Conservationist Asad Rahmani alongside a wetland protection employee in Haigam wetland in north India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
NEW DELHI, Apr 16 2025 (IPS)

Late in February, India’s noted ornithologist and conservationist, Asad Rahmani, wrote a letter to a wildlife warden in north India expressing his satisfaction about the availability of water in four important wetlands in Kashmir, where migratory birds from central Asia and Europe arrive annually for wintering.

This letter was in sharp contrast to Rahmani’s earlier concerns about the “deteriorating health” of wetlands in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. Conservationists, activists, and newspaper editorials in India have long been expressing concerns about the “decline” and “neglect” of wetland ecosystems across India. A recent editorial in a prominent English newspaper in India emphasized the importance of action-oriented measures by the federal and state governments for protecting wetlands.

In its Living Planet Report 2024, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) flagged the disappearing wetlands in the south Indian metropolitan city of Chennai (in the chapter “Tipping Point”) as a warning sign of rapid ecosystem destruction, which is not only resulting in acute water shortages but is also making Chennai more vulnerable to floods.

Wildlife enthusiasts such as Rahmani look at wetlands from the perspective of wetlands as wildlife habitats, particularly for birds.  “I reiterate that if we guarantee sufficient and timely supply of water, Kashmir wetlands will again support lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of birds in each wetland. They also have great potential to attract tourists and birdwatchers,” Rahmani, who has also served as the Director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), wrote in the letter seen by IPS.

“Hokarsar [wetland] is important for both resident and migratory waterfowl. As many as 64 species in and around the wetland have been reported during bird ringing studies. The [wetland] is particularly important as a wintering area for migratory ducks and geese and as a breeding area for herons, egrets, and rails,” Rahmani noted.

In his earlier communications in the past few years, Rahmani has expressed serious concerns about the deteriorating health of wetlands and their shrinkage.

Vanishing wetlands in India

On the occasion of this year’s World Wetlands Day on February 2, India designated four new Ramsar sites in three different states, taking the tally of Ramsar sites wetlands to 89 in India.

However, despite adding more Ramsar sites almost every year and celebrating these conservation efforts, many wetlands across India are unraveling and disappearing at an alarming rate—the country has already lost nearly one-third of its wetlands to urbanization since 1940, according to the available data.

Quoting data from the written response of India’s environment ministry to a Right to Information (RTI) application, a report in one of India’s national newspapers on March 24 (this year) revealed that out of India’s estimated over 200,000 wetlands, only 102 have been notified and even these are concentrated in three states and one Union territory. When a wetland is notified by the government in India, it means the demarcation of the wetland’s boundary, its ecological importance, and the need for its conservation are officially recognized and are also made available for public knowledge.

Wetlands are the lifelines that provide freshwater, food, and building materials; regulate floods; recharge groundwater; and even help combat climate change through carbon sequestration, experts say, adding that expanding agriculture, pollution, and unchecked water extraction are pushing these fragile ecosystems—and the species that depend on them—toward crisis.

Rahmani told IPS that there are scores of laws and conservation policies introduced by the federal and state governments in India for the protection of wetlands across the country, but, he said, they “have failed” to ensure their protection.

“We have the Wetland Authority of India and state wetland authorities that have identified wetlands for conservation. But there is hardly anything significant these so-called authorities have done so far for wetland protection. Sometimes the officials of these authorities have no basic idea of the functioning of a healthy wetland,” Rahmani observed.

He said that the Government of India has started several good conservation schemes and projects, such as the Amrit Sarovar project, under which each district will protect 75 wetlands for which money was also given. “[But] this good scheme is mostly used to carry out unnecessary construction in wetlands, such as cemented works in the name of wetland management and tourism development,” he said.

Protecting wetlands

“No wetland should be ‘beautified.’ Nature is beautiful. Keeping local ecology and naturalness in mind, most wetlands can be revived very easily with little funds… no natural wetland lives in isolation… catchment area is extremely important for wetlands revival and conservation,” Rahmani said.

According to Rahmani, small wetlands, important for biodiversity and local people, “are neglected,” and larger wetlands (some of them man-made lakes and reservoirs) “are under threat of hedonistic” tourism.

Faiyaz Ahmad Khudsar, senior scientist, Biodiversity Parks Programme, University of Delhi, said that wetlands are unfortunately often seen as wastelands.

“If there are any specific places for dumping of solid or liquid waste, they are wetlands and streams… similarly, near cities you have wetlands getting encroached upon for construction of houses and other infrastructure,” Khudsar said.

He observed that there has to be a focus on restoration ecology if the degraded wetlands are to be protected. This, he said, can be done by supporting the degraded ecosystems to recover, which needs to be supported by communities, scientists, and the government together. “We have to understand how the restoration is carried out scientifically—looking at the ecological history of the site and reference ecosystems is very important to find out the reasons for degradation,” he said.

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Wind turbines overlooking Vyas Chhatri, traditional architecture of Jasalmer district in Rajasthan. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
NEW DELHI, Nov 4 2024 (IPS)

While India continues to rely heavily on coal, the south Asian economic giant is also aggressively pushing renewable energy production, especially after the costs of renewable energy production have fallen drastically in recent years around the world.

But experts say that India—the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs)—has to face many headwinds for achieving its net zero target by 2070 and before that, reaching the target of a 45 percent reduction in GHG emission intensity by 2030 from 2005 levels. 

According to the experts, addressing the gaps in policies and strategies are some of the main measures India needs to take for a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. But most of them believe phasing out fossil fuels such as coal appears to be a daunting task for India given its huge reliance on them. India ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2016, committing to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2°C by the end of the century.

As part of its first Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), India had pledged to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of its economy by 33–35 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. In August 2022, the Indian government revised its NDCs, raising its ambition to a 45% reduction in GHG emission intensity by 2030 from 2005 levels.

The south Asian country has also pledged to become carbon-neutral or achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070, an announcement made by the Indian government in 2021 during CoP 26 in UK. According to the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, Decarbonisation is the biggest transformation of the global economy of this century.

Coal to Stay ‘For India’s Development’  

Presently, the contribution of coal for India’s energy generation is 72 percent and accounts for 65 percent of its fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The contribution of coal for energy generation in India, say the experts, is not going to change anytime soon.

“Coal cannot be removed from India’s energy mix in the next 20 years. We require coal because we need a development-led transition, not a transition-led development,” said Amit Garg, a professor at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad-Gujarat.  “We can adopt new technologies and try new ways, but we in India cannot eradicate coal just yet.”

Anjan Kumar Sinha, an energy expert who is the technical director of Intertek, told IPS that energy security in India is currently dependent on coal and would take time for its phasing out given how the country is yet to be ready for a rapid phase-out of coal, which is currently extremely important for India’s energy security.

“In phasing it out, we have to improve flexible operations of coal-based plants for electricity dispatch, especially with increasing levels of renewable energy,” he said.

According to Sinha, coal being an important energy resource which India has, “we need to wash its sins” with a continuous increase in production of renewables.  India, Sinha said, “has to save itself… it can’t leave it to the rest of the world.”

India has been hailed for the progress the country has achieved in its clean energy transition in recent years. The Indian government aims to increase non-fossil fuel capacity to 500 GW and source 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030.

“[This] progress seems encouraging on several fronts. Today, India stands fourth globally in total renewable capacity, demonstrating a 400 percent growth over the last decade,” notes an article published by researchers of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business.

But, despite this progress, the authors say that India faces a lot of challenges as it still remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels.

India’s Growth and Green Journey

With India’s economy expected to expand rapidly in the coming years, there will be an increase in demand for resources, and the environmental footprints will also increase. According to the latest World Energy Outlook report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), India’s energy consumption will increase by 30 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050, with carbon emissions from energy use rising by 32 percent and 72 percent in the same period.

If successful in meeting its climate commitments over the next seven years, India could offer a developmental model wherein a country continues to grow and prosper without significantly increasing its energy or carbon footprint. But the path ahead for India’s energy transition is full of significant challenges.

“This is one of the most challenging times for India. We have the challenge of growth, jobs and energy consumption, which we have to balance with environmental considerations,” B V R Subrahmanyam, the CEO of NITI Ayog, India’s top official think tank, was quoted as saying by India’s national daily, The Times of India, on September 11, 2024.

But he has emphasized that fossil fuels will continue to drive the country’s growth. “It is no longer about growth or sustainability, but growth and sustainability,” he was quoted as saying.

Experts also believe that there are hurdles along the road as the country seeks to phase out polluting energy sources.

According to this article published in Outlook magazine on October 30, uncertainties such as low renewable energy (RE) investments in recent years, land availability, high intermittency of renewables, higher costs of panels due to import duties and distribution companies that are tied up in long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) not buying new RE power are some of the major concerns.

“While there has been progress on deployment of electric vehicles in the country, upfront costs and a lack of reliable charging infrastructure pose challenges in scaling up the initiatives… for the industrial sector, fossilized manufacturing capacities will create decarbonisation challenges,” the article says.

Raghav Pachouri, associate director, Low Carbon Pathways and Modelling, Vasudha Foundation, highlighted how storage can play an important role in making energy transition successful.

“The success of the energy transition to renewable energy lies with the integration of storage. Current capacities are limited, and the quantum of requirements is huge.”

Moreover, Pachouri says, infrastructure for electric vehicles remains inadequate, with fewer than 2,000 public charging stations as of 2023.

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Farmers checking the saffron flowers on their farm in Pampore, Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Feb 7 2024 (IPS)

Saffron, the expensive spice from the Kashmir Himalayas, has been facing challenges for years, mostly related to yields and inadequate irrigation compounded by the climate crisis.

While the government launched the 4.1 billion rupee National Saffron Mission (NMS) in 2010 to mitigate these challenges and rejuvenate saffron cultivation in Kashmir, its efficacy remains questionable, farmers say.

Saffron is one of Kashmir’s major industries, along with horticulture and agriculture, supporting some 17,000 families in the region. India contributes 5% of the world’s total production, of which 90% is supplied from the Kashmir Himalayan region.

The spice has been cultivated since 500 AD in the Kashmir valley and reached its peak in the 1990s at an annual average yield of around 15.5 tonnes from 5,700 hectares (14,085 acres), but both the land farmed for saffron and yields have declined since then.

According to a study, prolonged periods of drought have caused significant concerns among saffron farmers.

“Since the crop heavily relies on rainfall, insufficient precipitation has resulted in the region experiencing its lowest saffron productivity in the past three decades,” the study says.

“In addition to the challenges posed by drought, the region is also facing issues related to urbanization and increasing population growth,” the study further says. According to Kashmir’s agriculture department, saffron land has reduced from 5,700 hectares in the 1990s to 3,715 hectares in 2016 due to land-use conversions.

Saffron farmers, who grow the “king of spices” in fields sprawling across several thousand hectares, mainly in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, have been complaining for years that lack of rainfall at crucial times has led to a decline in saffron production.

One or two spells of rain in September and October are vital for the crop to flower, farmers say. But in most years since the late 1990s, it either hasn’t rained in those months or has rained too much, damaging the crop, says farmer Mohammad Reshi, adding that farmers still rely on the weather in the cropping season.

“The sprinkle irrigation system, which the government claims has been put in place, should have been functional by now. But it is not working. You can see for yourself what has happened to these pipes and the bore wells. They are not serving any purpose,” Reshi tells IPS while pointing at the defunct sprinkle irrigation system in a saffron field in Pampore, where saffron cultivation is concentrated in Kashmir.

Though, Reshi says, tube wells have been dug and pipes have been laid in saffron fields for years now, “we are yet to see the water in saffron fields.”

According to him, the project was supposed to be completed years ago, but it still lingers. Denying the allegations of saffron farmers, Ghulam Mohammad Dhobi, Joint Director of Kashmir’s agriculture department, who is also the Nodal Officer for NMS, says that the government is trying its best to help the farmers get good yields.

“The farmers have not to wait for long to see the positive results of the irrigation infrastructure, as we are expecting its completion soon after it will function properly,” Dhobi tells IPS.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which has given saffron cultivation in Kashmir a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) status, “saffron cultivation has been facing severe challenges of sustainability and livelihood security, with an urgent need to adopt appropriate technologies to address water scarcity, productivity loss, and market volatility.”

Scientific research has established that irrigation plays the most important role in saffron cultivation in Kashmir. Firdous Nahvi, a former agriculture scientist at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, says that saffron yields have traditionally depended on rainfall in the crucial months from August to October in Kashmir, and saffron yields have fallen in recent years because of the irrigation problem.

According to Nahvi, until 1999-2000, Kashmir received well-distributed precipitation of 1,000 to 1,200 mm per year in the form of rain and snow, but that has now decreased to 600 to 800 mm.

“In any part of the world, farming is unthinkable without water,” Nahvi says and adds: “Creating irrigation facilities was the critical part of the project because we have observed in recent years that it doesn’t rain when the crop needs the moisture.” Nahvi was the expert who advised the NMS implementers about the need for installing the sprinkle irrigation system for saffron cultivation in Kashmir.

Solutions in Farming Methods

Bashir Allie, an agricultural scientist who heads Kashmir’s Saffron Research Station, says that he has also advised the agriculture and irrigation departments of the Kashmir government that creating drip irrigation facilities is crucial for improving saffron yields.

“But we are also working with farmers through our field awareness program to enhance saffron yield,” Allie tells IPS, adding that he and his team are telling the farmers to plant the optimum number of corms in the saffron fields rather than planting them haphazardly.

For example, Allie says, the farmers mostly plant up to 300,000 corms per hectare, “whereas we advise them to go for 500,000 to one million corms per hectare (or 50 corms per square meter).” This, he says, will help the farmers increase their yields, provided they uproot the old corms every four years and plant new corms.

“What we have also observed is that the farmers keep the corms in the fields for up to 20 years and leave them unattended,” he tells IPS, adding that this affects the yield as the older corms keep producing new corms, which increases the competition for nutrients within the population and the entire population underperforms (in producing flowers), thus affecting the yield.

“So, the solution we are offering to the farmers is to plant the optimum number of corms (50 corms per square meter) and replace the corms after every four years,” Allie informs.

To mitigate the impact of drought conditions on saffron crops, Allie says that he and his team have advised the farmers to start growing almond trees in saffron fields at a distance of four to five meters so that they provide shade and help the farmers retain moisture in their saffron fields.

“Once the almond trees produce branches, they will provide shade to saffron fields, as saffron is a shade-loving plant. Also, the moisture in the soil will be retained,” Allie says, adding that the almond trees, besides providing shade, will also produce almonds, thereby helping the farmers increase their income.

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Nordan Otzer during a cancer awareness event in a village in Ladakh, India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
LADAKH, INDIA, Nov 29 2023 (IPS)

While working as a doctor in the initial months of his medical career in southern India, a telephone call from his home in the Ladakh Himalayas convinced Nordan Otzer to involve himself with cervical cancer awareness.

“While I was working in a hospital in rural Tamil Nadu (in 2007), one day I received a distressing call from my family informing me that my mother’s health had deteriorated and she urgently needed my presence back home,” says Otzer, an ENT surgeon who is now in his mid-40s and works as a medical practitioner and social worker in Ladakh, a cold desert in the Himalayan Plateau in India.

“When I saw my mother lying on the bed, she was hardly recognizable. It was only at that point that she disclosed to me that she had been experiencing persistent spotting and occasional abdominal pain that had worsened over time,” Otzer tells IPS.  “Unfortunately, she only sought medical assistance when her pain (because of cervical cancer) became intolerable.”

According to the WHO, a large majority of cervical cancers (more than 95%) are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract.

“Although most HPV infections clear up on their own and most pre-cancerous lesions resolve spontaneously, there is a risk for all women that HPV infection may become chronic and pre-cancerous lesions progress to invasive cervical cancer,” reads a segment of a fact sheet about cervical cancer on the WHO website.

“When screening detects an HPV infection or pre-cancerous lesions, these can easily be treated, and cancer can be avoided. Screening can also detect cancer at an early stage where treatment has a high potential for cure,” the WHO fact sheet says and urges the countries that screening (of women for HPV infection) “should start from 30 years of age in the general population of women, with regular screening with a validated HPV test every 5 to 10 years, and from 25 years of age for women living with HIV.”

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women globally, with 90 percent of an estimated 604,000 new cases and deaths worldwide in 2020 occurring in low- and middle-income countries, according to the WHO.

Otzer says his mother was flown to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi for treatment, but her condition deteriorated, and she succumbed to the disease within days.

“Throughout the journey from my home to Delhi, she held my hand, perhaps also hoping that her doctor son would save her life. But unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything except watch helplessly while she slowly faded away,” Otzer recalls ruefully.

As someone who has studied medical sciences, says Otzer, “I knew my mother’s life could have been saved if she was aware of cervical cancer and its preventable measures.”

“My mother’s death due to cancer altered the course of my career, leading me to make the choice to remain and contribute to my own community.” Since those days, Otzer says that he started making efforts to launch an awareness campaign about cervical cancer and screening of women for HPV infection in Ladakh, a remote mountainous region more than 14,000 feet above sea level in the Tibetan Plateau, which remains cut off from the rest of the world in winters.

Since 2009, Otzer, with the help of his local supporter, Stanzin Dawa, and visiting doctors from Singapore led by Swee Chong Quek, has organized over 140 awareness and screening events for women across Ladakh, where villages are spread out across the terrain and not easily reachable.

“We have conducted screenings for 12,400 women thus far, among whom one out of every 10 women has precancerous lesions. This implies that without timely treatment, these lesions could progress into full-blown cancer,” Otzer says.

Besides the logistical challenges, such as travelling long distances and traversing tough terrain, other challenges, according to Otzer, included women being too shy and reticent.

“Women in Ladakh tend to be reticent about discussing women’s health matters openly, not even with their own family members. Therefore, when I initially launched a cervical cancer screening program, there was a noticeable reluctance among them to undergo checkups,” he says, adding that initially, women would avoid making eye contact and refrain from asking any questions.

“However, with the passage of time, they gradually became more receptive and started attending our screening camps for examinations.”

Cervical Cancer Awareness and India

In India, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, and India contributes the largest proportion of the global cervical cancer burden. In December last year, the federal government in India urged the state governments to create awareness and take steps to prevent cervical cancer.

According to an article published by Lancet in March 2023, the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare plans to vaccinate 68 million girls across India against human papillomavirus (HPV) by the end of 2025, which will be followed by vaccination of a further 11,2 million girls aged 9 years and older each year.

Cervical cancer accounted for 9.4 percent of all cancers and 18.3 percent (123,907) of new cases in 2020 in India, says this December 2021 Springer study, adding that cervical cancer is still among the most common cancers in India and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in low- and middle-income countries.

According to the Springer study, cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths for females in 12 Indian states. “The situation is more alarming in rural areas where the majority of women are illiterate and ignorant about the hazards of cervical cancer and healthcare resources are scarce.

Research has established that awareness and the availability of medical infrastructure play a significant role in preventing cervical cancer. Results of a study published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention have confirmed that stages (of cervical cancer) “are strongly correlated with survival outcome, and early stages of the disease are associated with an exceptionally favourable prognosis provided they are adequately treated, whereas survival for stage III and IV cancers was dismally low.”

A study published by Lancet in October 2023 found heterogeneity in cervical cancer survival across India, with higher survival rates in urban areas where healthcare facilities are much better than predominantly rural and mountainous north and northeastern regions.

“The disparity in survival between the populations could explain the overall effectiveness of the health care system. This informs policymakers to identify and address inequities in the health care system,” the study says, emphasizing the “importance of promoting awareness, early detection, and improving the health care system.”

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Women walk in a village in Indian-administered Kashmir. Women here often find themselves lured by the promise of a job into unsuitable marriages. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
BUDGAM, INDIA, Sep 13 2023 (IPS)

It has been over a decade since 32-year-old Rafiqa (not her real name) was sold to a villager after being lured by the promise that she would be employed in the handicrafts industry of Indian-administered Kashmir.

But, instead of getting a job, she was sold to a Kashmiri man in central Kashmir’s Budgam district for a paltry sum of 50,000 Indian rupees (USD 605). Before the traffickers lured her, Rafiqa lived with her parents and three siblings in a poor Muslim family in West Bengal, a state in eastern India.

Ranging from Rohingya refugees – there are an estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees in India – to women in other states of the country, such as West Bengal and Assam, women are trafficked and sold as brides to men who find it hard to find brides within their communities. Such grooms often include aged, physically challenged, and men with mental health issues.

Rafiqa’s husband, who drives a horse-cart for a living and lives in a one-room wooden shed, had to sell the only cow he possessed to pay the sum to the human traffickers.

She has now come to terms with “what I was destined to face in my life.” Embracing the reality, she says, was the only option left with her.

“I could have either tried to escape or taken some extreme step, but I decided to apply myself positively to make some kind of life out of what I ended up with,” Rafiqa told IPS while sitting at the base of the small wooden staircase of her house. “My husband’s simplicity and kind nature were also helpful in taking this decision – even though I didn’t like his appearance.”

“Now I have three kids for whom I have to live,” Rafiqa said. “I miss my parents and siblings. But it is very difficult to visit them. Even if I convince my husband, we can’t afford to visit them as it takes a lot of money to pay for the travel,” she added, saying her husband hardly provides two square meals for the family.

Rafiqa is not the only trafficked woman in that village. Over a dozen women have ended up getting married in similar circumstances. Elsewhere in the region, hundreds of other women from the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam are married to divorced and physically challenged men.

When 23-year-old Zarina (name changed), a woman from a poor family in West Bengal, got ensnared in a human trafficker’s trap, she had no idea that she would end up marrying a man whom she had never seen and was almost double her age. Zarina also fell for the false promise that a job in a carpet manufacturing unit in north Kashmir’s Patan area would be arranged for her. But, to her shock, she was sold into marriage.

“Now, how will my situation change after talking to you if it has not changed in the last five years? This is where I must be all my life,” an annoyed Zarina told IPS and then refused to elaborate.

Some women who encounter human traffickers are far unluckier. In a village of southern Kashmir’s Anantnag district, a young Rohingya woman was sold to a family by traffickers for their son with mental health issues after she was trafficked from a Rohingya refugee makeshift camp in the adjacent Jammu province.

“We were surprised when we discovered that the family has got a bride for their son who we knew was not mentally sound since his childhood,” said a neighbour of the family. “We would hear her screaming when her husband used to beat her almost every day. But fortunately for her, the young Rohingya woman was somehow able to escape after a few months.”

There are not any accurate official figures about sold brides, but some estimates say that thousands of girls and women are sold annually. The media sometimes reports the arrest of human traffickers, but such reports are not that common.

On July 26, India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra, told the Indian parliament that 1,061,648 women above 18 years and 251,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across different states in the country.

Mishra, however, said that most of the victims have been found and added that the Indian government has taken several initiatives for the safety of women.

Last year in April, India’s National Commission for Women launched an Anti-Human Trafficking Cell “to improve effectiveness in tackling cases of human trafficking, raising awareness among women and girls, capacity building and training of Anti Trafficking Units, and to increase the responsiveness of law enforcement agencies.”

In its 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the US Department of State identifies India as a Tier 2 country.

“The Government of India does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore, India remained on Tier 2,” the report says.

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Both the Wular Lake and Dal Lake (pictured here) are crucial for the Kashmir region's flood management and livelihood generation, however, both are reducing in size with implications for water security. CREDIT: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, INDIA, Aug 24 2023 (IPS)

Sadiq Dar, 68, is surprised how the heavy siltation of Wular Lake has turned many of its areas into land masses. “When we were growing up, we would only see water in this lake. Now, we see cattle grazing in it while a large portion is also being used by children for playing cricket,” he tells IPS.

Overlooked by magnificent mountains, Wular Lake is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia and the largest flood basin of Kashmir in Bandipora district, some 34 km north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Administered Kashmir.

An international Ramsar site under the Ramsar convention, this beautiful lake has served the people of Kashmir for centuries earning praises from all, including its poets.

“How long will they remain hidden from the world … the unique gems that Wular Lake holds in its depth,” 20^th century Urdu poet Sir Muhammed Iqbal once wrote about Wular Lake’s depth and water expanse.

Almost a century after Iqbal’s inquisitiveness, the depths of Wular have become heavily silted, its size reduced, and its pristine waters suffer from heavy pollution. This large Himalayan water body and Dal Lake in Srinagar play a key role in flood management, water security and livelihood generation in the region.

But a NASA report recently revealed that both these lakes — Dal Lake and Wular Lake — have witnessed a large reduction in size due to land conversions, urbanization, and deforestation in recent decades. This not only poses a threat of repeated flooding in Kashmir but will negatively influence livelihood generation and the availability of water for the communities.

“The conversion of forests to paved urban areas is a major driver of the change in water quality. Land conversion has delivered heavy sediment and nutrient loads into the lake, and untreated sewage from urban areas has also contributed,” says the NASA report.

“Some of the bright green areas on the eastern side of Wular Lake used to be open water. Nutrient-rich sediment and aquatic vegetation have filled in parts of the lake and contributed to its shrinking in recent decades,” the report further says and adds: “In a 2022 study, researchers in India—using data from the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) LISS-IV instrument—found that Wular Lake’s open water area had shrunk in size by about one-quarter between 2008 and 2019.”

In a detailed study of the lake, Wetlands International, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit that works to sustain and restore wetlands globally, had also revealed earlier that there was a 45 percent reduction in the lake area mainly because parts of the lake were converted for agriculture and willow tree plantations.

Wular Lake is crucial for saving Kashmir from floods. In recent years, the region has witnessed repeated flood-like situations following the devastating 2014 flooding. The recent IPPCC reports have predicted that there will be an increase in floods and other extreme weather events across South Asia in the coming years as the climate crisis deepens.

The Dal Lake, says the NASA report, has suffered a similar fate in response to land cover change. Researchers in Srinagar found that land conversion to urban development in the basin had worsened the lake’s water quality and contributed to its reduced size, the report says. They found that between 1980 and 2018, the lake shrunk in area by 25 percent, it added.

The marshy and water body area of Dal Lake, a major tourist attraction in Srinagar, has shrunk from 2,547 hectares in 1971 to 1,620 hectares in 2008, another study titled Impact of Urban Land Transformation on Water Bodies found earlier.

How to Stop the Lakes from Shrinking?  

Wular Lake and Dal Lake are crucial for the region’s flood management and livelihood generation. Besides acting as a flood absorption basin for Kashmir during high flows in the region’s major river, Jhelum, Wular, and Dal Lake provide livelihood support to over 100,000 families dependent on tourism and fishing, said Samiullah Bhat, senior Assistant Professor at Kashmir University’s Environment and Science department.

To stop further shrinkage of Wular and Dal Lakes, Bhat said that soil erosion in the catchment area of these water bodies, which is resulting in these lakes becoming silted up, must be stopped. “It is because of the massive soil erosion that parts of water bodies are turning into landmasses,” Bhat told IPS.

Regarding encroachments in these lakes, Bhat said that geofencing is one way to mark the boundaries of these lakes, followed by close monitoring. “It has been done recently in the case of Wular Lake, and the same can be done for Dal Lake as well,” Bhat said.

“It is a matter of proper governance, management and effective enforcement of laws for the protection of environmental assets,” he further said, adding that land ownership records and revenue records are also not that transparent, which also need to be addressed for protecting these lakes from further damage.

According to a study, Dal Lake represents a case of a threatened ecosystem in dire need of management, with land use changes, erosion, enhanced nutrient enrichment and rising human population in its catchment as the major threats to its existence.

“Regulation of a proper land use plan in the Dal Lake catchment is vital for preventing the further nutrient enrichment and sedimentation of the lake waters,” the study says.

Aijaz Rasool, an engineer who has worked on these water bodies previously, said that all the areas of Dal Lake and Wular Lake need to be prioritised for complete conservation work. “For years, I have observed that only those areas of the lakes get attention which are visited by tourists, the other sides get least or no attention and keep deteriorating and encroaching. For example, the north-western parts of Dal Lake and Wular,” Rasool said and added that once all the areas of these lakes receive equal conservational treatment, conserving them will get easier.

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Riverbed mining in Arin, which flows into the Jhelum river via Wular Lake in Kashmir. Courtesy: ThirdPole.net/Athar Parvaiz

By Athar Parvaiz
Aug 3 2020 (IPS)

Going against its own orders, the government in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has ordered the fast-tracking of environmental clearances despite manifest evidence of illegal sand mining.

A few months after the Jammu and Kashmir government auctioned hundreds of stretches of riverbeds for mineral extraction, companies that won the bids are mining the riverbeds despite the lack of environmental clearance. This makes the mining illegal. But instead of stopping that, on July 30 the government ordered “fast-tracking of environmental clearance”.

What is happening in Jammu and Kashmir is part of widespread illegal riverbed mining all over South Asia, which flourishes despite reports by officials, independent experts and the media. Three journalists reporting illegal riverbed mining have been killed over the past five years in India; many others have been injured and threatened.

The mining is mostly for sand and rocks used to build houses, roads and so on.

In June, the government’s own Jammu and Kashmir Expert Appraisal Committee (JKEAC) pointed out that illegal riverbed mining was going on. Taking note of it, the Jammu and Kashmir Environment Impact Assessment Authority (JKEIAA) – again the government’s own – sought immediate steps to stop illegal mining.

Instead, within a week, the government ordered that environmental clearances be sped up.

JKEAC is an eight-member group of experts set up by the central government in consultation with the regional government. It assists the three-member JKEIAA set up directly by the central government. Both were set up in August last year.

Plans rejected, data absent

Since the auctions, JKEAC has either rejected environmental clearance for 80 riverbed mining plans (and 40 brick kilns) or asked for more information. “This, despite a lot of pressure from top government officials to grant environmental clearances to such projects. They are telling us these approvals are needed promptly as there is dearth of construction material such as sand and gravel for infrastructure,” a member of JKEAC told this correspondent, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“But we are trying our best not to clear mining projects in haste. There can be a huge environmental catastrophe if we fail to do our duty,” he said. “In a recent meeting, we informed the government that it should either let us work as we are supposed to work by taking the required time for reviewing these proposals or not ask us to review them at all.”

In a meeting held over video on July 23, JKEIAA said, “JKEAC has also expressed concern on the non-availability of any authentic replenishment data, sketchy district survey reports as well as various other issues. Accordingly, JKEIAA accepts following recommendations of JKEAC: 1. Issuance of strict advisories to the Director, Geology & Mining, J&K to check illegal mining without valid EC [environmental clearance] at appropriate level. 2. The Director, Geology & Mining, J&K to conduct replenishment studies of all basins across UT [union territory] proposed for extraction of minor minerals. 3. The Director, Geology & Mining, J&K should complete comprehensive EIA [environmental impact assessment] studies on catchment basis at the earliest.”

Government goes against its own

Instead, on July 30, the Jammu and Kashmir government issued an order for “fast-tracking of environmental clearance process” for mining operations. It cited “Acute and unprecedented shortage of key material for development works and challenging COVID-19 pandemic” as the reasons for its order.

Local residents had expressed concern before the July 30 order was issued. “This is an environmental catastrophe in the making,” said Ashiq, who lives close to the Farozpora river, in the Tangmarg area of Baramulla district in north Kashmir. “In our area, they are operating without any environmental clearances just because they have emerged successful during the bidding process.”

The rule says if a company wants to mine more than five hectares in a riverbed, the authorities are supposed to hold public hearings before clearing the plan. Over 70% of the blocks auctioned are over five hectares, but hardly any public hearings have taken place. Delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, JKEAC is still processing the applications. But the mining is going on; in fact it has accelerated in the lockdown caused by the pandemic, because few officials are on the ground to check.

Permits to mine sand, boulders and gravel from the beds of the Jhelum river and its tributaries have been auctioned for five years by Jammu and Kashmir’s geology and mining department. This year, bids were invited from outside Jammu and Kashmir as well, following New Delhi’s decision to scrap the semi-autonomous status of the region on August 5, 2019. Among other things, it means people from outside Jammu and Kashmir are now eligible to buy land and property and do business based on the region’s resources. Most of the mineral blocks auctioned this year have been bought by companies based outside Jammu and Kashmir.

“We had advised the government during a meeting in December last year that no mining should be allowed in Jhelum and other rivers till there is a basin-wise scientific mining plan as to which areas should be declared feasible for mining and which areas should be declared as river sanctuaries. It should not be done in a hotchpotch manner,” the JKEAC member said. “Any mining has to be done in a way that it doesn’t cause problems in flood management or functionality of water bodies.”

In recent years, Kashmir has faced many floods, notably the devastating floods in 2014 which killed hundreds of people.

Illegal mining in South Asia

In South Asia, especially in India, there are reports galore about illegal mining in riverbeds and some reports about killing of law enforcement officers, journalists and environmental activists.

A petition filed in India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT) said that due to the lockdown forced by Covid-19, illegal sand mining was going on even in officially protected areas in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. On June 30, the NGT set up a panel to prepare a report on it.

Kiran Pereira, founder of the London-based website Sand Stories, has been working on sand mining since 2010. She said illegal sand mining in South Asia is particularly serious because of the nexus between builders, politicians and the “sand mafia”.

Adding that there are lots of claims from governments that enough is being done in terms of legislation, Pereira added, “Legislation is of no use unless it is implemented. Monitoring and enforcement need to be strengthened.”

The United Nations Environment Programme, Pereira said, has called this problem “one of the major sustainability challenges of the 21st century”. Sand is a non-renewable resource and fundamental to create concrete and glass, both of which are used in great quantities wherever construction is high on the agenda.

Activists have been trying to stop the practice. GD Agarwal, the doyen of India’s river experts, died in 2019 after a 111-day hunger strike – one of his demands was to put a stop to illegal riverbed mining.

In 2017, the Uttarakhand High Court declared Ganga and Yamuna “juristic/legal persons/living entities having the status of a legal person” and banned mining in their beds. The government went to the Supreme Court against the order. The Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s order, deeming it unimplementable.

A UN report in 2019 said, “Sand extraction operations in emerging and developing economies are not in line with extractives and environmental management regulations. Resulting social and environmental impacts have been reported in India, China, and other locations across Asia, Africa and South America.”

The impact

Sand mining is linked to many changes in ecological structure, processes and biodiversity of freshwater systems, including habitat loss and degradation, reduction and changes to the diversity and abundance of macro invertebrate and fish populations, increased viability of invasive species, changes to food web dynamics, reductions in water quality and groundwater levels, and alterations to riparian processes.

According to research published by the Centre of Mining Environment, at the Indian Institute of Technology in Dhanbad, the large-scale extraction of streambed materials, mining and dredging below the existing streambed, and the alteration of channel-bed form and shape lead to several impacts such as the erosion of channel bed and banks, increase in channel slope, and change in channel morphology.

The solution

The 2019 UN report said, “Large-scale multipronged actions are urgently needed to implement technical and institutional innovations designed at the scale of regional infrastructure projects, large river basins and their downstream connections to deltas and coasts and global construction materials markets.” This, it said, “will need to involve a wide range of players – public, private and civil society organisations – from local to global levels.”

The report emphasised identifying sand sources that may be harvested at a sustainable level and according to guidelines, and with the support of agreed standards, best practices and decision-support tools, that are developed with inputs from all stakeholders.

This story was originally published on thirdpole.net and can be found here.

Women and children are the primary victims of indoor air pollution in poor, rural areas of India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
DARJEELING, India, Feb 17 2017 (IPS)

Mountain communities in the Himalayan region are almost entirely dependent on forests for firewood even though this practice has been identified as one of the most significant causes of forest decline and a major source of indoor air pollution.

Improper burning of fuels such as firewood in confined spaces releases a range of dangerous  air pollutants, whereas collection of firewood and cooking on traditional stoves consumes a lot of time, especially for women.

The WHO estimates that around 4.3 million people die globally each year from diseases attributable to indoor air pollution. Women and children are said to be at far greater risk of suffering the impacts of indoor pollution since they spend longer hours at home.

Data from the Government of India’s 2011 Census shows that 142 million rural households in the country depend entirely on fuels such as firewood and cow dung for cooking.

Despite heavy subsidies by successive federal governments in New Delhi since 1985 to make cleaner fuels like LPG available to the poor, millions of households still struggle to make the necessary payments for cleaner energy, which compels them to opt for traditional and more harmful substances.

This has prompted environmental organisations like Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) to help mountain communities minimise the health and environmental risks involved in using firewood for cooking in confined places.

IPS spoke with the Regional Director of ATREE for northeast India, Sarala Khaling, who oversees the Improved Cooking Stoves (ICS) project being run by the organisation in Darjeeling, Himalayas. Excerpts from the interview follow.

The Improved Cooking Stove (ICS) keeps this kitchen in India’s Himalaya region smoke-free. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

IPS: What prompted you to start the ICS programme in the Darjeeling Himalayan region?    

Sarala Khaling: In many remote forest regions of Darjeeling we conducted a survey and found out that people rely on firewood because it is the only cheap source in comparison to LPG, kerosene and electricity. Our survey result found that around Singhalila National Park and Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary, the mean fuel wood consumption was found to be 23.56 kgs per household per day.

Therefore, we thought of providing technological support to these people for minimizing forest degradation and indoor pollution which is hazardous to human health and contributes to global warming as well. That is how we started replacing the traditional cooking stoves with the improved cooking stoves, which consume far less fuel wood besides reducing the pollution.

IPS: How many ICS have you installed so far?  

SK: Till now ATREE has installed 668 units of ICS in different villages of Darjeeling. After the installation of ICS, we conducted another survey and the results showed reduction of fuel wood consumption by 40 to 50 per cent and also saved 10 to 15 minutes of time while cooking apart from keeping the kitchens free of smoke and air pollution.

We have trained more than 200 community members and have selected “ICS Promoters” from these so that we can set up a micro-enterprise on this. There are eight models of ICS for different target groups such as those cooking for family, cooking for livestock and commercial models that cater to hostels, hotels and schools.

IPS: When did the project begin? 

SK: We have been working on efficient energy since 2012. This technology was adopted from the adjacent area of Nepal, from the Ilam district. All the models we have adopted are from the Nepalese organization Namsaling Community Development Centre, Ilam. This is because of the cultural as well as climatic similarities of the region. Kitchen and adoption of the type of “chulah” or stove has a lot to do with culture. And unless the models are made appropriate to the local culture, communities will not accept such technologies.

IPS: Who are the beneficiaries?

SK: Beneficiaries are local communities from 30 villages we work in as these people are entirely dependent on the fuel wood and live in the forest fringes.

IPS: What are the health benefits of using ICS? For example, what can be the health benefits for women and children? 

SK: Women spend the most time in the kitchen, which means young children who are dependent on the mothers also spend a large part of their time in the kitchen. The smokeless environment in the kitchen definitely must be having a positive effect on health, especially respiratory conditions. Also the kitchen is cleaner and so are the utensils. And then using less fuel wood means women spend lesser time collecting them thus saving themselves the drudgery.

IPS: What is the feedback from the beneficiaries? 

SK: The feedback has been positive from people who have adopted this technology. They say that ICS takes less fuel wood and it gives them a lot of comfort to cook in a smoke free environment. Women told us that their kitchens are looking cleaner as so also the utensils.

IPS: How much it costs to have a clean stove? And can a household get it on its own? 

SK:  It costs around INR 2500 (37 dollars) to make a stove. ATREE supports only the labour charges for making a unit. Of course we support all the training, mobilising, monitoring and outreach and extension. Yes, there are many houses outside of our project sites who have also adopted this technology. The material used for making the clean stove is made locally like bricks, cow dung, salt, molasses and some pieces of iron.

IPS: Since you say that you are training local people to make these stoves, do you have any target how many households you want to cover in a certain time-period? 

SK:  We are looking to provide 1200 units to as many households. But, depending on the uptake, we will scale up. Our main objective is to make this sustainable and not something that is handed out as free. Our model is to select community members and train them.

We want these trained community members become resource persons and organise themselves into a micro-enterprise of ICS promoters. We want these people to sell their skills to more and more villages because we believe people will pay to make and adopt this technology. We are noticing that this has already started happening.

IPS: Have you provided this technology to any hostels, hotels etc?

SK: Yes, government schools who have the midday meal systems have also adopted this. There are about half a dozen schools which are using ICS and we are mobilizing more to adopt this technology.

Excerpt:

Women are always hit hardest by water scarcity as they have to travel longer distances to fetch water, which increases their workload and compromises their ability to perform other essential and livelihood functions. Credit: Pem Norbhu

By Athar Parvaiz
GANGTOK, India, Feb 1 2017 (IPS)

Bina Sharma, a member of the Melli Dhara Gram Panchayat Unit in the southern part of India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, is a relieved woman.

For the past three years, Sharma said, she has received hardly any complaints from villagers about water disputes.Before the village’s water crisis subsided, students of the local Nelligumpa Secondary School had to regularly take two litres of water from their homes to the school.

“Until a few years back, our springs were staying almost dry for five months from December to April. During those months I often used to get complaints from the villagers against their fellow villagers as they would fight for water,” Sharma told IPS.

People in most parts of the mountainous Sikkim, and those in other mountainous areas across the region, use spring water for their personal consumption, kitchen gardens, farms, cattle and poultry. According to Sikkim First, an economic and political journal, about 80 per cent of Sikkim’s rural households depend on springs for drinking water and irrigation.

From experts in Gangtok to laymen in the far-off villages, everyone agrees that erratic rains and frequent droughts have resulted in the drying up of springs in many parts of the state, especially in south. Some say that the problem became worse after the 2011 earthquake in Sikkim.

Many studies, including the IPCC’s 5^th Assessment Report, have reported changes in precipitation and temperature in the Himalayan region in recent years, but the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) says there is a major need for more research on Himalayan precipitation processes, as most studies have excluded the Himalayan region due to the region’s extreme, complex topography and lack of adequate rain-gauge data.

Adapting to changes, the Sikkim way

Thankfully, Sharma said, the water security scheme of Sikkim’s rural development department for recharging the springs “seems to be working in our village” since it was started in 2012. “We get water all year round now,” she said.

According to the people and the government officials in Sikkim, hundreds of springs and the lakes in Sikkim have been drying up, especially from November to May in recent years. This has compelled the government to think of a scheme to revive the drying springs and lakes by artificially recharging the springs.

The brain behind devising this innovative scheme is Sandeep Thambe, an Indian Forest Service officer with a mechanical engineering background who has also carried out extensive research on water and environmental issues in Sikkim and is currently a professor at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIMF), Bhopal.

Hari Maya Pradhan, a woman who lives alone in her home in Melli Dhara, said that she had decided to give up rearing poultry and cattle as a livelihood option because she had to endure so many hardships to access water. “But now I feel a lot better after the villagers worked hard and dug up the ponds [which help in recharging the springs],” Pradhan, who has two cows and a small poultry unit, told IPS.

Before the village’s water crisis subsided, students of the local Nelligumpa Secondary School had to regularly take two litres of water from their homes to the school.

“Many times we protested and were preparing to take all our students to Gangtok to stage a protest demonstration. But our woes got automatically addressed when our springs started producing water in the dry season as well,” said Norbhu Tshering, the school in-charge.

Connected to nature    

In almost all parts of Sikkim, people directly connect plastic pipes to the small springs spread above their habitations to avail the natural water supply. But in the south and western parts of Sikkim, getting water from the springs all through the season has become impossible for more than a decade.

In 2009, this prompted Tambe, who then served in the Sikkim government’s Rural Development Department, to start the Dhara Vikas (or Spring Development) programme for reviving and maintaining the drying springs and lakes particularly in southern and western parts of the state.

The scheme was later launched under the centrally sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), with technical support from other government agencies and organisations like WWF (India) and People’s Science Institute Dehradun.

According to Tambe, the core thrust of Dhara Vikas is to catch the surface runoff water and use it to recharge groundwater sources after identifying the specific recharge areas of springs accurately through scientific methods by digging staggered contour trenches and percolation pits.

“With increasing population, degrading health of watersheds and impacts of climate change, the lean period discharge of these springs is rapidly declining,” Tambe said, adding that artificial recharging has thankfully shown encouraging results.

He said that less than 15 per cent of the rainwater, as has been estimated in various studies, is able to percolate down to recharge the springs, while the remaining flows down as runoff often causing floods.

“Hence, a need was felt to enhance the contribution of that rainwater in ground water recharge, thereby contributing to rural water security,” Tambe told IPS.

Women, Tambe said, are always hit hardest by water scarcity as they have to travel longer distances to fetch water, which increases their workload and compromises their ability to perform other essential and livelihood functions. Reduced access to water, he said, also impacts health, hygiene, and sanitation.

Sarika Pradhan of Sikkim’s Rural Development Department said that 51 springs and four lakes in 20 drought-prone Gram Panchayats of Sikkim have been revived so far as the rural development department has mapped 704 springs in the village spring atlas, which provides information about all the mapped springs.

Her colleague, Subash Dhakal, said that trenches and percolation pits have been dug over an area of 637 hectares under MGNREGA for reviving these springs and lakes with an average cost of 250,000 rupees (USD 3,787) per spring.

*Research for this story was supported by a grant through The Forum of Environmental Journalists in India (FEJI) in collaboration with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) Media Fellowships in Environmental Conservation, 2016.

Plastic bags and bottles comprise a major part of the rubbish that clogs this delicate mountain ecosystem when scores of Hindu devotees flock to the Amarnath cave in Kashmir to worship a representation of the god Shiva. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
PAHALGAM, India, Aug 17 2015 (IPS)

As he struggled to find a section of the stream clean enough to rinse off his muddy shoes, Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the holy Amarnath shrine in Indian-administered Kashmir, gazed with despair over the filth that lay thick on the landscape.

“I fail to understand how our journey of faith can reconcile with all this filth." -- Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the holy Amarnath shrine in Kashmir
What should have been a well-maintained track leading to one of the world’s most visited religious sites was instead clogged with human excrement and plastic waste, much of it contaminating the stream that runs alongside the path.

Standing at over 3,800 metres above sea level, the 40-metre-high Amarnath cave houses a stalagmite that is believed to be a representation of the god Shiva. For two months each year, between July and August, over half-a-million devotees make the perilous five-day trek, known as the Amarnath Yatra, to pay homage to one of the supreme deities of the Hindu pantheon.

But in their rush to reach sacred ground the devotees leave behind a sorry sight: piles of trash that blot the scenic views of the foothills and valleys of Jammu and Kashmir, a mountainous Himalayan state of exceptional natural beauty.

“I fail to understand how our journey of faith can reconcile with all this filth along the track,” Kumar told IPS. “I have come for a spiritual journey, but what I see along the way disgusts me. If this vandalism continues for another few years, it will mean an end to the pilgrimage.”

Ten metric tons of trash a day

He is not the only one with strong concerns about the future of this delicate ecosystem.

A steep rise in the number of visitors to the shrine in recent years also has environmental experts and public health officials on edge: government data indicate that the number of worshippers has sharply increased from 4,500 in 1950 to 650,000 in 2012, while tourist arrivals shot up from 15,000 in 1950 to two million in 2012.

The logistics involved in the yatra place a huge burden on the authorities. For the duration of the pilgrimage, which lasts 60 days, 7,000 security personnel are deployed on the mountain, along with 1,500 ponies and as many men for carrying worshippers and their belongings.

“Based on these numbers our modest estimates suggest that [at an average] a minimum of 10,000 people visit the Amarnath cave every day,” an official of the Pollution Control Board (PCB) of Srinagar told IPS on the condition of anonymity.

“An average person generates about a kilogram of waste everyday; this means that 10 metric tons of waste are left behind every day for 60 days.”

Despite a government ban on polythene use in the state, much of the debris left behind by the pilgrims, or yatris as they are called, comprises plastic bags and bottles.

Furthermore, according to Riyaz Ahmed Lone, an environmentalist who heads the Pahalgam Peoples’ Welfare Organisation (PPWO), the garbage disposal and sanitation facilities provided by the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) are inadequate to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of devotees, who are forced to defecate in the open on the mountainside.

Added to the mix of plastic and human feces is gotka (chewing tobacco) and the excrement of ponies and donkeys, all of which eventually gets washed away into nearby streams that feed into the Lidder and Sindh rivers.

Other PCB officials who did not wish to be named told IPS that at least half a dozen fully functional Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) need to be set up to facilitate the proper functioning of several hundred toilets that serve the tourists and worshippers.

Currently there are only two STPs, which, environmental activists say, do not function properly, allowing effluent to flow untreated into larger water bodies.

These rivers subsequently provide water to roughly two million people throughout Kashmir, explained Shakil Romshoo, who heads the Earth Sciences Department at Kashmir University.

Kashmir’s Public Health Engineering (PHE) Chief Ghulam Mohammad Bhat added that 85 percent of the state’s drinking water needs are met by surface water sources in the mountains.

“But, it is a common knowledge that we have no healthy arrangements for sanitation here,” he told IPS.

“Not only the waste from open defecation areas, but also the sewer systems [from tourist hotels] are connecting with our rivers and contaminating our water bodies,” Bhat stressed.

An official at his office added that if people could see “what kind of water we treat at our treatment plants, they would not drink even a drop of it.”

According to India’s Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), Jammu & Kashmir ranks 23^rd rank on a list of 30 states surveyed, with only 41.7 percent sanitation coverage as per the 2011 census.

Human waste left behind by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims during the Amarnath Yatra in Indian-administered Kashmir flow untreated into nearby rivers. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Limiting arrivals and beefing up logistics

Lone told IPS that activists and experts “want the organizers to ensure environmental protection and proper regulation of the pilgrimage, by reducing the number of pilgrims to the permissible limit as per the carrying capacity of the fragile mountain ecology on a single day.”

Until the late 1990s, official data reveals, the pilgrimage had never crossed the 100,000 mark. Noted Indian human rights activist Gautam Navlakha says that the numbers started multiplying only after the establishment of the SASB in 2002 – an all-Hindu body with no representation from the majority Muslim population.

A few years after its formation, Navlakha says, the SASB extended the pilgrimage from 30 to 60 days, a move that is still mired in controversy, with environmental activists arguing strongly against the longer duration.

Pointing to tough restrictions on the number of pilgrims allowed into ecologically fragile zones like Mansarovar in Tibet and Gomukh – the snout of the Gangotri Glacier that forms the source of the Ganges River – in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, Navlakha has called for similar rules to govern the Amarnath Yatra.

Quoting the landmark 1996 Nitish Sengupta Committee report, he told IPS, “Along with the regulation of the total number of pilgrims to about 100,000, we could lay down a ceiling of 3,000 pilgrims permitted to travel in a single day.”

Nearly two decades after the report was released, these recommendations have been wantonly disregarded. Figures on the 2015 Yatra available on the SASB website indicate that the daily average between Jul. 2 and Aug. 13 far exceeded 3,000, with Jul. 6 alone witnessing over 20,000 worshippers on the mountains.

A May 2015 study on sustainable tourism in Kashmir published in the journal Elsevier revealed that the tourist flow in July for Pahalgam alone was almost fourfold the Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) of the mountain.

Shakil Qalandar, a member of the Kashmir Centre for Development and Social Studies (KCDS), said that civil society would continue to press for necessary restrictions on the number of pilgrims to better reflect the area’s carrying capacity until their demands are met.

“We have formally presented this demand to the government saying we are in full support of an ecologically-friendly pilgrimage for our Hindu brethren,” Qalandar told IPS.

The environmental implications of not dealing with the situation are enormous.

Hindu religious scholar and social activist Swami Agnivesh has even suggested that the growing number of pilgrims might have been the catalyst for the devastating floods that swept Kashmir in September 2014, resulting in a death toll of 600 and incurring economic losses of some 18 billion dollars.

According to an assessment report prepared by Kashmir’s Department of Environment, Ecology and Remote Sensing (DEERS) after the September 2014 floods, ecological degradation across the state is a major catalyst of natural disasters.

The study revealed that since 1992 Kashmir has lost 10 percent of its forest cover as tourism infrastructure encroached into wooded areas. It added that in the last century, the state’s total extent of water bodies plummeted from 356 square km in 1911 to just 158 square km in 2011.

Dealing with the challenges of sustainable religious tourism has been a concern all over the globe with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) estimating that 300 to 330 million tourists visit the world’s key religious sites every year.

Kashmir is in a unique position to set a global example, but it will have to overcome numerous political hurdles and religious sensitivities in order to do so.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A billboard in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir promotes gender equality and protests violence against women. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

Rizwana* had hoped and expected that justice would be served – that the man who raped her would be sufficiently punished for his crime. Months after she suffered at his hands, however, the perpetrator remains at large.

"We receive 1,000 to 1,500 complaints of domestic violence annually." -- Gulshan Akhtar, head of Srinagar’s only women’s police station
Hailing from a poor family in the northwestern part of the Indian administered state of Kashmir, Rizwana worked hard to finish her studies, knowing that if she landed a job it would help ease her family’s financial woes.

When an official in the frontier Kupwara District hired her as an assistant earlier this year, she thought she had struck gold. But she quickly discovered that the man’s support and eagerness to offer her a job was simply a front for ulterior motives.

“After working in the office for just a few days he summoned me to a room on the upper floor and bolted the door. Then he made sexual advances on me. When I objected to his behaviour, he forcibly raped me,” the young graduate told IPS.

Her entire family was traumatised by the experience; Rizwana quit her job and her mother suffered a panic attack that confined her to the hospital for weeks

Rizwana approached the State Women’s Commission (SWC) in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, and pleaded that the official be terminated from his position and sent to jail.

“But so far nothing has happened,” she said. “While the women’s commission is supporting me, the rapist is yet to be brought to justice as he uses his influence to get away with the crime.”

Militarisation breeds impunity

Anyone who follows the daily headlines in this heavily militarised territory in northern India knows that Rizwana’s case is not unusual. Every year, thousands of women experience sexual or physical abuse, both in and outside their homes, though few come forward to report it.

Women’s rights advocates blame the conflict in Kashmir – which dates back to the 1947 partition of India and has claimed 60,000 lives in six decades – for nursing a culture of impunity that makes women extremely vulnerable to gender-based violence.

In 2007, the Indian government revealed that it had 337,000 army personnel stationed in the region. At the time, this amounted to roughly one soldier for every 18 persons, making Kashmir “the most heavily militarised zone” in the world, according to sociologist Bashir Ahmad Dabla.

In 2013, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on violence against woman stated in her final country report on India that legislative provisions like “the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has mostly resulted in impunity for human rights violations [since] the law protects the armed forces from effective prosecution in non-military courts for human rights violations committed against civilian women among others, and it allows for the overriding of due process rights.”

Noting that impunity for armed forces was “eroding fundamental rights and freedoms […] including dignity and bodily integrity rights for women in Jammu and Kashmir”, the rapporteur called on the Indian government to repeal the Act.

A woman holds up a picture of her son, injured in the conflict. Here in Kashmir, women often bear the brunt of fighting and some have been subjected to rape at the hands of the armed forces. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Two years later, her recommendations are yet to be acted upon, with the result that not only armed forces but officials in any capacity feel at liberty to exploit women’s rights and freedoms, often in the form of sexual transgressions.

For instance, IPS recently gained access to a sexual harassment complaint filed by the female staff of the Kashmir Agricultural University with the State Women’s Commission.

Staff filed a joint appeal earlier this month so as to conceal each woman’s individual identity.

It stated: “Being the working ladies at the university, we want to share with you [the] bitter and hard realities we have been facing for the past many years”, adding that the male staff – and one official in particular – routinely harass the women, using their institutional authority to prevent the victims from taking action.

The complainants are demanding “strict punishment” for the culprits according to provisions on sexual harassment in India’s 2013 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act.

Nayeema Ahmad Mehjoor, chairperson of the SWC, told IPS that she acted on the appeal as soon as it was filed, and has already visited the university in order to take up the issue with the necessary authorities.

“They have assured me of initiating a fair probe, and we are expecting a detailed report within a few days,” she stated.

Domestic violence on the rise

These assurances are comforting but hold little weight in a society that routinely puts women’s issues on the backburner, a reality reflected in the low rate of reporting sexual crimes.

The situation is even worse in the domestic sphere, experts say, where spousal or intimate partner violence is on the rise.

Gulshan Akhtar, head of Srinagar’s lone Women’s Police Station, has been a busy officer over the past few years as she struggles to deal with a growing domestic violence caseload.

On a typical day, she receives between seven and 10 cases of domestic disputes involving violence towards the female partner.

“When this police station was established in 1998, it used to receive far fewer complaints compared to what we have been receiving over the past five-year period,” Akhtar told IPS.

“Now we receive 1,000 to 1,500 complaints of domestic violence annually,” she said, adding that the SWC receives an additional 500 complaints on average every year.

Kashmir’s State Women’s Commission (SWC) records roughly 500 cases of domestic violence every year. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

These figures – which are conservative estimates, considering that many women are silent about their suffering – reveal that every single day, over five Kashmiri women endure sexual or physical abuse.

Local news reports indicate that Jammu, the state’s winter capital, tops the list of districts with the highest number of domestic violence cases, recording over 1,200 separate incidents since 2009.

Earlier this year, newspapers quoting officials from the State Home Ministry stated that over 4,000 culprits have been booked in connection with these crimes, but rights groups maintain that prosecution levels are too low to act as a deterrent.

This past May, the women’s rights NGO Ehsaas organised a sit-in at Partap Park in Srinagar to draw attention to a surge in domestic violence.

Academics, journalists and activists gathered to mourn a woman whose husband had burned her to death the month before.

Addressing the crowd, Ehsaas Secretary and Women’s Project Consultant Ezabir Ali said, “It is high time to speak out against this barbaric form of human nature and a send message to the government to act strictly against such acts.”

The sit-in called attention to all the many forms of violence against women – from dowry killings and burnings, and from verbal and emotional abuse to rape. In 2013, according to statistics released by the Crime Branch, Kashmir recorded 378 cases of rape, an increase of 75 cases from the year before. Data for 2014-2015 is still pending.

Conflict leaves women vulnerable

Some experts say the increase in such heinous crimes is due to militarisation and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

A 2014 report by Human Rights Watch noted that “a local court recently ordered the reopening of the investigation into alleged mass rapes in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district in 1991. Residents of the villages allege that soldiers raped women during a cordon and search operation.”

Because of the brutality involved in these incidents, and because the victims included old women and young girls alike, scholars and advocates have claimed that it set a precedent for violence against women, since the perpetrators have yet to be brought to justice.

Others say violence has risen together with women’s shifting socio-economic role in traditional Kashmiri society. With more women leaving the home to work, men feel their financial hold weakening.

“This is causing conflict as many men […] do not feel comfortable with women acquiring a [better] economic status,” author and sociologist Dabla told IPS.

IPS recently met two women at Srinagar’s Rambagh women police station, one of whom had come to lodge a complaint that her husband was forcing her to hand over her monthly earnings, or risk a divorce.

Indeed, surveys and studies undertaken by the women’s NGO Ehsaas reveal that 75 percent of Kashmiri men “felt their masculinity was threatened” if their wives did not obey them.

Activists working to safeguard women and create a more peaceful society overall say that deep and fundamental changes in both the law and social attitudes are necessary to achieve some degree of gender equality and women’s rights.

*Name changed for her protection

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Kehmli Devi, a middle-aged Indian woman, bends over her wood-burning stove in her home in northern India. Credit: Athar Parzaiv/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
NEW DELHI, Mar 5 2015 (IPS)

For years, Kehmli Devi, a middle-aged woman from the village of Chachadeth in India’s northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, has prepared her family’s meals on a wood-burning stove.

She is one of millions of Indian women who cannot afford cooking gas and so relies heavily on firewood as a source of free fuel.

Gathering wood is a cumbersome exercise, but Devi has no choice. “It takes us five to six hours to gather what we need each day – we have to travel far into the woods to collect it,” she tells IPS. “But we don’t mind, since we don’t have to pay for it.”

“It takes us five to six hours to gather [the firewood] we need each day – we have to travel far into the woods to collect it." -- Kehmli Devi, a housewife in the northern India state of Uttarakhand, who has cooked for years on a wood-burning stove
Buying a cylinder of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), even at subsidized rates, is not an option for her – her entire family makes a collective monthly income of 57 dollars, which works out to less than two dollars a day. They cannot afford to spend a cent of their precious earnings on cleaner fuel.

Further north, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a similar story unfolds in thousands of households every single day.

“If my husband had enough money, we would use LPG for cooking,” says Zeba Begam, who resides in Rakh, a village in southern Kashmir. But since the family lives well below the poverty line, their only option is to use to firewood.

At first, they struggled to live with the smoke caused by burning large quantities of wood in their small, cramped home. Now, Begam says, they are used to it – but this does not make them immune to the range of health problems linked to indoor air pollution.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), around three billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and mud stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste), as well as coal.

Improper burning of such fuels in confined spaces releases a range of dangerous chemical substances including hazardous air pollutants (known as HAPs), fine particle pollution (more commonly called ash) and volatile organic compounds (VOC).

The WHO estimates that around 4.3 million people die each year from diseases attributable to indoor air pollution, including from chronic respiratory conditions such as pneumonia, lung cancer and even strokes.

Other studies show that indoor air pollution – particularly in poorly ventilated dwellings – is linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes in women and negatively impacts children, who are more susceptible to respiratory diseases than adults.

In general, women and children are at far greater risk of suffering the impacts of indoor pollution since they spend longer hours at home.

Millions of Indians at risk

Indoor air pollution is recognised as a pressing issue around the world, particularly in Asia, but India seems to be carrying the lion’s share of the burden, with scores of Indian households relying on traditional fuels for cooking, lighting and heating.

Data from the Government of India’s 2011 Census shows an estimated 75 million rural households (45 percent of total rural households) living without electricity, while 142 million rural households (85 percent of the total) depend entirely on biomass fuel, such as cow-dung and firewood, for cooking.

Despite heavy subsidisation by successive federal governments in New Delhi since 1985 to make cleaner fuels like LPG available to the poor, millions of households still struggle to make the necessary payments for cleaner energy, opting for more traditional, more harmful, substances.

Some estimates put Indian households’ use of traditional fuels at 135 million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE), larger than Australia’s total energy consumption in 2013.

Cleaner energy to meet the MDGs

Experts say that there is an urgent need to drastically reduce these numbers, both to improve the lives of millions who will benefit from cleaner energy, and also to meet international poverty-reduction and sustainability targets.

For instance, indoor air pollution is linked in numerous ways to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the U.N.’s largest development initiative set to expire at the end of the year.

According to the WHO, tackling the issue of dirty household fuels will automatically feed into MDG4, which pledges to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by the end of the year; since children bear a disproportionate rate of the disease burden of indoor pollution, helping families switch to cleaner energies could result in longer life spans for their children.

Similarly, women and children spend countless hours collecting firewood, a task that consumes much of their day and a great deal of energy. Reducing this burden on women and children would bring India closer to achieving the goal of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Less time spent on fuel collection also leaves more hours in the day for education or employment, both of which could contribute to MDG1, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

In 2005, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) put the economic and health cost of collecting and using firewood at some six billion dollars in India alone, representing massive waste in a country nursing a stubborn poverty rate of 21.9 percent of a population of 1.2 billion people.

For Zeba Begam, a resident of the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir, cooking with clean fuel is a distant dream. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Moving towards a sustainable future

As the United Nations moves towards a new era of sustainable development, scientists and policy-makers are pushing governments hard to tackle the issue of indoor air pollution in a bid to severely slash overall global carbon emissions.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego, told IPS that the provision of clean energy, particularly for the poor, should be on the agenda at the upcoming climate talks in Paris, where world leaders are expected to agree on much-awaited binding carbon emissions targets for the coming decade.

Ramanathan argued that it was the responsibility of the rich – what he called the ‘top four billion’ or T4B – to help the ‘bottom three billion’ (B3B) climb the renewable energy ladder instead of the fossil fuel ladder.

“In order to avoid unsustainable climate changes in the coming decades, the decarbonisation of the T4B economy as well as the provision of modern energy access to B3B must begin now,” he said at last month’s Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS).

His words reflect countless international initiatives to cut emissions from dirty household fuels, including the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which estimates that a transition to clean cook-stoves could reduce emissions from wood fuels by up to 17 percent.

Quoting findings from a recent study conducted by experts at Yale University and National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Radha Mutthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance, said last month that her organisation planned to “target areas where clean cooking technology can have the greatest impact, not only improving the effects on climate, but also the health of millions of people living in hotspots.”

These ‘hotspots’ have been defined as regions where firewood is being harvested on an unsustainable scale, with over 50 percent non-renewability. In total some 275 million people live in hotspots, of which 60 percent reside in South Asia.

Overall, India and China were found to have the world’s highest wood-fuel emissions, which experts say should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers and legislators that the time for taking action is now

* This story has been updated. An earlier version carried a quote from a former senior official at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), who has since resigned.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Over 100,000 people in the north Indian state of Kashmir have been left homeless after a deadly flood on Sep. 7, 2014. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
Oct 23 2014 (IPS)

Rafiqa Kazim and her husband Kazim Ali had a simple dream – to live a modest life, educate their four children and repay the bank-loan that the couple took out to sustain their small business.

Until early last month, their plan was moving along steadily but now Kazim says they have “hit a roadblock”, which took the form of deadly floods that swept through the north Indian Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir on Sep. 7, killing 281 people and destroying crops worth millions of dollars.

According to government estimates the overall damage now stands at some one trillion rupees (16 billion dollars), in what experts are calling the worst ever recorded flood in Kashmir’s history. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said this was the first time the force was called upon to respond to such a severe flood in an urban area.

“I have no idea how to get things back to normal." -- Rafiqa Kazim, a flood victim residing just outside of Kashmir's capital, Srinagar
By the time the floodwaters had receded and the Jhelum River had returned to its usual steady flow, much of Kashmir’s capital Srinagar was underwater, with 140,000 houses destroyed and hundreds of thousands of others badly damaged.

It has been over a month, but families like the Kazims are only just starting to come to terms with the long-term impacts of the disaster as they move slowly out of makeshift camps, shelters and relatives’ homes to start picking up the pieces of their lives.

Making her way through the wreckage of her home in Ganderpora, 17 km northwest of Srinagar, Kazim points out the damage to their house and one acre of agricultural land. But in truth, her mind is elsewhere – on the 10X10-foot carpet that she and another weaver had been working on for over two months.

For Kazim, this carpet represents months of labour, and the promise of grand profits for a woman of her economic background: in a single year, she can earn up to 200,000 rupees (about 3,350 dollars) from carpet weaving and embroidery. In a country where the average annual income is about 520 dollars, according to the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this is a tidy sum.

“As the announcement came on the community address system that flood waters were entering the village, our first instinct was to save ourselves and get to a safer place. In the process, we forgot everything else including the loom, the carpet, as well as our floor mats and bedding,” she explained.

Hajira Begam, a 49-year-old flood victim, rigs up a clay cover for an electric coil that will serve as her stove in the absence of a proper home and kitchen. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

The loss of the loom could mean dark days ahead for the couple. Kazim only took up the practice of weaving and embroidering when Ali lost the use of his right arm due to a neurological disorder, preventing him from continuing with his job as a videographer.

Reluctant as he was to pass the onus of breadwinning onto his wife, Ali soon realized he had no choice. He sold his beloved camera, and pooled the money together with a 1,500-dollar loan to purchase the loom and various other tools Kazim would need to convert their home into a small handicrafts unit.

Their first order, for an eight-by-seven-foot carpet and assorted embroidered clothing items, brought the family nearly 1,250 dollars, which enabled them to pay their children’s school fees and set something aside for repayment of their loan.

Now, the floods have swept away their hopes of making ends meet, including the limited harvest from their small plot of farmland.

“I have no idea how to get things back to normal,” a dejected Kazim concluded, looking around at her three daughters and son. She is convinced that unless government support is forthcoming, families like hers will be looking at a bleak future.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked Wednesday’s Diwali holiday, a holy Hindu festival of light, with a visit to the affected areas, where hopes were running high that he would announce a generous aid package to flood victims.

In an already poor state – with 2.4 million out of a population of some 12 million people living below the poverty line – the impact of a natural disaster of this nature is gravely magnified, leaving the destitute far worse off than they were.

Things are particularly bad for farming families, who constitute 75 percent of the state’s population and lost some 512 million dollars worth of agricultural products in the floods. Some 300,500 hectares of crops were also destroyed, spelling trouble for landholding families who generally own just 0.67 hectares of farmland.

Women shoulder the burden

Until official assistance kicks in, women like Kazim will be forced to bear the brunt of the floods, since the responsibility of managing domestic affairs is seen throughout traditional Kashmiri society as a woman’s job.

In most of the flood-hit areas, it is the women who are fetching water for their families, cleaning homes of silt and mud, retrieving cooking utensils and generally making sure that life gradually returns to normal.

Finding clean drinking water is proving a particular challenge, with many sources such as wells and water supply tanks damaged and contaminated by debris washed up by the floodwaters, which reached heights of up to 25 feet in some areas according to the NDRF. For the average family, which consumes about 500 litres of water per day, this poses countless challenges on a daily basis.

In Haritara Rekhi-Haigam, a village located some 60 km north of Srinagar, IPS witnessed women struggling with all these challenges. Some residents told IPS that several women had been injured while attempting to fill their buckets from a water tanker, as scores of people jostled for a place in the line.

Many women in Haritara Rekhi-Haigam must now walk over four km each day for a single pitcher of water. IPS spoke with a group of young girls carrying heavy pots on their heads, who said they set out at daybreak for a return trip that lasts over five hours.

Women like 49-year-old Hajira Begam are coming up with unique solutions to their problems. She shows IPS the earthen insulation she has rigged up over an electric coil, which allows her to boil water to clean her cooking utensils.

She has also created a makeshift structure over a portion of the roadside that serves as her only shelter since the flood has washed her house away. She is one of some 100,000 people left homeless by the floods.

Women must also see to their children’s education, no simple task given that the floods damaged as many as 2,594 schools, with some 686 buildings left completely uninhabitable.

A school teacher named Nahida Begam told IPS that her family still has not found permanent housing, with some renters demanding as much as 423 dollars “for two rooms and a kitchen” she said. With a combined monthly income of about 900 dollars, and two children to educate, she and her husband cannot afford such a high rent.

With the winter approaching, bringing with it the promise of weather that falls as low as minus ten degrees Celsius, “it is likely that people are going to die of cold in the coming months for want of shelter,” according to Mehbooba Mufti, president of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

And with the onset of winter, those with humble dreams like Rafiqa Kazim will be hunkering down to plan for a future that, for the time being, holds very little promise.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Suma Bhen, a camel breeder in the western Indian state of Gujarat, and her two daughters. Credit Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
KUTCH, India, Jun 18 2014 (IPS)

When Sangan Bhai, a humble man in the Kutch region of India’s western state of Gujarat, was offered a position as an executive member of the local camel breeder’s association, he made a decision that surprised his community: instead of accepting the prestigious post he offered his wife’s name instead.

His reason, he told IPS, was a simple one; unlike him, his wife can read and write, and has as much experience rearing camels as anyone in the community.

“Sometimes we don’t have much to eat, but we can live with this – what we can’t live without is water.” -- Suma Bhen, head of a family of camel breeders
Meera Bhen, the only woman in the area to have attended school – albeit only up to the fourth grade – was more than willing to step up to the challenge.

“My father was very keen to educate me, but he died when I was very young so I had to drop out of school,” she told IPS. “But I kept practicing reading and writing as I grew up.”

Her perseverance has paid off; she is now one of the few people in the vast arid area known as Lakhpat who can read, write and do basic arithmetic, crucial skills in this community of herders and breeders who have scant formal education, though their knowledge of cattle is unmatched.

Now, Meera Bhen is making history, not just locally but nationally, as her brainchild for the 350-member breeder’s association, known as the Kutch Unt Uchherak Maldhari Sangathan (KUUMS), begins to bear fruit.

“She was the first to suggest that we market the camels’ milk,” KUMMS President Bhikha Bhai Rabari, told IPS. “So we approached a dairy company with the idea, and as soon as the project takes off we will receive double the price for our product.”

A litre of camel milk currently sells for 17-20 Indian rupees (less than 0.30 dollars), making it nearly impossible for this semi-nomadic tribal community – who are thought to have migrated to the Kutch region from Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province over a thousand years ago – to support itself financially.

Some 37 percent of the nearly 300 breeders in the region manage herds of 31-60 camels, but with few formal markets for the milk, they are forced to rely on government food rations.

The breeders, known locally as maldharis, have long expressed a desire for supplementary income. Decades ago, they made a decent living by offering up their camels for transport, or by selling the males for a high price. With the advent of modern transportation systems and the penetration of road networks into rural India, however, they have been increasingly marginalised.

It was these very problem that Meera Bhen hoped to address when she first brought her idea to the association.

If the marketing initiative succeeds, it will represent the first-ever commercial camel milk enterprise in the country. The original scheme, submitted to the state government by the Kutch District Milk Union in 2012, proposed the setting up of a processing unit with a capacity of 2,000-2,5000 litres.

According to officials, the purpose of such an undertaking was two-fold: to provide an alternative livelihood for the maldharis and to promote increased consumption of the highly nutritious milk, which is lower in fat than cow’s milk, and contains more nutrients per single serving.

Given that Gujarat is the birthplace of the massive Amul dairy cooperative, which agreed in 2012 to brand and sell the camel milk, the scheme seemed almost foolproof.

Last year, however, it ran into a legal hurdle: according to current laws governing dairy production, ‘milk’ is only defined as that which comes from cows, buffalos, sheep and goats.

NGOs and legal experts are working to amend the law to include camels, but until they do, the project is at a standstill.

Few people are aware that a humble woman was behind the proposal that has made national headlines. But here among the breeders, Meera Bhen is just one of many women who enjoy a far greater degree of autonomy and respect than their counterparts in this country of 1.2 billion people.

A buffalo for a baby girl

While many families across India lament the birth of daughters, breeders in the Banni area of the Kutch region do the opposite: they allocate a buffalo to every single girl child born to a member of their community.

Saleem Nodae has allocated four buffalos to his four daughters. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Razia Saleem is one of these girls. A student in the eighth grade, her inheritance already amounts to roughly 3,400 dollars – all in the form of a herd of buffalos.

“This all belongs to her,” the girl’s father, Saleem Nodae, told IPS, gesturing at the grazing beasts. His three other daughters each ‘own’ their respective share of his herd of roughly 80 animals.

Until they are old enough to tend to the creatures themselves, the girls receive part of the monthly income generated from sales of the buffalos’ milk, so they can “buy the things they want,” Saleem added. The rest goes to feeding and caring for the animals.

For their own part, the girls use their allowances wisely. Razia recently spent three years’ worth of her savings to buy a desktop computer. “This is the age of technology,” she told IPS. “I want to benefit from it.”

Right now she mainly uses the machine to practice her typing, and for digital art. “I will start using the Internet only when I really need it,” she added.

According to Saleem, allotting a buffalo to a girl at the time of her birth is an investment worth making.

“By the time she is married, she will have five or seven animals to her name. She can take these creatures to her in-laws with pride,” he said, which will allow her a degree of independence.

Some 10,000 breeders live in Banni, tending to over 168,000 buffalos. The maldharis here are more economically independent than their camel-rearing counterparts, largely owing to consistent demand and formal markets for buffalo milk.

Even so the nomadic breeders live simple lives, moving with their herds over the grasslands for most of the year and residing in modest dwellings during the monsoon season.

‘We can live without food, but we can’t live without water’

Life for women breeders is far from easy. While they are allowed a degree of independence and respect, they shoulder a disproportionate level of the community’s burdens, such as finding water in the dry landscape.

Suma Bhen, who heads a family of camel breeders, says her closest source of water is a dam located roughly eight kilometres away. The journey through the scorching heat is made on foot, leading a camel whose energy must be conserved for the long trip back.

“The camel carries 70 litres of water, which we use for two days,” Eisa Taj, Suma Bhen’s husband, told IPS. “But this is barely enough for all our needs.”

Suma Bhen makes sure her family conserves every drop, using dry soil to scour out their plates and cooking utensils after every meal so as not to waste any of the precious water.

“Sometimes we don’t have much to eat,” Suma told IPS. “But we can live with this – what we can’t live without is water.”

Their son, Saleh Alma, who had hidden himself inside the family’s humble home during the interview, eventually emerged with a scrap of paper on which he had scribbled the message: “It is very difficult for us without water. We want the government to help us.”

(END)

A Kashmiri woman with the picture of her son who went missing 17 years ago. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India , May 5 2014 (IPS)

Forty-seven-year-old Shahmala’s husband has been missing since 1993. In India’s restive Jammu and Kashmir state, she is what is known as a half-widow, a woman who has no clue whether her husband is dead or alive.

In December last year, a group of clerics issued a fatwa (Islamic decree) at a meeting in state capital Srinagar that women in Kashmir whose husbands had been missing for more than four years could remarry. But for Shahmala, the decree is of no consequence.While the decision has been widely welcomed, many also say it has come too late as most disappearances in Kashmir took place during the 1990s and early 2000s.

She has lost her youth, her children have grown up, and she has weathered the blows of life as a single mother for 21 years. The prospect of marriage at this stage seems remote.

“It should have come much earlier in order to help hundreds of half-widows across Kashmir remarry,” law professor Showkat Sheikh, who teaches at the Central University of Kashmir, told IPS.

According to the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), there are 1,500 half-widows in the state, where an insurgency since 1989 has resulted in many custodial disappearances of men. Human rights activists say most of these men were taken away by the security forces that were battling insurgents, and never seen again.

The ‘half-widows’ they leave behind are stigmatised, lonely and often under severe financial strain.

Many of these women join sit-ins by the relatives of missing persons every month in Srinagar to seek the whereabouts of their loved ones.

All these years, the half-widows of Muslim-majority Kashmir had to abide by Islam’s Hannafi school of thought that says a woman has to wait up to 90 years to marry again following the disappearance of her husband. But civil society groups appealed to Islamic scholars to find a solution to Kashmir’s problem.

The result was the new fatwa in December, a decree on remarriage coming for the first time since insurgency broke out in the state 25 years ago.

While the decision has been widely welcomed, many also say it has come too late as most disappearances in Kashmir took place during the 1990s and early 2000s. According to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons in Kashmir, at least 8,000 people have gone missing.

Some of these cases, as Professor Sheikh observes, are 15 to 20 years old. “The half-widows who are still young might think of remarrying, but it might not be helpful for those now advanced in age,” he told IPS.

Shahmala has struggled all these years to make ends meet. Following her husband’s disappearance, her two brothers-in-law started taking care of her and her two children.

“But after four-five years, their wives wanted to live separately,” Shahmala told IPS in Lolab area, 110 km north of Srinagar. “Our family disintegrated, though my brothers-in-law continued to help with my children’s education.”

This arrangement too did not last long. Both children eventually dropped out of school. “Fatherless children can hardly study, especially when their mother is also uneducated and without any source of income,” she said.

“My son is now 21 and drives a cab to fend for the family,” Shahmala said. “Had his father been around, he would have been in a college or university. But this is what fate has chosen.”

Human rights activists say Kashmir’s half-widows do not fall under a compensation policy. The Kashmir government does give an equivalent of around 3,300 dollars to the families of those killed in militancy-related incidents.

Dr. Peerzada Mohammad Amin, who teaches sociology in Kashmir University, told IPS: “I think Islamic scholars across South Asia and particularly in our part of the world focus more on ritualistic Islam than on social problems even though it is clearly mentioned in basic Islamic literature that religion can’t be separated from politics, sociology and economy.

“In all these years, society, state and religion have failed to respond to this human problem in Kashmir. If they come forward in a committed manner, things can still be done for these women.”

In spite of societal pressures, there are many half-widows, especially the younger ones, who would like another shot at a happy married life.

Mehmooda (name changed) is only 29. When her husband went missing five years ago, they had been married for just one-and-a-half years, and was pregnant.

She has thought of remarrying but continues to live with her in-laws on their insistence. “They are very good people and they take good care of me,” she told IPS. But, she says, they didn’t agree when her parents brought a marriage proposal for her.

“While I respect my in-laws and appreciate whatever they are doing for me, I have my whole life ahead,” she said. “Things don’t always stay the same.”

The wife and daughter of one of many missing persons in Kashmir at a sit-in protest in Srinagar. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India , Mar 2 2014 (IPS)

Upon meeting an acquaintance after a long time, a young man at a Srinagar drug store asks: “Where did you disappear?” The innocuous question elicits an unexpected reply from the other: “Weigh your words. There are people whose loved ones have really disappeared.”

In the conflict-scarred India’s border state of Jammu and Kashmir, ‘disappearance’ is a loaded word.According to the Srinagar-based Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), more than 8,000 people have gone missing in the state.

Emotions are running high after the Indian Army closed what is called the Pathribal case, giving a clean chit to five of its officers who were accused of killing five innocent Kashmiri civilians in what was reported to be a staged, extra-judicial killing in March 2000.

“We had no expectation from this inquiry,” Rashid Khan, son of one of the victims, told IPS.

Justice Rajindar Sachar, former President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), said the self-acquittal by the army would only aggravate the sense of alienation and resentment among Kashmiris.

Kashmir has been at the centre of a bloody conflict between India and Pakistan for decades, almost since the two nations became independent from the British in 1947. An insurgency has claimed thousands of lives since it broke out in 1989, with the rebels demanding ‘freedom’ for Kashmir. The region has seen heavy mobilisation of troops by the Indian government.

According to the Srinagar-based Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), more than 8,000 people have gone missing in the state.

In the Pathribal case too, the victims had gone missing after being picked up by “unknown gunmen”. Soon after, the Indian Army filed a first information report with the police claiming it had killed five ‘militants’ of the terror outfit Lashker-e-Toiba, which has its bases in Pakistan. The army action was reported to have been carried out at Pathribal village.

The army, according to local witnesses, had burnt the bodies of the victims beyond recognition. Massive demonstrations were held by locals who demanded exhumation of the bodies for identification.

The bodies were finally exhumed following the protests. DNA tests were carried out, but repeated tampering of samples prolonged the investigation for two years. The state government later handed over the case to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which established that the bodies were those of the five missing civilians.

After the CBI filed a charge-sheet against five army officers, including two brigadiers, the army challenged the indictment. It got permission from India’s Supreme Court in 2012 to court-martial the five officers according to its own legal procedures.

But in January, the army gave a clean chit to all the accused.

“There is no evidence on record which in any way connects any of the five accused persons with the charges of murder, wrongful confinement, abduction or causing disappearance of the five deceased persons,” the army said while declaring the case closed.

The decision has shocked many, though some relatives of victims say they are not surprised. “Once the army decided to probe it further, despite CBI’s thorough investigation, our hopes were crushed,” said Rashid Khan.

From human rights groups in Kashmir and New Delhi to political parties, many have reacted strongly.

“This is strange. How can the army deny what the CBI has clearly established? I think this will undo all the goodwill the army has earned,” said Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

The CBI says it will not say anything until it gets directions from the Supreme Court. “We will do whatever the Supreme Court asks us to do,” Kanchan Prasad, the CBI spokesperson told IPS.

According to Nayeem Akhtar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had justice been allowed to prevail in the Pathribal case, it could have been a game-changer in Kashmir.

“After all, it was perhaps the first case among thousands that was allowed to be investigated freely,” he told IPS.

Civil rights groups are now worried about another court-martial being conducted by the army in a similar extra-judicial killing pertaining to Machchil area in north Kashmir.

In a study based on official documents, acquired through the path-breaking Right to Information (RTI) law of the Indian government, the International People’s Tribunal for Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir says there is an overwhelming reluctance to genuinely investigate or prosecute the armed forces for human rights violations.

“We filed an RTI seeking information about the results of inquiries in different cases from 1990 to 2011,” Khurram Parvez, convener of the Srinagar-based Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), told IPS.

“An analysis of the information provided under RTI clearly indicates that these inquiries were merely symbolic.”

Mules carry a solar energy system to a remote region in the Himalayan desert region of Ladakh. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
LEH, India, Feb 24 2014 (IPS)

Surendar Mohan, a catering assistant at the residential school Jawahar Navodiya Vidyalya, looks thankfully up at the sun from this cold high-altitude desert in northwest India.

“Now things have become quite easy for our workers,” he tells IPS. “Earlier, we had to use a lot of dishes for cooking rice, pulses and vegetables, but now the big solar dishes have made our job much easier.” A five-dish solar steam cooking system can cook for up to 600 persons at a time.The region is now witnessing a significant spread of a solar energy network.

“Apart from reducing the workload, cooking in solar dishes also improves the quality of food,” he says. The solar cooking system can cook as much as 150 kilograms of rice, 100 kilograms of vegetables and 30 kilograms of pulses at a time. More than 570 students and staff have their meals here.

“It is not only very easy to operate, but it provides us [with] hot water for washing the dishes in the cold season,” says Tashi, one of the kitchen staff.

Mohan says solar cooking saves the school a lot of money. “Every day, we save three gas cylinders.”

Jigmet Takpa, project director at the independent Ladakh Renewable Energy Development Agency (LREDA), which installed this and several other solar cooking systems in Ladakh, says solar substitution at the school saves 23,000 dollars a year.

Over the past few decades, many people from this arid plateau in India’s northern state Jammu and Kashmir have been using diesel generators for lights, and kerosene and firewood for cooking and heating water.

“This not only polluted the atmosphere, but would involve huge finances for transporting diesel, kerosene and firewood to Ladakh given its remoteness from rest of India and its rugged terrain,” says Shahid Wani, who teaches environmental science at Kashmir University.

The region is now witnessing a significant spread of a solar energy network. Takpa says this will not just fulfil the energy needs of Ladakhis, but will produce solar energy for other regions in India.

Ladakh is rich in renewable energy sources and is amongst the world’s most-promising areas for the development of solar projects.

“Ladakh being a cold desert, we don’t have any forests. So all the timber would come from Kashmir while diesel and kerosene would come from India, at a heavy cost,” says Takpa.

But now, says Takpa, after an 87 million dollar project from India’s New and Renewable Energy Ministry for exploiting solar energy in Ladakh, things have changed quite rapidly.

The 50 percent subsidy on solar energy operated devices under the project has captured the imagination of people across Ladakh.

“Every square metre of our land has the potential of generating 1,200 watts of solar power, which is highest in India,” says Lakpa. “And we get more than 320 clear sunny days a year.

“Also, the low outside temperature in Ladakh further improves the efficiency of the solar panels. This is the reason we are regarded as the best for solar energy.”

According to Takpa, the Indian government’s Desert Bank scheme is best suited for Ladakh. He says the government has set a target of generating 400,000 MW of solar energy between 2030 and 2050, of which 100,000 MW will be generated from Ladakh.

“As of now, we have already installed 137 small solar power plants; they have been set up for remote villagers, monasteries, educational institutions and hospitals.”

The impact of this solar energy initiative on the lives of people in Ladakh is already visible. More than 40 villages which had no electricity or had extremely unreliable sources of power have been provided with reliable solar energy and solar water heaters.

Just about every household and hotel in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, has a solar water heating system. A solar cooking apparatus can be seen outside most houses.

“All this has remarkably reduced the dependency on diesel, kerosene and firewood,” says Wani.

Education of girls is helping women learn about their rights in Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India , Dec 24 2013 (IPS)

Mehnaz Bano (not her real name), a 37-year-old woman in a hamlet in Indian Kashmir, is living a “satisfied and peaceful” life ever since she secured her daughter’s property rights before her remarriage – though not without a long and tedious struggle following her first husband’s death.

When her first husband died in 2003, she was just 27 years old. But her in-laws stood in the way of her second marriage. According to Bano, they argued that since they had invested money in their son’s wedding, they couldn’t let that money go to waste by allowing her to remarry.

“Initially, I took it as my fate and lived with it for six years. And I also wanted my daughter to grow up a bit. She was just a year old at the time of her father’s death,” Bano told IPS.

But, she added, as time went by, she started getting the feeling that she was no more than a slave in their household, given that she had no legal right to the family’s property.

“I asked them to leave me alone with my daughter or to allow me to remarry, in which case I would leave my daughter with them provided they registered one-third of the property in her name. But they agreed to neither of these two options,” said Bano, who has a master’s degree in history and teaches at a government school.

“I could easily provide my daughter with a quality education given that I had a steady monthly income, but they refused it vehemently.” She said that if her in-laws had allowed her to take her daughter with her, she wouldn’t have remarried, for the sake of her daughter.

But her in-laws’ “stubborn stance” compelled her to wage a legal battle against them. And once the case went to court, her in-laws approached her with a “compromise,” agreeing to register property in the name of Bano’s daughter on the condition that the girl would live with them.

“When I saw them budging, I was happy to settle out of court. So I withdrew the case,” she said. Bano now has two children – a daughter and a son – with the new husband she married in 2009. “I am glad that I pushed for my rights, and my daughter’s,” she said.

A recent trend

Women are just starting to become aware of their rights in the region of Kashmir in northwest India.

“It was mainly because of illiteracy. Women’s education used to be considered against the norms of Kashmiri society,” Bashir Dabla, a leading sociologist at Kashmir University in Srinagar, told IPS. Women’s employment has also long been looked down upon, he added.

But this trend, said Dabla, has been changing in the past few years. “Now women are not only seen in good numbers in educational institutions, but also in workplaces,” he said.

According to the 2011 census, female literacy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir increased from 20 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in 2011, compared to 44 and 78 percent for males in the same period.

The result gazettes at Kashmir’s school board examination reveal that girls have topped the 10th standard annual exams six times in the past ten years. In Kashmir University a number of departments have an almost 50:50 male to female ratio.

The impact

Results have begun to be seen on the ground. Tasaduq Ahmad, assistant divisional commissioner of Kashmir, said his office received 917 complaints this year from women who were denied their share of the family property.

“We straightaway asked the concerned revenue officials to cancel the land registration of all the households where women had filed complaints,” Ahmad told IPS.

According to Ahmad, legislation passed by the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly in 2007 made it easier for women to claim their share of the family property. Earlier laws were not clear on women’s property rights.

Ahmad said women have increasingly filed complaints since the legislation was approved. “This was not the case 10 years back, but now such numbers go up each passing year,” said the assistant divisional commissioner, who has been serving in Kashmir’s revenue department for 23 years.

But social activists say women in Kashmir have a long way to go in fighting social prejudices against them.

“For example, when it comes to decision-making in a household, men continue to call the shots. Women are not yet in a position to assert themselves,” said Abdul Rashid Hanjoora, a prominent rights activist.

The 2011 census reflected the continued preference for boys over girls among Kashmiris, with the child sex ratio falling from 964 girls per 1000 boys in 2001 to 862 girls per 1000 boys in 2011. The national average in India is 940 girls per 1000 boys.

A woman victim of a buried shell. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 2 2013 (IPS)

A vast and picturesque meadow called Tosamaidan, about 112 km west of Jammu and Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, has now become the rallying point for hundreds of villagers who want the artillery exercises being carried out there by the Indian Army to stop.

For, the unexploded shells of Tosamaidan have been tearing their lives apart.

Reshma, a villager, lost her 19-year-old son Bilal Ahmad in 1997 to an unexploded shell while he was playing around the meadow. “As a mother, I don’t want to see children getting killed in like this,” Reshma told IPS.

In 1964, the meadow spread over 375 acres had been taken on lease by the Indian Army from the state government for 50 years. Now that the lease period is coming to an end in April next year, the residents of more than 30 villages around Tosamaidan have started a massive campaign against its renewal.The shells have resulted in heavy casualties and maimed hundreds of people, besides killing livestock and hitting the picturesque area’s tourism potential.

They say the shells have resulted in heavy casualties and maimed hundreds of people, besides killing livestock and hitting the picturesque area’s tourism potential.

“We don’t want our children to suffer like us,” said Fatima Begam of Khag village who has three children.

“If our parents had said in 1964 that the army should not be allowed to carry out military exercises in the vicinity of our villages, we would not have suffered,” Begam told IPS outside her home.

Picturesque Kashmir valley has for decades been at the heart of a bloody conflict between India and Pakistan. At least 60,000 people have lost their lives since an insurgency broke out in 1989, with the fighters demanding ‘freedom’ for Kashmir. The region has seen heavy mobilisation of troops by the Indian government.

Now the army has approached the Kashmir government for a fresh lease for Tosamaidan for another 20 years.

Lt Col. N. N. Joshi, army spokesperson in Srinagar, told IPS: “I can’t comment on this beyond the fact that the issue of lease extension is currently being deliberated upon.”

But the residents of Khag, Beerwah, Arzal and many other villages are bitterly opposed to an extension.

An inquiry by a Kashmiri lawmaker in the state assembly in August this year revealed that many shells left behind during army exercises have accidentally exploded, killing 63 people over the years. The statistics were provided by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

Ever since, the villagers who had been demanding an end to the military exercises around their homes have garnered the support of human rights activists as well as Kashmiri politicians.

Mehbooba Mufti, president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has demanded that instead of military exercises, the idyllic beauty of Tosamaidan should be used as a tourist destination. “You can’t ignore the pleas of thousands of villagers who have been suffering on many fronts because of these military exercises,” Mufti told IPS.

Members of her rival political party, the ruling National Conference party, also agree that the lease should not be extended for the army.

The Kashmir government has constituted a high-level committee to give its report to the state government. But many feel the government should deny an extension at the current site due to the ground realities.

“Both on principle and legally, the government has enough reason (to say no). Besides, a democratically elected government should always consider the genuine demands of its people,” a widely circulated Urdu daily, Kashmir Uzma, wrote in its editorial on Nov. 12.

Villagers say artillery exercises also hit their livelihoods.

“These artillery exercises hamper agricultural and livestock related activities apart from spoiling all chances of developing the area as a tourist destination,” said Arjumand Talib who has extensively written on conflict and economy in Kashmir.

Akhtar Hussain, another villager of Khag, said that developmental activities had become virtually impossible. “A few years back, the army disallowed the construction of the road in the area on the plea that it would give villagers easy access to the army camp,” Hussain told IPS.

Villagers say not only do they stumble upon unexploded shells in the upper areas while grazing their livestock, but shells also roll down to lower areas when torrential rains come in summer.

In May this year, a major tragedy was averted when a villager informed a social activist about an unexploded shell in a nearby stream.

“One of our villagers, Bashir Ahmed, telephoned me saying he had found a suspicious item near the stream. I informed the police right away and got the shell exploded safely,” Raja Muzaffar, a social activist, told IPS. “But unfortunately this does not always happen. Most often people stumble upon these shells and start tampering with them or step on them accidentally.”

Raja and other social activists have filed a petition before the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC). “We are quite hopeful that the SHRC will give clear directions to the state government about not leasing out the land any further,” Raja told IPS.

Tourism is adding to the strain on natural resources in Leh. Credit: thar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
LADAKH, India, Sep 24 2013 (IPS)

The Ladakh of today is a different world from the one Skarma Namgiyal remembers as a child. Back then, he had taken for granted the breathtaking beauty of its landscape, the purity of the cold mountain air, and the sweet taste of water in its streams.

Today, at 47 years of age, this resident of Tukcha village in Leh district in the north of Kashmir cannot believe they are digging borewells for water, using water to flush toilets in their homes in place of the dry toilets they had been accustomed to, and having to cope with sewage flowing right up to their houses.

Climate change, booming tourism and modern practices are wreaking havoc in this high altitude cold desert in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. The average elevation in Ladakh is 11,000 ft above sea level and temperatures swing between minus 35 degrees Celsius in winters to 35 degrees in summer. Annual rainfall in the region is less than four inches.

Earlier, water from the melting glaciers would be enough to cater to the needs of the locals, Namgiyal tells IPS. But with less snowfall and warmer summers, some of the glaciers have vanished altogether while others too are fast melting.

“Look at Khardongla,” says Namgiyal’s neighbour Tsering Kushu. “It used to be a huge glacier. It is not there anymore.”

GERES India, the Indian wing of the Paris-based environmental organisation, had in 2009 done a baseline survey of Ladakh, based on an analysis of meteorological data from 1973 to 2008 and interviews with older villagers. Its results showed glacial retreat in every part of Ladakh, most notably in Khardongla and Stok Kangri, the first north of Leh and the latter to its southwest.

“Trend analysis clearly indicated a rise of the order of nearly one degree Celsius for all winter months,” says the survey.

“Snowfall and rainfall too have showed a decreasing trend in the studied period,” Tundup Angmo, under whose guidance the survey was carried out, tells IPS.

Kushu has another barometer for gauging the hotter summer. “Now you can see people using refrigerators and ceiling fans in their homes,” he says.

Ladakh itself has a population of 280,000, according to the 2011 census. In addition, tourist arrivals have vastly increased from the trickle that began when the Indian government first opened the region to tourism in 1974.

According to figures with the state tourism department, Leh had received 100,179 tourists by the end of August 2013. “The number of arrivals has been less this year because of the increase in air fares,” Mehboob Ali, assistant director for tourism in the Ladakh region, tells IPS.

To cater to its visitors, Leh has 511 hotels and guest houses. “It is growing very fast,” says Lobzang Sultim, executive director of the environmental NGO Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG).

LEDeG is conducting a survey titled Urban Water Health Project which was started in October 2012 and will end by March 2014. According to the initial findings of the survey, 375 hotels in the town are extracting 852,000 litres of water a day. Sultim also says that almost 60 percent of Leh’s 20,000 households are using borewells to draw water.

“We have no choice but to draw water from borewells as the piped water supply is available for just one hour in the morning,” Manav Thakur, the general manager at Hotel Lingzi in Leh, tells IPS.

All this is putting pressure on Ladakh’s already scarce water resources, and with no means to replenish them, the water table is falling rapidly.

“We are already aware that precipitation in Leh is quite nominal,” says Sultim. “And with the decrease in glacial melt, stream discharge is also decreasing, making the recharging of the water table very difficult.”

LEDeG is working on means to conserve water and regenerate groundwater resources. “We are planning a project in which we will divert some of the surface water and allow it to travel slowly to ensure seepage of water to the water table,” says Sultim.

Another negative trend that is straining Ladakh’s water resources is the replacement of traditional dry toilets with water flush toilets. All of Leh’s hotels and guest houses have water flush toilets now, though a few also have dry toilets. A few households too have installed water flush toilets.

Dechen Chosto, a housewife in Leh town, is not one of them; her family is happy using a dry toilet. “They need no water, don’t stink and the compost can be used in our agricultural fields,” Chosto tells IPS.

Dry toilets, indeed, are ideally suited for Ladakh’s cold climate, says Sultim. “They are easy to use in the winter here when everything else except the blood in the body freezes,” he adds.

“We cannot afford the luxury of water flush toilets,” says Tashi Tundup, an executive engineer in the public health engineering department in Leh. “Though I am all for change and want people to benefit from modern facilities, I am a strong votary of continuing with dry toilets in Leh,” he tells IPS.

Leh had so far not felt the need for a sewage system. However, with the growing number of hotels and guesthouses, sewage and waste from these establishments is flowing right into people’s backyards and even into the Leh stream which runs through the town.

“They not only cause problems for people living in the lower parts, but are also contaminating our water,” says Rigzin Dorge, a resident of Sheynam, a village in the area. “We were better off with our own dry toilets.”

LEDeG is now urging people to return to eco-friendly ways. “During our interactions with foreigners, we found that some of them had actually used dry toilets,” says Sultim. “This made us realise that our guests will respect our traditions if we ourselves retain them.”

The organisation is now planning to publish posters and pamphlets to spread awareness about continuing with traditional practices.

The famed pashmina shawl that keeps the cold away – in style and at a price – could itself have become the victim of winter. Thousands of goats whose fine wool is weaved into pashmina have perished in extreme cold being associated with climate change.

A Changpa woman takes her Pashmina goats out near Kharnak in Ladakh. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

Pashmina is drawn from Changpa goats found in Ladakh region of Kashmir state and a part of the Tibetan Plateau, more than 14,000 feet above sea level. The plateau is often called the Roof of the World. Little grows in these areas where the temperature can drop to minus 35 degrees Celsius. The local Changpa nomads live off their herds of sheep, yak and goats.

The Changthang region of the larger Tibetan Plateau does not normally see heavy snowfall, though. That may now be changing, given the heavy snowfall earlier this year that deprived the Changpas of fodder for their animals.

“In the past five years this is the second time I have seen such heavy snowfall,” Bihkit Angmo, 53, who rears goats, told IPS outside her tent in Kharnak, a nomadic settlement 173 km east of Leh, the capital of Ladakh. “This new trend of snowfall several feet high has left us quite worried.”

Summer last year brought its own problems, leaving areas parched and barren. “It was terrible, we had to go long distances to find suitable pasture for our livestock,” said Angmo. This summer melting snow brought some greenery back but not before serious loss. The District Sheep Husbandry Office at Leh puts the number of goats lost due to weather upheavals at 24,624.

This has seriously jeopardised the pashmina business. Wool from the goat is extremely warm, given the cold the animal has to survive in. With a diameter of 14-19 microns, strands of pashmina are said to be six times finer than human hair.

Kashmiri craftsmen have used these for generations to make the renowned pashmina shawl, woven with hand and often embellished with fine embroidery. A pashmina shawl can cost about 200-600 dollars. Pashmina exports fetched 160 million dollars in 2011-2012, according to the state government’s economic survey. Now, given the extremes of summer and winter, goats are dying either of starvation or of hypothermia.

Angmo’s is one of few families that have stayed behind in Kharnak to still rear Pashmina-producing goats. Some 83 families out of a total of 98 have migrated from this area, according to Mohammad Sharief, the district sheep husbandry officer at Leh.

“For the past several years,” he told IPS, “our surveys show that five to 10 families from the Changthang area migrate to Leh city every year.” According to Sharief, there are an estimated 2,500 Changpa families managing about 200,000 goats in Changthang. Each goat produces 250 grams of wool in a season. The wool sells at about 35 dollars a kilogram.

Nomads from Changthang have set up their own neighbourhood in Leh called Kharnak Ling. “All the families that have migrated from Kharnak and other belts of Changthang have settled here,” said Sharief. Forty-three-year-old Motub Angmo is among those who migrated from Kharnak four years back to settle in Leh. The hard mountain life had got to him, he said, and they moved out after selling off the 300 goats the family had.

“Now that we have no livestock, we go and work as labourers,” he told IPS. His five children go to a proper school now in Leh. The mobile schools that the government had set up for nomads in the mountains did not succeed.

If things continue this way, Sharief said Pashmina-goat rearing would come to an end in the next two decades. That would also mean the end of the livelihoods for about 300,000 people in the Jammu and Kashmir state of India who depend on pashmina directly or indirectly, according to Shariq Farooqi, director of the Craft Development Institute in Srinagar, the summer capital of the state.

“We all rely on pashmina for making shawls,” Ashraf Banday, a pashmina trader in the city, told IPS. “Any threat to its production means a threat to our livelihood.” As it is, he said, the Kashmir pashmina industry is suffering because of duplicate products in the market. “Any decline in pashmina production will make it even more vulnerable.”

Maryam Akhtar, a farmer in Kashmir, worries the taps will not yield enough water for her family's daily needs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

Most residents of this lush valley, nestled between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, are unaccustomed to drought. For generations subsistence agriculturalists have relied on steady rainfall and glacial rivers to irrigate their farmland, but now this scenic alpine region is feeling the pinch of climate change.

The most recent State of the Environment Report (SOER), released by the Directorate of Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing in the capital, Srinagar, says that all its monitoring stations across Kashmir – except Jammu, which is located 290 km away from the capital – recorded a decreasing trend in total annual rainy days.

A number of other studies carried out in recent years corroborate these findings, adding that glaciers in the Kashmir Himalayas are receding, while snowfall and precipitation are both showing decreasing trends.

A study by Norwegian scientist Andreas Kaab and his French colleagues, which was published by Nature Magazine in August last year, found that increasing temperatures in the region posed no immediate threat to glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalayas (HKKH) except to those in the Kashmir Himalayas.

Kaab’s findings suggest that Kashmir’s glaciers may be receding by “as much as half a metre annually,” presenting an immediate threat to the rivers that feed the Indus basin.

Jhelum, the largest river in the region, originates in South Kashmir and is fed by glaciers in the upper reaches of the town of Pahalgam. One of the river Jhelum’s primary tributaries, the Lidder, is fed by the Kolhai glacier, which is receding fast.

Quoting a study conducted by Kashmir University’s geography department, Department Head Mohammad Sultan Bhat informed IPS that, since 1975, precipitation in the lower parts of Kashmir has declined by 1.2 centimetres in lower altitudes and eight cm in higher altitudes.

These trends, say experts, bode badly for the future of Kashmir’s agricultural industry: according to figures in the most recent Kashmir Economic Survey, only 42 percent of agricultural land in Kashmir is covered by irrigation facilities like canals and lift stations, while the remaining 58 percent is entirely dependent on rainfall.

Following the enforcement of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act in 1959, over 9,000 landowners were stripped of over 100,000 hectares of land, which was transferred to peasants, thereby creating an agrarian-based economy in Kashmir.

Over 80 percent of the population is now dependent on agriculture for a livelihood, cultivating such crops as rice, maize, pulses, saffron and potatoes.

Official statistics indicate that 75 percent of agricultural land – roughly 46,943 hectares – is under paddy cultivation in Kashmir, indicating that rice farmers comprise the bulk of agriculturalists here.

Early this year, scientists from the earth sciences department at the Kashmir University revealed that increases in temperature and a considerable reduction in precipitation would result in a sharp decrease in paddy yields across the region.

Earlier this year, renowned scientists Shakil A. Romshoo and M. Muslim presented a paper at the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi, predicting that rice production would decrease by 6.6 percent (over 4,000 kg per hectare) by 2040.

According to Romshoo, these projected declines are based on predictions that maximum and minimum temperature will increase by 5.39degrees Celsius and 5.08degrees Celsius respectively by 2090.  Precipitation levels are likely to decrease by about 16.67 percent by 2090.

Most farmers in Kashmir earn roughly 1,900 dollars a year and produce an annual average of 40 quintals (4,000 kgs) of paddy per hectare. Experts say these farmers will struggle to withstand the decrease in yields that will undoubtedly accompany the predicted weather changes.

Already countless families are feeling the pinch of decreasing water supplies. Nasreena Begum, a mother of three children living in the village of Surigam in the northern Kupwara district, spends several hours every morning walking over a kilometre to fetch water from a stagnant pond, since the stream that once bordered her village has completely dried up.

She told IPS she makes the trek several times a day in order to collect enough water to meet her family’s daily needs.

In addition to drinking and washing water, she must also ensure that the family cow is properly watered, since her children rely heavily on the cow’s milk for nourishment and she herself sells five litres a day to the local milkman in order to supplement her husband’s meagre earnings as a daily labourer.

As the rains become thinner, and the glacier-fed rivers slow to a trickle, she and many other farming families will be forced to hunker down to weather a hotter and drier Kashmir.

(END)

An elderly TB patient at the Srinagar-based Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

Twenty-three-year-old Haleema (not her real name) was not the first female patient at Srinagar’s Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir to try to run away.

While undergoing treatment in the isolation ward reserved for tuberculosis patients, she hatched a plan with her brother to dodge the watchful eyes of the officer in charge, Ali Mohammad, and make a quick escape.

“She told me they wanted to take a stroll,” Mohammad told IPS. “I followed them and managed to get her (Haleema) back to the ward…but not without resistance.”

“I don’t have TB,” a distraught Haleema told IPS from the bed where, for the time being, she is reluctantly continuing her treatment.

Her doctors say she is suffering from all the telltale TB symptoms, including a bad cough that has lasted for over two weeks, evening temperature rises, blood in her sputum and loss of weight and appetite.

Worried that the infection could lead to fibrosis (a thickening of the lung tissues) if left untreated, doctors are administering daily doses of isonicotinylhydrazine (INH), rifampin, ethambutol and pyrazinamide, which they hope to continue for six months.

Far from being grateful for the care she is receiving at the state-run facility, the young woman insists that the hospital staff are putting her future “at risk” by forcing her to stay put.

By way of explaining this unusual claim, Haleema’s brother told IPS: “We won’t be able to find her a husband if she remains in the hospital. The word will spread about her illness and no one will want to marry her.”

Dangerous misconceptions

Haleema’s desperate escape attempt is not an isolated case, but rather a trend in this region of 12 million people, where misconceptions about TB are thwarting doctors’ attempts to stamp out the disease.

Women often bear the brunt of the stigma attached to TB.

Rehana Kausar, a researcher with Kashmir’s health department who presented a study entitled ‘Sex Differences in Key Aspects of Tuberculosis Control’ at a recent conference at the Srinagar-based Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), found that 87.6 percent of 240 female respondents said they would deny or hide a TB diagnosis for fear of “spoiling marital life or ruining their marriage prospects.”

“Nearly one-third of married women feared desertion by their husbands and the majority (95.9 percent) of unmarried women said they would not be able to find a match (marriage partner) if their TB diagnosis was revealed.”

According to Mushtaq Ahmad, director of the State Tuberculosis Diagnostic Centre (STDC), misunderstandings about the disease and its impacts pose “a major challenge” to the medical establishment.

He says that some TB patients prefer to visit private doctors rather than check into free, government-run health centers, in the hopes of keeping their health status a secret.

“This is a dangerous trend,” Ahmad told IPS, “because these patients often leave the treatment midway… when they can no longer bear the cost of paying private doctors themselves.”

Experts say incomplete treatment is a serious health hazard for the entire region.

Ghulam Ahmad Wani, Kashmir’s chief tuberculosis officer, told IPS that patients frequently declare themselves infection-free after a month, even though a full course of TB medication typically runs for at least six months.

“Though the symptoms may disappear, this does not mean the disease has been cured,” he stressed, adding that, on the contrary, stopping TB treatment prematurely simply makes the disease harder to treat.

Patients end up developing multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), a particularly virulent strain of the disease that refuses to respond to isoniazid and rifampin, the two most potent TB drugs, and a host of related medications.

The worst-case scenarios, says Suraiya Farooq, an MD at the Chest Diseases Hospital, include extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and totally drug-resistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB), which are particularly worrisome strains for people living with HIV/AIDS, since the body effectively stops responding to even second-line intravenous drugs, leaving the patient with a severely weakened immune system.

The repercussions of this trend are magnified in India, the country with the highest number of TB patients in the world.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India accounts for one-fifth of global TB cases, with two million people developing TB annually, of which roughly 870,000 are thought to be infectious cases. It is estimated that 300,000 Indians die of TB every year.

Residents of the mountainous state of Jammu and Kashmir, nestled between the Great Himalayas and Pir Panjal mountain range, are highly susceptible to TB, especially those who dwell in traditional mud huts without proper ventilation.

Unhygienic and crowded living conditions also encourage transfer of the disease, according to Suraiya.

In 2012, Kashmir’s Tuberculosis Cell conducted sputum tests of 50,000 people who complained of TB-like symptoms: 5,800 were diagnosed with TB.

In the previous two years, according to officials speaking to IPS under condition of anonymity, more than 15,000 out of roughly 100,000 suspected cases tested positive for TB.

The officials refused to divulge the number of deaths resulting from these cases.

However, Wani said that state hospitals “treated 93 percent of those patients, who recovered fully, while the remaining seven percent left the treatment midway.”

Most experts agree that a lack of awareness about the disease is the main culprit for the high infection rate and for the number of people who either deny their diagnosis or discontinue their treatment.

Quoting figures from her recently published study, Kausar told IPS that 10 percent of women with TB did not know they were living with the condition, while 60 percent of female patients had no knowledge about the disease and how it spreads.

According to her research, few patients were aware that TB is a bacterial infection, caused by inhalation of respiratory fluids emitted by an infected person; in fact, one-fourth of the women surveyed attributed the disease to “tension”, stress, domestic strife and “past sins”, while 21 percent of nearly 250 male respondents believed the disease was caused by smoking.

Ahmad lamented that Kashmir’s health department had yet to create a comprehensive awareness campaign, though he welcomed recent efforts undertaken through the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP), which is being implemented throughout India as part of a nationwide TB eradication initiative.

States are now utilising radio and television stations to advertise that the disease is treatable. “We are also (mobilising) school teachers and preachers from the mosques to help spread the word,” he said.

Suraiya says awareness is crucial not only for ending the stigma but also for urging people, especially residents of the Himalayan foothills, to come for regular check-ups or sound the alarm when a family or community member has been coughing continuously for more than a week.

A worker bends over the rows of flowers in one of Rubeena Begum's polyhouses. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

As a little girl, Rubeena Begum had big plans: she would become a doctor and secure a decent income working in one of the 30 hospitals in the Himalayan state of Kashmir in north India.

She had pictured sterile medical establishments and well-lit corridors that reeked of disinfectant, never dreaming that she would one day make a living in a much more organic environment.

Standing in front of a handsome collection of polythene-covered greenhouses, or polyhouses, Rubeena points proudly to the fragrant blossoms inside – Lilium, gladiolus, gerberas, carnations, lavender and Bulgarian roses – that have changed her life forever.

She does not cultivate these flowers for their aromatic and medicinal properties alone: they also fetch her a tidy sum at the local market, enough that she has been able to pay back a considerable portion of the loans she took to get this floriculture business off the ground.

Starting with just three polyhouses erected on half an acre of land in the Budgam district of Kashmir in 2006, Rubeena has doubled her business in six years, and now manages 12 growing units.

Banks that once baulked at the idea of providing a loan to this intrepid young woman – demanding countless documents as proof that she would be able to repay – now approach her with offers of even bigger loans to sustain her successful venture.

Rubeena tells IPS that she has become the veritable poster child for entrepreneurship in Kashmir, where half a million out of roughly ten million people are jobless.

Experts blame this dire situation on the armed conflict that has gnawed at every aspect of life in this scenic yet troubled state for over two decades.

Every year over 2,500 young people graduate from Kashmiri universities with Master’s degrees in hand – but those who are unable to bag the few available jobs in the government sector, or in the tourism, agriculture or handicrafts industries, end up searching desperately for work that simply does not exist.

Now, floriculture seems to be offering a way out of a cycle of poverty that many youth were beginning to fear they would never escape.

In full bloom

Rubeena had been on the lookout for employment opportunities when she happened to tune into a radio programme extolling the virtues of agricultural ventures, and of flower cultivation in particular.

“As a child I was always passionate about flowers – I would gather them and decorate my house with them,” she said. “I knew then that this was something I needed to take up.”

After receiving basic training from the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneur Development Institute (J&KEDI) on how to erect polyhouses, as well as advice from the floriculture department on the basic growing seasons and harvesting techniques, she set to work.

While reluctant to divulge details of her profits, she readily shared news of having recently expanded her operations by renting 57 acres of land for the cultivation of Bulgarian roses and lavender.

She transports many of her flowers and aromatic oils to collection centres in Kashmir, where they are picked up by distributors who drive them into major urban centres like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, where flowers for religious festivals, marriage ceremonies and temple offerings are in high demand.

She also sells extracts like rose oil (used in perfumery), rose water (used for cosmetic and medical products) and lavender oil (used in cosmetics and alternative medicines) at her shop in Srinagar’s Sheikh-ul-Alam International Airport.

The Jammu-based Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) also facilitates sales of her products by putting her in touch with buyers interested in the plants’ medicinal properties.

Experts tell IPS that a bunch of 10 high quality carnations or gerberas typically fetch between five and 15 dollars, while a kilogramme of rose oil brings in up to 7,000 dollars in the Indian market.

According to official estimates, Kashmir’s floriculture industry has the potential to generate 100 million dollars a year in revenue, since the blooms here are said to be of exceptionally high quality.

Whether this is due to the crisp, clean mountain air or the rich Himalayan soil does not seem to matter much to the youth who are flocking to the sector.

Shahnawaz Rasool Dar, a youth from downtown Srinagar, recently started cultivating flowers in the Baramulla district on four acres of land.

“I was working in a private company outside Kashmir but after realising the potential of floriculture in Kashmir, I rushed back here,” Dar told IPS at his farm where he cultivates gerberas, carnations and roses.

Dar’s Bismillah Flora Company is still in its infancy, fetching around 4,000 dollars a year, but he says he is confident that he can transform it into a major business operation.

Well educated and tech-savvy, Dar spends hours online researching the best scientific practices such as the ideal distance between rows of flowerbeds and optimal irrigation techniques; he also buys seeds from reputed companies.

According to Kashmir’s Floriculture Department, in the last year alone more than 1,100 youth started growing flowers for a living.

Popular regions for floriculture include the Budgam, Srinagar and Baramulla districts of the Kashmir Valley, a fertile basin of the river Jhelum, where the climate is ideal for nurturing the delicate flowers, according to Sunil Mistri, director of Kashmir’s Floriculture Department.

“The average farmer can earn an additional annual income of 3,000 dollars if he also grows flowers,” Mistri told IPS.

According to Javid Ahmad, a floriculture officer in Budgam, the number of flower-growing farmers reached 375 in the last year. Once registered with his department they are entitled to regular advice from experts and subsidised loans ranging from 3,300 to 16,600 dollars to encourage more people to venture into the field of floriculture.

As Javid was talking to IPS, two young men dropped into the office and expressed their desire to start a flower cultivation project using a small portion of their farmland.

Bashir Ahmad, who graduated from Kashmir University two years ago and has since tried – unsuccessfully – to secure a livelihood cultivating mushrooms, is desperate for an income.

Lured by the many success stories of floriculture entrepreneurs like Rubeena, Bashir is now “quite keen to take this up as a profession,” he told IPS.

Individual ventures have a multiplier effect on employment. For instance, Rubeena now hires 53 workers to tend to the flowers, paying day labourers about five dollars a day, and her regular employees between 70 and 100 dollars per month.

Anxious to capitalise on these developments, the government is laying plans to develop the sector on a national level. Mistri says the floriculture department will soon create cold storage facilities at various centers across Kashmir, to ensure that flowers stay fresh until buyers come for them.

Government hospitals in Kashmir are mostly visited by the poor. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jun 5 2013 (IPS)

Leaning on her daughter’s arm in the post-operative ward of a hospital in Srinagar, capital of the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Raja Begam views the anti-infection pill she is being offered with a large dose of suspicion.

“How can I be sure it will relieve my suffering?” the 49-year-old asked. Begam has just had her gall bladder removed and is giving her attendants a tough time, insisting, “Everyone says we are being fed fake drugs in Kashmir.”

She is referring to the fake drugs scandal in the state, which erupted this April after samples of the antibiotic Maximizine-625, subjected to a random quality check by the state drug controller, were found to be spurious.

Tested samples of the drug, which is supposed to contain 500 mg of amoxicillin trihydrate and 125 mg of clavulanic acid, turned out to be completely devoid of the former. Yet 200,000 of these tablets were in circulation in numerous government hospitals.

While the media hype during the early days of the scandal quickly died down, the long-lasting effects of such a scam can still be seen in hospitals across the state, where patients like Begam have become cautious to the point of paranoia.

“Every time she needs to take her medicines, we have to cajole her to do so,” Begam’s daughter, sitting beside her mother’s hospital bed, told IPS.

It is not as though scandals are anything new to Jammu and Kashmir, which has waged a long battle with militancy and oppression by Indian armed forces. More than 800 cases of corruption against politicians and bureaucrats are registered with the State Vigilance Commission and the crime branch of the Jammu and Kashmir police department.

Civil society, however, is infuriated over the current drug scandal because it involves human lives. “This is not about amassing wealth through corrupt means but about playing with human lives for making money,” Shakeel Qalandar, who organised a protest against the scandal early in May, told IPS.

Symptoms of a disorder within the health system here have been apparent for a while.

The state’s only childcare facility, the G.B. Pant Hospital in Srinagar, recorded 3,800 deaths between 2008 and mid-2012. Early this year, reports surfaced that 636 infants died in the hospital in the first half of 2012. The shortage of ventilators and other basic equipment mandatory for a childcare hospital was offered as a possible reason.

Another recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India observed that between 2007 and 2012, there were as many as 12,860 deaths in Srinagar’s lone tertiary-care hospital, the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS). Of these, 7,875 people had died within 48 hours of their admission to the hospital, the report added.

Even as recently as May 29, ampicillin injections as well as emergency medicines supplied to patients at the Chest Diseases Hospital in Srinagar came under the scanner when, instead of showing signs of recovery, patients began developing various side-effects after the drugs were administered.

However, no one had connected the dots so far, till the scam blew up in their faces.

The annual consumption of drugs in Jammu and Kashmir is worth 75 million dollars, according to the Jammu-based Drug and Food Control Organisation. A good percentage of these drugs have routinely turned out to be suspect in random samplings by the laboratories of the drug control department. These findings have, however, never been made public.

Of the 2,000-odd samples collected in this latest round of inspection, at least 51 were found to be substandard. An official of the department admitted as much to IPS, but only after an assurance that he would not be named.

The Jammu-based Life Line Pharmaco Surgicals supplied the drug, on the strength of an authorisation certificate allegedly from Medley Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a Mumbai-based manufacturer of bulk drugs, which has been approved by the Jammu and Kashmir government to supply drugs to its hospitals.

It later transpired that Affy Parenterals, an outfit based in the state of Himachal Pradesh with which Jammu and Kashmir shares its border in the south, had actually manufactured the drug.

Once in Jammu and Kashmir, the suspect drugs entered the state hospitals through a complex network of wholesale dealers and retailers. It is another sad commentary on the system that of the 4,100 drug stores in Kashmir, over 1,200 operate without licences, the official in the drug control department told IPS.

“And most of those who do have licences have got them after paying bribes,” he added.

As early as 2008, a report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), the country’s apex trade body, had stated that while most of the fake and substandard drug establishments worked out of the northern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the fake drug supply was fed particularly to Jammu and Kashmir, a state located in the country’s northern extremity.

So perturbed are the state’s people that even two months down the line, protests continue.

Members of civil society have staged demonstrations, while the Doctors Association of Kashmir (DAK) demanded that the former health minister of the state, Sham Lal, believed to be close to Life Line Pharmaco’s owner Ashok Kumar, be arrested.

He and the present director of the drug control department, activists say, are directly involved in the scam. They are alleged to have facilitated the entry of fake drugs by ignoring standard norms.

Given the scale of the public anger and the repeated call for strikes, the state government was forced to hand over the investigation to the crime branch. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that he had asked the State Vigilance Commission to probe the scandal as well.

But DAK has also filed a petition in the state high court, which directed the crime branch to carry out an objective investigation and issued summons to the former health minister and the other accused. No arrests have been made so far, although warrants have been issued against 15 people of the suspect companies.

Civil society is far from pacified by the promises of official inquiries. They are adamant on an independent probe.

“The investigation should be carried out by some reputed international agency, like Amnesty International, because the scandal amounts to attempted genocide,” Hameeda Nayeem, chairperson of the Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies (KCSDS), told IPS.

“What the government is doing is an eye-wash,” said DAK president Dr Nissar-ul-Hassan. “We demand that all the drugs being used in Kashmir be subjected to a quality check,” he told IPS.

The drug scandal comes as another blow to the already dismal healthcare scenario in the state. Lack of space, infrastructure and equipment are crippling, while low staff strength leans even heavier on the system.

The affluent class in Kashmir can afford to seek treatment outside the state. The poor, however, have no recourse but to rely on the public healthcare system in the state. Prayers appear to be the only palliative now that the system itself has taken ill.

Qadir Sheikh, a landmine victim from Warsun, laments that his handicap will mean no education for his two daughters. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, May 18 2013 (IPS)

Aadil Khan and his two siblings had been playing as usual behind their house in the village of Diver, 110 kilometres north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, when they came across what they thought was a “plaything” laying on the ground. But no sooner had they picked the object up than it literally shattered their innocent lives into pieces.

Stunned by the explosion from the shell, which the children had mistaken for a toy, they cannot remember much about the aftermath of that incident on Dec. 17. But the medics who treated them said they were “lucky” to have escaped with their lives.

“Aadil and Mashoq received severe injuries while their sister Naza escaped any major damage,” Sharief Khan, the children’s father, told IPS.

Khan, who supports a family of seven and earns his livelihood through manual labour, had to make a “tough decision” to ensure his children received proper medical treatment: he had to sell off a portion of his land.

The value of land in his village is so low that he only received 800 dollars for the entire plot, which is less than two-eighths of an acre, but Khan had few options. “Who could have lent such a huge amount to a poor man like me?” he asked.

Nearly six months later, Khan is still feeling the crunch of that sacrifice, forced to buy extra rice in the market because his remaining land does not yield enough grain to feed his large family. Already accustomed to the pangs of hunger, the Khan family now almost never has enough to eat.

Such are the stories of the nearly 700 victims of shells and mines here in Kashmir, a valley tucked between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, whose scenic beauty conceals a bloody history that has its roots in the 1947 partition of India.

As the latter celebrated its independence from British colonial rule, and the newly created state of Pakistan struggled to find its feet, Kashmir found itself claimed by both sides.

While the two countries jostled for power over the resource-rich region, a United Nations resolution offered the valley’s residents three possibilities: either join Hindu-dominated India, Muslim-majority Pakistan, or vote for independence. But this last option was never made a reality, leaving Pakistan to seize a third of the territory and India to administer what was left.

For decades Kashmiris have resisted this arrangement, enforced by India and Pakistan. The “pro-freedom” uprising of 1989 morphed into a resistance movement that continues to simmer today and has resulted in at least 60,000 deaths to date.

Those whose lives have been spared have not been left untouched by the conflict, with hundreds maimed by landmines and unexploded shells months, even years, after they were planted. Most of the victims are children or farmers, who stumble across unexploded shells in fields where encounters between insurgents and the Indian army once took place.

Though no exact figures are available, experts believe thousands of unexploded shells and mines are scattered around frontier areas like the northeastern administrative unit of Karnah; the western town of Poonch; the Rajouri district, also known as the Vale of Lakes; Uri, a town located on the banks of the river Jhelum; and in various remote villages.

Earlier this year, four children were injured when a shell exploded in Chattabandy, a village in Kashmir’s Bandipora district.

“The children were playing in an open paddy field when they found an unexploded shell and started fiddling with it,” a villager named Mohammad Ramzan, who witnessed the scene on Feb. 3, told IPS, adding that such incidents have become a matter of “routine.”

“A number of people, mostly kids, have either been killed or sustained injuries in such explosions in and around our village alone,” he said.

For nine-year-old Aadil Khan, memories of the blast are too painful to recall. Though he is now recovering, he is plagued by the hardships his family has endured as a result of his injury.

But activists lament that the Khan family’s situation is not unique. Those maimed by stray explosives receive standard government compensation of about 1,500 dollars, a sum that does not even cover the most basic treatment and fails to take into account the fact that most victims end up disabled for life, according to Dr. Hameeda Nayeem, a civil rights activist and professor at Kashmir University.

She told IPS nearly 100 percent of the victims come from poor socio-economic backgrounds and belong to families who earn less than 95 dollars a month.

A technician at the the Hope Disability Centre in Kashmir preparing prosthetic limbs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Qalandar Khan, a farm worker who was handicapped by a shell in 2012, is one such example. In the last year his family has spent 1,900 dollars on his treatment by selling off their cattle. The medical expenses have devoured their savings, and the loss of their animals has left them with almost no income since Qalandar was the family’s sole breadwinner.

“Now, the onus is on me and the kids,” his wife Reshma tells IPS. “Sometimes we don’t have enough to eat.”

Clinics providing free services are few and far between. One of them, the Hope Disability Centre, is currently treating 150 of the roughly 700 landmine victims, according to Director Sami Wani.

Working in collaboration with the Paris-based Handicap International, the NGO sends its coordinators into affected areas to identify families or victims in need of support, and even “provides prosthetics free of charge,” Wani told IPS.

Zahid Ahmad, coordinator of the northwestern Kupwara district for the Hope Disability Centre, says he found Qadir Sheikh in the village of Dardsun during one of his routine searches for victims.

“Had he not come, I would not have got my prosthesis,” Sheikh told IPS. He received basic training at the Centre and is now able to walk, but still cannot find a job. “I am worried about my two daughters, as I am not in a position to earn enough money to educate them.”

Rights activists say that the government should offer better compensation to those who have lost body parts and been rendered disabled.

“Most of these victims are now dependent on others,” Khurram Parvez, convener of the Srinagar-based Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), told IPS. “They should be compensated in a manner that allows them to lead dignified lives.”

Caregivers of victims who are bedridden, immobile, or otherwise unable to perform the most basic life functions are under enourmous pressure. In the village of Marhama, Habeed Lone sits by the side of his disabled wife Fata, who had both legs amputated after stepping on a mine on her way home from the family farm.

“We have six children and I have to take care of them and my wife single-handedly,” Lone tells IPS.

According to experts like Parvez, “It is the duty of security agencies to sanitise the surroundings of a place where they carry out combat operations,” adding that no effort has so far been made to raise awareness among the general public about the hazards involved in coming across these destructive shells.

“Give us his body; we want to give him a respectable burial…” this is the overwhelming demand across Kashmir following the hanging of Mohammad Afzal Guru who was convicted for his role in the attack on the Indian parliament on Dec. 13.  2001. Nine people died in the attack.

Guru was convicted by a trial court in 2002. Two years later, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s order.

A mercy petition from his family was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee on Feb. 3. He was executed on Feb. 9 in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail. The body was buried in the jail premises.

His family and many others have objected strongly to the burial. “We will not sit silent until the body of our beloved brother is returned to us,” Afzal’s elder brother Aijaz Guru told IPS in a broken voice over phone from his house in Doabgah-Sopore, 65 km north of Kashmir state capital Srinagar. “We want to give him a decent burial.”

He added: “We are well aware that our brother became a victim of vote bank politics. Now his body should be returned to us. It is our right.”

The demand for Guru’s body is the second such from Kashmiris. There is already a demand for return of the mortal remains of Maqbool Bhat, a Kashmiri separatist leader who was hanged and buried in Tihar Jail on Feb. 11, 1984 after being convicted on the charge of killing an Indian official. Kashmiris have kept an empty grave for Bhat’s mortal remains in Srinagar’s ‘Martyrs’ Graveyard’.

The execution of Afzal Guru has evoked strong reactions from civil society and political parties in Kashmir across the board. With elections in India due next year, many say Guru was hanged for ‘petty’ political reasons and that he was not given fair trial.

“This is part of India’s election drama and a proposition motivated by electoral considerations in which Kashmiris are being made sacrificial lambs,” separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told IPS over phone from New Delhi where he was detained briefly after the hanging of Guru.

“Yes, there was politics involved at every stage and it was indeed a political trial rather than a judicial trial,” Prof. Anuradha Chenoy from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi told IPS on phone.

According to Chenoy, there are many loopholes in the Indian judicial system. “The Indian lower courts and judiciary as a whole look at some cases in a typical fashion: if they treat somebody as an enemy, they look at his case with that perspective only; and not on merit,” she said. “It is well known that Guru did not get a fair trial.”

Expressing her distress about Afzal’s last wish to see his family not being fulfilled, she said:  “Every person’s last wish before death is to see his family. But it is quite unfortunate that he did not get an opportunity to see his wife and son before he was hanged.”

Guru’s friends say he had “given up militancy” in the late 1990s and had set up a pharmaceuticals business.

Delhi University lecturer Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani, who was earlier acquitted in the same case, said that Afzal Guru’s family was not informed by the government about his execution. “His wife had absolutely no clue. Under the law, she had every right to meet him before the execution,” he told IPS.

“I woke her up early on that morning (Feb. 9) and informed her about rumours of Afzal’s hanging. It was so shocking for her as she was completely unaware. She told me that she had received no communication at all.”

India’s Home Secretary R. K. Singh has said the family was sent a letter through speed post.

That led Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to say: “If we are going to inform someone by post that his family member is going to be hanged, there is something seriously wrong with the system.”

Omar Abdullah said this kind of execution is “unheard of.”  In an interview to Indian news channel NDTV, he said:  “There are enough voices already in the rest of the country who believe that the evidence was flawed.”

According to Abdullah, there could be long-term political implications. “We can deal with the short-term implications as we have taken enough security measures for that, but what we are worried about are the long-term political implications of this execution,” he said.

Mehbooba Mufti, president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – the largest opposition party in the legislative assembly – said that while “the hanging should not have been carried out, the return of Afzal’s body was the least the government could do to show concern for humanity.”

The Kashmir government has imposed curfew all over the state. At least three people have been killed and scores injured in clashes between police and people who defied curfew restrictions.

Internet services have been blocked in order to curb protests on social media. News channels have also been blocked.

Protests against human rights violations have been a hallmark of the armed conflict in Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, Dec 15 2012 (IPS)

Amid growing scepticism among Kashmiri people that the separatist leadership has lost relevance in the region’s fast-changing political landscape, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference – an alliance of separatist political parties and religious and social groups – is making a Herculean effort to reclaim some relevance in this disputed region.

Kashmir, the northwestern most region of South Asia, has long been the site of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan.

Ever since the partition of India in 1947, Pakistan has held control over one-third of Kashmir’s territory, while India administers the remaining two-thirds, including the Kashmir valley.

In the six decades since Indian independence, the two South Asian neighbours have fought three wars over Kashmir, but neither one has ever been able to claim complete control over the territory or its people.

Formed as a political front in 1993 with the goal of realising Kashmir’s right to self-determination, guaranteed by United Nations Security Council Resolution 47, Hurriyat was once the voice of Kashmir’s resistance movement, encompassing members from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Jamaat-e-Islami, the Awami Action Committee, the Peoples Conference, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s League (JKPL), the People’s Democratic Front and the Islamic Students League.

But the inability to resolve some of Kashmir’s most basic political questions resulted in the Conference being edged out of its central spot in the political sphere, replaced by more mainstream parties.

A delegation representing the Hurriyat Conference, led by its chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, is in Islamabad today for talks with the Pakistani government, which has supported Kashmir’s freedom struggle since its inception in 1989.

India, in turn, has accused Pakistan of supplying arms to Kashmiri freedom fighters.

Throughout decades of talks and failed negotiations, Pakistan has pushed to resolve the territorial dispute according to the wishes of the Kashmiri people, while India – which currently has tens of thousands of troops stationed at intervals across Indian administered Kashmir – has fought to maintain the status quo.

Meanwhile, Kashmiris themselves want to be included in the dialogue that has, hitherto, been primarily a bilateral exchange between India and Pakistan.

People like Ghulam Rasool Malik, who lost his only son to the conflict, are desperate for the freedom struggle to yield results. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

“We want to go to Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue and make the dialogue a vibrant one, with Kashmir at the top of the agenda for the Indo-Pak talks, along with active participation of Kashmiris,” Farooq said last week in Srinagar, before leaving for the Indian capital, New Delhi, to board a flight bound for Pakistan.

“We will urge Pakistan to (increase) its support for Kashmiris so that India will feel pressure to initiate a meaningful dialogue for the solution of this issue.”

Analysts say that Hurriyat’s visit will not yield much for the coalition, nor even for the overall political situation in Kashmir.

Commenting on Hurriyat’s visit, Reyaz Wani, a leading Srinagar-based political commentator, told IPS, “The visit is taking place at a time when Pakistan is preparing for national polls next year. And at the same time there has been little headway in the ongoing talks between India and Pakistan to warrant consultations with Kashmiri leadership.”

According to Wani, Hurriyat’s demand that it be given “legal sanctity” for its third party role in the resolution efforts is, simultaneously, well past its time and ahead of its time.

“It is past its time as Hurriyat has lost its political centrality in Kashmir, being reduced to a spectator to the fast-changing political (landscape). And it is ahead of its time because India and Pakistan seem to have moved away from tackling their political issues, towards nurturing a long-term trading relationship.”

Recently, Pakistan has shown eagerness to build trade relations with India and is on the brink of granting India the long-awaited Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status by the end of December.

“Besides,” Wani added, “not only has the separatist leadership itself splintered into different groups but the two-thirds of the political space it once dominated has been appropriated by the mainstream parties (such as the pro-Indian National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party),” who not only have electoral sway but also occupy a substantial space in the minds of most Kashmiri people, he said.

Still, the visit will undoubtedly bring Hurriyat, which has long been stagnating on the margins of Kashmiri politics, back into the mainstream discourse.

“The meetings with Pakistani leaders and those from Pakistan Administered Kashmir will allow Hurriyat to bask in some media attention. Hurriyat will also get a chance to be active on a larger plane, playing the role of the de facto third party without being acknowledged as such by New Delhi,” Wani said.

According to Shamas Imran, a professor at Kashmir’s Central University, the visit “provides a good opportunity” for Hurriyat to pluck itself and the Kashmir issue from obscurity.

“The recent successful elections for grassroots-level government (village heads and Panchayat members for local governance) and the growing influence of mainstream politics is presently the most worrying situation for the pro-freedom political parties,” Imran told IPS, referring to the fact that the average Kashmiri and most of civil society have grown sceptical about Hurriyat’s role.

Addressing Hurriyat leaders during one of their seminars last Thursday, Siraj Ahmad, general secretary of Kashmir’s Economic Alliance, pointed out, “You have to bear in mind that people do come out in large numbers to cast their votes during polls held by the Election Commission of India, despite your boycott calls.”

“The movement for seeking the resolution of the Kashmir issue should not be confined to giving sermons and holding deliberations; actions should speak louder than words,” Doctors Association President Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan told participants at the same seminar.