
NAGAPATTINAM, INDIA – Notions on the street about who Bill Clinton is range from a prince to a curious white man coming to see the tsunami-affected region. For those abroad who are more familiar with the former US president, his visit here as the UN special envoy for tsunami recovery has refocused attention on India's worst-hit district.

Five months on, the major issues tsunami survivors grapple with are the lack of permanent housing and regular employment, elements crucial to rebuilding their lives. Most survivors are still staying in temporary shelters, eking out a living on the money and supplies doled out by the government and other nongovernmental agencies.

NGOs have brought $103 million in relief to the region. And $92 million of construction work is planned - an expected boon for local people looking for work.

But handouts are becoming scarce as the government and aid agencies move on to the recovery phase - a transition that has been hampered by poor planning, say aid workers and residents.

"The government was unprepared for such a disaster. Now, they're learning through trial and error," says R. Somasundaram of Avvai Village Welfare Society, an NGO working in Nagapattinam.

According to Mr. Somasundaram, Indian officials did not plan for the land they would need for permanent homes before they allocated land to temporary shelters, and now there is a land crunch. They also did not plan accurately for the length of the transition period which, he says, is why the subsistence money has stopped even though people's livelihoods have been ensured.

Until May, the government was giving out an allowance of Rs. 1,000, about $23, per month to each affected family.

"We've been living on the tsunami relief that was given," says V. Vasantha, whose farming family owns two acres of agricultural land spoiled by seawater. "We don't know what we're going to do next month."

But, district collector J. Radhakrishnan, the highest government official in Nagapattinam district, says that the end to relief measures is not permanent. "There is a proposal to extend it for another month or two if needed."

He says relief measures have been stopped because the government wants to discourage dependency on handouts. "More and more people have to go back to their livelihoods."

Walter Gillis Peacock, a professor at Texas A&M University who is in Nagapattinam to develop a social vulnerability map, says that what looks like dependency on handouts might simply be the lack of capital resources. He says that people in the US can recover from disasters more quickly because they have insurance, savings, and other reserves. "It's a market-based recovery process. Here [in Nagapattinam] we're dealing with a different set of contingencies," he says.

Fisherman R. Harikrishnan is anxious because he has not been able to take out the boat loan he is eligible for. He now is a work hand on somebody else's boat, but he says he does not have sufficient sea skills because he has always been a boss on land.