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Tsunami
Survivors
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Tsunami
hits Andaman farmers
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Agricultural
land in Andaman
islands devastated by the tsunami waves. The gushing
saline water destroyed standing crops and
made the soil infertile
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Port
Blair: The tsunami-hit
island farmers are left with little hope as saline water
eats away crop fields. Their lives might have been saved
but survival is still a distant dream for hundreds of farmers
in tsunami-battered Andaman and Nicobar islands where acres
of precious agricultural land has been left infertile by
the millions of gallons of salty sea water that inundated
it for days. Three weeks after the tsunami slammed into
the country's eastern shores and killed over 16,000 people,
the survivors are still struggling to come to terms with
an unsettled sea and earth.
At
Wimberly Gunj, in south Andaman, the residents watched in
horror as the unforgiving sea engulfed their lush paddy
fields on December 26, days before they were to be harvested.
"Around 75 farmers have lost their crops in the tsunami
which struck here. We were about to harvest the crop. Even
now the water is increasing everyday. Nobody from the Andaman
administration has come here to inspect our condition,"
Elvy Kutti, a farmer said. Farming is a premium occupation
in just a few of the inhabited islands of this virgin monsoon-swept
archipelago, many of them having dense mangrove tropical
forests. Top soil is thin and hard rock, exposed at several
places,make farming a rarity in these islands, where bulk
of foodgrains and vegetables are brought by ships from the
mainland most of the year. Besides paddy, which is the staple
crop in this part of the islands, the salty sea water has
also wrecked the soil, which supported the coconut trees,
an integral part of life for the indigenous people here
for generations.
The crops gone and the land infertile, at least for a few
years to come, the farmers are cynical, not sure whether
to call themselves lucky for having escaped the tsunamis
or await starvation in its aftermath. "More than 1,000 acres
of land of the farmers. No officer has come here. We have
not received any aid from the administration. We have lost
everything," said A. Hamsa, a former village chief. Though
authorities have brought in ecological experts to help with
rehabilitation, their task is more than cut out. The killer
waves have permanently altered the region's coastlines,
left some islands completely submerged in the sea, while
others were split into two. The mountains of debris left
behind as the torrential waves receded, could further take
away more land, choke mangrove forests and destroy coral
reefs, - scientists say what long term effects it will have
on the island ecology, perhaps can never be accurately predicted.
The
Andaman and Nicboar are very favourably suited for plantation
crops like coconut and areca nut and expensive spices like
clove, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper. The archipelago, which
is 1,200 kms from mainland India, has been hit by 130 tremors
of more than 5.0 magnitude since the biggest earthquake
in 40 years on December 26 triggered the tsunami. Only about
three dozens of the more than 550 islands in the group,
a strategic military zone, are inhabited. Several are home
to primitive tribes including some who subsist on hunting
with spears, bows and arrows and on fishing and gathering
fruit and roots. Indian government says most of the aborigine
communities survived the tsunamis' wrath.
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Jan 17, 2005
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