The Hindu : National : Floating shelter for Assamese

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Monday, Oct 08, 2007
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Floating shelter for Assamese

Sushanta Talukdar

Guwahati: An indigenously developed floating flood shelter has brought hope for lakhs of flood-affected people of Assam, who suffer temporary displacement during the floods every year and are forced live in sub-human condition without proper shelter.

Developed by Sanjib Sabhapandit, Assam’s award-winning filmmaker, writer, engineer and business administrator, this Flood Relief Camp Capsule is a portable structure with a collapsible camp system which takes two hours to assemble and entails zero maintenance cost.

This shelter structure designed and produced at Maanpee Creation, Noonmati, has a bathroom, study table, water storage tank, kitchen table, solar lantern, tent erected on barges to help the structure float on water, potable water facility by harvesting and filtering rain water and a disposable biodegradable septic tank. Mr. Sabhapandit arranged a demonstration of the shelter structure named as Mother Craft on October 1 before government officials and executives from the North Eastern Developement Finance Corporation Limited (NEDFi) on the banks of the Brahmaputra at Nathgaon under Bhuragaon revenue circle in central Assam’s Morigaon district.

Available material

Speaking at the demonstration site, Mr. Sabhapandit said that the material that he had used to make this capsule are readily available in the State and he would also encourage the villagers to use other alternative material which they might think could be used to serve the purpose. The NEDFi has sponsored Mr. Sabhapandit to develop a prototype of this flood relief camp capsule.

He said that three key considerations motivated him towards developing the shelter. These included lack of privacy for flood-affected women and grown-up girls, discontinuance of studies by students and non-availability of safe drinking water.

Another problem faced by these displaced people is cooking in absence of fuel, wood or LPG. Mr. Sabhapandit has done some modification to the smokeless chulla developed by the Khadi and Village Industries Corporation to minimize the fuel requirement.

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