Twisted tale of the tragedy that struck Midnapore

The government’s relief machinery is working out of a temple. At one end is the camp of the local panchayat samiti and at another, under a tarpaulin sheet, sit BJP workers. Inside the temple, the block development officer and sub-divisional officer take stock of relief material.

West Bengal’s BJP MP, Tapan Sikdar, who came calling this afternoon with the delegation led by Union Minister Naveen Patnaik, says the relief is inadequate. Former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta and Geeta Mukherjee of the CPI and Lakshman Seth of the CPI(M) also heard complaints of inadequate relief.

The BJP is training its guns on the ruling Marxists. “Why should we allow the panchayats to rebuild the victims’ huts?”thunders Monoranjan Datta, the BJP candidate from the Midnapore Lok Sabha constituency, who lost the last elections to Indrajit Gupta. “Don’t we know how corrupt the CPI(M) panchayats are?” Datta says. Datta is confident his party’s government (the Centre) will provide several crores of rupees but he says his party’s workers will “police” the rehabilitation work. Sitting at the panchayat samiti camp, CPI(M) leader and Midnapore’s zilla sabhadhipati, Harekrishna Samanta, dismisses the idea. “How can we not allow the panchayat samiti to do the work? After all, it is the elected body of the local people.”

As for the victims, they are merely watching. “We know nothing of all this,” murmurs villager Suresh Barik, “all we want is another hut and soon.” In fact, quite a few of the villagers have started rebuilding their little homes on their own. They can’t afford to wait for politics to play out its games.

But it’s difficult. Many are yet to recover from the trauma. An old woman lies in pain under atarpaulin shelter, too weak to speak. Her leg, broken by mud walls felled by the tornado, is bandaged. “She can’t walk,” says her son, Gour Maity. Elsewhere, there are broken mud walls, bamboo frames and uprooted trees; men, women and children huddled in the debris of their homes mourning their dead.

Black tarpaulin sheets, spread over broken clay structures, mark the village from a distance. So far, these are the only visible signs of relief provided by the government. Today, survivors got bread, parched rice and molasses for lunch. Last evening it was khichri. And mercifully, water is not a problem, as the tubewells are working.

Meanwhile, the confusion over the toll continues. Yesterday, in the State Assembly, Irrigation Minister Debabrata Banerjee put it at 81. Home Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharyya counted 41 dead and about 300 injured. Director General of Police Dipak Sanyal put it at 40 dead and 413 injured. Today, the toll stands at 47.