A trek to desperation

The condition is so bad that people in a number of areas in Kishtwar tehsil have to walk for up to three days to reach the nearest road-head. There is hardly anydevelopment in these villages as government officials do not reach here. Schools are non-functional. Teachers often move the courts if transferred to these areas. Some smarter ones have evolved a new concept of proxy-teaching. Sitting in the comfort of their homes in Jammu or Udhampur, they appoint some local person to mark presence on their behalf and, if required, also to teach the students. A small amount is paid by the teacher for the proxy’s services.

The only visible presence of the government in these remote but beautiful areas is the deployment of security personnel, who, however, rarely move up the higher reaches which are believed to be the preserve of militants. Some locals say that the writ of militants runs large in these forested areas. “They run a parallel administration and even get doctors to take care of the sick and the needy,” says a resident of Kishtwar.

Security agencies estimate the number of militants in the district at 600, 80 per cent of whom are foreigners. The militantsbelong to a spectrum of insurgent groups now active in the state. The number, say the locals, has significantly gone up after the Kargil war.

Because of fear and the long distances involved, few residents of the remote villages ever take the risk of coming to Kishtwar. And when they do, the journey has to be so planned that after days of trekking they reach the road-head before the scheduled departure of the bus. Otherwise, another day has to be spent at the bus stop. If nothing goes wrong, it takes three days to reach Kishtwar from Marwah Warwan. The situation is similar in Dessa. Sometimes a villager is kidnapped and his body found days later. Some of the worst massacres in the state’s history have taken place in these areas.The state government, which in 52 years could not connect these areas by road, has a dream of putting them on the tourism map. State Finance Minister Mohammad Shafi recently annou-nced that the remote areas of Marwah and Dachan would find a place on sta-te’s tourism map. But he waspragmatic enough to admit that this would happen only after the situation normalises in these areas. Of that there appears little possibility in the immediate future.

Absence of roads is also the biggest handicap faced by the security agencies in their operations and these often have to be heli-borne. The process of the recent Lok Sab-ha elections was also completed with the aid of helico-pters in these areas. If a sick person is lucky, he may also be flown to the district hospital at Doda. Each time there is a possibility of a helicopter coming, the locals get extremely expectant and hope to hitch a ride to the town to finish their chores. As they try to get in, many have to be refused entry. Those who get in also have to be disembarked if the load in the helicopter exceeds the stipulated limit. It’s not easy. There is pain, disappointment and dejection.