POST-CYCLONE
28 OUTLOOK 29 July 2019
by Sandeep Sahu in PuriP
OLYTHENE sheets have been
made into makeshift roofs. A
little distance away, the mud
houses people once lived in lie
in heaps of rubble. Shabby-
looking children loiter on the
village road; the elderly while away
their time in the temporary bamboo
structure built by Save the Children
outside the village to serve as the
community dining place. Take a
stroll around the village and it bec o-
mes clear that more than two-and-a-
half months after Cyclone Fani
devastated the Odisha coast, life is
yet to become normal in the worst-
hit Satapada area of Puri district.
Welcome to Bhoisahi, a village of 85
families under Satapada block predom-inantly inhabited by Bhois (a scheduled
caste). With no land—not even home-
stead land—of their own, the majority
of people in the village used to earn
their livelihood by fishing in the Chilika,
the largest brackish water lake in Asia.
But that was before the cyclone. With
their boats and fishing equipment
wrecked by Fani, there is little they can
do to feed their families.
“U Mumba, a Mumbai-based NGO,
has already announced that the freekitchen they have been running since
the cyclone won’t be there after the
end of this month,” says villager Golam
Mohammed, sitting in the makeshift
community dining hall. “We shudder
to think what we will do after that.”
Ano ther villager, Bharat Chandra
Nayak, adds: “The 50 kg rice we
received from the government in the
immediate aftermath of the cyclone
was exhausted long back. Once the free
kitchen stops, we will have little option
but to beg to feed our families.” At least
20 young men have left the village in
search of work after the cyclone, vill-
agers tell Outlook.
What about the compensation for
damaged boats that the state govern-
ment had announced as part of the
rel ief and rehabilitation measures?
“After the cyclone, we had been assured
of compensation by the collector and
asked by officials of the fisheries dep-
artment to submit our applications for
compensation,” says Arjun Pahana.
“Accordingly, we applied for it at the
district fisheries office in Puri. To our
horror, our applications were returned
three days ago, and we were asked to
submit them to the fisheries office inlts livelihood system wrecked, a fisherfolk’s village
near Chilika lake struggles with Fani’s aftermathLIFE AFTER
THE BOATS
STORMED Bhoisahi villagers have
been living in these temporary ‘homes’At least 20 young men
have left Bhoisahi, a
village of 85 families in
the worst-hit Satapada
area, in search of work
after the cyclone.Photographs: SANDEEP SAHU