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'If once 75 % of the villagers were for Congress, now 90 % are against it'

Chindu Sreedharan in Ersama block

Unlike in Ambiki and Ollera and the few other villages in Ersama block that you have just passed through, there is no crowd thronging the polling booth for Dohibar.

"How will there be?" asks a woman, who has just cast her vote. "The people here have all died."

Dohibar is about 30 minutes by road from Ersama proper. At village Ambiki, you have to stop your vehicle, climb into a boat and haul yourself across by a yellow rope.

Four months ago there were some 1,200 people here. Today, after the super cyclone took what it could, there are just 537.

The survivors live in thatched and tarpaulin-covered sheds, wherein only a midget can stand straight. There is a Mamta Gruha, a house for the destitute, which shelters 26 widows, 20 orphans and two aged people.

It was one October morning that the sea hit the village. Suddenly there was water all over, and it kept rising. The rain and wind were so powerful that there was nothing to be seen.

When their mud-houses melted into the water, whole families took shelter on trees. And when those fell, only the lucky survived. So today you find that only 102 of the 450 voters have polled till 1500 hours IST.

"Everyone here will vote," assures Sanajay Das. "No one will boycott the poll."

Earlier, many villagers had threatened to do just that in protest against 'the politicians who left us to nature's mercy'. Some said they would stamp the wrong side of the ballot paper to register their anger. But most seem to have decided to give the Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine a chance.

"We will not forfeit our votes," Aarti Mandol, who lost her husband and son to the cyclone, and now lives at the Mamta Gruha, had assured yesterday. "But we have decided to support only the right party. We have had a meeting here... we will vote for the combine."

Dohibar, the people here will tell you, was once a Congress village. Today, it is more or less in the hands of the BJD. The shift isn't entirely due to the cyclone.

"Actually it was seen during the parliamentary election too," says a youth. "The Congress government hadn't done anything for us. Then, during the cyclone, the relief came from other quarters, not the Congress. If once 75 per cent of the villagers were for Congress, now 90 per cent are against it."

"They didn't even bother to come and see whether we were dead or alive," says Swapan Das. "The Orissa [Congress] government didn't give us anything. Whatever help came to us came from outside, from the Centre. And the government there is the BJP's."

The booth for Dohibar is three kilometres away, in Jhatipuri. Despite the distance, you see many villagers walking there to cast their votes.

This trend, contrary to the earlier indication that the cyclone-hit might not be bothered with the voting process, can be witnessed in many villages. The booth in Ollera, for instance, has recorded over 45 per cent polling by 1200 hours IST. There too voter sentiment seems mostly to favour the BJD, as it did in all the villages en route.

This is only expected. Bolaram, a 30-plus inhabitant of Ollera, one of the villages worst-hit by the cyclone, explains the reason succinctly:

"If not for the BJD, we wouldn't be alive today."

The cyclone washed away 26 villagers here. After it subsided, for eight days the survivors were stranded without food and shelter.

"It was the BJD that came here first with rice," says Vasanth Mandol, "The candidate who's contesting now, Damodar Rout -- he came himself to help us."

The voters of Ersama have to choose between Rout and Congressman Bijay Kumar Nayak. The block falls under 36 Ersama constituency. It saw the maximum death and destruction. All of its 186 villages have been affected. Total lives lost: 5,941.

Besides Nayak and Rout, the constituency offers seven more candidates, including that of the Communist Party of India and the Bahujan Samaj Party, but it is the BJD that seems to enjoy the winning hand. And that mostly because of the cyclone relief it organised.

Ask about the Congress and Mandol has only contempt.

"Who ever saw them then?" he spits out. "They had come here for campaigning, but very few people went to their meeting."

A few kilometres away, in Durgapur, another severely affected village that lost 72 people, Congress candidates are persona non grata.

"Many voted for the Congress five years ago," says Malhotra. "Now it is time to change the government."

While returning, you drop in at the Ersama block headquarters to check on how the polling has been going.

"It will definitely cross 60 per cent," an official assures you. Which, he adds, would bring it into the same bracket as the election five years ago.

Assembly Election 2000

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