On June 16, over a week before the rains drenched the parched stretches of Orissa, the mercury was touching 47 in Khurdah, nearly 10 degrees above normal. For Kumara Singh, a 71-year-old man of Gurujanga Dewanshai village, it was time to collect his old-age pension of Rs 100 from the municipal office about 2-3 km from his home.‘‘He set out at about 9 am,’’ says Kanchan, his 60-year-old wife. It took almost four hours for him to reach the office, get the money after completing the formalities and come back home. ‘‘When he returned, it was 1 pm and one would dare not even look out in the open, let alone work outside,’’ says Kanchan.He then went out in the field to take a look at the government cattle pound, a job he was entrusted to do. He collapsed in the field and died. An inquiry by the tehsildar and the Khurdah primary health centre doctors ascertained that his was a sun-stroke death.His family holds a BPL (below poverty line) card issued by the food, supplies and consumer welfare department. The family is entitled to an ex-gratia payment of Rs 10,000 from the CM’s Relief Fund, says district officials.Just about 500 m from Kumara’s house, in the scheduled-caste basti of Gurujanga, Bhikari Naik’s family hasn’t been as fortunate. Bhikari, 70, died just a day after Kumara Singh. On June 17, Bhikari went out to sit under the shadow of a tree but came back home feeling uncomfortable. Rushed to Khurdah primary health center, he was refused admission, says his son Balaram.He was brought back home but collapsed soon after, recalls Magani, his wife. ‘‘It was a death from exposure to heat,’’ Magani feels. But the tehsildar and the a doctor from the Khurdah PHC who came and investigated did not think so. Bhikari’s hasn’t been diagnosed as a ‘heat wave’ death.Bhikari’s, too, is a BPL family. But poverty is so acute that the family didn’t even lift its quota of 16 kg of rice, 2 kg sugar and 4 litres of kerosene even for once ever since the card was issued. The entry column of the card is blank. ‘‘Where is the money to lift the ration?’’ says Magani. ‘‘No one in the family has a job.’’Even as monsoon showers drenched large parts of the state, state government teams are busy investigating the ‘heat wave’ deaths. The numbers keep rising—from 96 to 115 to 132 and perhaps more. But a Sunday Express investigation reveals that the sun was just a factor.The BPL connection in the deaths of Singh and Naik is not a coincidence, death has a correlation to poverty in this heatzone of India.Nature, certainly, wasn’t the only villain. In many of these pockets, wells dried up and tubewells were defunct. The socio-economic conditions did not permit the victims to remain within the safe shelters. Many dropped dead on the roadside, on way to market, or near the pond while returning from a bath. Most of the victims were poor and old.There is no dearth of government alarm about drinking adequate water and keeping the body temperature cool by pouring water or whatever means possible. Such warnings make little sense here as there’s little water around.In Gurujanga, the only well is almost dry. Nearly 60 ft from the top, a small pool of thick muddy water is visible. A villager drops an iron bucket and when it is lifted, it has only about half a litre of water. ‘‘We’ve got to manage with it. The municipality at times supplies water in a tanker but that’s not regular,’’ says Satyapriya Das, a community leader. One out of the three hand tubewells in the village of 400 houses is defunct. If one pumps, it belches out flakes of iron.On way to Nayagarh—that recorded the highest number of deaths so far— Begunia is another block that saw about half-a-dozen ‘sun-stroke’ deaths. The tehsildar admits most of the victims are extremely poor and BPL card holders. At Nayagarh, the hospital emergency keeps on adding to the chart of sun-stroke deaths everyday. Till June 24, it has a confirmed figure of 14.D.K. Mahanty, a junior engineer of the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation at Begunia, says that about 67 of the 993 tubewells in the block are defunct.The additonal district medical offier at Nayagarh, Dr. B.N.Satpathy, recalls how mid-June had been a ‘‘restless phase’’ with hot and humid winds lashing the region. ‘‘We get one hour of tap water suppply and one has to manage by storing whatever quantity possible in that single hour.’’When asked, T.K. Mishra, principal secretary of the State Revenue Department who is also the Special Relief Commissioner, says: ‘‘Undoubtedly, the poor is the most vulnerable section. After all, poverty is the greatest disease our country has.’’ But he also adds that this situation is not peculiar to Orissa. ‘‘Even on the streets of Delhi, I am sure there are heat wave deaths, there are hunger deaths.’’
