The newspaper headlines on 26th & 27th May said that the Cyclonic storm "Aila" hitting South Bengal during daytime of 25th May had caused widespread damage to the many villages of the Sunderban delta. The previous day (i.e. on 25th May) I had witnessed Aila lashing around at my office in Rajarhat, Kolkata and did not think it could be that bad. I had even ventured out of office with some colleagues to take lunch while the storm was supposed to be at its peak. Why, I had even taken some cellcam pictures and videos of the moderate storm that struck Kolkata on 25th May (pics posted here & movie files posted here).
Going beyond the headlines revealed that the dykes around the villages had broken up at various places. It was then that the possible magnitude of destruction hit me. I had been to Sunderbans a few months back, and the first thing we noticed during the tour was that each habitable piece of land - more correctly, each island - was protected from the tide by earthen dykes (or bunds) built continuously around the periphery.
Going beyond the headlines revealed that the dykes around the villages had broken up at various places. It was then that the possible magnitude of destruction hit me. I had been to Sunderbans a few months back, and the first thing we noticed during the tour was that each habitable piece of land - more correctly, each island - was protected from the tide by earthen dykes (or bunds) built continuously around the periphery.
The low tide waters would perhaps stay below the grade level in the islands but the high tides were a problem that only the dykes could insure against. We were looking at a number of mini Hollands around us, un-engineered construction separating life from a watery grave. All transport and material carriage to and from these islands would have to be via boats and steamers, as there are no roads and bridges connecting these islands to the humanity on mainland.
At around the time we were busy taking 'daring' pictures of a much-mitigated Aila hitting Kolkata, the force of raw and uninhibited cyclonic storm was devastating village after island village in delta region of Bengal. The destruction was greater for places that were closer to the open sea. 'Kachcha' houses, comprising almost all residential units of the meagre-earning folk in that region, were demolished without a trace. And that was only the beginning. The dykes were broken at many places. This resulted in flooding inside the villages, salination (equivalent to 'poisoning') of cultivable land and pollution of the drinking water sources. While the large waves waned as Aila receded, the tidal floods would not go away as the dykes were still broken. Remember the Tsunami hitting Indonesia / Sri Lanka / Tamil Nadu on 26th December 2004? Now consider that happening in these villages with broken dykes, with the saline water only partially receding after wreaking havoc.
Most of these people raised there livelihood from agriculture. That land is now partially under water and will remain so until dykes are fully repaired. Even so, the dry land would not become cultivable till it is purged by a season or two of rainfall. The only livelihood some of them have now is the daily wage for earthworks towards re-construction of dyke. They cannot grow food for themselves, most of them have no money to buy their food from the expensive sources around them and their condition is likely to stay that way for an indefinite period. They need support. They need it badly. And worst of all, they need it for an extended period.
Why this is the worst part? A look at the newspapers will tell you why. The media has 'moved on'. Aila related affairs are no more hot news. They are gradually getting out of sight and out of the minds of people unaffected by Aila. That is us. The waves of sympathy that brought relief efforts to this region are receding almost as fast as the waves that caused this plight.
Government relief is woefully inadequate. While they are diligently supplying potable water, they have not been able to provide minimum staple food requirements of affected people. Private efforts are there but these are not well organised within a single window to ensure need-based distribution of relief. Many relief providers are considering this as a one time effort. They come, distribute their relief and go away, never to come back. Moreover, distribution of relief is far from equitable. The relief is generally distributed at the parts nearest to access, i.e. areas that may well have been less affected than the more remote villages. This is always the case, as my experience of Tsunami relief work in remote Vedaranyam of Tamil Nadu taught me.
We visited a village named Chargheri at Satjelia no. 10. We were supporting a relief work by orkut community 'Pather Katha' and 'Khelaghar' from Garia. All of us contributed to an ongoing effort carried out by Green Camp, a green tourism enterprise who are carrying out relief work by continuing distribution of food and bare essentials (like clothes, mosquito nets, medicines, match boxes) to residents of a few villages in Satjelia of Sunderbans. We went from Kolkata to Gadkhali, mounted our relief material (mainly rice and clothes) in a steamer arranged by Green Camp and started off towards Satjelia. It turned out to be twice as deep into Sunderbans as Sajnekhali, which is the central point of Tiger reserve tours. Pictures and videos of our 28th June journey to Satjelia are uploaded here.
On the way we found local folk of many villages coming to the shores and requesting us to distribute relief to them. Some of them shouted at us a tough query - "Amader ki Khidha nai?" [Don't we get as hungry as those you want to feed?]. Some of it was perhaps a rehearsed act put up to maximise 'income' of relief as many of these villages looked like being well located enough to be getting relief. But it hardly seemed artificial as we moved deeper. They have only one direction to look for help - and that is into the river in front from where all good and bad news comes. We saw people waiting on the banks with containers for the water distribution vessel to turn up. On one fateful day chosen by the weather Gods, they lost even the right to drink water of decent quality.
We were delayed right at the onset of the steamer journey by some problems faced one of the relief carrier truck which led to its late arrival at Gadkhali. We had plans of participating in the distribution of relief materials. However reaching Chargheri at 5:30 pm and then having to wade through slippery mud before hopping on mud-lubricated stepping stones for 15 mins (without falling over - a miraculous feat, let me tell you) to reach the actual village meant we had no chance of distributing relief that day. Reason: there is no illumination to be availed after sunset. So we had to come back after depositing our relief material to the local relief team. Green Camp have apparently set up a local team to stock up and distribute relief in that village and also distribute in some of the nearby islands using a steamer owned by one of the villagers (this boat was often hired by Green Camp from its owner Dipankar for their Sunderban tour packages; it was Dipankar who raised the pathetic plight of people of his village to Green Camp and asked them to visit Chargheri).
The plight of Chargheri and its neighbouring villages can be assessed by having a look at the pictures and videos of the place (pics and videos uploaded here). It is hard to believe that this village was home to a reasonably self-sufficient set of people having land and means of livelihood of their own. Virtually no homes are to be seen now, and it is a wonder how these people are managing themselves at this God-forsaken place (I have seldom seen a place more deserving of that term) for a good month since the destruction happened. They live on the dykes and under polythene sheets (one family that had a good home and a piece of land are now staying in a boat), cook a bare rice meal or two per day and sustain themselves in the desperate hope that things will turn better one day. And until that happens they need our sustained help to get that bare meal.
Some of them work on the re-construction of dykes and manage to earn some wages. There is no other possible local source of income at present, other than the normal alternatives of fishing and honey collecting. There is every chance that the relief distribution, if left to these desperate people, will get skewed and ultimately degenerate into a base game of 'survival of the strongest'. That is why we were less than happy at not being able to witness the distribution during the 28th June visit. And hence it cannot be stressed enough that as much as it is important that willing people pick an area and contribute to sustained support of relief to the affected locals staying there, it is further essential that these contributors also pitch in by volunteering a visit or two to their chosen place just to support and monitor the distribution of the relief stocks.
At around the time we were busy taking 'daring' pictures of a much-mitigated Aila hitting Kolkata, the force of raw and uninhibited cyclonic storm was devastating village after island village in delta region of Bengal. The destruction was greater for places that were closer to the open sea. 'Kachcha' houses, comprising almost all residential units of the meagre-earning folk in that region, were demolished without a trace. And that was only the beginning. The dykes were broken at many places. This resulted in flooding inside the villages, salination (equivalent to 'poisoning') of cultivable land and pollution of the drinking water sources. While the large waves waned as Aila receded, the tidal floods would not go away as the dykes were still broken. Remember the Tsunami hitting Indonesia / Sri Lanka / Tamil Nadu on 26th December 2004? Now consider that happening in these villages with broken dykes, with the saline water only partially receding after wreaking havoc.
Most of these people raised there livelihood from agriculture. That land is now partially under water and will remain so until dykes are fully repaired. Even so, the dry land would not become cultivable till it is purged by a season or two of rainfall. The only livelihood some of them have now is the daily wage for earthworks towards re-construction of dyke. They cannot grow food for themselves, most of them have no money to buy their food from the expensive sources around them and their condition is likely to stay that way for an indefinite period. They need support. They need it badly. And worst of all, they need it for an extended period.
Why this is the worst part? A look at the newspapers will tell you why. The media has 'moved on'. Aila related affairs are no more hot news. They are gradually getting out of sight and out of the minds of people unaffected by Aila. That is us. The waves of sympathy that brought relief efforts to this region are receding almost as fast as the waves that caused this plight.
Government relief is woefully inadequate. While they are diligently supplying potable water, they have not been able to provide minimum staple food requirements of affected people. Private efforts are there but these are not well organised within a single window to ensure need-based distribution of relief. Many relief providers are considering this as a one time effort. They come, distribute their relief and go away, never to come back. Moreover, distribution of relief is far from equitable. The relief is generally distributed at the parts nearest to access, i.e. areas that may well have been less affected than the more remote villages. This is always the case, as my experience of Tsunami relief work in remote Vedaranyam of Tamil Nadu taught me.
We visited a village named Chargheri at Satjelia no. 10. We were supporting a relief work by orkut community 'Pather Katha' and 'Khelaghar' from Garia. All of us contributed to an ongoing effort carried out by Green Camp, a green tourism enterprise who are carrying out relief work by continuing distribution of food and bare essentials (like clothes, mosquito nets, medicines, match boxes) to residents of a few villages in Satjelia of Sunderbans. We went from Kolkata to Gadkhali, mounted our relief material (mainly rice and clothes) in a steamer arranged by Green Camp and started off towards Satjelia. It turned out to be twice as deep into Sunderbans as Sajnekhali, which is the central point of Tiger reserve tours. Pictures and videos of our 28th June journey to Satjelia are uploaded here.
On the way we found local folk of many villages coming to the shores and requesting us to distribute relief to them. Some of them shouted at us a tough query - "Amader ki Khidha nai?" [Don't we get as hungry as those you want to feed?]. Some of it was perhaps a rehearsed act put up to maximise 'income' of relief as many of these villages looked like being well located enough to be getting relief. But it hardly seemed artificial as we moved deeper. They have only one direction to look for help - and that is into the river in front from where all good and bad news comes. We saw people waiting on the banks with containers for the water distribution vessel to turn up. On one fateful day chosen by the weather Gods, they lost even the right to drink water of decent quality.
We were delayed right at the onset of the steamer journey by some problems faced one of the relief carrier truck which led to its late arrival at Gadkhali. We had plans of participating in the distribution of relief materials. However reaching Chargheri at 5:30 pm and then having to wade through slippery mud before hopping on mud-lubricated stepping stones for 15 mins (without falling over - a miraculous feat, let me tell you) to reach the actual village meant we had no chance of distributing relief that day. Reason: there is no illumination to be availed after sunset. So we had to come back after depositing our relief material to the local relief team. Green Camp have apparently set up a local team to stock up and distribute relief in that village and also distribute in some of the nearby islands using a steamer owned by one of the villagers (this boat was often hired by Green Camp from its owner Dipankar for their Sunderban tour packages; it was Dipankar who raised the pathetic plight of people of his village to Green Camp and asked them to visit Chargheri).
The plight of Chargheri and its neighbouring villages can be assessed by having a look at the pictures and videos of the place (pics and videos uploaded here). It is hard to believe that this village was home to a reasonably self-sufficient set of people having land and means of livelihood of their own. Virtually no homes are to be seen now, and it is a wonder how these people are managing themselves at this God-forsaken place (I have seldom seen a place more deserving of that term) for a good month since the destruction happened. They live on the dykes and under polythene sheets (one family that had a good home and a piece of land are now staying in a boat), cook a bare rice meal or two per day and sustain themselves in the desperate hope that things will turn better one day. And until that happens they need our sustained help to get that bare meal.
Some of them work on the re-construction of dykes and manage to earn some wages. There is no other possible local source of income at present, other than the normal alternatives of fishing and honey collecting. There is every chance that the relief distribution, if left to these desperate people, will get skewed and ultimately degenerate into a base game of 'survival of the strongest'. That is why we were less than happy at not being able to witness the distribution during the 28th June visit. And hence it cannot be stressed enough that as much as it is important that willing people pick an area and contribute to sustained support of relief to the affected locals staying there, it is further essential that these contributors also pitch in by volunteering a visit or two to their chosen place just to support and monitor the distribution of the relief stocks.
Each such visit can be something of a big effort for us city dwellers, but believe me it is worth it. At the end of it you will want to make the effort again and go back to be with the hapless thousands for one more time. If not for nothing else then simply to reassure them that not everyone beyond that floating horizon of the tidal waters has forgotten about them.
