Monday, January 03, 2005

People reject aid

This was news I read in a kannada daily today. It was confirmed by one of my neighbors.
There is an association near my house. My neighbor is a member of this association. Ladies and a few guys got together and booked a choultry for a couple of days. They pooled and collected money and started preparing chapattis. One full day they prepared almost 1 truck load of chapattis. This was taken to Nagapatinam on Friday. To their surprise, the affected people there just weren’t ready to accept chapattis. They demanded rice and water. Some of them abused these relief workers for bringing chapattis and not bringing rice. Some old clothes collected were lying all along the roads it seems. They need new clothes, new vessels and rice.
I was in Tamil nadu for 4 yrs, and I know that chapatti is not consumed there. But this rejection is a big surprise for me. When they don’t have anything to eat, they could have had chapatti. It’s not poison after all.
The truck had to come back with the chapattis. It was distributed in the slums of Bangalore. Also there was another truckload to be sent on Sunday. This was also diverted to some slums of Bangalore.

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