Flood Response 2008
Between July and September 2007 people of North Orissa met with 4 consecutive floods with high intensity and devastation. Unnayan, in collaboration with Oxfam took up humanitarian response programmes in the worst affected villages of Basta, Jaleswar and Sadar blocks of Balasore district and Rasgobindpur block of Mayurbhanj district. The flood washed away the standing kharif crop in many areas thus adding woes to the wound and disparaging the livelihood support system as agriculture and agricultural labour is the main stay of living of the people in this area.
Thus there was an obvious situation of food insecurity and lack of income avenues particularly for the landless, wage labourers and marginal farmers. Unnayan also conducted a food security assessment during the response programme with the following objectives:
• To understand the food availability among the flood
affected communities, their access and affordability to
food and nutritional requirements in flood period
• To understand the different coping strategies and
mechanisms adopted by the community to meet their basic
food requirements
• To explore opportunities to enable the flood affected
communities to meet the food requirement without any
increase in harmful coping strategies that would affect
dignity of people
It was observed through this assessment that the tribal
families, the landless and waged labourers were the worst
affected in this flood. The general consumption of food,
which is also nutritionally deficient under normal
circumstances, had been reduced by almost half due to the
effect of flood. Women were also most affected as
availability of less food had substantially reduced their
consumption as it is the general practice that women eat
in the last after feeding the male members and children in
the families. There was no special provision of food for
pregnant women, lactating mother and small children for
marginalized people even under normal conditions except
few exceptional cases of well off families under general
caste (other than ST and SC). It was observed that above
50% of deserving families had not been issued the BPL
(Below Poverty Line) card. The BPL rectification and fresh
issue of card to deserving candidates has not been done
since last 7 years. Supply of rice through BPL has not
been implemented yet in Balasore district. Only 10 kg of
rice was being provided to the poor above 65 years of age
under Annapurna Yojana. Very less households have been
covered under Antadoya Yojana who get 35 kg of rice per
month with a price of Rs. 3 per kg. Midday meal programme
had been stopped in many schools. Facilities through
Anganwadi Centres are not being provided properly.
Balasore district was included under NREGA (National rural
Employment Guarantee Act) only few months back. But no
work had yet been done under this scheme. Thus in reality,
though some schemes were there, many of them had not being
implemented.
Rice and other grocery items were available in the market.
The price of rice had been increased by 25%. Price of
other grocery items has remained the same or marginally
increased in comparison to prior to flood situation. The
flood adversely affected the livelihoods in another way,
i.e. the food grains (particularly rice) that the marginal
farmers, waged labourers and other marginalized people
used to get on loan from the medium and large farmers and
well off families was not available. The landless and
waged labourers who used to do share cropping had been
badly affected by this situation.
Mid-August to Mid-November was the most food scarce period
during this year. Usually this is the food scarcity period
every year. But people used to manage this as under normal
circumstances they get wage labour in agricultural fields
(Kharif crop) during this period. They also keep some
stock of food grains (by saving from earlier period) for
use in this lean period. But these food grains (mainly
paddy/rice) was either washed away or totally damaged for
most of the families. Hardly there was any family under
our study who was able to shift his/her stock of food
grains to safe places. Since agriculture had been damaged,
availability of wage in the locality was substantially
reduced. In normal period people used to get 20 days of
work per month, but in the post flood period, it was
reduced to about 8 days a month on an average.
Priority wise the following
population groups required support for food and income:
• Tribals
• Landless
• Waged labourers
• Marginal farmers
Evidence Of Food & Income Scarcity:
We got practical evidence of food scarcity by visiting
many households in the villages. We also studied the case
of 20 households very minutely by taking note of the food
items available in the respective families, members in the
families, looking in to the food containers and also
observing the quantum of food intakes while eating. We
made case studies of these people. We selectively made
these case studies of the most vulnerable families. We
also informally cross checked between the facts given by
the people during FGD and practical observation at their
home. Almost all the members of the families in the
village were available. This indicated non availability of
wage. Almost all people were looking sick. Malnutrition
was quite evident among the children (pot bellied). In
none of the houses could we see food stock.
Recovery Programme
In the above context, it was planned to conduct
recovery programmes in terms of agriculture support and
cash for work for most vulnerable families which were
implemented subsequently with the support of ECHO & OXFAM.
It is proposed to provide agricultural support to 1350
beneficiaries and CfW programme for 2000 beneficiaries as
per the details mentioned below. Apart from these
livelihood recovery programmes it was also planned to
conduct the Public Health Promotion activities and
Capacity building of the village communities and
implementing staff as well with the aim of linking the
programmes with Disaster Risk reduction thus leading to
long-term impact of the programme.
In this year (2007) heavy rain on 4th, 5th, and 6th July 2007 in the upper catchments and also in the down stream region caused severe floods and the water level of the Subarnarekha went up beyond its danger level. As a result the area in the river basin was vastly flooded, unprecedented of its kind in the area. The flood took 21 lives, destroyed thousands of homes, washed away kharif crop in thousands of hectares and caused devastation to lives of lakhs of people in the area.
