People in distress get little relief

Pradeep Singh DamiÔÇÖs two-storey house in Tawaghat in Pithoragarh District, fell like a pack of cards on June 17 when the raging Kaliganga river ate away a chunk of the hill beneath his house. Dami had savings which helped him rent a small room in Dharchula town for his family of five. From a shop owner, he is now a shop assistant and earns barely enough to feed his family.

In tough times, unlike others, Dami doesn’t curse his fate. He curses the administration. “My house was newly constructed. The officials granted my house a sanction and then I started construction. Now, I come to know that my village was one of the many that were supposed to be shifted as the land is unstable. Why was I given a sanction if the government knew we would be doomed sooner or later,” he says. 

Not many have been as fortunate as Dami. Several villages in Darma valley in Pithoragarh are now ghost towns. Only mules, goats and cows inhabit the villages of Sobla, Dhar, Bongling, Sela, Nangling, Baling, Dugtu, Dantu, Tidang, Bidang and Dawe. 

The arterial road that connected the valley to Dharchula sub division is damaged; even after three months of the tragedy, the roads are still being repaired. Everyday people have to risk their lives, walking over the loose debris that was once somebody’s house. A wrong step and there is always a risk of falling right into the wild river. 

Ajit Singh Rongchu was crossing a gaping crater on the road to Dharchula, balancing two canisters of ghee. He is a resident of Sobla. Having spent 50 years of his life in the village, he is unable to recognize it now. He was airlifted to safety but four of his cows are still there grazing in the open. After the rains subsided, he went back to his village, found his cows, built a small shelter with tarpaulin provided by the government and is living there. 

“I lost everything in the disaster. From where will I pay rent and feed my family? My cows are my only hope,” he says. 

But didn’t chief minister Vijay Bahuguna promise Rs 3,000 as rent to people, displaced in the disaster, for the next one year? “I read in papers that he has. But, we did not get a penny. Some did get a small amount. But they had to bribe the officials to get that. I do not have anything to bribe,” he says. 

Rongchu’s neighbor, Jaman Singh, lives in a camp in Dharchula Government College, with his family of six people. “When the government first got us here in this camp, we were promised pukka houses. Now, we are promised house rent. We did not even get that. Those who get the money, get Rs 2,000 every two months. With so many people looking for houses, the rent has increased. I don’t know where we will go. I am scared that the government may shove us into tin camps,” he says. 

With the cry for rebuilding Uttarakhand, the major question that arises is: where is the land? Soon after the disaster, in the heat of the moment, the chief minister announced pukka camps for the displaced. But soon authorities realised that once a family settles on a piece of land they would not vacate it easily and this will lead to a major problem. So the  scheme to distribute money for rent was declared, said an official in the rural development department of the Uttarakhand government on condition of anonymity. 

“Uttarakhand doesn’t even have a resettlement and rehabilitation policy. Whether people are displaced by dams or because of disaster, there is no state policy to rehabilitate them. Every time there is a disaster, the state starts from scratch,” says Ravi Chopra of Dehradun-based advocacy group, People’s Science Institute. 

During the earthquake in 1999, the list of 25,000 affected people went through series of revisions. People went to court, and the categories of compensation had to be revised at least three times. Since elections were round the corner, Chamoli district for some reason got the money while Rudraprayag remained deprived. People were handed out first installment of Rs 10,000 and then nothing happened. The money just stopped coming, says Chopra.

1,150 villages need rehabilitation 

According to official figures, about 600 villages have been affected in the June disaster and these villages will have to be rehabilitated. Till 2010, the state had prepared a list of 243 villages to be rehabilitated and the number of vulnerable villages had risen to 550 in 2013. Till date, only Chatikhal, in Rudraprayag district, has been partially rehabilitated. After the disaster, the number of total villages that need to be rehabilitated stands at 1,150. 

The state that is cribbing about the lack of land for rehabilitating these villages vulnerable to natural calamities has been generous in distributing land to corporate, builders, religious organisations and politicians. The chief minister has squandered away about 100,000 hectares of land in this manner, says Purushottam Sharma, social activist. 

According to Uttarakhand chief secretary Subhash Kumar, Union Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) agreed to sanction Rs 6,687 crore to the state for its rebuilding and reconstruction projects. The money is a part of a proposal for Rs 13,800 crore sent by Uttarakhand government as financial assistance to the state for rebuilding calamity-hit Uttarakhand districts. The state made the proposal on the basis of estimates of losses suffered by the state. He says the state government will get a loan of Rs 3,000 crore from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB) as externally-aided project as a part of the Rs 6,687 crore financial assistance. He says 90 per cent of the loan will be repaid by Central government while 10 per cent is to be repaid by state government. Apart from the Rs 3000 crore loan, Rs 1,187 crore will released for the National Disaster Response Force, Rs1,500 crore from Centrally-aided projects and another Rs 1,500 crore as additional Central aid.

“Unpredictability of rainfall and unique geographical conditions of the state have made the rehabilitation exercise difficult. Hundreds of villages have been swept away. It will be naive to bind the reconstruction and rehabilitation exercise in Uttarakhand within a specific time-frame,” says Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre (DMMC) chief Piyush Rautela.

Compensation enhanced on afterthought
After facing flak from several quarters for late response during the disaster, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuga made changes in some of the announcements he had made in a hurry. Here is a list of what he doled out to the disaster-affected just after the flood and a few weeks after assessment:

Other announcements and significant developments post disaster: