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Flood-hit village claims it
was ignored by Bengal govt

As the floodwaters began to recede, there were signs of restlessness among marooned villagers in West Bengal on Friday.

Exasperated over the administration's 'apathy' in supplying food material to those marooned for many days, residents of Ranaghat, the sub-divisional headquarters of Nadia district, demonstrated outside the sub-divisional office.

Armed with canes, about 200 people abused sub-divisional officer Onkar Singh Mina. They were unhappy as the government machinery 'ignored' them in their moments of despair. Mostly from nearby Ramnagar, the villagers told rediff.com that no relief or rescue team had visited their village ever since the devastating floods wreaked havoc.

Said Arinav Kundu, "We were cut off from the rest of the world for seven days. But no one from the government chose to visit us or make attempts to rescue us. Every time we saw helicopters flying over our village. We hoped that food items would be air-dropped. You can't even gauge the mental and physical sufferings we and our children experienced in the past week."

Mina, however, came out with a novel solution to pacify the crowd, who had been spending many days without food. He ordered six buckets of cooked rice and distributed it around.

However, soon after having their meal, they began constructing makeshift shelters 100 metres from the SDO. Knowing that the people were in a violent mood, no one resisted.

Mina expressed the administration's helplessness in providing relief material to those marooned in the region. "The situation in Ranaghat was ravaging. We knew that many villages were submerged. But our predicament was that we could not have air-dropped food material since there was no dry spot there. The villagers' unwillingness to leave their houses compounded the problem,'' Mina added.

B S Ingty, chief relief secretary, denied reports of non-distribution of relief items in flood-hit Nadia. He claimed that the state government had distributed 3000 tonnes of food-grain in Nadia.

NH-34, the main highway linking Calcutta with the rest of north Bengal, remained waterlogged, ahead of Ranaghat, bringing road transportation to a halt. Residents said that the road had been breached at many places.

With the flood waters receding, people in Nadia are now gearing up to fight the menace of snakebites. The state health ministry has also expressed fears of a large-scale epidemic.

Kaushik Mahto, a resident of Ranaghat, said many bodies and animal carcasses were around. According to him, shortage of drinking water was another problem for the flood victims.

In Calcutta, the high tide overran a large part of the city's low-lying areas, especially those alongside canals. Rashbehari Avenue, Kalighat, Keoratal crematorium, Garden Reach, BT Road and Ballykhal were under knee-deep water. With the state government issuing a warning of similar tides for another two days, there doesn't seem to be any respite for Calcutta in the days ahead.

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