Summary of relief operation at HoleAlur , Gadag District

All,

First of all thanks a lot to all the people who contributed directly or indirectly to the noble cause of aiding the flood affected farmers in Gadag Dist. With your support we were able to cumulate Rs 1, 30,052 (as of 7th October 2007).



We started off to Holealur last Sunday dated 7th October 2007(See the Pictures below).Our mission was to distribute Jawar to the farmers (per their wish) but the snag was availability, Sept-Dec being a off season we were struggling to get the required quantity(100-130 Quintal) of Jawar. We enquired in Gadad/Ron/Bagalkot/Hubli and some other places. We had to brainstorm a lot on the quality/quantity/cost/transportation criteria and finally thanks to Manohar Daga from ILKAL for arranging the jawar in such short duration of 12-15 hours with the best way possible wrt to factors mentioned above.



Since we had sizable amount of money we thought of helping more villages apart from Kuruvinkoppa.So we visited the Tehsildar office in the morning to the get list of affected family names of other villages. Once we had list in hand we visited each of the places where affected villagers were taking shelter to confirm the actual figures. Also we got to know about a local community formed by group of volunteers from Holealur and nearby villages, to help victims. They collect relief materials and channelize it to many villages. We visited Dasoha (Meal) camps operated by this community where in they supply food material and people have to cook by themselves. The main idea of this common Dasoha (meal) camp was to avoid any resentment among the different masses due to improper food/material distribution and also to discourage any biases based on cast/creed and have the entire villagers share the common stage.



It was sad to see the woeful plight of these homeless farmers. They have nothing but tin sheets around them as shelter and nothing more than a pair of clothes to wear, no vessels to cook. Local community has provided them with common vessels per camp to cook. Groceries are given per camp on required basis. Due to the lack of electricity they are forced to cook before sunset as there is a meager amount of kerosene to light lamp in the camp in the night.



The Jawar loaded truck from ILKAL reached Holealur at 5-30PM traveling through rough bumpy road. We had a plan of distributing 30Kg's of jawar to each family in 4 villages. We started off immediately with Kadagoli camp which had no electricity. As we started unloading the Jawar the crowd gathered around the pile. We tried to control the people by calling them in the order of the list we had. But everyone wanted to be the first to get the prize. Even 8 of us could not control the plight. We managed to distribute 30 Kg to around 54 families but the situation was not improving, some of the people started verbal scuffle and some villagers who have already moved into the villages also tried to sneak in and we were finding it difficult to contend the crowds. At his point we thought its better to give the Jawar to local community which is already in place catering to the basic needs of people at 14 affected points. At max we could have covered 4 Places ourselves but since local community was very well organized to reach out to many more people than we could, we handed them remaining quantity of jawar.



Thanks a bunch to Truck driver, Somashekhar Sonnagi and his brother Sridhar who started at 5AM in the morning and managed the loading and transportation of truck to Holealur till 6PM without giving heed to their meals.



Also thanks to following volunteers for sparing their time for this cause

Dundappa Bali, Praveen Tatti, Shivanand Deshmukh, Shrinivas Balulad, Gopal Baheti and Myself (J).



Please find the attached bills and details on individual contribution in attached xls

Here are the expenditure details



Detail
Amount(Including tax)

50 Quintal Jawar @ 915 per quintal
47,500

75 Quintal Jawar @ 915 per quintal
71,180

APMC market fee
293

Lorry and driver fee
4,000

Total amount spent
1,22,973

Total amount left with us
7079




In case you have any doubt please revert to me/Shrinivas/Rajshekhar (CC’ed in the mail).

With the remaining amount we are thinking of donating it to constable late Shri R.M. Chavadi’s family who lost his life after rescuing about 50 stranded people.



Just to emphasize few more things. Its still not clear when these unfortunate ones will get their shelter and not sure how long communities will be able to help them. Whatever we did now will lessen there problem a bit but there life seems to be in trouble for unprecedented time as of now.



Thanks a lot for your time and consideration and contribution.



Ciao,

Sidharth



NOTE: Please forward it to your friends who have contributed and haven’t got this mail and those who feel it a spam inconvenience regretted.

Our north karnataka is flooding(Ground survey of North Karnataka flood affected areas)

All,

Latest updates from ground survey done on Saturday 29th September in Ron taluk of Gadag district.

Volunteers Dundappa Bali, Shrinivas Balulad, Somashekhar Sonnagi visited Kuruvinkoppa village to gather ground realities.

Kuruvinkoppa is small village comprising of about 100 families in Ron taluk of Gadag District .The whole village has been submerged due to heavy rain and for about 3 days and 3 nights around 400 people were staying on the top of 2 temples. The rescue operation started on the 4th day by the army through helicopter and boats. All the houses in the village are completely collapsed and they are now shifted to a college in Holealur situated about 3 km away from the Kuravinkoppa.

With help of Govt and local communities people have been provided with temporary shelter and food. When questioned what needs to be done to help them in our little way, people responded by saying “Food Grains” (Basically Jawar) as most basic requirement as of now .It will take a while to restore their life back to normalcy.

What we plan to do?
We are planning to buy food grains (like Jawar) from the collected money and donate it to the each affected family this coming Saturday, 6th October.

So what each one of us can do?
1) We can contribute as much money as possible and be a part of this noble cause. Please make your contributions on or before coming Friday 5th of October
2) Awareness of issue could be one more positive step, so forward it to your friends/relatives to gather more support

We would like to thank following people who helped us while surveying the village
1) Dr. Ballappanawar (Veterinary officer, Gadag).
2) Dr. Hulagannavar (Veterinary officer, Ron).
3) Mrs. Sharada (KAS) (Tahashildar, Ron).

Please see the below link and post ur suggestions/comments in the blog.
http://expressthefeelings.blogspot.com/2007/09/raising-fund-for-flood-remedy-in-north.html#links
http://expressthefeelings.blogspot.com/2007/09/our-north-karnataka-is-flooding.html#links
http://expressthefeelings.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-north-karnataka-is-floodingground.html#links

and some pictures related are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/dbali.81/NorthKarnatakaFloodsLink

And those who want to contribute see the below mail for the bank account /contact details.

Please Note: All the contributions are on voluntary basis so contribute willingly.

Picture 1 –Homeless and destroyed - Kuruvinkoppa villagers


Picture 2—Crop in ruins - The only source of revenue for the farmers now reduced to rubble.



Picture 3 – Famished Farmers - Hands that feed a nation are now dependent on local bodies for their food.



Picture 4 – How Mother nature orphaned the village – rare footage of the devastation



-Regards