Climate change and an advancing shoreline have devoured several villages in Orissa’s Kendrapara district.

The hamlets that have survived are counting their days

Whenever a radio announcer spouts meteorological terms like “low pressure” or “deep depression”, a strange fear assails 700 families of Satabhaya. For the last few decades, these villagers have been living under the shadow of dread in their undersized huts. As bad weather sends the sea into a fury, huge tides cross the shoreline and threaten to wipe away their dwellings in the flash of an eye. “This area is perhaps the worst sufferer of global warming and climate change in Orissa,” says noted environmentalist Ranjan Panda.

Life is really pitiable in Satabhaya though it is just 150 km from the state capital of Bhubaneswar. Cut off from the mainland, people living in here are deprived of standard facilities available in any village of Naveen Patnaik’s Orissa. Satabhaya has no pucca house, no television set, no telephone, no fan and the list of nos goes on. Even basic minimum facilities like safe drinking water, electricity and primary health care facilities are as good as non-existent. The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) has also been unable to make its presence felt here.

Getting to Satabhaya is really difficult. One has to cross Baunshgadi river, a tributary of Mahanadi, on a country boat. The ghat is at least eight km away from the village. If you don’t manage a lift from a biker or cyclist, the walk can be energy sapping. “Everyday more than 300 people cross the river to gather their daily needs in my boat. Since my service is not available after sunset, villagers prefer to stay in nearby Okilpal or Gupti. As crocodiles are seen frequently in the river, it’s considered dangerous to cross by any other means,” says boatman Karunakar Behera.

When told that we are journalists, Suka Dei, a housewife aged around 45 years, a co-passenger, spontaneously tells us, “Sambadik babu, please write strongly about our misery. The government is doing nothing to resolve our long-standing problems.”

The hapless people of Satabhaya, a cluster of villages in Kendrapara district, located a hundred meters off the Bay of Bengal coast, are silent witnesses to nature’s wrath. When the weather is inclement, they spend sleepless nights. “The situation wasn’t so terrifying earlier. The sea was at a distance of two km from our village. We had to walk for 20 to 25 minutes to reach the shore. The sea water has gradually inched in, submerging our homes and agricultural lands. We were forced to shift to this comparatively safer place, adjacent to our village. The place where you are standing is not our original village; we were forced to shift here after the super cyclone of 1999,” reveals Bishnu Charan Sahani of Kanpur hamlet of Satabhaya Panchayat.

“The sea advanced at least 10 feet into Kanpur two years back,” says Sudarshan Rout, a social activist working for relocation of villages to a safer area. “It has wiped out the primary school and one of the tube-wells that provided drinking water to the villagers.”

Satabhaya Panchayat, which once covered seven villages, now represents only two. The remaining five villages have vanished, swamped by the sea. The people of Satabhaya and Kanpur are counting their days.

In the early 1980s, the first villages to vanish into the sea were Govindpur, Mohanpur and Kuanriora. Kharikula and Sarpada villages were submerged in the mid 1990s. Haramani Biswal, a housewife aged 75 years, recalls, “Panchubarahi temple, shrine of our community goddess, was at the centre of the village and surrounded by houses but now it stands alone on the shore.”

This ancient shrine, built some 1,200 years ago, was two km from the sea in 2000. By 2006, the distance shrank to 200 metres. And in 2008, the tidal waves hit the temple. The situation is worsening with every monsoon.

According to people’s perception, every year sea is grabbing around 50 meters of land in this region. But it has been noticed that sea water is marching towards the shoreline more rapidly after 1999. The sea has advanced almost 1.5 km since then. Revenue records of the area confirm that in the last 50 years, the size of this area has dwindled to almost half. As per the land settlement done in the year 2000, Satabhaya region spanned 155 sq km, while this figure was 320 sq km in the previous settlement.

Then why are the people of Satabhaya still here? Why haven’t they shifted? Susmita Das, sarpanch of the area, replies: “How could they have shifted? As many as 249 families of our panchayat are below the poverty line. They do not have sufficient resources to relocate. Direct your question at the administration. In the last 20 years, the state government has promised thrice to rehabilitate the Satabhaya families, but nothing has been done.

” In 1992, the state government prepared a master plan to rehabilitate people in the Sunei-Rupei area at an expense of Rs 1 crore. After Rs 14 lakh had already been spent in digging ponds and constructing roads within the Bhitar Kanika National Park, environmental concerns stalled work on the plan.

Twelve years later, in 2004, chief minister Naveen Patnaik laid the foundation for the construction of Biju Nagar, a township named after his father for Satabhaya villagers at Magarkanda.

This plan also ran aground. As a last resort, the state government has now decided to shift all the 700 families of Satabhaya Panchayat to Bagapatia near Gupti Panchayat. Its implementation, it seems, is quite some time away.

The Kendrapara district collector insists that “the process for rehabilitation has already started and will be complete as soon as possible”.

But the sarpanch and people of Satabhaya have a different story to tell. “The government has demarcated 132 acres of land in the proposed area but land acquisition hasn’t got underway yet. We don’t know what fate awaits us,” says the sarpanch. She could well be echoing the sentiments of many other villages around the country that are similarly on the brink of catastrophe.

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