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The lazy sun shines on the lush green fields, where millet is ripening on terraced fields. The cicadas are chirping and there is a languid air about the place. The road is rocky, cut from the steep hill side, with a sheer drop several hundred feet down to a small rushing stream. It is an idyllic setting for Lamgauday village, seven kilometres from Guptkashi town in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district. But this is a village of death, where 25 of its 358 inhabitants perished when a ferocious swoosh of water swept across the Kedarnath temple, leaving 15 women widowed and without a bread earner.
“Most of the dead were purohits (Brahmins performing puja for worshippers) at Kedarnath or had shops there,” says village head Narendra Sharma, himself a purohit. It is now almost a hundred days since torrential rains on June 16 and 17 brought untold devastation in the geologically fragile state of Uttarakhand, killing 1,000 people, with 4,120 missing and presumed dead. “The families of the Lamgauday victims each received cheques for Rs 5 lakh. The widows were given Rs 25,000 in addition,” adds Sharma. Is that enough for the future? “They will have to work their small fields here,” says Sharma with a sense of hopeless acceptance.
The village of Deuli Bhangram suffered a worse fate, with 53 families hit by the disaster. But anxieties about the future have been somewhat calmed by Sulabh International adopting the village and providing Rs 2,000 per month to the families till 2018. That supplements the money they got from the government.
However, for many others in the districts of Uttarkashi, Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Pithoragarh, there is no future beyond six months. Dildeyi Devi, 52, of Semi village in Rudraprayag, where 20 houses crumbled when the slopes on which they were built slid riverwards on June 17, speaks with a dead voice, her eyes bereft of all hope. “I don’t know what we will do after six months,” she says. Her family of five lost their house and received Rs 2 lakh as compensation and got Rs 12,000 as grant for rented accommodation for six months. The only working member in the family, her son, lost his job when the same deluge hit the Larsen & Toubro hydel power project at Kund where he worked (the sluice gates and the dam were damaged by the spate; all employees, except 12 security guards, have been derostered.) For two-and-a-half months, she has been living in tents with ten other families by the highway. “The government has done nothing for us except to give us the compensation money. See this water pipe, even this we ourselves had to arrange,” she says, before she tearfully adds, “I don’t know what we will do now, my mind isn’t even capable of thinking of the future.”
Even the Chamoli sub-divisional magistrate, Avdesh Kumar Singh, doesn't know what lies beyond the six months for which the people have been granted rents. “I think the government will extend the rent scheme,” he ventures. “We have also identified reserve forest land on which we will build huts and give them to the victims,” he adds. But no work has started on these pre-fabricated huts and there already is a chill in the air. Will they be ready before winter? Besides, there is popular resistance to the huts. “The huts will be on the river bank, why should we risk another death?” says Ramchand Nautiyal, 48.
“Will the government give us new land to build a house?” asks 45-year-old Suman Nautiyal. Her cement house collapsed when the land sank beneath it. She and her family of seven live on the rice, wheat and other stuff that NGOs distribute every 15 days or so. But she at least got the stipulated Rs 2 lakh compensation, which is more than the Bhotia tribals of Chhinka-Chameli village in Chamoli can claim. Thirty-five houses were completely destroyed in this small hillside village, perched 100 metres above the Alakananda. For generations, the Hindu-Tibetan tribals never bothered about property papers. Today, the official compensations have been held up due to lack of documents. “Their case has been referred to the district magistrate and something will be worked out,” says SDM Singh. But it’s been three months that Raghubir Singh Kunwar, village president, has been running from the patwari to the tehsildar to the sub-divisional magistrate to little avail.
Even the food for the homeless is being provided by non-government bodies. One such is Shankalp Foundation, based in Dehradun. It is an educational trust, but it has taken up the task of providing food and other necessities to the 27 families whose houses were completely destroyed by the angry Alakananda at Ganganagar. Those houses are today cement carcasses hanging over the now more placid waters of the river. Navin Sharma, president of the organisation, is at Bedubagar town, meeting the distressed women, who have been depending on agencies like his for food and shelter for three months. “Winter is coming, these people can’t cope with the cold if we don’t help them,” says Sharma. Shankalp is today giving them buckets, cooking vessels, rice, dal, flour, tea, soaps and blankets.
Puran Bartwal, who is on his way to Sunali village near Nandprayag to train the homeless in putting up temporary two-room shelters provided by his organisation, People Science Institute, says, “The government seems more interested in opening up the yatras, not in people.” Mukesh Pahari, a schoolteacher from Dehradun who has painted 14 artworks on the disaster and now volunteers for the rehab efforts of NGOs, echoes the frustrations of the victims when he says, “The chief minister is busy performing puja at Kedarnath. What does he care for those who have survived?"
Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna has a lot on his hand. The destruction was unprecedented in the state, with hundreds of kilometres of roads hit, the tourism economy in tatters and with thousands of people clamouring for a government hand in rebuilding their lives. He has pegged the funds required for reconstruction at Rs 14,000 crore. The state has disbursed around Rs 200 crore to the victims, and set aside funds for roads and bridges too. Bahuguna says that all help will be given to the victims and has talked of a monthly dole of Rs 400 for widows. But as a man in Guptkashi town watching Bahuguna make some announcements on TV sarcastically remarks, “The chief minister has made 12,000 promises since June; he hasn’t even kept 12 of those.”
The quiet resentment against the chief minister is, however, not manifest when it comes to the government’s rough and ready methods to restore roads and infrastructure. “Honestly, I never thought the government would be able to restore roads within a year, forget the three months in which they have done it,” says a thankful Vijay Kapurwan, owner of a roadside eatery on the highway to Kedarnath. He is happy his business is picking up again. Almost 150 bridges and large stretches of highways had been washed away. Today, most roads have become motorable. The yatras to Gangotri and Hemkund have started and the one to Kedarnath will start soon. New pedestrian suspension bridges, connecting villages across the swift mountain rivers, are being reconstructed. Tourism, on which Uttarakhand depends heavily for its economy, has been at a standstill for three months, affecting hotels and lodges, guides and transporters, shops and services. With at least the roads network back in working condition, there is hope that the road to recovery will gain momentum.
