Flood Relief in Mehbubnagar, 18 Oct 2009

Here are the photos taken and a video taken during our visit on Sunday, 18th Oct 2009 to Veni Sompur village in Aiza mandal of Mehbubnagar:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kolanupaka/FloodReliefInVeniSompurAizaMandalMehboobnagar#

Overall it was a good and bad experience there doing flood relief. Compared to last one that I visited a week before to Thurpu Garlapad, this is definitely a bad experience for us. We could not manage the villagers frustration, we could not manage few people who wanted to take advantage of this relief, even after we took help of two police officers and locally employed to coordinate the relief for that village.
We actually were coordinating with Aiza manda’s MRO officer, who directed us to Kutkanur, which deserved the support and had exactly 125 families and fits in to the amount of relief material packs that we took along. But later the same day, it seems somebody else visited the same village before us and provided the relief material. So, we had to ask him for another village and he directed us to Veni Sompur (somewhat close to Kutukanur and about 75 km from NH7). This village accessibility is OK because of one famous temple (Veni Sompur temple).
The temple also got damaged (50%). The village is divided into two parts and physically by a wall (“kota” in Telugu). This wall probably helped the otherside of the village not to get much damaged but the side which is close to river got highly damaged and can be seen in the video and photos. There are about 15 to 20 houses completely devastated. Most of these houses are made from thick granites and probably not cemented well and hence the reason for them to collapse.
We distributed the relief to 80 people as per the list given to us by the local (govt employed) person as he called upon by their names. Later when we decided to give the relief to rest of the villagers. This is probably one mistake that we did. Then villagers started to fight and started to grab whatever they could. We just had to leave the place and did not wanted to create a mess out of the situation.
We were left with some 25% of what we took and then we gave that away to RSS volunteers in Pebbair on our way back, asking them to use them in their relief work or to any orphanage or oldage home that they support.
We sincerely thank BHUMI for giving us 125 sets of vessels, 125 blankets and bed sheets. We also thank VRMG Suresh for giving chlorine tablets as part of our relief work.
Here are our observations:

1. I sincerely think that we should now stop relief work, but rather look in to rehabilitation and restoration. I think that the villagers have got enough relief now.
2. It is very difficult to find the real needy people to be given the relief. We do not know who has been worst hit by the flood and who is not. We are not sure who to believe and who not to.
3. Hygiene and sanitation is definitely needed on emergency basis. I saw that these villagers drinking water locally and was very muddy (with brownish red in color) when I saw them personally. I was about to puke when one villager was drinking such water.

Even though we were only 5 of us (myself, Venkat and 3 of his friends), we were able to manage quite well, but slightly disappointed at the end with the way villagers started to overcrowd on us.