CUTTACK, Aug 6 (UNI); Sripati had never dreamt that one day he would earn enough to support his family and lead a life with diginity after his land and home was destroyed in the 1999 super cyclone in Orissa.
A small farmer of Chaulia under the Ersama block, Sripati lost his house during the cyclone and his land was ingressed by sea water and remained water-logged for most part of the year.
With no resource or job to start afresh, Sripati had resigned his fate to God.
Thousands of others in the area shared his fate.
But an Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) project launched in June 2001 in Astaranga in Puri district and Ersama in Jagatsinghpur district, worst-affected by the cyclone, succeded in improving the standard of living of the people of the area.
Sripati, who used to grow only one crop before the cyclone, is now growing vegetables, fruits, tuber, betel vine, has installed bee-hives, besides doubling rice productivity in his two acre plot.
He also managed to get his daughter married off during this period.
The success of the project was filmed and exhibited in several seminars and workshops across the country.
The project is likely to be treated as a model for the cyclone prone areas of Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Pondicherry.
'The Management of Coastal Agro Eco system Affected by Super cyclone in Orissa' a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary project, was launched under National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP) with the Central Rice Research Institute as the lead centre and eight other centres as cooperating units in June 2001.
The others institutes involved in the project for the socio-econimic developmenet of the cyclone-affected areas were Water Technology Centre for Eastern Region, Central Institute of Fresh Water Aquaculture, National Research Centre for Women in Agriculture, Central Horticultural Research Station, Central Tuber Crops Reserch Institute, Central Avian Research Institute (CARI), National Research Centre on Groundnut (NRCG) and Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology.
The project was taken up in five worst cyclone-affected gram panchayats of Ambiki and Jirailo in Erasama block in Jagatsinghpur district and in Patalada, Chharuiana and Astaranga Gram Panchayats in Puri district.
It covered 2800 farm families in 41 villages with the objective to introduce and popularise technology suitable to the ecologies of selected locations for restructuring the cyclone-affected villages and to conduct need based farm research under coastal agro system.
The other objectives of the project were to educate the farming community through training, group meetings, demonstrations and to create an awareness among them on modern technology.
The project, which ends this November, achieved tremendous success and changed the outlook of the people towards agriculture and income generation said Central Rice Research Director (Acting) S G Sharma.
