A parched farm in Kutch in northern Gujarat. The district has seen three consecutive years of drought, even as water from the Narmada Valley Project goes to industries and cities. Farmers say 75% of the district’s population has been forced to leave for cities because there is no work here.

Lakhpat is one of 10 talukas in Kutch, the least populated taluka of India’s largest district spanning 45,674 sq km, covering 22% of Gujarat (196,024 sq km). Lakhpat residents keep leaving because, as Patel said, “there is no way to make a living here”. He said his was a basti (hamlet) of 20,000 that is now down to 1,500 people.

“In places like Lakhpat, there is no water. Not even underground water is left that we could pull out and farm with,” said Patel, weary after working for six hours.

Dayapur is 520 km from the Narmada Main Canal, but has not received any water from the canal in the 71 years since its foundation stone was laid, promising to bring the waters of the Narmada river to the parched Kutch, Saurashtra and North Gujarat regions of the state. Already facing years of drought, these regions have seen no rainfall so far in 2019. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded that Kutch saw a 99% departure from normal climate conditions, while other regions’ rainfall deficit is 100%.

This is the third story in our series on drought that is affecting more than 40% of India’s land area. This story examines the situation in Gujarat’s worst-hit Kutch region, where scanty rainfall and rising temperatures have exacerbated competition for scarce water between farms on the one hand and cities and industries on the other, while raising questions over why the Narmada Valley Project’s raison d’etre–to irrigate farms in Kutch, Saurashtra and North Gujarat–remains unfulfilled 71 years on.

The previous stories can be read here and here.

Promises made and belied

When the Narmada Valley Project was envisioned in 1946, the government’s plan was to harness water for irrigation and hydropower through construction of the Sardar Sarovar and Narmada Sagar dams, and over 3,000 smaller dams and canals. The first plan proposed that the Sardar Sarovar dam be built in two stages, 160 ft and 300 ft, which was later increased to 320 ft–the height considered necessary for the water to reach the arid Kutch and Saurashtra regions.

After various disputes over water sharing between the states of the Narmada basin–Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan–the central government constituted a Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT) on October 6, 1969 to settle the matter. Ten years later, on December 7, 1979, the NWDT determined that 28 million acre feet (MAF) or 34,537.7 million cubic metre (MCM)–equivalent to 94,623 million litres per day (mld)–was the utilisable quantum of water at the time, and awarded 9 MAF (11,101.4 MCM) or 32.14% of the total water allocation, amounting to 30,414.62 mld, to Gujarat. Madhya Pradesh (65.17%), Rajasthan (1.8%) and Maharashtra (0.89%) would also receive water.

The NWDT also laid out the power allocation between the states. In Clause VIII of the award, the tribunal allocated 57% of power generated to Madhya Pradesh and 16% to Gujarat. The lower power allocation was meant to balance the extensive irrigation benefits to Gujarat.
Till date, only 36% of the project has been completed, covering only parts of central Gujarat, which includes more urban districts such as Ahmedabad and Kheda.

The Gujarat government also made a provision that only 11% of the total allocated water, i.e. 3,582.17 mld (1.06 MAF or 1,307.5 MCM), would be used for drinking water and industrial use in 135 urban centres and 9,633 villages in the state, including villages in Kutch, North Gujarat and Saurashtra regions.

However, between 2013 and 2016, Gujarat has utilised for non-agricultural use more than 11% of the water it withdraws, according to the annual reports of the Narmada Control Authority, set up in 1980 to implement the NWDT’s orders. As of 2016, the state was utilising more than 18% of its allocation to provide water for industrial and domestic use.
 

Source: Narmada Control Authority, Annual Reports, 2013-2016
Note: Figures in million cubic metre

Kutch, as well as Saurashtra, remains dependent on rain. And rainfall has been so scanty since 2017 that Gujarat is in the throes of a drought. In 2018, Gujarat saw an overall rainfall deficit of 19%, while the Kutch region saw 75%. Kutch declared a drought in 2011-2012 and 2014-2015, according to the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare’s 2015 Drought Crisis Management Report.

Though 2018 was declared the worst monsoon season since 1901, Gujarat insisted it was not drought-hit until three months after the rainy season had passed. After months of terming its arid conditions as “water-scarcity”, the state government declared drought in 51 talukas in 16 districts in a press conference on December 17, 2018. The declaration came two-and-a-half months after the state revenue department had declared drought and pointed out that conditions in five of 10 talukas in Kutch, including Lakhpat, had been assessed as ‘severe’.

Of the 401 villages in Gujarat facing drought, the maximum number of villages with 50% or more crop loss are in Kutch district, as per the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) report released on December 13, 2018.

The rainfall deficit continues into 2019. Villagers are leaving for cities for survival, while farmers and activists are starting to ask questions.
It was in response to one such set of questions, filed by activist Sagar Rabari under the Right to Information (RTI) Act between 2014 and 2018, that the state  government admitted that industries in Mundra and Kutch received 25 mld of water from the Narmada Valley Project, and the cities of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar received 75 mld of drinking water–an amount that would irrigate 22,502 hectares of farmland for a day (calculated by farmer and activist Bharat Jhala), nearly twice the size of Chandigarh.

While the quantum of water is within the 11% limit set by the state government, during this time no water from the project was released for agricultural purposes for Kutch, which was the project’s original mandate. “Ahmedabad is not part of the Narmada Main project,” Rabari told IndiaSpend, referring to the NWDT’s 1979 award on allocation of water between the four states.

Lakhpat taluka, where Patel lives, is not part of the Project’s Command Area, SS Rathore, the chairperson of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL), which executes the irrigation and power generation project, told IndiaSpend. This could mean Lakpat may never receive water from the project, say activists. However, they insist that the taluka and many other villages were initially part of the project’s “command area”, but have been removed after numerous revisions that are not reflected in the updated Command Area map currently available on the SSNNL website.

Source: Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited

“The revisions [of the project’s command area] are ad-hoc and not systematic,” environmental activist Rohit Prajapati told IndiaSpend. “If an individual brings it up with the government or if there are industries coming up near a town, the government will revise the command area, saying it is to bring drinking water to people.”

The revisions are not disclosed to the farmers and the people of Gujarat as they should be, Prajapati said, adding, “Today there is a water crisis so [the revisions are] coming to the surface, otherwise this would not even be known.”

Worst drought since 1985, but no water for Kutch farms

Agriculture and animal husbandry are the predominant economic activities in Kutch. About 72% of land holdings are with small and marginal farmers such as Patel.

Three decades of relentless water extraction have left farmers with little by way of groundwater, and Kutch, a dry zone, has no other natural water source. “Earlier, at least we had some groundwater though we had to bore deep for it. Now, even that has dried up and the water we get by boring deeper is not usable for farming,” Patel explained.

Farmers like him are questioning why cities and factories, and not farms, are receiving water.

Industries in the Kutch and Saurashtra regions are taking water amounting to 844.85 mld (0.25 MAF) against their allocation of 675.88 mld (0.2 MAF). All the industries set up in these regions show the Sardar Sarovar Dam as their main source of water supply, while farmland remains parched.

“Industry and factories get water. Mundra, Mandvi… where there are factories, there is water, there is a pipeline,” Patel told IndiaSpend. “But for farmers, there is never water. The government doesn’t want to give it.”

Now, with the drought situation in Kutch so dire as to be called “possibly the worst since the drought of 1985 in Gujarat” by Kutch District Collector Remya Mohan, activists say the state government must answer why a project conceived primarily to provide irrigation is serving factories and cities.

Kutch has witnessed a record heatwave over the last 15 years. In 2016,  the temperature reached 50 degrees Celsius (oC), the highest in 100 years.

At the same time, rainfall is becoming increasingly erratic. “The monsoon patterns have changed throughout Central India, due to deforestation and industrialisation. The monsoons winds have shifted eastwards to Western Ghat Sahyadri range. This has severely affected both Maharashtra and Gujarat,” Kiran Kumar Johari, physicist and meteorologist working at KTHM College in Nashik, told IndiaSpend.

District-Wise Rainfall Departure In Gujarat, March 1-April 14, 2019

Source: India Meteorological Department, April 2019

Kutch received only 25% of its annual average rainfall, according to the State Emergency Operation Centre data, in 2018. In 2017, Kutch was 56.58% deficit in rainfall on average, according to the IMD. Rainfall was sporadic and uneven throughout the year. During June and July, peak sowing season for kharif (monsoon) crops, Kutch saw only 58.9 mm and 295.4 mm of rainfall, respectively–averaging to only 5.9 mm of rainfall per day or 65% of the the entire summer rainfall in the area.

The district also saw disastrous rainfall patterns during the rabi (winter) crop sowing months of October and November, with no rainfall in October and a 99% rainfall deficit in November. The district declared droughts in 2012-13 and 2015-16. Historically, Kutch has a drought-frequency of two-and-a-half years. This year, as early as April, mercury has soared in the district’s cities. Bhuj, the district headquarters, saw a heatwave with temperatures soaring to 42oC on April 3.

Source: India Meteorological Department, CRIS Hydronet Division

Since 2003, at which time there was an anomalous spike in rainfall, Lakhpat taluka has received erratic rainfall. The changing rain patterns are causing havoc for farmers. The arrival of the monsoons are getting delayed from June to July, and in recent years peak rainfall is occurring towards the fag end of the rainy season, in September. For farmers who sow summer crops during the months of June and July, the changing patterns of rainfall mean crop loss and increasing debt.

The speed at which the monsoon patterns are changing can be seen in the graph below. It is worth noting that Lakhpat taluka saw good rain in August 2011 (177.079 mm), while in August 2018 there was a 58.57% deficit and in June 2018, there was a 49% rainfall deficit at Lakhpat.

Rainfall Pattern At Lakhpat in Kutch, Gujarat, 1979-2018

Source: NOAH water mapping tool

Back in Lakhpat, Patel, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) man, served as president of the RSS-affiliated farmers’ union Bhartiya Kisan Sangh for 20 years, opined why providing adequate water to Lakhpat taluka’s farmers is important for India. “Lakhpat and Rapar are [Pakistan] border towns. If they get water quickly, it’s in the nation’s interest to keep these areas populated with Indians,” he said, adding, “At the same time, it will finally become possible for local farmers to make a living.”

But for years now, farmers have been leaving, and industries have been taking their place.

Lakhpat taluka hosts three cement factories including one of Sanghi Cement, India’s largest. Two power plants–one owned by the Adani group and the other by Tata Power–have been set up in the nearby district of Mundra.

The state-owned Gujarat Water Infrastructure Ltd (GWIL) was constituted as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) whose mission is to provide drinking water to Gujarat. Because it is an SPV, it does not come under the RTI Act, Rabari told IndiaSpend, but he found that SSNNL supplies GWIL with water, which then distributes both drinking and industrial water, which is contrary to its mandate to supply only drinking water. “This is a big game that the government has played with the farmers,” Rabari alleges.

Forty years on, project delays and financial irregularities keep Kutch dry

The Narmada Valley project had a target of irrigating 1.79 million hectares through a 74,000-km canal network. However, 40 years after the tribunal award, only 36% of the network–27,189 km–has been constructed. Even with a dam height of 138 m, enlarging the water reservoir to its maximum, in 2017-18 Gujarat could only supply irrigation water to 628,000 hectares–less than half its target.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani blamed the opposition Congress party for delaying the project.

However, Rupani’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power in Gujarat for over 20 years, Rabari pointed out. “The full drawing [Layout of the Project Command Area] and schemes and allocations had been done on the ground. Even farmers knew which khet would get water and which wouldn’t. That’s how much knowledge there was. So what happened?” he asked.

Launched in 1961, the Narmada Valley Project aimed to harvest the waters of the Narmada with 30 major, 136 medium and 3,000 minor dams, the main ones at present being Sardar Sarovar in Gujarat and the Narmada Sagar in Madhya Pradesh. The main benefit of the project was to provide irrigation to 1.79 million hectares land of Gujarat covering 3,360 villages of 62 talukas in 14 districts.

The Rs 56,000 crore Sardar Sarovar project (by 2017 figures) met with strident opposition from local people and activists in Gujarat, which the government countered by arguing in the Supreme Court in a writ petition filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in 1994, for the necessity to bring water and prosperity to the parched farmlands of North Gujarat, Kutch and Saurashtra regions.

The World Bank, which funded the project until March 1993, canceled its loan after activist Medha Patkar, one of the founder members of the NBA, raised concerns about its environmental and human costs. The matter went to court in 1994, and by two orders in 2000 and 2005, the Supreme Court allowed the Sardar Sarovar dam to be constructed subject to conditions including rehabilitation of displaced persons.

The Sardar Sarovar dam was finally inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 17, 2017. The main Narmada canal to carry water from the dam has 42 branches across Gujarat, but construction of branches to take the water to Kutch, Saurashtra or North Gujarat is incomplete.

On September 8, 2018, Rupani laid the foundation stone of the Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana link-4, which is expected to fill nine dams with Narmada water and provide irrigation water to Saurashtra. Within Kutch, a 59,934-hectare area has been set aside for the Kutch Branch Canal, but the pipelines have yet to be connected to form a viable network to deliver water.  

The slow pace of work on the Narmada Valley project was censured by the government’s auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, which found that the state government had fudged its accounts of expenditure incurred between 2014 and 2016 to the tune of Rs 213.17 crore.

The government had included expenditure on power projects in its statements even though the Central Water Commission had explicitly stated that this cost would not be born by the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) funding programme, the CAG report (22 of 2018) said.
The report further pointed out that the Narmada Main Canal and its tributary channels (minor canals) were subject to water theft “by nearby cultivators who illegally lifted water from canals to irrigate their fields by using motor pumps”.

“Farmers are desperate. They are looking at consecutive years of crop failure because of lack of irrigation facilities, which means their debts are increasing and cannot be paid, so there are people who install diesel-fuelled pumps to divert water,” farmer and RTI activist Bharat Jhala told IndiaSpend.

The CAG report chastised the state government for inaction towards these thefts. The state had conducted a three-day raid from April 28 to 30, 2016 to remove illegal motor pumps and other encroachments from the Narmada Main Canal, the CAG report found, but had done nothing to curb water theft from minor canals.

Cattle-rearers leaving

Kutch’s other large economic activity, animal husbandry, is also in a state of terminal decline, according to the villagers in Bhuj and Lakhpat taluka.

Sura, a 62-year-old man who like many elderly in his village goes by only one name, resides in Sayana village of southern Kutch, and says cattle rearing is all he has ever known. With a growing number of industries competing for scarce water resources and increased climatic variability, water levels in the area are severely depleted.

With a record heatwave and a prolonged drought, water scarcity has hollowed out the animal-rearing economy. Broken, empty houses dot the entire village.

An abandoned house in Sayana village in Kutch district of northern Gujarat. After a record heatwave and three successive years of drought residents, earlier engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, have abandoned their homes to move to cities in search of work and sustenance.

“Only 25% of our population is left. We who are left are just waiting for rain… You know how Sabri-bai used to wait for Ram, that’s how we wait for the rain,” Sura said, alluding to the legend of Sabari, a local tribal woman whose guru told her that she would be visited by Lord Ram, a promise on which she waited for decades, setting out plates of berries every day in hopes of his arrival.

The few young people left in the village get odd-jobs driving trucks. Mostly only the aged are left behind.

To alleviate distress among farm animals, the government brought “5,000 kilos of grass from outside”, District Collector Mohan told IndiaSpend.
Sura and others said they have seen little of it. While the state provided subsidised fodder at Rs 2 per kg, the delivery came only once every two months. “We need 30-50 kg for every animal per month. The government gives 100 kg every two months, which is not enough to feed more than two-three animals. Every day a cow dies here. If you look around, you can see their carcasses scattered everywhere.”

The government issues grass cards that allow animal rearers to pick up subsidised fodder, but for only five cattle at a time. Any villager with more has to move the extra chattel to a “neela gaon” (blue village, meaning one where there might be rain) in north Kutch. Since 2018 was a particularly bad year for the seasonal monsoon rains, most families took half or more of their chattel towards north Kutch in search of greener pastures.

Cattle-rearing in Kutch has been on a decline owing to prolonged drought. Water scarcity has forced residents to take half or more of their chattel towards regions to their north, sometimes traveling more than 300 km with their livestock to reach Ahmedabad district in search of greener pastures.

The situation of other villages that are dependent on animal husbandry for income is the same as of Sayana.

The nomadic Muslim tribe known as Jats populates the village of Ravareswar. Every June-July, the Jats migrate to find better pastures for their buffalo, their only means of income being the milk they sell. This year, the tribe had migrated earlier than usual, in February itself, because of the lack of grass, 30-year-old Ramzan Jat told IndiaSpend. An age-old cycle had thus been disrupted and the Jats found themselves in hostile farmland that would otherwise have been empty.

“In the village, everyone has 5-10 buffaloes, so the village has about 10,000 animals. There’s barely any water here so we can’t grow grass and so we can’t feed our animals. To keep them alive, every family takes half or more of the cows and buffaloes and migrates towards the northern areas of Kutch where there is more change of finding water,” he explained.

Fisherpeople’s plight

Kutch’s fisherpeople, already suffering due to climate change and overfishing, are now also contending with the pollution that comes with industrialisation.

“First there’s the power plants–Adani and Tata. Then there are the mining operations. All the hot water goes into the sea. So at Kutch border, the fishermen are not getting fish anymore. They have to keep going further in boats that are not safe for beyond 15 nautical miles. And they have to go 40 or so nautical miles to get fish,” Rabari said. “Often this is how our fishermen are caught in the Pakistani area. Sometimes without realising and sometimes as a risk they have to take. Some fisherman are dying like this.”

To launch a fishing boat costs Rs 4-5 lakh, one villager told IndiaSpend, not wishing to be named. “So what can a fisherman do? If we don’t catch something, we have no way to pay back the loans we take. So wouldn’t anyone have to take the risk when the fish have migrated further?” he said.

Pipelines not maintained

While the region waits for canals to be constructed, Kutch receives drinking water from a 91 km pipeline going to the district from the Maliya Branch Canal of the Narmada project.

Dependent on piped water supply, Kutch district is affected every time a line breaks down due to lack of maintenance or due to climate variables. “We depend on the [pipe]line, but that also breaks every few weeks. Right now it’s been broken for four days and so we have not gotten any water. It’s a regular thing,” Sura told IndiaSpend.

Gujai Pani, an SSNNL employee in charge of overseeing the supply of water through these pipelines to 86 villages including Sayana, confirms Sura’s statement. “In the last four days the pipeline has broken down twice,” he told IndiaSpend.

Kutch receives drinking water from a branch of the Narmada project through a 91-km pipeline. “In the last four days the pipeline has broken down twice,” says Gujai Pani, an employee of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd, in charge of overseeing the supply of water through these pipelines to 86 villages including Sayana.

Alternative work, but wages late

Some villagers supplement their income by performing manual labour under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. They walk several kilometers along a tiny forest path where they dig squares in exchange for money.

“We dig squares of 4 [cubic] metres and get paid Rs 200 for this. The wages are not paid daily but on the basis of work done, after it’s inspected,” 30-year-old Hajiani Jat explained. She and another woman Surmi Jat had not gone to work on the day IndiaSpend visited as they were feeling unwell and were frustrated because they had not been paid for 15 days.

“We live hand-to-mouth here. Right now I am taking loans to feed my family. Hopefully I will pay these back when my wages come,” she said, nervously folding and unfolding her coarse hands.

Surmi’s story is confirmed by a district administration functionary responsible for revenue collection, expenses, etc. of Kutch, deputy district officer Prabhav Joshi, who says her name appears on a list of persons who have not been paid wages. “We are trying to pay everyone as quickly as possible and in most cases we have managed to. But, there are sometimes unforeseen problems due to which a small number of villagers may not get wages on time,” Joshi said. He shared the district’s muster roll report from December 18, 2018 to January 1, 2019, which clock villagers’ person-hours to calculate their wages. The list showed that, on average, some villagers from Ravareswar were owed more than Rs 2,500 each–enough to feed a family of four for eight days.

CSR projects of little benefit

Kutch district houses many factories belonging to a range of industries, such as lignite (brown coal) mining and clay processing.

“Many corporates are doing very good work and have contributed to our fodder and water situation. They are also giving water to desalination plants etc.,” says District Collector Remya Mohan.

Villagers and activists, however, disagreed. “Most industries make charitable trusts and then they misuse the funds for personal use and show it as a CSR expense,” Rabari said, “Then they donate to government projects like the Statue of Unity and that’s where the CSR ends.”

Villagers showed IndiaSpend a different picture from the one Mohan had painted. The barren land around Lakhpat taluka, for example, is rife with signs of over-mining. Gaping holes from mining explosions are visible across the flat terrain.

“There are factories nearby, such as Sanghi Cement. They don’t employ people from the village. The company had said that it would give the villages meetha paani [desalinated water] but instead they’re taking all the water for their own use,” said Pragji, the village sarpanch’s brother, who goes by only one name. The sarpanch was away visiting another village under his jurisdiction.

Villagers said they were willing to work in the cement companies for as little as Rs 100 a day–a third of the minimum wage of Rs 312.2 per day for such work in Gujarat–but the corporates only hire people living close to their factories, Vishwanathan Joshi, a senior reporter for Kutch Mitra, a local Gujarati language daily, told IndiaSpend. The National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business say companies should provide employment to residents of villages within a 15-20 km radius of their property.

“There are grey areas,” said Mohan, “We tell corporates not to give us an eyewash, old photos and so on… [There] are people who are doing a lot of good work; there are people who are doing some but need to do more; and there are also people who are not doing anything.”

Intentional disregard for Kutch, say farmers

Farmers and activists say the state government is intentionally driving farmers and cattle-rearers out of Kutch to make way for industries.
“They [the state government] want to divert the water [from farmers to industries], and once the water reaches the farmers, to take it back will be political suicide. They understand that. So, they’re delaying it so that water doesn’t reach the farmers so ultimately they can say that no one is living there so why make a canal?” Rabari told IndiaSpend.

Activist Sagar Rabari filed a Right to Information request asking for details of the breakdown of water supply for irrigation and non-irrigation purposes in Gujarat’s Kutch district. Rabari and other activists allege that the government is intentionally driving farmers out of Kutch to make way for industries.

In the state assembly, the government had claimed that agriculture growth is 11% per annum, but the 2018 CAG report on Gujarat’s economic sector put the figure at 3.6%.

“On paper, Gujarat is a great state, it’s really growing, but that’s only true until you look at the actuals,” Rabari said.

“The government’s intention is that if water reached Kutch then the people who have left will come back to farm and then there will no place for industries to build their factories in this area,” Lakhpat farmer Patel said.

Despite numerous farmers’ agitations, the government has failed to provide irrigation. Farmers’ rallies are often met with police lathi-charges (beatings with batons). Last year in February, farmers from 36 drought-struck villages who launched a 60-km march were beaten up.

Patel had just returned from an andolan (protest) at Nakhatrana village during the first week of January 2019 when IndiaSpend met him.
Farmers belonging to his political outfit, the BKS, had also been lathi-charged, he said.

“We have both big rallies and small protests regularly and the farmers get lathi-charged by the police. We also have no choice and neither do they, I feel,” Patel said, “If no one is listening to the farmers then where will they turn, what will they do? They’ll get frustrated and they’ll take to the streets and the traffic stops. Then the cops come and lathi-charge us until we disperse.”

This is the third report of a six-part series. You can read the first report here and the second report here.

(Avantika Mehta is a New-Delhi based writer and editor.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post Drought-Hit Gujarat Has Water For Factories, But Not For Farmers appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A video grab of 26-year-old Feku, a resident of Khirkia village in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh. “CM-ji, my older brother died of hunger, please save me,” Feku said. He fell into a coma soon after and died in a government hospital at 5:30 a.m. on September 14, 2018. Pappu and Feku’s deaths are among the five reported from Kushinagar since April 4, 2017, that point to starvation as a possible cause, or at least a major factor.

Residents of Khirkia village in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh (UP), brothers Feku and Pappu, a year apart in age, died within 16 hours of each other on September 13 and 14, 2018.

Both had been starving and ill for several months, their mother Somwa, a 50-year-old widow, told IndiaSpend on September 25. She stood near a small tent under which a priest and several men were preparing a bhoj, a ceremonial meal, to commemorate the death by starvation of her two youngest sons. Some local politicians and the village head (pradhan) had donated food after her sons’ deaths.

Both men had had “a fever, and their whole body would shake”, Somwa recalled, squinting as the harsh sun hit her weathered face. The family had not eaten in days, and her sons had had lesions inside the mouth.

Somwa and her family belong to the Musahar community–a Hindu ‘Scheduled Caste’ traditionally occupied as rat catchers, or, as a popular belief goes, a caste so poor that they chase mus or rats for a meal.

Her sons’ deaths are blamed on different causes in various government documents–at first, the doctor told Somwa they had dengue; then, the chief medical officer said they had tuberculosis (TB); finally, their death certificates said they had died of cardiac failure. “I don’t know what they had, but no one at the hospital would listen to us,” Somwa told IndiaSpend.

The report from the district TB centre shows Feku did not have tuberculosis. The deaths of Feku and his brother Pappu are blamed on different causes in various government documents–at first, the doctor told Somwa they had dengue; then, the chief medical officer said they had TB; finally, their death certificates said they had died of cardiac failure.

Pappu and Feku’s deaths are among the five reported from Kushinagar since April 4, 2017, that point to starvation as a possible cause, or at least a major factor. IndiaSpend visited the district and its villages to investigate these deaths, and found that the lack of jobs and denial of subsidised rations under the public distribution system (PDS) have subjected large numbers of people to ill-health, starvation and death.

Meanwhile, the government healthcare system is not only failing to prevent these deaths, the government machinery is actually helping cover up these starvation deaths by ascribing other reasons.

Starvation deaths
At least 56 hunger deaths have been reported in India in the last four years, 42 of these in 2017 and 2018, according to a report compiled by IIT-Ahmedabad economist Reetika Khera and her organisation, Rise Up. Reports of hunger deaths are particularly frequent from two states: Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, which have reported 16 cases each.

Most starvation deaths have been traced to denial of ‘ration’ from PDS shops, which sell subsidised food grain to the poor who are registered with the government as falling below the poverty line (BPL), or denial of access to pension accounts for the elderly and widowed. Most of the victims belonged to disadvantaged groups such as the Dalits, Adivasis (tribals) and Muslims, Khera’s research shows, adding that the Musahars, who live mostly in UP and neighbouring Bihar, have been the worst hit.

Khera’s research checks out in Kushinagar.

Jobless in Kushinagar
While its economy is almost entirely dependant on agriculture and the sugar industry, Kushinagar lacks proper sources of irrigation. “Lack of infrastructure facilities, like, entrepreneurs, skilled labourers, capital, technology, power sources, transport and communication facilities etc; socio-economic backwardness and lack of political-will are responsible for backwardness in (sugar) industrial sector (sic),” a 2016 report by the Indian Institute of Geographers said. The report noted six sugar mills in Kushinagar, but when IndiaSpend visited, only four were working. These are concentrated in two of the 15 blocks, Hatta and Padrauna, so job opportunities are limited to a small area.

The effects of muted economic activity are evident from the most recent Census data–65% of the district’s population has no work (termed non-workers), 14% of the people have not worked for over six months (marginal workers), and only 19% have worked for six months and longer (main workers).

The effect of this overall failure is felt most by the rural population, who constitute 70% of Kushinagar’s population, and acutely so by marginalised communities such as the Musahars. As many as 91% of Kushinagar’s Musahars depend on physical labour as they have no land of their own to cultivate, according to a 2016 report by the German development organisation, AWO-South Asia. The Musahar community earns Rs 9,105 per year while all the other communities in Kushinagar record income levels of more than Rs 36,000 per year.

The health indicators of Kushinagar’s Musahars are not encouraging. Their infant mortality rate is 82 per 1,000 live births, more than twice the Indian average of 34 deaths. As many as 89% of Musahar children are not born in hospital, and only 19% of the Musahar community in Kushinagar have access to healthcare services, according to AWO-South Asia statistics.

Of all Kushinagar residents, 25% of the male population and 28% of the female population had below normal body mass indices in 2015-16, as per the fourth National Family Health Survey. And within these, the poorest and most marginalised are the worst affected.
Take the case of Feku and Pappu.

Somwa and the villagers of Khirkia, mostly  populated by Musahars, alleged that Pappu and Feku had died of hunger. Just two months ago, the brothers had returned from Punjab, where they had gone to seek work, as villagers frequently do. They returned with little money, Somwa said, though she did not know why. Neither brother had found work in Khirkia, not even under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

Somwa, a widow since 20 years, would get 35 kg of ration under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, which provides highly subsidised food to the poorest among BPL families. Feku and Pappu, who lived with her, were enrolled on her card. Often, the family would buy only some of Somwa’s entitlement because they could not afford more. Even when they could, the total entitlement of 35 kg was not enough to feed three people for a month.

“The biggest problem is that none of us was given any jobs under MGNREGS,” Somwa said, “I get 35 kg a month but without a paying job, I don’t have money to buy it. And who can live on that much anyway? Especially with three people in the house?”

Somwa’s home is a 30-sq-ft hut where once she lived with her sons. Sticks and a few bricks make up a patchy roof. “When it rains the water floods the house,” she said. A tiny makeshift wooden bed sat at one corner. A gas cooker lay in the middle, unused.

After her sons’ deaths, local politicians and the village pradhan donated some grain to her. “They came and handed me grain as if I’m a beggar,” Somwa said, perturbed. “I used to work as much as I could–as a labourer, on someone’s farm, anywhere I could get work privately. Sometimes I would have to ask neighbours for leftovers. That’s how I tried to feed my family, but…” her voice trailed off and she pointed speechlessly at her run-down empty hut.

Other villagers also complained that no one had received work under MGNREGS for years, leaving many unable to buy PDS ration or food from the open market. “If we get work for a few days, it’s not through MGNREGS. Every adult in the village has a job card, but no pradhan hires us saying there is no work to give,” said Ram Raj, 40. “Outside, if we work for one day, for eight hours of work, women get Rs 50, and men can sometimes make Rs 300, but the work is sporadic at best.”

In nearby Rakwa Gulma Patti village in Seowrahi block of Kushinagar, where a 40-year-old Musahar woman named Sangeeta and her 10-year-old son Shyam had died on September 7, 2018, villagers allege nepotism in how MGNREGS jobs are given out.

The MGNREGS job card of Birendra Singh, the late Sangeeta’s husband, was issued in 2017 but is entirely blank. “The pradhan gives MGNREGS work only to special people,” he said, implying family and friends or those who will give a kickback to the pradhan in return for work.

The job card issued to Birendra Singh under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is completely blank. Other villagers also complained that no one had received work under MGNREGS for years, leaving many unable to buy PDS ration or food from the open market.

This is the norm throughout Kushinagar, said Congress member of legislative assembly (MLA) Ajay Kumar Lallu. “The job card is a showpiece. What is happening is that instead of benefiting the poor, labourers, Dalits like it was supposed to, the MGNREGS scheme is being misused by the officers like pradhans–they get job cards in the name of their family members and friends, and give jobs to only these people, so the money gets transferred into the family itself,” he said.

The village pradhan, Savita Devi, was not available to comment and reportedly never stepped out of her house. “I do all of Savitaji‘s work, and you can say she keeps records in the house,” her brother-in-law Punnu Verma told IndiaSpend, grinning widely, adding that their family owns a jewellery shop and makes about Rs 5 lakh a month.

There had been no jobs available to give under MGNREGS, Verma said, sitting among several tall and robustly built men like himself. He alleged that the Gram Sabha (the forum that decides what work should be undertaken under MGNREGS) demanded a commission of 5% on any job demand the pradhan would raise. He added that the MGNREGS wage rate, Rs 175 per day, was too low and should be increased to attract more people to demand jobs under the scheme.

Despite numerous calls to the office of Satish Singh, the district programme coordinator for MGNREGS, IndiaSpend was unable to reach him. On two occasions, Singh’s mobile phone was answered by a man who said he was an assistant and that Singh was in a meeting and would call back, but he never did. The additional district programme coordinator (APO), Parveen Kumar, said the state government was doing the best it could with the resources at hand. Nevertheless, he agreed that the MGNREGS daily wage should be increased, and the time taken to transfer payments to workers’ accounts reduced from the current 14 days, which, he said, is too long for the very poor who “live hand to mouth”.

“There has been delay more than that at times, sometimes two months or two-and-a-half months,” he said, “What happens is that our labour budget falls short and we have to get more work done. At that time, we have to ask the Centre for more money. There is a time delay in getting the money from the Centre.”

The delay in MGNREGS wages does deter people from demanding jobs, but other factors are at play, too, said Lallu, the MLA. Earlier, digging of drains, soling of structures (building the bottom-most hard layer), building of mud roads, etc. was done through MGNREGS, but not anymore, he said. For example, after using mitti (soil) to build a mud road, if building the pavement requires cement, work may get held up as the government may have put a stop to pakka works that year. “For this reason, a lot of work is incomplete, and people are afraid to take it on,” he said, explaining why many people are not getting jobs under MGNREGS.

A torn social security net
The ration shop at which Khirkia’s residents buy their food is more than 2 km from the village. Lacking any means of transport, they walk the distance and back. The owner, Ram Prasad, agreed that the amount of ration allocated is not enough. “[I]n 35 kg, I would say three to four people can eat for about 15 days at most. When they don’t get to eat, they get weak and fall sick easily. But the amount of PDS ration is not for me to decide,” he said.

The National Food Security Act, under which all programmes to provide subsidised food are administered, is riddled with petty corruption, said Lallu.

The legislator is referring to the state government’s initiative whereby people can apply for new ration cards online through the website fcs.up.nic.in. After applying for rations on the internet, during the time it takes for the administration to send them a permanent ration card, people get a printed slip with their ration card number and names of those registered for PDS.

“Now the names on these [online ration card] lists can change daily. You go to the office and pay Rs 200, the person on the computer will put your name, then three days later someone else’s name can be put, and yours is gone,” Lallu said.
One such bungling cost Subhash Singh of Amvivari village his life. The poor, upper-caste farmer, his wife and their four children–three daughters and a son–lived in the depths of poverty ever since Singh had mortgaged his 10 khattas (one khatta equals a quarter hectare) of farmland to pay for the weddings of two daughters.

The villagers said he was a proud man, and “never let anyone know of his problems or that he wasn’t able to buy rations”. Singh’s family were on the ration list but he had been unable to get the paper slip to prove this, his wife, 45-year-old Chanda Devi, told IndiaSpend. “He would run back and forth from the ration shop to the pradhan, begging them to give him food because we hadn’t eaten in days. What really worried him the most was that the children were hungry,” she said. “He was always tense. Always worried and too proud to ask anyone for help. Once, I got some saag-roti from a neighbour and fed our children, but he didn’t eat.”

Then, on April 3, 2017, Singh complained of chest pain and collapsed, frothing at the mouth. Concerned villagers collected money to take him to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The linking of all benefit transfers with the Aadhaar biometric ID system is meant to remove the problem Singh faced. However, Ram Prasad, the ration shop owner of Khirkia village, was not optimistic. “I don’t think biometrics will help. It will only cause more problems because there are hardly any telephone towers here and there will be a network problem, and people will have to keep coming back until the network is available.”

Recently, the government distributed gas cylinders to some households, including Somwa’s and Ram Raj’s in Khirkia. “The first month is free, so I guess we will all use it. I don’t know when I’ll get work next so by next month there will again be no gas in the house,” said Ram Raj.

No basic facilities
With no toilets in their huts or in the area and having never heard of Swachh Bharat, Khirkia residents routinely fall ill. Chhotey, 20, had been admitted in the district hospital for several days when IndiaSpend visited. With his brother unable to find work, Chhotey was the sole earner in a house of four–his mother, his brother, and his sister-in-law Mamita who was alone in the house while her husband looked for work.

“Chhotey has a fever, and it won’t break,” Mamita said. “My husband took him to the hospital, and they say he has TB, but he wasn’t coughing nor have any of us gotten sick living in the hut with him.”

When he was well, Chhotey would take up odd jobs at local construction sites or farms, “wherever he would find it”. With Chhotey in hospital, Mamita worried for her family’s future. “We got ration on the September 7, but it is finished,” she told IndiaSpend on September 25, 2018, “I don’t know now how we will get food.”

The complete absence of basic facilities was evident in Rakwa Gulma Patti village, too, where 40-year-old Sangeeta and 10-month-old son had died on September 7, 2018. The news channel NDTV showed the villagers alleging malnutrition while the government said the mother and son had died of diarrhoea and food poisoning. The post-mortem report accessed by IndiaSpend does not state either and lists the cause of death as unknown. The medical officer had reportedly sent the viscera for further testing, but no one could tell us when the results would come.
Sangeeta’s husband Birendra repeated a now-familiar story of penury, and alleged that government medical authorities had been callous in dealing with his sick wife and child. “She started complaining of a horrible stomach ache early in the morning after we ate some food she had gotten from a nearby farm–a karela [bitter gourd], raw with a little salt, and roti,” recalled a gaunt, sunken-eyed Bijendra. “I asked the pradhan to call an ambulance and we took her to hospital at 7 a.m. The doctor came at 10.30 a.m. He gave her an injection and then said he would give her a drip. That was administered several hours later.”

The two had died in an ambulance on the way to another hospital that they had been referred to. The post-mortem report records Sangeeta’s time of death as 2 p.m. on September 7, 2018–the same day she was brought in.

The remainder of the family, three girls–Laxmi (10), Sita (2), and Suna (10 months)–sat by their father, unsmiling, listening once again to the circumstances that had led to their mother and brother’s deaths.

Laxmi had also fallen sick along with Sangeeta and Shyam. She had not eaten much on the day she was admitted, and had survived, but had spent a week in hospital. She recalled that her intravenous fluid drip had been changed several times but not much else done by way of treatment or nourishment.

Birendra Singh and his daughters Sita, Suna and Laxmi. Birendra’s wife Sangeeta and 10-year-old son Shyam had died on September 7, 2018. Villagers say they died of malnutrition, while the government said the mother and son had died of diarrhoea and food poisoning. The post-mortem report accessed by IndiaSpend does not state either and lists the cause of death as unknown.

The only way to reach the village is through a labyrinth of dusty roads where huge stones and overgrown trees block the path at every second turn. One shabby toilet is shared by the entire village. The only toilet in the village has no discernable plumbing. A pit toilet, it has no means of flushing, and the villagers empty out the faeces into a nearby river every few days. A tank is affixed to the wall on the outside, of whose purpose the villagers had no idea.

“The toilet is according to the specifications given by Modiji‘s scheme,” said Punnu Verma, “The specs say there must be a tank so I have made one–the government gives Rs 12,000 to make one toilet. What more could I have made?”

The nearest district hospital, over an hour away, is understaffed and understocked to the extent that Birendra was asked to buy paracetamol from a private pharmacy.

Rakwa Gulma Patti has one water pump for its 150-odd residents, and many complained that they could not extract fresh water from it. “Sometimes a fish or a rodent dies inside the well, and no one knows until the smell becomes impossible to ignore, and the colour of the water turns yellow,” Rajalaxmi, 30, said. This water is used to bathe, wash clothes and sometimes to drink and cook. “When we have money, most of us try to avoid taking water from the pump,” she said, adding that they sometimes buy bottled water from a kirana store just outside the village. “We have complained to the pradhan, but no one listens,” Rajalaxmi added. At the time IndiaSpend visited the village, the water extracted from the pump was a dark yellow with dirt floating on top.

Rakwa Gulma Patti village has one water pump for its 150-odd residents, and many complained that they could not extract fresh water from it. At the time IndiaSpend visited the village, the water extracted from the pump was a dark yellow with dirt floating on top.

Several villagers had fallen sick from urinary tract infections and/or developed kidney stones. The district hospital was not equipped to handle these cases, and villagers sought out private healthcare as and when they could afford it.
“Four people are sick with kidney stones, my father is among them,” said Rajinand, 25. The district hospital referred his father, Rudal Prasad, to Gorakhpur’s Baba Raghav Das Medical College. Rajinand accompanied his father there but was sent away unceremoniously by the security staff.

Threats of violence against the kin of those who are ill are frequent, the villagers alleged. Sangeeta’s mother said when she realised her daughter and grandson had died, she had told the ambulance driver. “He said keep quiet, or I’ll throw you out of the car,” she said.
The poor of Kushinagar, especially the Musahar, feel neglected by the government but helpless to do anything.

In Feku and Pappu’s case, despite the medical reports disproving the TB hypothesis and the lack of any other plausible cause of death, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath denied the men had died of hunger.

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it. And here, the UP government has already failed.

(Avantika Mehta is a New-Delhi based writer and editor.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post In A UP District, Death From Hunger, As Governance, Social Security Collapse appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Sam Panthaky
 

“I haven’t had a drink in five months,” said Javed Shaikh. His voice slurs and hands shake as he spits back into a tiny glass, the mango juice his wife had placed before him. It has been 15 years since the moment that defined Shaikh for life: then 14, Shaikh witnessed a Hindu mob rape and burn a pregnant Muslim woman to death during the 2002 Godhra riots in Gujarat.

That day, as he hid under a pile of dead bodies, Shaikh had seen both his parents and his older sister killed. He has told his story since to the courts, to politicians, to the numerous journalists who have sought him out – but has never spoken with a counsellor or psychiatrist about the things he saw as a child. Since 2002, he has moved from place to place seeking comfort. Each time, he has returned to Ahmedabad.

Fifteen years later, there is no official count of how many children were orphaned during the riots. Those who were left alive, like Shaikh, “wish every day to be dead because they die slowly every day,” said Hozefa Ujjaaini, a social worker who works with the riot victims through the non-profit organisation Jan Vikas. The children who survived relive the atrocities in their nightmares.

Between February 28 and March 2, 2002, the three-day-long spate of violence across Gujarat left – even by the State government’s conservative estimates – hundreds dead and over 98,000 people dispossessed. Though the state claims to have moved on, the riot-affected are stuck in time and place at the rehabilitation camps – once meant to be temporary, but which have since transformed into homes for most survivors. Many of those who remember the riots have grown weary, beleaguered from years of being ignored, displaced and overlooked. The residents of one such camp Citizen Nagar wonder when they will finally be treated like actual citizens of the country. Their children continue to suffer psychological and physical scars which no one in the administration has attempted to understand, let alone heal.

Some trials, such as the killing of Kausar Bano, witnessed by Shaikh, have been concluded – in 2012, a Gujarat court ruled that Kausar was hit with a sword and killed by Babu Bajrangi. Judge Jyotsna Yagnik, however, ruled Shaikh was too young to know whether the pregnant woman’s foetus was actually ripped out. This, along with other cases relating to the Naroda Patiya massacre, in which Shaikh was caught, are still pending before the Gujarat High Court.
 

 

Seeking a new normal

Rehabilitation colonies like Citizen Nagar, Vatva and 67 other sites across Gujarat lack basic amenities like running water, electricity and trash collection. The 130 homes in Citizen Nagar depend on a single tanker for their daily water needs. The roads are unpaved and water is scarce, a mountain of trash – all of Ahmedabad’s waste collected over decade – rises high. Black smoke spews out of the aluminium factory nearby, darkening the sky and making the air putrid.

The riot-affected of Ahmedabad have been, quite literary, moved to the outskirts of the city where they cannot be seen heard. “Many people have died,” said Moinuddin Sheikh, another survivor and witness of the Naroda Patiya massacre. “We have trouble breathing, the number of heart patients have increased since we came here in 2002.”

Sheikh was a policeman at the time of the riots. He quit right after. He recalled feeling helpless as he watched people being killed by men he has since identified in court as members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. “There was no order to stop them from the Commissioner,” he said. “The police ran away first because they wanted to save their own lives.”

Sitting outside his one-storey makeshift building with a wrought iron roof, Sheikh recalls his family’s struggles in the first five years after the riots – an ordeal which has not yet ended.

Sheikh has two sons and one daughter, none of whom went to school after the riots. A graduate himself, the former cop wanted his children to be educated and to be placed in a government jobs, but this became impossible after 2002. The children were too psychologically scarred – like many child survivors of the riots – to concentrate on school or do much else.

“For the first five years, they were in a coma, you could say,” he said. “They would not move or do anything. If they would fall asleep, they’d wake up screaming, ‘Pappa, the mob is coming to kill us; Pappa, the mob is coming to burn us.’ What they saw plays in their minds even now, like a film that’s stuck in place.”

His children, and the hundreds who witnessed the brutal violence firsthand, are yet to receive any form of counselling or psychological treatment.

“Survivors of the riots say things like how many times will we be victimised?” said Hozefa. Working with the riot-affected people through Jan Vikas for a decade and a half, he asked why it should take the State government so long to intervene in their conditions. “Tata got its factory in a matter of months. These survivors have been living without a home to their name, without water or any facilities since 15 years. You cannot say it is because the government is slow to act.”
 

 

Sheikh has given up the fight for his children: his daughter was married as soon as she turned 18, his sons are day labourers and he drives an auto rickshaw. A parent’s regret loomed large on his face as he shook his hennaed head, recalling the first few years in Citizen Nagar.

“We have gone before the counsellors here, the MLA here to request water, a government hospital, a school for our children… it feels like its fallen on deaf ears,” he said. The next generation, he added, which was born after the riots in the rehabilitation colonies, will continue to suffer just like his children did. “The school is far, sending children there is expensive. Recently there was an accident and several of the colony’s children died on their way to the school, so now parents are even more scared to send their kids there.”

Rashida Ansari, a survivor of the riots and now a social worker with Jan Vikas, who helps the displaced living in Citizen Nagar, echoes the concern for the children. “No one remembers these children, the government ignored them,” she said. Workers like Ansari have invested in learning counselling techniques themselves, so they can provide relief to others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ansari received her training under Action Aid, an NGO that has worked closely with the riot-affected women and children since 2002. But there is only so much she can do without formal education. “Hum baatein sunte hai,” she said – all I do is listen.

Ansari wonders why the government never stepped up to provide safe havens for the affected and bereaved children. “Agar government ne ek orphanage bhi banaya hota jahan yeh bacche reh sakte; jahaan inki rehabilitation ho sake, abhi yeh bacche kuch aur hi hote,” she said – if only the government had provided orphanages for these children to live in, they would have been very different people today.
 

No exit

Today, the education and restoration of the riot-affected children is a matter of individual luck and circumstance. Shaikh Sahir Sabir Hussain is fresh-faced, with close-cropped hair and sharp eyes. He’s 16, and was seven-months-old at the time of the riot. Hussain lives in Citizen Nagar with his parents and two brothers. His brothers, 30 and 25 respectively, dropped out of school after the fifth grade. Hussain travels half an hour every day to reach the Irish Presbyterian Mission high school in Raikandh, where he is determined to finish his schooling. Until grade 10, he went to a private school, but had to move out because there were no facilities for senior classes there. “I want to study,” he said smoothening his green kurta-pyjama, “I want to study and become someone of consequence.”

Hussain’s friend Yakub is sixteen too, but dropped out of school after the eighth grade. The two boys spend their evenings together, but in the mornings, when Hussain is at school, Yakub makes furniture. “Meri mujboori thi,” Yakub said, indicating that his circumstances did not allow him to study. Yakub is the only working member in a household with five sons. His parents never objected when he stopped going to school – it was five kilometers away, and with eight mouths to feed, there were only so many textbooks and auto rickshaw rides the family could afford.

Seeing that lack of education is a growing crisis, several young men within Citizen Nagar have put together hour-long tuition classes for those who do not go to school. Students, mostly boys, gather together to learn the basics: writing their names, reading signs, simple math. Their teachers are college-going young men who donate time to help out their neighbours.

The girls have it worse. Most girls are pulled out of school after the eighth grade, with families citing various reasons, from societal norms to a fear of the Hindus living near the high schools. Most girls are married off even before they turn eighteen, never given a chance to excel at anything. In Vatva, a few girls voiced their discontent with the situation, but were resigned to the idea that this was the only way. None of them wanted to be identified – their parents had bigger problems at home, they said.
 

 

This article was first published on Scroll.in

The post ‘They wish every day to be dead’: The struggles of children in Gujarat’s riot rehabilitation camps appeared first on SabrangIndia.