[Reader-list] Sangh reaches where LF govt. failed

[Pawan Durani]

Sangh reaches where LF govt. failed
By Ranjit Roy
* Women blew conch-shells to welcome swayamsevaks

* Massive relief work by RSS in cyclone-affected Sunderbans
HINGALGANJ: It was a nightmarish experience for 50-odd swayamsevaks
who were desperate to reach Hingalganj Jetighat criss-crossing other
inaccessible riverine villages in the Sunderbans after Aila cyclone
battered and ravaged Bengal’s famous archipelago of islands on May 25.
The rivers Kalindi and Raimangal were turbulent and wind speed was not
less than 60 km per hour even 24 hours after the cyclone lashed the
Sunderbans.

They hired a large vessel with a capacity to carry about six tonnes
relief materials for distributing among the cyclone-hit villagers
separated from the mainland. Risking their lives, they finally reached
Jetighat, Hemnagar, Mandirghat and Parghumta villages where thousands
of marooned villagers had been awaiting the government relief for
three days since the Aila blown away their hamlets. They had no food
and drinking water during the past 72 hours.

Indeed, the marooned villagers had lost all hopes to survive as the
area remained inaccessible due to swelling of Dasha river following
the cyclone. The team of swayamsevaks, led by North 24 Pargana Zila
Karyavah Shri Sukumar Vaidya, was the first batch of volunteers to
reach them braving nature’s fury.

Initially, the starving villagers took swayamsevaks as state
government relief employees and started to hurl abuses. However when
the distressed villagers discovered that they were RSS volunteers and
risked their lives to bring them relief materials, they were simply
over-joyed and begged pardon for their initial mistake. Women blew
conch-shells to welcome the swayamsevaks in their mud houses. Packets
of dry food, water pouches, milk powder and clothes brought by
swayamsevaks were distributed with full cooperation of the distressed
villagers.

This is the same area where the local CPI(M) MLA Gopal Gayen from
Hingalganj was roughed up and the Chief Minister, Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee received abuses from the relief-deprived villagers on
June 2. The distressed villagers in Hingalganj block in the riverine
Sunderbans made it amply clear that even in misery they had more
respect for honest and hard-working swayamsevaks of the RSS than that
for callous elected communist leaders, strutting about in the
corridors of power.

Nearly a fortnight after the cyclone Aila hit West Bengal’s coast,
thousands of people are still stranded in the Sunderbans. People with
boats have left, but many have no choice but to stay. The human misery
is telling. “I have nothing left. Utensils, pans, plates and glasses.
Even the three bags of rice, we had saved from the last harvest, are
gone. It would have been good had we been given a house to live in by
the administration. What else do the poor people have, money? My
daughter has to be married off, but there’s nothing left,” Purnima
Mondal, resident of Dakshin Yogeshganj near Bangladesh border said.
The villagers here are facing an added misery as robbers from
Bangladesh are raiding border villages as they left their homes and
sheltered in relief camps.

The RSS has a well-knit organisation in the Sunderbans under North and
South 24 Parganas. There are ‘one teacher-one school’ establishments
in 90 villages. Swayamsevaks of the two neighbouring districts have
set up 32 relief camps and have been feeding about 30,000 cyclone-hit
hapless villagers daily since May 26. The worst affected are the five
blocks, Hasnabad, Najat, Sandeshkhali I & II and Hingalganj. Here 50
shakhas are affected due to large-scale inundation. Even after
flooding, swayamsevaks are running two relief camps in Basantitala
where cooked food is supplied to nearly 4,000 villagers daily.

Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh, Shri Manmohan Vaidya, visited several
relief camps in the affected areas in Hasnabad block in North 24
Parganas on June 3 and took a stock of the grim situation prevailing
there. He was told that the RSS volunteers braved the storm and rains
and started distributing relief to distressed villagers at Basanti,
Sonakhali, Kultuli, Gosaba, Pathankhali, Hemnagar and Mandirghat
within six hours after the Aila lashed villages in the Sunderbans on
May 25. As the villagers have lost everything and have no means to
cook rice, the meals are being cooked at the RSS relief centres on the
main land and then transported by country boats to relief camps set up
by sawyamsevaks in far-flung Sunderban islands daily.

This mammoth relief operation requires huge amount of money. Shri
Vaidya appealed to people all over the country to come forward at this
time of crisis and shoulder some social responsibility by donating
liberally to organisations like Bastuhara Sahayata Samiti, RSS Samaj
Sewa Bharati, Friends of Tribal Society and Bharat Sevashram Sangh.

http://sevabharathi.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-relief-work-in-sunderbans.html