ASTARANG, (PURI DIST), NOVEMBER 6: Last year's super-cyclone almost blew his village off Orissa's map but 35-year-old Babuli Kandi and his wife survived, rebuilt their tiny thatched hut, even had a baby. One year later, it was hunger that killed him and now threatens his wife as well.Alasahi village, 10 km from the Astarang block headquarters on the Puri coast, defies all state government claims of post-cyclone relief and rehabilitation.Take the treacherous road that leads to the village. The welcoming signboard reads: ``Food for Work Programme. Pucca road to be laid from Rs 1 lakh sanctioned for 1999-2000.'' A year has gone, not a single brick can be seen.The state government says that Kandi fell ill and died. However, villagers say that not one official has visited the family after his death to find out how and why he died.Astarang BDO Niranjan Behera denies that there have been any starvation deaths in his area and boasts of giving assistance to Kandi's family in terms of a widow pension of Rs 100 a month and ``house damage assistance.'' What this means is a single polythene roof over Kandi's hut which is now uninhabitable.Villagers point to Kandi's wife Hemalata, 30, who leaves her 14-month-old child with her neighbours, lives on the verandah of a kind friend's house and walks several kilometres every day to work in the fields.``Tell me, will a mother leave her 14-month-old child with a stranger and work in the fields several miles away if the Government has provided her all support?'' says Dhobi Bewa, who looks after Ruby, Hemalata's daughter, in her absence.Bewa and her friends are kind enough to take care of the baby since all of them have seen how the father died. Dogged by poverty and jobless after the cyclone, Kandi virtually did not have anything to feed the family and was forced to depend on the generosity of others. That, too, didn't last long since others were struggling to survive in the cyclone's wake.Villagers say that gradually, Kandi became weak and on August 10, he died, days after his mother Sodari Bewa, too, passed away.``We provided them food since they were starving. But how long could we continue supporting them when we don't have adequate food to feed ourselves?'' asks Mani Muduli of Alasahi panchayat.Though the Alasahi Gram Panchayat authorities couldn't care less when Kandi was dying, politicians are milking his death. Jadumani Dalei, a former sarpanch of Alasahi, says that the Panchayat is responsible for Kandi's death. But Upendra Kumar Behera, a Biju Janata Dal functionary and gram panchayat member, claims that everything has been done to bring the family's plight to the notice of officials.
