A damaged house at the Podampetta village in Odisha. | Pramit Karmakar
Podampetta is a coastal village in the Ganjam district of Odisha. A few years ago, it had several households which were primarily involved in the fishing trade. Now it has only five households. The rest of the village has been resettled by the state government to a new area called New Podampetta, around 300 metres away from the village on the eastern coast of India.
The resettlement of the entire village was triggered by the massive coastal erosion the village witnessed in the last few years. The village lies along the Bay of Bengal, now at a distance of only 50 metres from the sea. Several houses there have been damaged by natural disasters and are now lying in dilapidated conditions.