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KAMALA THIAGARAJAN
The Border Security Force distributes food and water in the aftermath of the flooding in Kerala. Online volunteers helped find
out what people needed to get by — and shared public health messages.
Atul Loke/Getty Images
Devastating rainfall followed by treacherous landslides have killed 210 people since
August 8 and displaced over a million in the southern Indian state of Kerala. India's
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National Disaster Relief Force launched its biggest ever rescue operation in the state,
evacuating over 10,000 people. The Indian army and the navy were deployed as well.
Thousands of Indian citizens used mobile phone technology and social media
platforms to mobilize relief efforts.
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Some of them lent a hand to bigger players who'd stepped in. Charity organizations
such as World Vision, which has been operating in India since the 1950s, used its
website, to collect donations for relief kits. Many [victims of the flood] leave home
with just the clothes on their back," says Cherian Thomas, national director, World
Vision India. "We identify the most vulnerable communities and provide for their
immediate needs. Our emergency kits prioritize items that these displaced people
would find helpful — food, dry clothes, bedding, mosquito repellent, toothbrushes,
paste and soap." World Vision was one of four charities asking people to donate
money to pay for these relief kits through Amazon.in. Just a few days after the
flooding, they had received enough funding for over 10,000 kits.
In many other cases, it was ordinary folk who harnessed social media and their own
resources to play a role in relief and rescue efforts.
As the scope of the disaster became clear, the state government of Kerala reached out
to software engineers from around the world. They joined hands with the state-
government-run Information Technology Cell, coming together on Slack, a
communications platform, to create the website www.keralarescue.in
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The website allowed volunteers who were helping with disaster relief in Kerala's
many flood-affected districts to share the needs of stranded people so that
authorities could act.
Johann Binny Kuruvilla, a travel blogger, was one of many volunteers. He put in
14-hour shifts at the District Emergency Operations Center in Ernakulam, Kochi.
The first thing he did, he says, was to harness the power of Whatsapp, a critical
platform for dispensing information in India. He joined five key Whatsapp groups
with hundreds of members who were coordinating rescue and relief efforts. He sent
them his number and mentioned that he would be in a position to communicate with
a network of police, army and navy personnel. Soon he was receiving an average of
300 distress calls a day from people marooned at home and faced with medical
emergencies.
No one trained volunteers like Kuruvilla. "We improvised and devised our own
systems to store data," he says. He documented the information he received on Excel
spreadsheets before passing them on to authorities.
He was also the contact point for INSPIRE, a fraternity of mechanical engineering
students at a government-run engineering college at Barton Hill in Kerala. The
students told him they had made nearly 300 power banks for charging phones, using
four 1.5 volt batteries and cables, and, he says, "asked us if we could help them
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Some people took to social media to create awareness of the aftereffects of the
flooding.
"I hadn't even met the people who asked me to volunteer," he says. "But they struck a
chord with me, because I was wondering, apart from financial help, what else could I
do? And here was someone offering me a chance to share my skills through social
media to make a real difference."
For the next three days, Appukuttan and a team called Kerala Designers
Collaborative compiled vital information in the form of infographics. Topics ranged
for how to assess your car after floods ("check for lizards, venomous snakes, mold
growth in the vehicle and remove moisture content from the lights) to burying
animal bodies to prevent the spread of disease (tip: dig a 4-foot-deep pit, preferably
at least 24 feet away from a well and as far as possible from the house. Cover the
carcass with lime powder and two and a half feet of soil). The infographics were
translated into five Indian languages.
As the waters receded, ordinary citizens tweeted about where to go for free medical
care and other services.
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Vinay Aravind
@vinayaravind
#Verified
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¯ \_( )_/¯
@iKooky
Will give you pai pai hisab in the end. Doing this personally.
Account is my wife.
113 5:46 PM - Aug 18, 2018
As reports came in about the mounting plastic garbage in Kerala's capital city,
citizens tweeted to mobilize support for clean-up efforts.
Malayalee
@Manju_kerala
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But social media campaigning wasn't without its share of controversy. Some people
spread controversial messages on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. They claimed
that Kerala's suffering was a result of divine retribution for eating beef. Eating beef is
considered a taboo by many of India's Hindu population. But people pushed back on
the same platforms, shaming trolls and debunking rumors.
As people across Kerala are now rebuilding their lives, aid specialists are assessing
the role played in relief efforts by mobile phone technology and social media.
Jayendra Panchapakesan, founder of the disaster relief charity the Bhoomika Trust,
says that it's heartening that younger people are now more involved in relief efforts.
During these floods, Bhoomika publicized helpline numbers using social media,
which helped in the coordination of the rescue of pregnant women, dialysis patients
and the elderly.
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