ORISSA- A Heavy Toll

A Heavy Toll ORISSA has been in the grip of a succession of natural calamities, during the last few months. Both the Government and the people have been so pre-occupied with the havoc wrought that other problems have been pushed to the background. Early in September the two easternmost districts, Balasore and Mayur- bhanj (the former considered the State's rice bowl) suffered their worst floods in four decades. The Government machinery had hardly been geared up to deal with the scars left behind by the floods when a disastrous hurricane ripped through the most thickly populated and probably the State's richest agricultural belt in Cuttack district.