Kendrapara: Being forced to survive sans any form of livelihood, villagers displaced from Satabhaya area in Rajnagar block of Kendrapara district have raised their voices against neglect and apathy by the administration. “After being displaced from our ancestral lands, we have lost our livelihood. How do we feed our children? It has become very difficult to manage families and meet household expenses,” the angry locals said Sunday.
It is worth mentioning, that the erstwhile residents of villages that made the Satabhaya cluster were rehabilitated in Gupti and Bagapatia. While the administration has provided them with some basic amenities, much more is needed to be done.
During rehabilitation, each of the Satabhaya villagers got just 10 decimals of land at the designated colonies in Gupti and Bagapatia to construct a house. Electricity, drinking water, road and schools including Anganwadi centres were also provided. However, there was no farmland in the new rehabilitation area. The erstwhile Satabhaya village was a fertile region for carrying out agricultural activities and used to be the main source of livelihood for the residents. “Without a stable source of earning, many have migrated to states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu in search of work as migrant labourers,” several residents stated.
Residents of Bagapatia rehabilitation colony are yet to be issued their Records of Right (RORs). Hence, they are apprehensive that the district administration may ask them to vacate the land any time as they have not been recognised as bonafide owners.
Satabhaya previously was a cluster of seven villages. Due to major changes in the local environment, especially sea erosion, the number has now come down to two. The residents were rehabilitated by the Odisha government in 2012. The Odisha government had rehabilitated as many as 571 families of Satabhaya cluster in Kendrapara district.
The villages of Satabhaya and Kanpur still exist. Five other villages namely Gobindpur, Mohanpur, Chintamanipur, Bada Gahirmatha and Kharikula have been washed away due to erosion by the sea.
Descendants of the former ruler of Kanika had established the cluster of villages constituting a panchayat in the coastline of Bay of Bengal. Satabhaya was then a large village owned by seven royal brothers. At the entrance of this cluster of villages was the shrine of presiding deity goddess ‘Panchu Barahi’.
