ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Lead, kindly light

Bibhuti Mishra in Bhubaneswar

It has been well said that a crisis brings out the best and the worst in men and this is nowhere more in evidence than in Orissa in the wake of the super cyclone that left a trail of devastation in the 10 coastal districts. On the one hand there are politicians trying to cash in on the tragedy in a ceaseless game of one-upmanship. Then there is the pilfering of relief materials by officials and racketeers and as for the common man it is an unending obstacle race to get the electricity back or the pipes carrying potable water repaired.

On the other hand, absolute strangers have become a godsend. With a completely inept government unable to meet the post-cyclone demands of the starving people it is the private individuals and the usually maligned Non-Governmental Organisations who are extending a saving hand. Says Prabir Patnaik, who runs a tutorial in Bhubaneswar, "Nobody forced us to go with relief material. But we felt like being with our fellowmen who have been much more unfortunate than us. Even young students of our institute volunteered to go and work there."

He describes how they waded through knee-deep slush in Erasama in total darkness, stumbling over a fallen tree here and a rotting corpse there. The students went without food the entire day but at the end of it all there was the satisfaction of having done something truly worthwhile.

S P Thakur, the director of welfare, reveals that more than 800 NGOs approached him for either vehicular support or supply of diesel so that they could undertake relief work in the affected areas. Bhanu Panigrahy of a Bhubaneswar-based organisation Sambandh corroborates it -- "It was a tough task but most of us were infected with a messianic zeal."

There has been no dearth of overseas NGOs pitching in either. Humedica, an NGO from Germany, distributed medicines and its managing director Wolfgang Gross has found service to the ailing so intoxicating that he is already talking about undertaking long term health services. Nor have women volunteers lagged behind. They are ubiquitous -- whether it be a team of women going daily to Jagatsinghpur to help the Guru Nanak Devji langhar or the volunteers of International Indecency Prevention Movement who have penetrated the most inaccessible areas with relief materials.

Then there are the Ananda Margis bravely concentrating on completing the singularly unrewarding task of cremating rotting carcasses, human and animal. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh volunteers too are engaged in commendable service, reaching out to marooned people and disposing corpses to ensure that there are no epidemics. Outfits like the Gospel to the Unreached Millions rushed in medical teams but for whose intervention gastro-enteritis and the like would have carried away more people than the cyclone itself.

Tell us what you think of this report