Mail from Anuradha Talwar: 

Our union, Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity has a large membership (of about 29000 people) in the flood affected areas  and almost all of them are affected adversely by the floods.

The situation is quite frightening still, with some areas in Gosaba and Kultali blocks without even drinking water. In addition, remoter villages are also complaining that they have not got food as yet. In addition, as there is no sweet water available (except for limited packets of drinking water). In many places people are having to use saline water for washing purposes and many are developing skin problems because of this.The need for aid is huge on the whole espeicially for medical aid , and for bleaching powder , water purification tablets, ORS packets etc. There is also need to cleanse ponds especially and to ensure that villages are supplied fresh sweet  water through existing tubewells.

Our union's inputs so far have been as follows

• helping villagers to reach safe places
• pressuring the Govt o ensure that  Government food and water reaches all places - even the very remote ones
• mobilising city doctors and medicines to start medical camps
• collecting donations to provide all villages with a minimum amount of bleaching powder and lime to disinfect the area
• our members are involved in cleaning activities of debris etc.
• our members from dry areas are trying to collect food and water and are transporting this to affected places.
• we are campaigning to ensure that the Govt provides free foodgrains of 14 kgs per person every month and starts NREGA works (with daily payment) immediately, esepcially for embankment repairing
  

While our union is pursuing the Government to provide aid, we also need to step in with some help ourselves.

Source: Mail from Anuradha Talwar.  Being shared to help create awareness on how various groups in India are responding.  AID and AID-India volunteers are exploring how they can help here.  Thanks to Sanat Mohanty [Daily SouthAsian] for connecting us with this work.