For Narasimha Swamy, a fisherman from Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, an article by The News Minute has led to the revival of his livelihood once again. He had lost his hand-made fishing nets in a fire accident recently. However, a TNM reader responded to Narasimha’s plight and generously donated an amount to buy all the raw materials he would require to make the fishing nets.
As earlier reported, on the morning of July 17, 60-year-old Narasimha Swamy, from Chinna Karagraharam village in Andhra Pradesh’s Krishna district, lost his only source of income — handmade fishing nets — in a fire accident. Most of the fishermen in the community buy raw materials and make their own nets for fishing. These handmade nets are worth approximately Rs 40,000.
All of his fishing nets got burnt in the fire accident caused by a short circuit in his house after a short spell of rain that day. Narasimha lost a couple of gill nets and cast nets, which were crucial for resuming his fishing.
A lawyer, Lankishetty Balaji in the area helped him with groceries and utensils for his daily survival. Andhra Pradesh Information and Transport Minister Perni Nani gave him an amount of Rs 10,000. However, the fisherman could not continue his daily survival without those nets.
After TNM reported about this incident, a TNM reader and software engineer from Hyderabad responded via Twitter and offered to help Narasimha. However, he wants to maintain anonymity and does not want to be identified.
The donor arranged a person, through his colleague’s relatives in Machilipatnam. They approached the fisherman's family in person and took Narasimha to the shop where he could buy the raw materials needed for making his nets once again. All of it amounted to Rs 21,000. Narasimha and his family expressed their gratitude to the anonymous person who helped them.
There is also a broader story that was revealed while this fire accident was reported.
Narasimha had been living in that thatched house, despite having his own concrete house. Like him, there are about 110 fishermen households in Chinna Karagraharam village, for whom the sea is just 500 meters away. However, most of them have moved out of their concrete homes, either to rented houses or to makeshift thatched houses, for the fear of their houses coming due to exposure to saline conditions, locals say.
Earlier, speaking to TNM, the former Sarpanch, Venkateshwarra Rao, who is also a fisherman, said that all these houses were built in the year 1985 as part of a government scheme. “For the last 35 years, all the houses were continuously being exposed to high saline levels from the sea. As a result, the houses have gotten severely damaged due to corrosion. Because of which, parts of the houses keep falling down suddenly. Fearing for their lives, people in our village are moving out of their own houses,” added Venkateshwarra Rao.