On Wednesday, a group of men and women from Poondiyankuppam village, which is about 15 kilometers south of Cuddalore town in Tamil Nadu, gathered by the side of the East Coast Road. Some of them were carrying umbrellas to shelter from rain expected through the day. All eyes were on vehicles passing by on the busy highway, seeking out those carrying materials to provide relief to those affected by the floods.
Like the rest of Cuddalore district, they too has been badly affected by the rains but no one had come to help them, they said. “We are labourers in farms and construction sites here. If we go for work we get paid. If we don’t go, we go hungry for the day,” said Anand, who was among the crowd of people. “Because of the rain there has been no work for a month.”
Tamil Nadu has had four rounds of torrential rains accompanied by four rounds of medium to heavy flooding in different parts of the state in the last one month. The worst floods in Cuddalore district occurred on the day of Diwali and the effects are visible a month later. Throughout the countryside are large bodies of water – not lakes but flooded paddy fields. Farmers have lost their crop and their investment, and farm hands have been left without work. Construction work has come to a standstill and construction workers left to their own devices.
J Jelastine normally works in the fields near her house in Kalkunam village in one of the worst affected taluks – Kurinjipadi – and normally gets Rs 100 per day for her labor. “If I have to earn the same Rs 100 now, I have to walk five kilometres to Kurinjipadi and then go from village to village asking for work,” she said.
News of the Cuddalore rains and floods got little attention till the deluge in Chennai on December 1. As relief in the form of food, clothes, blankets and medicines started pouring into Chennai, some of it has begun to trickle Cuddalore’s way.
In Vadalur, Father Susairaj fielded many calls seeking directions to his church that is also doubling up as a relief collection centre. The sudden influx of relief into Cuddalore, Susairaj said, is incidental. “They want to send the relief to Chennai but because there is too much there or something, it being diverted here,” he said. “A few days ago someone sent 2000 litres of bottled water. We don’t need bottled water. Our piped water has been coming properly.”
The Cuddalore District Collectorate has been busy collecting all the material coming in so that it may be distributed in an organised manner. Officials as the collector’s office said that the material, most of which has been coming in from private donors and NGOs only in the past week, is already being sent out to all affected parts of the district.
But like in Poondiyankuppam, many of Cuddalore’s residents are not confident of getting the aid. Several groups of people have been staking out the Mettupalyam-Cuddalore road as well, trying to flag down vehicles that look like they might be carrying something the people could use in their damaged homes.
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