A.V. Louis, 70, a resident of Bazar in Chellanam in coastal Ernakulam, stands in the middle of what looks like a graveyard of homes. The waves continue to lash the disfigured coastline along which a seawall is coming up.
“The others are all gone,” laments Louis, a fisherman. “Some have moved to rented houses while the others have sought rehabilitation under the Punargeham project. At my age, I cannot afford either of these options, having already given up two-and-a-half cents of my meagre five cents for the road,” he says.
A few metres from where he stands is an abandoned toilet built under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, 2018-19. The family for which it was built had moved as the sea had claimed their house.
