DISASTERS challenge system capacities and human intelligence and in most cases bring out the best of human capabilities in dealing with sudden shock with creative and constructive thinking. This is particularly true of South Asia, an area which has experienced a disproportionate share of global disasters. The South Asian journey of recovery after disasters is a testament to the will and ingenuity its citizens, who despite insurmountable odds have managed to rebound after such catastrophes. However, it is proposed that the Sasian (South Asian) Journey should rest, from time to time, to reflect on disasters as a creative moment.

During my two decades of risk reduction and resilience building work with poor but creative communities, I have come across some fascinating insights. I have found that citizens in South Asia view disasters as creative moments to search for newer meaning in their suddenly disrupted lives by pouring fuller life in the meaning destroyed. For disaster victims, especially the poor, who are also citizens, being creative is not a matter of choice but a way of life. A strategy to survive and making use of what is available, generates and sustains their ability to bounce back after a crisis. Thus, creativity is also a way of coping with the reality of risk. Loss of rebuilding opportunity is far more painful to watch than the loss of life, livelihoods, and assets.

A few weeks after the 2004 tsunami, I travelled with Rajeev Sethi, first to the villages on the coast of Tamil Nadu and later to Sri Lanka to review the humanitarian work which my team had initiated. Day-end dialogues with Rajeev soon unveiled the creative side of response to me. What struck me the most was the remarkable similarity across disasters and communities; the manner in which victim citizens see a crisis as an opportunity and the manner in which they innovate. I have found their vision and innovations emerging out of crises more rooted and realistic than of most non-victims or several government initiatives.

Citizens in South Asia have repeatedly found creative ways to turn a disaster into an opportunity to reduce their poverty as well as vulnerability to disasters. Policies, be they on poverty or disasters, have yet to recognize this creativity. Though almost all countries in South Asia have a disaster management act, policy, and also an authority, none come out to say that they aim to recognize, respect, nurture and build on what citizens are already doing to reduced poverty and build resilience. Since the 1987-89 repeat drought in Gujarat, India, I have argued for this dual benefit approach to disaster relief.

The use of cash transfers is one way victims have shown immense creativity and business sense to recover better and faster, be it after the 1998 Kandla cyclone, the 1999 Odisha super cyclone, or the 2009 Pakistan floods. Cash in hand is turned not only into purchasing power but also a tool to make choices, barter, disrupt dialogues, protect privacy, outsmart delays, boldly gamble for safety, check reality of remaining risk, and move from managing to making smart decisions.

 

One of the most striking, but unrecorded creativity with the use of money is shown in enhanced cash as compensation or relief. How citizens have used cash, or lack of cash, in their recovery and preparedness from micro credit or savings groups is a journey of creativity. What is not very hard to observe is that victims know the value of money and use money carefully; only when required and only on what is needed. Thus, letting victims control financial resources is the real value of money.

A wide range of financial instruments and services come up in humanitarian camps and linger on into the recovery stages. Sadly, none are recorded or recognized. Only those financial instruments and services that make any significant impact in the long-run are considered trustworthy and allowed to be developed into programmes. This holds true for both, SEWA Bank in India and the Grameen Bank and BRAC Bank in Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya, and the Sungi Foundation in Pakistan, have also captured this aspect of financial creativity in South Asia.

Owner-driven housing reconstruction is another area where the owner of lost or damaged homes after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake or 2007 Koshi floods in India became creative customers and smarter users of information by embracing the complexity of who owns what rather than who has lost what. Ownership is about home as well as of imagination of the future.

 

Far more creativity has been shown in integrating disaster, climate, and development risks into day-to-day life, especially in agriculture, animal husbandry, perma culture and water use in South Asia. What is planted when and by whom after the tsunami and following flooding from rains is what I was looking for in coastal Tamil Nadu. In 2007, I found over 2000 farmers who decided to de-salt the tsunami affected land and reclaim rice planting with organic processes. They dumped top-down chemical and water intensive processes; also dumped the use of costly fertilizer and pesticides. This was a slow but far more sustainable way to recover the coastal economy and ecology. Victims do not compartmentalize and differentiate between disaster risk and climate risk in their day-to-day life. They see the many connections and use the first ones to make the integration, direct and multiple. Unfortunately, hardly any official or international humanitarian organization welcomes such local initiatives which fall outside project mode.

In the context of disasters, cities not only kill but also create ways of living. Creativity is inherent in the cities of South Asia. Without creativity the poor and vulnerable citizens cannot live in our cities. Citizens use individuals, cultures, and ideas they encounter in cities to find creative solutions. From city-to-city, disasters and their risks are understood in many different ways even as the policy makers in Kathmandu or Delhi or Dhaka strive for uniform, fixed, and standardized policy! As a slum dweller in Dhaka pointed out to me as I was evaluating an international urban disaster risk reduction project of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, ‘Do you not know that disasters in our world are always multi-dimensional?’ When asked to explain, he added, ‘Find me a single item in our slum that has less than four uses.’ This creativity in housing or shelter is recorded, and even debated about, but in other urban sectors it remains unexplored by us, not the disaster victim citizens. The victims manufacture fresh meaning in new settlements, negotiate resilience, and thrive in a warmer world. They never place their expectations in an upright or uptight position, but listen just as Hermann Hesse learned to listen to the rivers in South Asia. Listening becomes their passport to the power of right advice.

 

Similarly, the creativity in dealing with loss and damage in rural areas is amazing – in its starting point of crop diversification, all the way to dealing with conflicts around livelihoods of artisans and to their clans recovering from catastrophes. Sadly, while we are quick to jump and record humanitarian innovations we do not encourage ongoing day-to-day creativity of the victims though it is the creativity of these victims that inspire our innovations. The South Asian conversation should start here, unlike anything else on morning television. Though the victims build their house of cards like birds or bees, they hum even when not anointed.

During Cyclone Aila, the creative manner with which spatial inequalities were dealt across the borders of India and Bangladesh brought the two countries together. The recovery efforts of the victims in the Sunderbans, in both India and Bangladesh, united the two countries through their delta communities. The prevalence, depth and severity of risk is not only addressed with income, but also with non-income measures of work by these delta citizens where tree after tree that is logged takes away a whole different variety of delta forestry and horticulture.

The creativity of citizens has not only addressed issues of sustainability, but also discovered sustainable practices in the efforts especially when labour migrates across cities and countries and also across sectors and markets in Asia after a disaster. However, this inherent but invisible sustainability is yet to be recorded as evidence in any humanitarian impact study.

One of the most heart wrenching examples of creativity is exhibited by out of school children all across South Asia. However, any art or design show is yet to be devoted to these children who see disasters on their own terms. In Assam, after a flood in the Brahmaputra in July 2013, a schoolboy drew his home inside the flood area, and titled it ‘airport’. When asked why, he said, ‘a place to take off from.’

As climate change pushes us into an increasing number of disasters, failing to learn and make use of them will be a terrible waste. Many ways will have to be found to deal with disasters. It is proposed to find moments of rest in the Sasian Journey, maybe after a disaster such as the one in Nepal, or more importantly between two disasters, to capture this creativity and use it to reduce risk and build resilience in South Asia. A journey only becomes a journey when one stops to rest.