The road from Baramulla to Uri and beyond straddles the gently flowing
Jhelum, lined by trees and terraced fields—a perfect, but deceptive,
picture of serenity. Forgotten by the media and quickly abandoned by
the State, one year after the deadly quake that struck
this part of Kashmir in October 2005, the denizens of this region struggle to rebuild their lives.
Balkot is one of the largest villages in the Uri tehsil in Baramulla
district, almost on the Line of Control that separates the Indian- and
Pakistani-administered parts of Kashmir. Its hamlets are scattered
across the face of a massive mountain, reached by a narrow, unpaved,
rocky and crater-filled path. Almost all the 400 houses in the village
were destroyed in the quake. Today, only the shells of what were once
graceful cottages remain. Its inhabitants now live in makeshift tin
sheds and canvas tents.
'Many of us received just forty thousand rupees from the government to
rebuild our houses', says Muhammad, a village elder. 'We spent most of
that money on food and medicines and on clearing the rubble of our
destroyed houses, so few were able to rebuild their homes properly.
That will probably take generations'.
Muhammad's friend Salim adds, 'The cost of everything here in these
remote mountainous parts is much more than in the cities. A truckload
of sand costs three thousand rupees in Baramulla and double that here,
because it has to be transported by mules all the way up. And
similarly for brick and cement and everything else we need to rebuild
our houses'. 'After the quake', he says, 'the rates for manual labour
have also gone up. People are trying to rebuild their homes, so there
is a massive labour shortage'.
Desperate poverty hits me in the face as I trek through the village. I
think of the professor whom I had heard pontificating a few days ago
at a seminar at Kashmir University who insisted that there is no
absolute poverty in Kashmir. I am agitated. 'Most academics are a
burden on society. They should shut down the universities for a couple
of years and force the self-styled experts to live in places like
Balkot for a while to learn', I tell Irfan, my traveling companion.
The average landholding in Balkot, as in the rest of the
quake-affected villages in Uri, is less than a quarter of an acre, and
many families are landless. The land here is rocky, dry and barren,
affording just one crop of maize a year. This forces most families to
rely on selling their labor to survive. Some work as porters for the
army. No home in the village has tapped water. Women have to walk up
steep slopes to fetch water, an arduous walk of up to an hour. Matters
have been made more difficult by the destruction of water pipes by the
quake. Irrigation channels and water sources have been damaged and
this has badly impacted on agricultural yields.
The building of Balkot's government school came crashing down in the
quake and has not been reconstructed as yet. Children now study in
tents. The village has a small medical sub-centre, which provides
medicines for minor ailments. For major medical problems people have
to travel to Uri town. Because of the difficult terrain and the
absence of roads in the area, this can lead to the death of patients
in an emergency situation.
Villagers complain of the complete absence of any state-funded
development schemes in the village despite the immense destruction
that it has witnessed. 'All we got was some compensation for our
houses. After that, the government has done nothing for employment
generation, development or reconstruction', says a village youth.
'This is a border area', he goes on. 'If I were the Prime Minister of
India I would do everything to help people here because this is a
sensitive region and people must feel that the government here
genuinely cares for them. But this is not the case'. 'If I want to
take a loan from bank to start a small business I can't', he goes on,
'because they ask for an asset as security and I possess no land at
all'. 'Till a few years ago', he tells me, 'we had to face the brunt
of the crossfire between Indian and Pakistani soldiers. And now with
the quake our lives have been made even more miserable'.
NGOs that arrived after the quake mainly focused on villages that were
more easily accessible on the main road, leaving out numerous remote
villages like Balkot, explains Nasir, a high school student. 'Some
NGOs came here. They made lists of people but most of them did not do
anything', he says.
Most NGOs that came to Uri in the wake of the quake soon withdrew
after providing some immediate relief. The only ones that still remain
in Balkot are Action Aid and its local partner, the People's
Development Trust (PDT). They have supported the construction of
community toilets and the clearing of rubble and village paths,
providing cash in exchange for work. They have also provided modest
avenues of livelihood to some of the most poor families in the
village.
Abida runs Action Aid's activity centre in the village that caters to
some forty children. 'These children have undergone great trauma, so
through games and songs we try to bring some cheer into their lives.
We also provide them nutritional food every day, which is one way of
getting the children to come here', she says. Colorful posters grace
the walls of the tin shed. Boys and girls recite poems and tell of
their dreams for the future. A girl says she wants to become a
teacher. Another talks of becoming a doctor. A boy shyly announces
that he wants to fly a plane. I squirm inside, wondering at the harsh
reality of fate.
Mahtabi is a 65-year old widow. Poverty and despair are deeply etched
into her wrinkled face. She suffered a fall some days ago and her feet
and hands are wrapped up in bandages that are soiled with stains. She
lives in a one-room hovel, made of logs and tin sheets nailed
together, along with her daughter Jana Begum, her husband Ali Muhammad
and their three children. The family owns about an eighth of an acre
of land. Ali Muhammad used to work as a laborer but now cannot since
he is sick. His children appear emaciated and grossly undernourished.
His elder son has withdrawn from school. 'We cannot afford the costs
of even government schooling', Mahtabi explains. 'Our house was
damaged in the quake and so we live in a mud hovel', she says,
pointing to the ruins of what was once her home. 'We did not get any
compensation from the government', Ali Muhammad says. 'There are
several other families in the area which did not get any aid', his
neighbor reveals.
A volunteer of the PDT tells me that Mahtabi was given four goats by
his organization as livelihood support. Mahtabi clutches a goat in
her arm and gently pats its head. 'Maybe it will soon produce babies
and then we can sell them in the market and earn some money', she
says. 'It may not lead to a radical difference in the family's
economic conditions', the volunteer tells me, 'but perhaps something
is better than nothing'.
Sarah is a young widow, the wife of Abdur Rashid, who died in the
quake. She has three children, including a son who is stricken with
polio. She now lives in her father's house in Balkot after her own
home was destroyed. She got some monetary compensation from the
government but much of this she spent on medicines for her son. She
received three months' rations and tin sheets from the PDT as well as
a cow as part of a livelihood reconstruction program. The cow gives
just four liters of milk a day, and this is all consumed at home,
leaving nothing to sell to augment the family's income. 'I cannot
afford the cost of the special feed for the cow that's needed to get a
higher yield', she says.
Eighteen year-old Sajjad Ahmad Bandey was struck by polio when he was
three. His brother died in the quake. He points to the ruins of what
was once his two-storied house. 'We now live in the ruins of the one
surviving room', he says. His father works as a laborer, earning
around Rs.150 per day, but employment is to be had for less than half
a year. Sajjad contributes to the family income by running a small
provision store, funds for which were provided by the PDT. 'The
government just paid us a small compensation and did nothing else',
says a woman who has come to the shop to make a purchase. 'Some NGOs
helped us, and if it was not for them I don't know what the fortunate
few who got help from them would have done'.
A small crowd gathers at a house where we stop for tea on our way up
the mountain. Inevitably, the conversation is about the plight of the
villagers left to their fate, faced with the onset of yet another
harsh winter. We hear predictable tales of corruption about some NGOs
and government officials. The few NGOs that remain, we are told, work
on only a very limited scale, given their relatively small budgets and
over-stretched staff. Some of them might pull out soon. There is
little or no coordination between them, making reconstruction work
even more difficult. In any case, the general consensus seems to be,
given the scale of the destruction wrought by the quake, NGOs cannot
take on the role of the government in reconstruction and livelihood
promotion. But this is precisely what the state appears to be doing,
abandoning its own responsibility.
'The government is not at all concerned about us. It thinks that
everything has been settled by giving us a small monetary
compensation. And the media doesn't even talk about us now, so people
outside think that life is back to normal here', rues a village elder.
Another man points to a hamlet on a hillock ahead. 'That village is in
Pakistan', he says. 'Both India and Pakistan spend so much money on
arms', he rues. 'In this mad war over Kashmir, they care little about
the plight of Kashmiris like us, on both sides of the Line of Control,
who have suffered so much in the quake'.
'Who is there to listen to us?', he asks, turning up to the sky in anguish.
'God will take care of us, even if others don't', replies another man.
'What will happen will happen', he says firmly, and the others nod in
agreement.
***
Cholan village, not far from Uri, is home to some 240 families. Most
of them are Pahari-speaking Muslims, Shias and Sunnis. As in many
other villages in this remote and treacherously mountainous part of
Baramulla district, poverty is stark in Cholan. The average
landholding is less than a fifth of an acre, and even this is rapidly
dwindling. Several families only own the land on which their tin sheds
stand. Most families are dependent on agriculture for their
livelihood, but the dry and barren soil produces just one crop a year.
Most of this is consumed locally, leaving little to sell in the
market. There are just ten government employees in the village. Most
of them are teachers employed on a paltry wage of 1500 rupees under
the state's much-touted Rahbar-e Talim scheme.
The quake brought down every house in Cholan. Today, all
families live in miserable tents and tin sheds and in the shells of
their former homes. Family incomes, already miserably low, have been
badly hit, as irrigation channels have been blocked, water pipes
destroyed and the precious few assets that people possessed sold off
in the struggle for survival. Other than providing a modest sum of
money to people to rebuild their homes, the state has done nothing for
the village. There appear to be no state-funded development or
employment schemes underway in Cholan, as in most other villages in
the area.
60 year-old Jannat Hussain lives in a hovel in Cholan, set up on the
ruins of what was once her modestly-sized cottage. Her husband, Khadim
Hussain, who used to earn his livelihood as a manual laborer on the
roads, is too frail and old to work. 'We received forty thousand
rupees as compensation from the government to rebuild our house',
Jannat says, 'but we spent much of it on food and medicine to survive
last year's harsh winter'. Jannat manages her family's expenses by
depending on the charity of fellow villagers, supplemented by working
as a midwife.
50-year old Muhammad is a daily-wage laborer. He works in other
people's fields and on the roads, for which he earns less than 100
rupees a day. This is the only source of income for his family of
seven. 'Several families in our village did not get any compensation',
he says, 'and none has received the second installment of the
compensation package announced by the government'. The government, he
tells me, had laid down that the second installment would be paid only
to those who had built a plinth on which to construct their restored
homes. 'Most of us don't have the money for that, having spent much of
the first installment on food and medicines and clothing', he
explains.
Like most families in Cholan, Muhammad is deep in debt. 'Most men here
work as laborers, as the land is not sufficient to support our
families. But we get work for around half a year, as for the rest of
the year this area is blocked by snow. So, we have to borrow money to
survive'. Muhammad's annual debt is around 12000 rupees. 'For half a
year every year I work as a laborer simply to earn enough to repay my
debt and to save enough to hope that my family can see through the
harsh winter'. 'That's the story of my life, like that of many other
people in our village', he says matter-of-factly.
Muhammad tells me, and this is a story that I hear in almost every
village I visit in the area, that there are no state-funded
development schemes functioning in the village. 'Maybe they have
schemes, but we are not very educated people, so we don't know what
these are. Maybe money comes for us but it is eaten up by corrupt
government officers', he surmises. 'I wish I could start a tea shop in
Uri or a fruit business or maybe I can buy clothes from Baramulla and
sell them here but for that I need a bank loan. But, the bank won't
loan me money because I have no assets to offer as security', he says.
Nearby Dawara village presents the same pathetic picture as Cholan.
Almost all the 285 houses in the village were badly damaged or
destroyed in the quake. However, only a little more than half the
families are said to have received full compensation from the state.
The only land that 40 year old Abdur Rashid possesses is that on
which his shack now stands. He used to work as a laborer till he lost
his hand in an accident. Like everyone else in the village, his house
was destroyed in the quake. Today, he survives by running a small
shop, supported by Himayat, a local NGO. 'No government officer or
agency has bothered to help us out. Because we are no longer talked
about in the media, people outside think that all is well here and
that things are back to normal. But this is far from true and almost
every family in our village barely manages to survive. Only we know
what we are going through one year after the quake', he says.
Masarrat is a 35 year-old divorcee. Abandoned by her husband, her
house destroyed in the quake, she now lives with her father along with
her 2 year-old child. She earns her livelihood by stitching clothes,
having received a sewing machine from Himayat. 'I wish Himayat could
give machines to many other women like me, but perhaps they don't have
funds. I would like to set up a tailoring unit, through which I could
train other women to do this work so that they could earn for their
families. I wish the government would start some such scheme here',
she says.
Himayat is the only NGO active in Cholan and Dawara. Most other NGOs
that arrived in the area with emergency aid have long since withdrawn.
In collaboration with Action Aid, it has funded relief efforts,
including providing tin sheets for destroyed homes, clearing rubble
and village paths, limited livelihood support to some of the most
needy families and setting up children's activity centres in the two
villages. But, says Irfan Hamdani, a Himayat worker, 'we simply don't
have the resources to help everyone. We could help only a limited
number of families. The state really needs to institute development
and employment generation schemes on a large scale. There's no other
alternative given the immensity of the problem'.
