| There are times when a story is so
enormous in terms of the attention it demands that everything else
pales in comparison. In recent times Kargil, which featured nine times
on our cover this year, was such a story. Now, it is the cyclone in
Orissa.
So sweeping was the extent of
destruction that nothing we have written in the past two weeks seemed
enough. As a fresh tragedy unfolded each day, putting a fullstop to
our coverage would have been callous. India cannot continue to fail
Orissa.
This, our third
successive cover story on Orissa, looks at a different aspect of
the tragedy. In the first week we reported the disaster; in the second
we noted the failure of relief. This time we focus on the
rehabilitation of a displaced people and the rebuilding of a collapsed
state. It entailed a mammoth exercise. Principal Correspondent
Sayantan Chakravarty and Deputy Chief Photographer Pramod Pushkarna
camped at Bhubaneswar's Kalinga Stadium, where relief is collected and
distributed. In Bhubaneswar too was Associate Editor Farzand Ahmed who
examined the politics of relief and the workings of the bureaucracy.
Meanwhile,Special Correspondent Ruben Banerjee and Senior Photographer
Sharad Saxena travelled to Ersama where about 8,000 people died, and
Principal Correspondent Avirook Sen and Senior Photographer Bhaskar
Paul lived in a devastated village to get a first-hand micro-view of
what needs to be done. Said Sen, astonished when he saw a 70-year-old
woman climb up to put thatch on the roof of a hut: "There is a
desperation here to return to normal."
Apart from the journalists, we are
sending out another fact-finding team, headed by Ajit Chaudhuri,
executive director of our Care Today Trust. He will assess which of
the villages the trust will adopt, to help its inhabitants put their
lives on track again. All of us, I believe, need to do our bit.
(Aroon Purie) |
