Tsunami battered tourism and fishing economy of the Southern India will receive little aide to recover – small businesses suffer like nine eleven tragedy in America
Sukhbinder Singh, Special Correspondent
January 01, 2005

The Tsunami hit South India’s tourism and fishing industries is battered like never before. The survivors’ biggest problem now is how to move on to tomorrow. It is similar to the small businesses who lost their business facilities in September 2001 at the World Trade Center. The aid and relief comes to help in drinking water, food and shelter. But people need more than that to move on. The biggest loss for those who survived is the loved ones they lost. Beyond that their biggest loss is their lost livelihood. The poor fishing communities have lost their boats, docks, nets – everything. The tourists are shunning away from these areas and tourism industry (hotels, travel guides etc) will lay off hundreds of thousands of workers who does have alternate means of employment in these areas. And the people without job have no hope from any direction.

The central Government, International relief agencies and private individual and corporate donors have come forward to chip in money and essential goods. But there is lack of understanding that the havoc is long term. People will need their boats, nets to start again what they have been doing for ages. The hotels needs the tourists back to operate decently again at a reasonable capacity.

Unfortunately the battered part of the economy will suffer in the same way small businesses in World Trade Center suffered. In America billions of dollars were spent for relief and loss of life. But no one ever cared for small businesses that had to pay salaries to their surviving employees without any infrastructure to earn any revenue for months and years. 

Unlike in America Indian poor fishermen and their families had no insurance to recover their loss of equipments. Family owned equipments passed on from generation to generation in providing the livelihood. And now the loss is long term - the infrastructure for earning a livelihood is gone forever.

The killer tsunami that has already taken thousands of lives in southern India has badly hit the fishing and tourism industries of the region. Industry officials in India's Tamil Nadu, the second worst hit, said the impact on fisheries could be more. A large number of fishing boats and equipment have been swept away or lie damaged and officials say the damage could be as high as Rs. 2 billion. "It is going to have an impact on the economy. The fishing industry which has been very very strong exporter, it's going to be affected," N.Srinivasan, Director General of Confederation of Indian Industries, a powerful industrial lobby, said. Officals fear that tourism could also be hit badly. However, India's main beach attractions, Kerala and Goa, are on its west coast and escaped the tsunami. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh on the east coast were hit hard but are not big beach destinations. "The devastation caused is going to be deter tourists from coming for a long time to come. So, that will have a major impact on the economy of the southern region," Srinivasan added. Official estimates say nearly 25 million domestic and 800,000 foreign tourists visit Tamil Nadu annually.