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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

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  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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India assisted programme of constructing/repairing of 50,000 Houses in Sri Lanka

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A view of house constructed by Indian government in Sri Lanka.


Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Monday happy over progress in the India Assisted Programme of Constructing/Repairing 50,000 Houses in Sri Lanka. “Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India has informed me that 10,250 houses were completed by December 2013 under the India assisted programme of building houses for internally displaced persons in the northern Province of Sri Lanka,” said Chidambaram.
Another 27,750 houses will be constructed under the same scheme. The funds are being released directly to the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries have received the installments in the accordance with the progress made by them in the construction of the houses.
He further said that 5,000 houses are being repaired with the assistance of the Government of India and 6,000 houses would be constructed through an agency, out of which 4,000 houses will be built in the Central and Uva provinces of Sri Lanka as support for Indian-origin Tamils, primarily tea plantation workers.
Earlier, 1000 houses were constructed as part of a pilot project and the work was completed in July, 2012. Thus, there is satisfactory progress in the India assisted programme of constructing/repairing 50,000 houses, claimed Chidambaram.

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