Question

Floods in the coastal areas of West Bengal wiped out hundreds of villages. People have been left homeless; source of livelihood gone, no food. In this hour of their need, all the countrymen must come forward to help. As a responsible citizen, write a letter to the Editor of a newspaper, expressing your concern about the miserable condition of those who have been uprooted.​

Answer 1

Answer:

Band beria ,

Rathtala ,

Hooghly .

5th June ,

2021

Dear Sir,

The inhabitants of West Bengal’s Sundarbans region may have been saved from Cyclone Yaas due to timely evacuation. However, their livelihoods have been lost due to embankments in the region being breached.

People in at least one area of the world’s largest delta shared by India and Bangladesh used their own bodies to plug the breach in an embankment. However, with most of the region underwater currently, it will take a lot of time for shattered livelihoods to be revived.

The ‘human wall’ was made by people in the G Plot of Pathar Pratima block in the Sundarbans. As Yaas subsided May 26, 2021, residents noticed the embankment on the Jagaddal river adjoining Sitarampur village beginning to wobble.

Kalipada Das, a local, said:

The embankment adjoins agricultural land as well as residential plots. People quickly ran and tried to stop the water with whatever they could find, be it hay, plastic or tarpaulin. They even used their bodies to form a human chain. Others dug earth to plug the embankment.

However the embankment gave away during the next high tide.

“I am now in the G Plot area and can’t distinguish where the river ends and where land starts … It seems that rivers have completely swallowed Pathar Pratima. Many areas of Pathar Pratima are under water,” Samir Jana, member of the legislative assembly from Pathar Pratima told this reporter May 27.

A similar fate befell Mousuni island, squeezed between Sagar island and Bakkhali and part of the Namkhana block. Residents could do little as the island, like G Plot, is surrounded by rivers and the Bay of Bengal.

“The whole of Mousuni is under water and even the pucca houses have chest-high water on their ground floors. The mud houses are not there anymore,” Adalat Khan, a resident of Mousuni, told this reporter over the phone May 27.

Both, Pathar Pratima and Mousuni remain flooded even 30 hours after Yaas’ landfall.

Yours faithfully

Ramesh