Poor health and road infrastructure in distant villages in border district of Poonch, Jammu

Forgotten Fight of People of Poonch Spending money thoughtlessly in the name of development will only fetch the state the awards while doing little for the rural and disadvantaged people of the state

KAJAL KAZMI/MEHNAZ AKHTER It is said, “To know the value of nine months, ask a mother who has given birth to a still born”. In the undulating terrain of Noona Bandi Village, tucked away in the hilly region of the Pir Panjal Range, fourteen kilometers from Poonch town in the Jammu region, there lives a young mother who has a different take. For her, it was not the nine months but the last few hours that were valuable. In the last hour of her labour pain, her dream of holding a new life in her arms was crushed. Her only fault: she lives in one of the most geographically difficult and remote regions of our country, where, to reach the motorable road - an incomplete one at that - it takes nearly half an hour of tossing about in the winding hills. Six months ago, twenty eight year old Fatima Bi, in her ninth month of pregnancy, suddenly felt the labor pains coming on and informed her husband Mohammad Aslam. Aslam immediately walked out of the house to look out for help. The houses in the village are scattered over the hillside with no dispensary or primary health care center for emergencies. As he did not own a vehicle, he asked the local driver from the village to meet him at the motorable road, about half an hour’s trek from his house, so she could be taken to the District Hospital in Poonch Town. He was in for a nasty surprise. The driver refused to show up, demanding two thousand rupees at that critical moment – and extra for petrol. According to the “Maa Tujhe Salaam” scheme that was launched by the Jammu and Kashmir Government on 26th January 2011, free hospital services are to be provided to all pregnant women and children up to the age of 5 years which includes free transport from home to health institutions. In blatant violation of the scheme, the driver refused to help the destitute couple as they had nothing to offer him. A helpless Fatima, writhing in pain, held on to Aslam’s hand and the couple started the trek down the road towards the hospital. Before they could reach, the unborn child was no more. Fatima is not the only one in the village who has suffered due to lack of basic infrastructural facilities in the state. Entire communities living in the tough topography have at some point lived such harrowing moments. Zulaikha, a resident of the adjoining Bandichichain Village, shared the suffering of her sister-in-law, Razia Kausar. “This year on 16th October, Razia complained of severe pain in her abdomen at two in the morning. Our family members called the ambulance but, with no hope of it turning up, they looked for a local driver or any source of transport but failed. As there is no dispensary in the village, she had to suffer the entire night and could be taken to the hospital only the next day.” The pain has been the villagers’ fate for several years now. Availability of two major facilities will play a major role in bringing change in the lives of this forgotten lot - one is of course the immediate help required in terms of a dispensary or a Primary Health Center; and the second, road connectivity. “There are nine hundred and fifty homes in our village with a total population of over six thousand in ten wards. We have such stories to share from every house. We all need solutions. We need connectivity and of course the Dispensary,” said Aamina Bi of Bandichichain Village. The Government invests several crores of rupees for improving the lives of the rural and the marginalized communities. In this case, for example, a road exists officially upto Bandichichain Village under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. To support the claim, there is a sign board flaunting the date of completion as 29th April 2008, just a step away from the Kuccha Raasta that leads to the village. Any one visiting the village can figure where the problem lies. It is time the administrators had a look to check whether the money is being spent in the right direction. During his visit to J&K in November 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced a Reconstruction Plan for J&K involving an outlay of Rs.24000 crore. A part of this project was devoted to the overall development in Poonch District under the project title “Development of Poonch” which was to be implemented by the Poonch Development Authority. For the infrastructural development of the region Rs. 243.52 Lakhs was sanctioned and released by the Central Government in 2006-07. The status of the project on record is complete while the life of the people in these remote villages continues to be miserable without the basic requirement of health care facilities and road connectivity. Developing a half road or a basic dispensary would only cover up for the problem, not solve the issue. An understanding of the geography and the need of the people surviving in this forgotten region is required to get to the root of the matter and then design an action plan. Spending money thoughtlessly in the name of development will only fetch the state the awards (like the one it received in November 2012 for Best Health Care Service award from India Today conclave) while doing little for the rural and disadvantaged people of the state. Charkha Features

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Prayers from Border!

Fervent prayers for peace ASHUTOSH SHARMA “It is very easy to shout war cries from the interiors of metropolitan cities, but it is the villagers in border areas who bear the brunt every time,” say residents who live close to the Line of Control “Is it possible?” asks 85-year-old Begum Jaan with the astonished innocence of a naïve child, about the possibility of her daughter Fatima Begum, settled on the other side of the Line of Control (LoC), returning home to her village Nakka Manjhari, a few km from the LoC in Mendhar tehsil of Kashmir’s Poonch district on the Indian side. This obscure corner of India is currently in the news for the brutal killing of two soldiers on the Indian side and one dead on the Pakistani side, suspending hopes, faint as they were, of the likes of Begum Jaan being reunited with family on the other side of the border. The incident that led to the suspension of cross-LoC trade and bus service has left several divided families and pacifists on both sides deeply disturbed. Begum Jaan is among the thousands whose lives have been torn apart by the conflict and has been sending up fervent prayers of peace. Fatima Begum was stranded on the other side of the border during the turbulence of the 1965 war. At that time, Begum Jaan had assumed that they would be reunited shortly after the war ceased. But it was not to be. The wait simply kept getting longer as days turned into months and months into years. The years have been piling up for nearly five decades now. It was only in July last year that she could meet her long separated daughter for the first time. The joyous and tearful reunion, however, remained incomplete in spite of warm hugs and celebrations as Begum Jaan, by this time, had lost her sight. “Of what use was our meeting...now I cannot see anything. But I still wish for her to keep visiting me. I wish she settles here along with her family. Like my son, she, too, will inherit a share of my land and property,” says a visibly worried Begum Jaan, who regrets that her husband died before the reunion last year. “I wish to meet my daughter again and again…She lives in Jammu Gali at Gujranwalla in Pakistan. The only bus that connected us has now been suspended following the disturbances at the border. I request both the governments to resolve their issues separately and restore the bus service immediately. I pray that good sense prevails on both sides so that people like us can live and die in peace.” Sufferings of this humanitarian crisis are common on both sides of the LoC. According to Shahbaz Choudhary, a researcher in Political Science and a poet at heart hailing from the same village, “the wounds inflicted by Partition are still raw. We have grown up listening to heart-wrenching stories of separation scripted by Partition and subsequent wars. We have seen people crying their hearts out on meeting long-separated close relatives. Their sobs and cries, the warmth of their hugs and kisses, the final, desperate handshakes from the windows of moving buses, exchange of farewell notes at the site where cross-border travellers board or alight from the buses reflect the silent cries of the people who want only peace.” Boundaries created by the State have failed to alter the relationships migrants share with their land. “Can you imagine what elderly people who migrated to the other side ask visitors to bring along while returning from this part of Poonch? They ask for unusual things like leaves of the old trees they had once planted here, photographs of their homes, fields, village lanes, mountains, streams and voice recordings of relatives living here. They ask for soil of their birthplace so that when they die and are buried, a fistful of their homeland is filled in their graves,” says Shahbaz, adding, “these sensibilities and sentiments ought not to be muzzled by the insanity of war and hatred.” Every person living at the border is now hoping for the return of normalcy immediately so that the bus service, Paigam-e-Aman, can resume because prosperity without peace is virtually impossible to imagine in these border villages. Lal Hussain, another villager who has seen the boundaries insidiously weave divisions into their lives, says that innocent people on either side of the LoC must not be forgotten or taken for granted by either government. “It is very easy to shout war cries from the interiors of metropolitan cities but it is the villagers in border areas who bear the brunt every time,” says Lal who also wishes the bus Paigam-e-Aman’ resume its services soon as he walks away, humming lines of the famous poet Sahir Ludhyanvi: Jung to khud aik masla hai, jung kya maslon ka hal degi….Jung taltee rahay to behtar hai…… (War in itself is an issue, how can war resolve other issues? It is better if a war is kept in abeyance) (Charkha Features)