The fishing village of Puri awakes at dawn, as it does every morning. From the beach, the men prepare their nets to go to sea on the few boats spared by cyclone Fani, who made landfall on their coast. At first glance, one might think that everything has since returned to normal. The damage is still there, however, both material and psychological, on the coast and in the land.
"My whole house has been destroyed, we haven't lived there since Fani's landfall," says Laxmi, 40, who is unemployed after the cyclone destroyed her street food stand. Her beachfront home was one of the first to be hit by the terrible winds of Fani, blowing at over 250 km/h. She seeks to raise the necessary funds to rebuild "at least the roof".
Of the 42 million inhabitants of Odisha, one of the poorest regions in India where the average income is less than $5 a day, 16.5 million people have been affected by Fani. More than 850.000 homes have been partially or completely destroyed, plunging their inhabitants into even greater precariousness.
According to the World Bank's "Indestructible" report, published in 2017, the overexposure of the poor to natural disasters contributes to making it difficult to eradicate poverty by "keeping people in poverty or pushing them back into it.
The effects of Fani, repeated flooding and the threat of a future disaster in an accelerating climate degradation context will continue to be felt in Odisha.
