Hudhud havoc: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces Rs 1000 crore interim assistance for Andhra Pradesh

HYDERABAD | NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an interim assistance of Rs 1,000 crore for Andhra Pradesh to deal with the damage caused by Cyclone Hudhud that left a trail of devastation after making landfall near Visakhapatnam on Sunday afternoon.

After an aerial survey of the cycloneaffected areas around Visakhapatnam on Tuesday afternoon, Modi assured an early assessment of the losses by central teams for extending full-scale financial assistance. He also appealed to insurance companies to expedite loss claims and help the affected.

According to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, losses to state-owned properties alone were at least Rs 5,000 crore based on preliminary estimates, with the navy suffering losses of nearly Rs 2,000 crore and the Vizag airport incurring some Rs 500 crore of property damage.

Loss to private properties and agricultural crops would run into a few thousand crores of rupees, he said. Besides causing damage to infrastructure such as airport, roads and railway lines, the cyclone damaged crops like paddy, cotton, maize, coconut and banana in large swathes of land in both Andhra Pradesh and adjoining Odisha. The same areas were hit by a similar cyclone exactly a year earlier.

Since the eastern coast has been regularly witnessing severe cyclones in October, agriculture scientists say farmers in the region should time sowing of crops in such a way that they don’t reach flowering or maturing stages during this time of the year. This will reduce losses, they say, because crops nearing harvesting are more susceptible to heavy rains and inundation.

“Major loss will be in the three districts of Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram. Paddy, which has been planted on over 60% area, will see the maximum damage, followed by cotton, sugarcane and maize,” said Anil Chandra Punetha, principal secretary of agriculture in Andhra Pradesh. In the three districts, kharif planting was done on 5 lakh hectares.

In Odisha, crop loss assessment is going on said RS Gopalan, director at the state’s agriculture department. As per rough estimate, the impact is on 5,000 hectares of agriculture land where paddy and maize have been planted. Some area under vegetables might also be under water in Odisha. Heavy rains fell also in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, causing water logging in paddy and soybean fields.

Trilochan Mohapatra, director at the Central Rice Research Institute Cuttack, said farmers should ensure that their crop is not in flowering or early maturing stage at this time of the year to avoid large-scale weather-related damage. Submergence of fields will make a significant impact on farmers, but to the overall production, a loss from 1-2 lakh hectares isn’t much, he said. As on October 10, paddy was planted on 38 million hectare in India. The paddy crop in Andhra Pradesh was to be harvested by mid-November.

Since the paddy crop hasn’t reached ripening stage, farmers could make up something even if it is submerged for few days, said BV Krishna Rao, managing director of Pattabhi Agro Foods, a rice exporter. But, “there will be texture loss, discolouration, more broken grain and definitely production loss in grain”, he said.