[It’s a question being
asked by many who have seen their homes and livelihoods disappear in the
floods. The focus of the rescue efforts, which are continuing, has been on the
thousands of tourists who have been stranded in different parts of the state.]
 |
Reuters
Indo-Tibetan
Border Police personnel searching for flood victims in a damaged house in
Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand on Wednesday.
|
NEW DELHI – Tens of thousands of pilgrims have been evacuated from the
higher reaches of Uttarakhand, but tens of thousands of residents of towns and
villages affected by the floods are facing the dire aftermath of homelessness
and unemployment. The population of the tourist towns in the flooded
districts of Uttarkashi, Tehri Garhwal, Rudraprayag and Chamoli is more than
20,000, according to the 2011 census, not taking into account the residents of
the many villages surrounding them.
A few years back, Hari
Singh Gusain, a 40-year-old lawyer, moved with his family to Joshiyara, a
village of 300 households that sits alongside the Bhagirathi River in the
Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand.
Joshiyara, which
adjoins the town of Uttarkashi, has benefited from the thriving tourism
industry centered on the Chardham Yatra, a pilgrimage to the sacred Hindu sites
of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.
Uttarkashi and
Joshiyara are on the route to the first two sites, 40 kilometers (about 25
miles) to Yamunotri and 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) to Gangotri.
Last week, Mr. Gusain
watched helplessly as floodwaters washed away his newly constructed home on the
banks of the Bhagirathi, a tributary of the Ganga River, taking with it not
just his hopes of living in his own home, but a lifetime’s worth of savings
that was poured into the three-story house.
“What do I do now;
where do I start?” Mr. Gusain lamented in a phone interview.
It’s a question being
asked by many who have seen their homes and livelihoods disappear in the
floods. The focus of the rescue efforts, which are continuing, has been on the
thousands of tourists who have been stranded in different parts of the state.
“This tragedy is not
limited to the tourists,” said Gopal Thapliyal, who is leading a rescue team
from Sri Bhuvneshwari Mahila Ashram, a nongovernmental organization that has
been working in the region for more than three decades. “There is a whole
tourism industry here, on which lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of local people
are dependent.”
Thousands of men from
villages like Joshiyara come to Uttarkashi and other tourist towns to work as
porters, drivers, guides, waiters and janitors.
“Their families are
still waiting for them to come back,” Mr. Thapliyal said.
For Mr. Gusain, the
move to Joshiyara had been a long-awaited fresh start, a homecoming planned
while he spent a decade working as a lawyer in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, after
Uttarakhand was granted statehood in 2000. Before they moved to Allahabad that
year, Mr. Gusain and his wife laid the foundation stone for a house in
Joshiyara with the intention of coming back one day to their home region.
Mr. Gusian had grown
up in the village of Kankradi, about two miles from Joshiyara, but he decided
to settle down in Joshiyara, which had prospered on account of growing tourism
on the Chardham route.
He has been the
village headman of Kankradi for the past four years, had moved his family to a
rental in Joshiyara a few years ago and was eagerly making plans to move into
the new home this year when the floods struck.
In addition to their
life savings of 2 million rupees ($33,000), the Gusains had borrowed 400,000
rupees to pay for the growing construction costs. Now they are forced to pay
back a loan for a house that no longer stands.
Though the rains this
year were much heavier than anyone had anticipated, Mr. Gusain blamed local and
central government officials for ignoring his increasingly frantic warnings of
a possible repeat of the flash floods that hit Joshiyara and Kankradi last
year. As the village headman, Mr. Gusain wrote to the district officials, the
state’s chief minister and even the prime minister, asking them to take
immediate measures to safeguard the settlements.
Luckily, there was no
loss of life in the Joshiyara last year, as was the case this year, but many
buildings suffered damage. People had to leave their homes, which were seen as
being in the danger zone, while they waited for the authorities to construct
retaining walls to safeguard their homes against floodwaters.
Those retaining walls,
which were under construction when the rain began to fall earlier this month,
have been washed away. The work had been progressing very slowly, Mr. Gusain
said. “Nobody responded to my pleas to hasten the process to build them after
what happened last year,” he said.
“They did not even
give us any advance warning about what was going to happen this time,” he
added.
While it was under
construction, Mr. Gusain’s house had survived the floods in 2012 but was not
spared this time. “I worked all my life to see this house built,” he said. “Now
I fear we will live as tenants all our lives and never have a home of our own.”
Amod Singh Panwar, 35,
was one of the luckier ones as he has savings that he said could help him start
over after he lost his two hotels, one in Joshiyara and one in nearby Netala
village.
When the floods hit on
June 16, more than 100 tourists had checked in at his hotels. Most of them had
gone up to Gangotri and Yamunotri and had been scheduled to return by nightfall
that same day. Mr. Panwar, 35, himself made the journey to Maneri village,
about 15 miles up the Uttarkashi-Gangotri road, to bring back a tour party on
Sunday, a week after they had left.
He said he was
grateful that all his guests returned safely, but he feared for the future of
his business and his 50 employees.
“I am devastated,” Mr.
Panwar said, “I have been running these hotels for 15 years now. But I am
worried the people who worked with me and many others in this village will have
no way to earn a living now.”
Tourism provides
employment, directly or indirectly, to a significant number of the people
residing in villages near the tourist spots in Uttarakhand.
“In most of the areas
affected by the floods, their entire economy is based on tourism,” said A.K.
Dwivedi, a joint director in the state tourism department. The contribution of
“trade, hotels and restaurants” was almost a quarter of the state’s total
G.D.P. in 2010, according to state government estimates, the largest share
among all the industries listed.
It is hard to put a
number to the people employed in tourism in flood-hit tourist areas, Mr.
Dwivedi said, as “people are employed both formally and informally in many
private enterprises.” But government statistics show how the tourism industry’s
reach has grown, with the number of tourists coming to Uttarakhand jumping from
about 10 million in 2001 to 30 million by 2010.
“The Himalayan economy
here has been completely destroyed,” said Anil Baluni, a spokesman for the
Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand and former vice chairperson of the state
forest and environment advisory committee. “This will likely affect the economy
here for years to come.”
Mr. Panwar sounded
equally despairing. “I don’t see the point in starting over, this tragedy has
affected people from all over India,” he said. “Now people will think a hundred
times before coming here.”
He has plans to
migrate from Joshiyara as a last resort, but for Mr. Gusain, that is not an
option.
“I cannot go anywhere
from here,” he said. “I work here. My children study here. My life is here.”
Vishnu Varma
contributed reporting.
