"I can’t believe it," says Nityananda, looking at the destruction around. "I have become a pauper overnight." The state government has very little clue on how to go about changing the fortunes of the cyclone’s hapless victims, considering the fact that Orissa is a benighted state anyway: some some 60 per cent of its 31 million people live below the poverty line, 96 children die per 1,000 births in India’s highest mortality rate and it has the lowest number of doctors per capita in the country (one government doctor for over 64,000 people). Only 5 per cent of its population have access to pds and just 19 per cent of the state’s rural homes have electricity. Its rapacious politicians have happily led the state into the red with a whopping fiscal deficit of nearly Rs 2,500 crore. Add to this a property loss of around Rs 1,000 crore in this cyclone and you have a truly dismal picture. "If we continue to get sustained national and international support, which is rather difficult, the state will take a minimum of 10 years to return to the pre-cyclone situation," is the grim prognosis of revenue minister Patnaik. There are roads to be rebuilt, electricity to be restored, large-scale afforestation to be done in completely denuded districts, employment to be generated and cattle to be bought. Another big casualty is primary education. "The schools have vanished from the map," says Rabi Das, editor of Oriya daily Paryabekhyaka. The only silver lining is that epidemics have still not broken out. "The government can’t simply afford an epidemic now," says Dr Sailesh Mishra of the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who is examining some cyclone victims in Jagatsinghpur. "There is no cholera, and people are mostly suffering from flu and respiratory infections." Small mercies indeed.