Sunday, Dec 21, 2003
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Andhra Pradesh
By G. Nagaraja
It seemed as if everybody was equal for the disaster but not for mankind, of course. That is the impression an outsider gets upon being greeted by separate places for cooking and serving food to people from different social backgrounds reminding one of the separate tumbler system in hotels in some parts of the State. Food is cooked and served in a temple for cyclone victims from upper-castes, while a church was chosen for the inhabitants of the SC colony. "We have no objection to dining with the upper-caste people. It is only the upper-caste people who don't like our company,'' says M. Yesobu, a ward member of the gram panchayat. In the same manner, the habitation has two primary schools -- one located in the heart of the village for upper caste children and the other tucked away in a corner for the `outcasts.' About 30 children from the SC colony got an unexpected chance to study and play with their counterparts from `superior' backgrounds for the last few days, thanks to the cyclone which brought together kids of divergent social groups, for the time being at least, following the submergence of their original school. Yesob, however, said their children would be sent back to their colony school after the floodwater receded. The food served in their locality was the only source for all the 100 families in the SC colony for the last few days. The same is not the case of upper-castes, with only a section of people who ran out of buffer stocks availing of the facility. The cyclone had a more devastating effect on the dalits by virtue of their colony being located in a low-lying area and their houses being made of mud. Besides, their daily earnings fell drastically since the fish tanks in which they work were either inundated or damaged. According to Michail, over 300 men and women were taking shelter in the two churches built in their colony by Christian missionaries. The dalit inhabitants took a couple of visiting press reporters around their marooned colony in a country boat to show them the plight of the villagers. Seen sticking out from a sheet of flood water was the top of a foundation stone, laid by the local former MLA, Garapati Sambhasiva Rao, for establishing a colony with pucca houses for SCs. The scheme had failed to take off as the dalits could not raise the margin money to avail of the subsidy given by the Government for constructing the houses. The proposal for building a community hall in the colony also met with the same fate for want of a site. "Had either of the proposals been realised, we would not have had to undergo this traumatic struggle for shelter,'' a youth lamented.
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