Kranti hears them out. "Don’t seek compensation for both the quake and the tsunami," he tells one islander whose house is still standing. "You can only file a claim for your goods, not for your rented shop," he tells some shopkeepers. And so on.
After a couple of days, the Kranti caravan moves on to another island, and to another set of problems the tsunami has washed ashore. The young man who’s deliberately dropped his surname needn’t have got his hands dirty doing this work. After graduating from ILS Law College in Pune eight months ago, he, like his classmates, could have plunged into practice. But Port Blair beckoned. He had done some work during the Bhuj earthquake and the same expertise, he figured, would come in handy when everyone, from local officials to NGOs, were jostling for a piece of the "relief and rehabilitation package".
Kranti, who still has to formally take oath as a lawyer, now runs the Human Rights Law Network’s branch in Port Blair. But it is a travelling show. He zips around from one island to another in dangerous boats, sleeps in shacks and hutments, trying to secure for these voiceless islanders whatever assurances they’ve been given. And they have already tasted their first victory. On December 19, the courts passed an interim order that free rations to the tsunami-affected will continue till further notice. For the beleaguered lot here, this was the first sign of relief. Where the administration had failed, it seemed like the courts had come to the rescue.
What Kranti’s travels has recorded is a damning saga of neglect and insensitivity that feeds on the innocence and ignorance of the islanders. With most of the islands being lorded over by junior level administrators, the human aspect of the rehabilitation process was being lost.
It’s this that Kranti and colleagues are trying to rectify. Kranti and his team set out each morning into the temporary shelters searching for lost voices who neither know what is rightfully theirs nor have the means to get what they have been denied. After speaking to them and collecting documents, they then draft petitions at the Port Blair bench of the Madras High Court with help from equally conscientious lawyers.
But it’s no bed of roses. "If we are filing a petition, the court officials expect the petitioner to travel to Port Blair from the far-flung islands and sign the necessary papers in front of them. Is this fair to people who have no access to decent inter-island communication or are busy trying to resurrect their lives after the tsunami?" he asks.
The work is far from over, but clearly there is a growing realisation of their rights among the tsunami-affected. Each afternoon, as the islanders file past him, Kranti listens to each one with exemplary patience. But there is also exasperation at the ignorance and injustice. Sometimes, he lets it show. "The problem with all of you is that you don’t know how to ask for what is yours," he tells one group. The islanders listen intently. For, in these ravaged islands, Kranti is a rare source of help and reassurance that they can always count on. "True to his name he’s creating a revolution," says a grateful old lady.
