Tackling the post-Amphan damage

A crisis like the one we are faced with in the form of Covid-19 is one too many for any country, but to be visited by two crises simultaneously is seldom encountered, if at all. Thanks to the now-well established system of evacuation implemented by the local administration, very few lives were lost in Cyclone Amphan, but the damage to property caused by the cyclone, whose maximum speed had reached about 150 km/h, was massive. The administration has reached aid to more than half the 50,000 directly affected people across 26 districts of the country, but the rest are in dire straits for want of immediate aid.

Reaching immediate aid for survival is only half the problem that the affected people are facing, and we hope the administration will move quickly to ameliorate the conditions of all the flood affected people who are in need of humanitarian support. Most of them have to make do with temporary shelters with very limited access to food, safe water and toilets.

What the government will also have to plan to address simultaneously is the consequence of a vast swathe of farmland going under saline water due to the washing away of a big length of embankment, destruction of fisheries which depend on fresh water, and the nearly 400,000 destroyed homesteads. Compounding the problem is the scarcity of potable water and the likelihood of the people in these affected areas being hit by waterborne diseases. The long and short of it is, it will take considerable time before the affected people can get back on their feet. Salinity can be removed only after the onset of monsoon and the hatcheries can go back to business only after they have access to fresh water. Till then, they have to depend on government support, more in kind, alongside the supply of other necessary inputs for the agricultural and fish farmers to start from scratch when the conditions are suitable for cultivation and farming.