New Delhi, June 27, 2013: As the focus remained for the past one week on the evacuation of pilgrims stranded in the Kedarnath and Badrinath valley in the flood-ravaged Uttarakhand, locals are getting restless as the State government has failed to help them out.

Dozens of villages in the worst-hit districts of Rudraprayag, Chamoli, Uttarkashi and Tehri still await help from the government, even as the villagers have started counting their losses. “It has been 10 days since the disaster struck this region, but even today there is no sign of the administration reaching out to the people in the 100-odd worst-affected villages. Fearing the worst as rains are expected to lash the region again, villagers are trying to retrieve whatever that has been left behind,” Gajendra Nautiyal, who heads the NGO, Sri Bhuvaneshwari Mahila Ashram, at Gairsen, told The Hindu on the phone.

Disaster assessment

Volunteers of his NGO and other organisations have been carrying out rehabilitation and disaster assessment in remote villages. “From whatever information we have collected so far, the situation is frightening. There are scores of villagers who are missing. While in a few days, people will have to face problems related to food, employment and health as infrastructure has been completely washed away in flash floods,” he said.

Mr. Nautiyal said the maximum number of deaths and amount of destruction had happened in the Kedarnath valley, where locals from nearby villages go to work for two months during the period of pilgrimage. “Several youths who had gone there … from Ukhimath, Ghansali, Jakholi, Pokhri and Guptkasi have not returned home … and villagers do not know whom to contact [to find out their whereabouts]. Ironically, the entire Rudraprayag district is badly affected, but the district disaster management unit is clueless about relief and rehabilitation work … Whatever little is happening is due to the efforts of locals and NGOs active in the region. There were reports of protests in at least two places against the government’s failure to help them.”

According to reports, medical centres, schools and markets have been destroyed at several places, while villagers face the challenge of survival because their fields and cattle head, their only source of livelihood, have been washed away. “It is now feared that these villages with no proper water and food supply may face epidemic … Already there are reports of diarrhoea outbreak in some villages. And if the administration fails to act fast, people here will have to face severe hardships in the days to come,” Mr. Nautiyal said.

Kamal Bahuguna, director of the Dehradun-based Himalayan Institute For Environment, Ecology and Development said relief and rehabilitation efforts should now focus on employment generation and rebuilding of hospital and schools. He regretted that it was the administration’s unpreparedness to deal with such a disaster that led the situation to deteriorate. “Despite repeated floods and landslips year after year, we have not heard about the district or local administration conducting any mock drills or evaluating their preparedness to meet such eventualities.”

Source: the Hindu, DT. June 27, 2013.