NUAGAON, India, Sept 12, 2007 (AFP) - Chintamani Nayak used to earn just a dollar a day as a construction worker whenever he could find work, but that source of income is now gone after he lost his wife to cholera last month.

Within less than a week, his five-year-old daughter and mother were also dead, leaving him alone to look after his five surviving children.

The three members of the Nayak family were among the estimated 200 people who have died in a cholera outbreak in eastern Orissa state, one of India's poorest areas.

Now the remote districts where the disease struck, including Rayagada, Koraput and Kalahandi, are a study in contrast to the image of a country clocking blistering economic growth.

"How long do you think 16 kilogrammes (35 pounds) of rice will last for a family of six? So, this is what we cook," Nayak said, holding up a dish made of leaves collected from around his mud and brick hut.

"I can either go to work or look after the kids," said the 35-year-old.

When his wife fell ill with cholera, a severe diarrhoeal disease that causes massive body fluid loss, Nayak borrowed a mobile phone from a neighbour and rushed to a marked spot in Nuagaon village where a signal can be had.

"By the time the vehicle came, my wife was gone," he said.

Many villages here are in remote, hilly areas with no electricity and or paved roads, and offer few opportunities for education and employment.

In Nuagaon, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) from the state capital Bhubaneswar, most people live off government handouts, which they say are not sufficient to feed the entire family.

Krutivas Pujari, 40, is another man caring for four children after his wife and mother died in late July. He now gathers whatever vegetables or leaves he can find around his house to cook.

His neighbour, Gopi Majhi, shows what he received under a new ambitious scheme launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which promises 100 days of employment a year to the rural poor.

"I got this last year," Majhi says, flipping through blank pages of the book that once held out the promise of a job, but which records that he has not worked for a single day under the scheme.

Villagers say there is nothing to do in Nuagaon -- there is only poverty, hunger and disease.

Officials say 200 people in Orissa died in the outbreak and that the situation is under control, but aid groups and opposition parties say the toll is far higher and have accused the state government of corruption and apathy.

Tribal villagers have also been blamed by officials and doctors for drinking from polluted streams or wells.

"We found that the stream water which a lot of people consume was contaminated at 32 places," said Bhaskar Sarma, the top administrative official in Rayagada district, where Nuagaon is located.

"We agree that the infrastructure is less than adequate ... but we mobilised doctors and resources as soon we got to know about the outbreak," Sarma said, adding that new wells would be built.

But Bratindi Jena, a health activist working with the anti-poverty group Action Aid, said the outbreak was simply a symptom of the "systematic neglect" of Orissa's tribal people who account for more than eight million of the state's total population of 37 million.

"The tribal people are the most vulnerable. They don't ask for anything as they are shy, and that's why they continue to be neglected," she said.

"Growth and development are taking forests and land away from these people. They are getting dislocated because this area is rich in mineral resources, but they are not getting any benefit."