|
|
|
Saturday, June 10, 2006 |
|
|
|
Saturday, June 10, 2006 |
|
On the road to recovery Eight months after a
quake devastated part of the Kashmir Valley, the affected are still
picking up the threads of their lives. If some are yet to get
rehabilitated, others are trying to get over the emotional and
psychological stress caused by the October 8 tragedy. Aditi
Tandon checks out the ground situation
From a faraway cliff, Chappar looks rather sad. Forlorn and forgotten – the hamlet raises desperate cries for attention until its voice breaks. People here, as in scores of villages in the Uri and Tangdhar sectors hit by the October 8 earthquake last year, are far from healed. They spend their days recounting horrors of the disaster that came knocking at their doors and robbed their land of its vitality. It took away homes from villages; and people from homes. If that was less, it took from people their will to strike back`85. And this, for evident reasons – like Chappar, several villages in the Uri sector of Kashmir are located well beyond the reach of relief agencies that are chalking out a road map for the future of the disaster-struck area. Dangerously perched along the Line of Control, many of these quake-affected settlements are located about 10 to 20 km uphill or downhill from Sarai, the last motorable point in Uri. From here on, a risky trek must be undertaken to extend help to the remotest of the remote villages. While some villages like Chappar and Shahdra (in Baramula district of Kashmir) can be reached on foot, there are others like Dullanja that can only be accessed by a ropeway. The ropeway transports only two people at a time and operates under strict regimentation, as the area is under Army surveillance. To make matters more inconvenient, the ropeway runs only between 10 am and 5 pm. Dullanja on the LoC remains the worst affected of all quake-hit areas in the Valley. Almost impossible to reach, only one team of health workers, sponsored by HelpAge India, has held a medical camp in this small village post October 8. Survival instinct One of their many disturbing findings is the dangerously low level of iron among the women of this village, which now resembles a flat ground. Most of the men of the village have died; livestock has perished; and land has become unyielding by the severe impact of the quake. "The soil," says Ashfaq-ul-Hassan, an elderly man of the village, "is still rich and can grow maize and paddy but there is no water to irrigate the land. The Jhelum flows much below the level of the village, and all natural sources of water have either dried up or changed course following the earthquake." Given the odds, villagers are finding it difficult to pick up the threads and start afresh. By and by the survival instinct is coming back to the devastated people of the area. Never mind that it is coming back in traces, with a considerable number of people still reeling under the invisible, but palpable, psychological stress — the legacy of the October 8 tragedy. In what can be called the first phase of rehabilitation in the Valley, about 1000 affected families have been given food, clothing and shelter. Voluntary agencies like HelpAge International, HelpAge India, Care India, Coalition of Civil Societies, Corporate Outreach of India, Sanatan Sangathan (Punjab) and others have stayed put in the disaster-torn belt to ensure immediate relief to the affected households. People have been fed, clothed and treated for all visible ailments and injuries. Mental trauma What they have not been treated for is a deeper psychological trauma that threatens their welfare with the sheer nature of its complexity. Psychiatrists describe the psychological disorders as "potentially fatal to the well-being of the affected people" and insist on acute crisis intervention and psychological rehabilitation of the traumatised population. Dr Arshad Hussain from the Srinagar-based Psychiatric Diseases Hospital reasons, "Mental health is a casualty of conflict and disaster. From 1989 to 2005, the number of mental health patients in the Valley has swollen from 1800 to 60,000. After the quake, we have witnessed an alarming rise in the cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). "Our studies show that a patient of PTSD takes five to seven years to come to us for treatment and he takes not less than six months to show the first signs of recovery. It is, therefore, important to link the affected people with support systems and engage them in their routines. It is equally important to respect their dignity while undertaking relief work. We must understand the psyche of disaster-hit people. They first experience euphoria, triggered by their survival against odds. After the euphoria, denial sets in and this denial manifests in numerous forms." One of the manifestations is anxiety disorder, which is at an all-time increase in the level of substance abuse in Kashmir. Earlier restricted to urban areas, it has now spread to rural belts as well. Stress caused by the earthquake is reflected in many other brutal ways. At Bela base camp in Uri where HelpAge has provided 300 temporary shelters to quake-hit families, a crude manifestation of depression was on play. In a bid to seek attention, some parents were eagerly displaying their surviving wards to first-time visitors. Mohammad Shafaq, father of a three-year-old surviving girl child, was one of them. He moved the child centrestage and instructed her to narrate the sequences of that day. "Beta batao zalzala kaise aaya tha aur aap malbe ke neeche kaise paanch ghante pade the`85" (Tell everyone about the earthquake and how you remained trapped under the debris for five hours.) The tutored child began her narration, least aware of the after effects of such an insensitive exercise. Psychologists say parents indulge in such activities to find outlets for their own pain. "Disaster dis-empowers people. Hence our stress on psycho-social rehabilitation to root out abnormality and empower people by restoring their livelihood," says Dr Hussain. Struck by the declining standards of mental health in Kashmir, the state government is exploring the possibility of running psychiatry OPDs in general hospitals all over the state. At present, patients have to travel all the way to the Psychiatric Diseases Hospital in Srinagar for treatment. "This arrangement is a deterrent. We advocate six-day OPDs in all hospitals. We are also trying to conduct as many mental health camps in quake-hit sites as possible," Dr Hussain, also Registrar at the Hospital, says. NGOs engaged in the rehabilitation task could not overemphasise the need to restore livelihoods. HelpAge International (HI) and HelpAge India are working towards this end and their experts have outlined strategies to employ youth by reviving mountain ecology through regeneration of natural resources. Bill Gray, HelpAge International’s Emergencies Manager from London, and his Indian counterpart Avinash Datta were recently in Uri to conduct a survey for livelihood potential. Power for people The NGO has decided to train 3000 youths in masonry and carpentry – the two skills that are grossly underdeveloped locally. "The youth should be able to reconstruct razed houses in Kashmir. Another area of our intervention is community-owned and managed micro hydel power stations where the we have sought the expertise of Yogeshwar Kumar, who successfully launched a similar project in Orissa," says Datta. Kumar’s project, if implemented, will be a blessing in disguise for villagers who are complaining of lack of power. The project is most suitable for people below poverty line who can do a lot of work by having an energy source of their own. "In case of micro hydel power stations, we motivate the community to give us land. We set up the station with a power potential up to 100 KW, train their youth in managing the project and show the villagers other benefits of electricity in subsidiary businesses like carpentry, grinding and food processing. Once this project comes through, at least 50 households will have two KW of power each. They can then even work out a system of tariff collection." Another good news is that the J&K Government has amended the Electricity Act to allow private generation of electricity. Till now, the state was buying power worth Rs 1000 crore. Kumar says his project would revolutionise the power sector in the Valley. He has already signed MoUs with villagers at two sites in Uri, one being three km short of Aman Setu across the LoC. Apart from this, Kumar will train locals in the sophisticated art of wool processing, facilitating the production of traditional Kashmiri felts (namdas), which can be marketed both locally and outside. The projects will be carried out in nine villages of Uri tehsil in Baramula district, which HelpAge has adopted for rehabilitation. These are Bela, Jabda, Batar, Alphanda, Mohura, Shahdra, Kundibarjala, Chappar and Dachee. A recent survey in these areas reflected total lack of masonry skill locally, loss of livelihoods due to disturbance of traditional occupations like farming, cattle rearing and craftsmanship. A major setback for many families was loss of livestock on which they depended for earnings. Sakina, now relocated at Bela camp, lost all her livestock and as a consequence her source of income. Through its Livestock Programme, HelpAge plans to equip the families of affected villages with dairy farming, sheep and goat-rearing, poultry farming, bee-keeping and mule-rearing for transportation of goods across the hills. While loss of livelihood is a part of the problem, another, more critical issue, concerns the supply of drinking water to people of these areas. Shabnam Ara, an NGO activist, says, "Most villages are rainfed, and there is no other source of drinking water except the few seasonal and perennial water streams. These streams are far away from the project villages of HelpAge and women of the family have to spend a lot of time fetching drinking water. Post earthquake, these streams have also vanished." Sher Naman, 90, who broke his upper arm on the day of the quake, adds, "Streams have shifted track or have been submerged under the effect of the earthquake. Earlier we used to take water from one perennial stream or the other. But since these streams have changed course, there is no water to irrigate the land even for short-duration crops like vegetables." On the one hand, agriculture has taken a beating; on the other hand the promised six-month supply of government ration has stopped. HelpAge is now planning to develop spring spots existing in the area and construct rainwater harvesting structures to conserve water for drinking purposes. The work needs to be undertaken on a war footing lest the affected households spend the last penny of compensation amount on buying eatables for sustenance. Food crisis Ozair Nissar, a Kashmir University student, who has worked as a volunteer in Tangdhar and Uri, observes, "Each affected family got about Rs 40,000 in lieu of a plot and about Rs 50,000 out of the promised compensation of one lakh. But people are spending the money in buying vegetables and other things. The government must do something to prevent the food crisis." While it is proving backbreaking to provide even basic necessities, the disruption of educational services also poses a big challenge. Most school buildings have come down, and no reconstruction efforts have yet begun. Cluster Education Officer, Uri, Sarfaraz Khan is concerned: "The government should auction razed sites to builders. This will expedite task of reconstruction. How long can we expect children to study in the open or in temporary shelters? One day they will lose the motivation to study." At least 70 posts of teachers are lying vacant in the Uri zone, where several primary schools have one teacher against 200 students or more. At Bela, Mohammad Yusuf is the only teacher for 150 students. As rehabilitation efforts enter the second phase, challenges pile up before government and non-government relief agencies. Whether they will pass this crucial test of post-disaster management remains to be seen.
|
|||||
|
