The
students of Nirmala Niketan college of Social work (sr. Sunita and companions) took
the initiative to march towards the state of Uttrakhand in India for relief
work on 4th July 2013. Uttrakhand State is erected in
2001. It
is a high attitude area of which 93% is mountains and 47.04% is covered by
trees and forests. Most of the northern areas of the state are part of Greater
Himalaya ranges and covered by high peaks and glaciers while the lower
foothills were densely forested but have suffered years of deforestation. The
primary sources of livelihood in the state are agriculture and tourism and the
state sells hydroelectric power to other states 70% of 10.01 million population
of Uttrakhand lives in rural areas and 20% in urban locations. The
State is divided in to 13 districts. Its capital Dehradun is third
highest population density district in the state. The entire State is
vulnerable to high rain fall, cloudburst and landslides. People did experience
these calamities often in fragments but destruction up to this extent was
unexpected.
There are four pilgrimages on this
part of Himalaya namely Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri that is
why it is also called ‘Devbhumi’. The Holy River Ganga is also divided in to
four areas and has named Alaknanda, Mandakini, Bhagirathi and Saraswati. There
are around 200 huge lakes created by cloudburst and glacier. The peak time for
visiting these places is June to September. Months of June and July are the
school holidays for the children. So the boys above 10 years go to these holy
places to work in the hotels or help the parents who are engaged in taking the
pilgrims up to temple on the mule ride.
Another side L&T (Larsen &
Tourbro) and GVK (Gunapati Venkata Krishnareddy).
These two industries have implanted two major HYDEL PROJECTS. They have hollowed many mountains
and built the tunnels. This indicates decreasing strength of the mountains.
Apart from this the echo system in the environment is very strong due to which
with little sound the land slide occur.
This background may help us to
understand the real reasons of disaster.
BACKGROUND OF THE DISASTER
The ‘Man Made disaster’ now known as
“Himalayan Tsunami” hit the state of Uttrakhand on Sunday June 16,
2013.
The disaster was triggered by excessively heavy rainfall of more than 220mm in
the region that is home to head waters of the river Ganga and sudden fall of
glacier in one of the huge lake of Himalaya did not allow the people a second
thought but run to save life whoever can. These rains arrived nearly a month
early in the midst of an annual pilgrim rush for the four holy sites of
Kedarnath,Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. Mountains which were hollowed by
the hydro power project which caused much additional destruction of landslides.
Flash floods, cloudburst and landslides have claimed lives,
livestock and infrastructure and displaced thousands. The death toll in
Uttrakhand has reached about 10,000 and more missing. A total of 71,440
pilgrims bound for the Himalayan shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and
Yamunotri were stranded in Rudraprayag. In Uttrakhand, 8 out of 10 districts
are affected.
OUR RESPONSE
We the students of College of Social
Work (MSW II) jumped into the action and thereby planning and fund raising
began in full force in response to this disaster, the students wanted to carry
out some funds form of relief work in the affected areas. After successful
dialogue with Fr.Pius from Bijnor Diocese, our plan was finally put to action
and a batch of young students accompanying their faculty reached Kothdwar where
the teams were further divided across Uttarkashi, Ghat, Rudraprayag, Ghansali,
Mandavar and Pauri.
We were further instructed by the
Caritas and Catholic Relief Service (two catholic organisations). We got the
guidelines for the need assessment. We were divided into different groups
keeping in mind the severity of the destruction district wise.
Our team (Sr. Sunita and other
eleven students) was assigned to go to Rudraprayag, the worst affected area of
all the other regions. We stayed in a small hotel and went back and forth to different
villages fulfil our mission. The team could visit 18 villages. The modes of
travel were paralysed so all that we could do is walk and climb the mountains
taking high risk of landslides and aggressive flow of Mandakini River. Our
intervention was to do the need assessment. So we went house to house to find
out the worst affected people and collected the data about the human loss,
livestock and agriculture and took the measure of epidemics. Grief counselling
was also part of work. We also helped the medical team for the distribution of
the medicine.
We eye witnessed many landslides,
broken roads, paralysed education, transport and medical systems. We could see
only water where the villages existed, silt up to higher than 10 feet, aimless
children, frustrated and depressed people with full of fear. Cry of the people
made us to think as social workers how the systems could be made efficient to
cope up with this type of situations.
We returned to Kotdwar on 13th
July 2013. After a day of rest we put our effort together to compile the
reports from different districts. The whole team of 40 students visited 50
villages where government could not reach. The report was placed at the table
of chief minister of Uttarakhand on 16th July.
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