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Desperate poverty hits me in the face as I trek through the village of Balkot. One year, after the deadly quake that struck this part of Kashmir last October, the inhabitants of this region still live in makeshift tin sheds and canvas tents.
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 to their own fate, one year, after the deadly quake that struck this part of Kashmir last October, 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 Rs. 40,000 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 Rs 3000 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 travelling companion.
The average land-holding 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 labour to survive. Some work as porters for the army. No home in the village has tap 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.
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.
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 40 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. Colourful 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 labourer, 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 neighbour reveals.
A volunteer of the PDT tells me that Mahtabi was given four goats by his organisation 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, 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 programme. The cow gives just four litres 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-storeyed house. ‘We now live in the ruins of the one surviving room’, he says. His father works as a labourer, 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.
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. ‘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.
(If you want to help out a family affected by the quake, do get in touch with me on ysikand@gmail.com. I can procure a list of some families in Balkot and neighbouring villages whom we could help, and I could send you their contact details. You could then directly send them financial contribution).
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