Aftermath: The second flood

From Nine to Noon 20 July 2015

Dr Simron Singh lived and worked for five years on the remote Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal, 12 hundred kilometers from the Indian mainland, studying the unique culture and people. It was a largely subsistence economy, the culture inextricably tied to the island ecosystem. The Nicobarese fished, grew coconuts, and raised pigs and chickens. They lived in coastal villages and built their canoes and thatched houses from materials found along the coast and in the interior rainforest.

Then, the boxing day tsunami in 2004 devastated the archipelago. Dr Singh, who’s now a Professor of Social Ecology at the University of Waterloo, just outside Toronto, says the subsequent humanitarian aid that came flooding into the islands caused the breakdown of the traditional culture. His research before and after the tsunami are featured in a new documentary called Aftermath: The second flood.