One year after a cloudburst and subsequent landslides that claimed more than 350 lives in Leh and the adjoining areas, the people affected by the disaster are still struggling to rebuild their lives. It doesn’t help that the prefabricated homes provided by the government at a cost of Rs. 3,25,000 a piece that now litter the landscape are no more than large boxes that provide neither security nor shelter.
By Manisha Sobhrajani
The politics of disaster is being beautifully played out on the top of the world, in Ladakh.
Leh, one of the two main cities of Ladakh (the other being Kargil), and its adjoining areas, was hit by a cloudburst and subsequent landslides in the wee hours of August 6, 2010. What followed was government and civil society intervention mixed with the usual dosage of chaos and confusion in varying degrees.
As the authorities began to take stock of what had transpired in this game played out by nature, and as Ladakh began to take stock of the extent of damage, it was clear that the local administration was ill equipped to deal with the enormity of the natural calamity. Approximately 350 people were reported dead; more than 500 went missing; hundreds of families were rendered homeless as the flood water washed away land, animals, trees, human beings and everything else that came in its way; houses and shops were destroyed beyond recognition; people were rendered homeless, hungry and abandoned to face a severe Ladakhi winter. There was debris everywhere as far as the eye could see. And underneath lay buried bodies of those who could not move out of the way of the floodwaters.
Since Ladakh is a land that receives bare minimal rainfall, to deal with a cloudburst and its consequences was extremely challenging, to say the least. ‘Help’ came in various forms, and from different quarters. In the initial days, scores of volunteers came to provide immediate relief efforts; many NGOs distributed warm clothes, potable water, blankets, food grains and medicines; efforts were undertaken to rebuild houses for those who had lost their homes; temporary shelters were set up for hundreds of locals by the local administration and some charity organizations; local administration provided food to people affected in Leh and Choglamsar; NGOs arranged for fodder for livestock…
I was part of my organisation’s, Samarapan Foundation’s, team that was sent up to Leh for relief and rehabilitation work. We made a commitment of building 500 pre-fabricated houses for the flood victims. To say that Ladakh is a tough working environment is an understatement. In the immediate aftermath of the cloudburst, it was a challenge to get any work done, owing to the non-availability of labour, construction material, and a clear sense of the extent of damage. However, as the picture become clearer, things started falling in place, and by the time we wrapped up our work for 2010, the scenarios was thus.
As expected, the media assessed and reported about the extent of the devastation only in Leh city and the adjoining villages – the easily accessible areas. Not many bothered to go to villages that were not connected via blacktop roads. Help was limited to areas in and around Leh; scores of villages and hamlets in remote areas received little or no help; reconstruction efforts in and around Leh were hampered by harsh weather conditions and non-availability of labour and construction material; most of the rehabilitation projects undertaken were not completed; promised aid by most NGOs was not delivered; support from government quarters was almost non-existent. This was the story towards year-ending 2010.
The onset of winter in Ladakh is the time when life comes to a standstill, almost literally, owing to the extreme weather conditions. Those who can afford it, move to other cities, and return in the summer. For those who chose to remain behind, for whatever reasons, life is limited to remaining indoors and making do with whatever they have managed to stock up for the winter. The cloudburst hit Ladakh when Ladakhis were gearing up for the winter. The resulting mayhem did not allow them to prepare at all for the harsh time ahead: no dried vegetables or meat, no woolens, no food grains… For those who lost their homes, there was not even a roof over their heads.
When we returned to Ladakh in the summer of 2011 to resume our work, the relief operations’ story had a very interesting twist to it. Whereas the challenge in the previous year had been to explain to flood victims that pre-fabricated houses were better than the locally designed houses simply because they are flood and earthquake resistant, and would be suitably insulated to withstand the harsh winters, the challenge this year was to find a single family which had not received a ‘house’ either from the local government or from other civil society groups. This was no less than a shock for us! How was it possible for the local government, which seemed unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the aftermath of the disaster, to have reached out to the most inaccessible areas and given each family (whose house had been washed away in the flood) a roof over their heads? If this was true, their efforts had to be lauded. However, the real picture emerged by and by.
During my field visits to far-away villages to look for families which had not received aid, I realised that the landscape of Ladakh was littered with ugly white boxes which were the local government’s version of a pre-fabricated house. The boxes are 10 ft x 12 ft in dimension, and they are perhaps more suitable to be used as refrigerators rather than houses!
I have still not been able to ascertain who gave the final nod on the design of the so-called pre-fabricated ‘house’, but I know that it is a product of the Hindustan Pre-fab Limited (HPL). The Deputy Commissioner of Leh, Tsering Angchuk; the then Chief Election Commisioner, Tsering Dorjay; the special appointee for Relief Operations from the Prime Minister’s Office, Shahid Iqbal; the J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah have all been overseeing relief operations, and even though they may not be design-oriented, the fact that they live in the state of Jammu & Kashmir should have been enough to sensitise them and others involved in decision-making to the fact that what they have given out in the name of relief is practically unusable. A common joke about the pre-fab boxes (I chose to call them boxes rather than houses) is that if you close the door and window, you die of suffocation, and if you open them, you freeze to death!
It is common sense that in a place like Ladakh, where insulation and trapping the heat of the sun are most crucial, even a novice knows that the windows of the house should be south-facing to allow maximum sunlight to enter the house. It seems like the government-distributed boxes are made for someplace else! Not only are they impractically made, the size is inappropriate too, making them completely non-liveable for families. I happened to measure some of the rantaks (flour mills) re-built by a civil society group in village Igoo, and they were the same size as the government pre-fab ‘house’, one of them even being bigger!
I am told that the estimated cost of these boxes is Rs. 3,25,000. Having had some experience in building houses myself, I can vouch for the fact that something better could have been made out of that much money. The boxes are most definitely not worth Rs. 3,25,000.
What has the local government done with all the money that was sanctioned from the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund? Why was the design of the so-called house not scrutinised before implementation? On what basis has the government given out the boxes to flood affected families? These are some of the uncomfortable questions I haven’t heard or seen raised anywhere, unfortunately not even in the media. Whilst there was some media reportage on how NGOs come and stay in fancy hotels and spend their money on getting comfortable, I don’t remember seeing anything reported on the kind of houses which were given out in the name of relief. That is the story as far as the houses go.
There seems a lot to be done in terms of clearing up the land, especially agricultural land, which was either washed away or remains behind with the flood debris. Naturally, this land is unsuitable for agricultural purposes unless treated suitably. Also, the flour mills which are an integral part of every Ladakhi household, especially in the villages, is something which remains to be looked into. While a lot of families have rebuilt their lives with the limited resources they have had, simply because there was no option but to restart the whole process, there are some which continue to battle for resources and relief.
While there were a lot of civil society groups that came in to help last year; it seems most have forgotten Ladakh in their current-year plans. Indeed, public memory is short-lived. Other disasters and events have taken over the Ladakh issue, and it is left to the people of Ladakh to face another severe winter while living with the politics of inclusion and exclusion.
(Manisha Sobhrajani is a volunteer with the Samarpan Foundation. She can be reached at manisha@samarpanfoundation.org)