INDIA: India's decision to refuse foreign aid and go it alone in providing relief and rehabilitation to tens of thousands of tsunami victims on its south-eastern coast and on its offshore Andaman and Nicobar territory is a sign of the country's new found self-confidence and economic robustness.
As part of this growing self-assurance, India was also prompt in dispatching aid to badly devastated neighbours like Sri Lanka, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Indonesia, despite its own high casualty figures of 9,451 dead and another 5,000 missing. Officials fear the numbers missing could soon be counted amongst the dead.
"India's growing confidence in itself over the past decade and the impressive growth rate of its economy adequately equip it to single-handedly cope with catastrophes like the tsunami," said Dr Satish Kumar, former professor of diplomacy at New Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University. It has shown in the recent past that it is more than capable of handling such emergencies efficiently, he added.
Government officials said India's military, widely deployed in the tsunami-hit areas, was highly experienced in providing aid as it was regularly being called in to deal with earthquakes, cyclones and floods that plague the region.
Many of the country's doctors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and district administrations were similarly experienced in coping with natural disaster-related activities. In southern Tamil Nadu state and the Andaman and Nicobar island archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, India's relief efforts were now turning from providing immediate aid to restoring the ruined infrastructure and to rehabilitating the victims.
Government relief agencies, working with NGOs, have also launched initiatives to adopt hundreds of children, mostly from coastal fishing families, that the tsunami orphaned.