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Balanasi is a place where sand is everywhere—in the street, on the trees, underneath the covers. It reveals the closeness of the village with the water: Balanasi sits on an isthmus that straddles Chilika Lagoon, the largest body of water of its kind in South Asia. Here, nearly every one of the 145 residents squeezes out a living by fishing the nearby waters. In October 2013, Cyclone Phailin hit Balanasi, and pounded the village for hours. In its wake, almost every house was damaged and half of the boats were lost. Some remains are still scattered about the edges of the village, reminding the inhabitants of what they lost.
In response to the cyclone, Terre des hommes (Tdh), along with its partner organization Gram Utthan, came into the village and provided immediate relief in the form of shelter and hygiene kits as well as solar lamps. In addition, the Indian government provided up to 7,000 rupees to families who had fully damaged boats. However, a new boat can cost as much as 14,000 rupees, and many families – many of whom were very poor even before the cyclone struck – were unable to afford any new boats. The cyclone had also salinized much of the arable soil surrounding the village, which left villagers unable to farm. In attempt to find work, some of the villagers began to go in search of daily labor jobs in the surrounding area. Yet, many people in the region had been affected too by the cyclone and job openings were rare.
Tdh returned to Balanasi to give more substantial short-term relief through a project supported by The EuropeanCommission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (link to: http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/photo-slider). First, it repaired the road leading into the village, which had been partially destroyed in the storm. It also started a cash-for-work program, which provided families an income while they helped the organization complete different recovery projects. For a while, this scheme worked well for the village: Under the cash-for-work program, the villagers built a 4.5-foot-high embankment surrounding their village to protect it from future storms. They lined the embankment with saplings so that the embankment’s soil would not be washed away. Tdh also provided more nets for those who wanted to return to their trade.
Yet, today, long-term security still seems precarious for the people of Balanasi. The cash-for-work program has ended, but many villagers have not yet been able to afford new boats, and cannot return to their profession. Jemamani, a women with a shy smile and a family of seven, pooled her family’s funds with three other people from a nearby village, and has been able to put nets back in the water. However, she still faces daily challenges: “Yesterday, the net caught one fish,” she said. “We had to split this between four families, so in the end it came to very little. The day before, I had only a small amount of rice to eat.”
Tdh has been working with the Indian government to provide the village with further relief, but as of yet, the talks have not succeeded. Balanasi is a village of people from the Scheduled Castes, a marginalized group within the Indian society, and as such, they frequently are not high priority. Because of this and the small size of their village, the villagers have difficulty advocating for themselves. For now, the residents of Balansi continue to try to make a living the best they can, and hope that tomorrow will be better than the day before.
