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Gloomy Durga puja in cyclone-hit Sundarbans

Durga puja has been a low-key affair in the deltas this year after cyclone Aila destroyed the livelihood of the 4mn residents of Sundarbans deltas.

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With most of the people doing petty jobs in cities to run families back home, a pall of gloom has descended in cyclone-ravaged Sundarbans deltas before Durga puja.
 
Durga puja has been a low-key affair in the deltas this year after cyclone Aila destroyed the livelihood of the 4mn residents of Sundarbans deltas driving bread winners to cities.
 
Thousands of people, mostly working men, toiling as construction workers, gardeners or daily-wage labourers in the cities, are likely to miss puja festivities this year.
 
"The sadness that surrounds the day of Durga idol immersion is evident everywhere in Sundarbans before the pujas," MP of Jaynagar Lok Sabha constituency in Sundarbans,
Tarun Mondal told PTI.
 
"More than 40% of residents have left their homes to work in Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is difficult for the near and dear ones to enjoy puja festivities without them," says Mondal.
 
More than half the puja organisers in Sundarbans, where community pujas are held, have backed out due to lack of initiatives among the delta dwellers.
 
"Only 18 puja committees took permission to organise puja in Gosaba this year whereas 50 community pujas were held here last year," says Block Development Officer (BDO) of Gosaba, Amiya Bhusan Chakraborty 

Gosaba, Pathar Pratima and Hingalganj are the worst cyclone hit blocks of Sundarbans.
The wretched condition of the villagers has led to fewer collection of money and the puja was being done with bare necessitates, a puja organiser said.
 
Durga idols were seen installed in pandals of bamboo poles covered with tarpaulin sheets given to the villagers as relief material after cyclone.
 
MP Mondal blamed the state government for failing to bring smiles to villagers before the biggest festival of Bengal. "The government failed to launch development and rural employment generating schemes like NREGA in the deltas, forcing people to shift to far-away places for livelihood before puja," says Mondal.
 
According to him, road and embankment repair works could have been launched. "Instead the villagers are left to catch fish in the stagnant water in farmlands and earn meagre sum of money," he said.
 
Villagers feel the exodus of people would increase after the puja when the fish from agricultural fields would dwindle as they dry up.
 
Aeshop Kumar of Dulki village in Gosaba says they were waiting to receive the government's house building grant and leave after making homes for family.
 
"My brother Yeop Kumar and I are going with a group of 20 people to work at Batanagar near Kolkata to work for digging soil for a construction firm after puja," he says. Meanwhile, villagers blamed government's failure to provide house building grants before puja as one of the reasons for migration of people for the past four months since
cyclone and sea surge on May 25.
 
"The delay was caused by failure to finalise the list of beneficiaries. A review of the names were carried out by the gram panchayats and funds would be released after the puja," says of Gosaba, Amiya Bhusan Chakraborty.
 
Families which have lost everything to the cyclone have shifted to the fringe areas of Kolkata where males work as wage earner, women are engaged in domestic work and
children are earning as child labourers, Dipankar Dolui and Rajesh Sau of Pally Unnayan Samity which carried out a migration survey in Gosaba said.
 
Meanwhile, a handful of people working near Kolkata have returned the villages to celebrate puja with family. Shyamal Sau of Dulki village, who worked as construction
worker, said he would join work again after puja.
 
With poverty rife in the deltas ringed by tidal rivers, villagers go to work in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and other districts of West Bengal during harvest.
 
"These contacts will help them to get work after puja," BDO Chakraborty said.

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