A saffron farmer in Kashmir poses with saffron crocus flowers. The most expensive spice in the world is derived from the sigma of the purple flower. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Peerzada Ummer
SRINAGAR, India , Dec 17 2020 (IPS)

Walking in the middle of fields of delicately-scented purple saffron crocus flowers, 36-year-old Mubeen Yasin, a saffron farmer from the southern region of Indian Kashmir, is not optimistic that in a few years time the scenery will remain as beautiful as it is today.

Located in the southern region of an otherwise violence-strewn Kashmir valley, the town of Pampore — which is also called Saffron Town — is famous for its saffron and remains one of the few places in the world where the saffron crocus still grows. The most expensive spice in the world is derived from the sigma of the purple flower — its bright orange-red strands. Once dried, these harvested sigma are sold as saffron strands.

In Pampore more than 19,000 families are directly dependent on this crop for their livelihoods.

However, over the last decade the area has seen an unprecedented boom of cement manufacturing plants, which are proving lethal for Kashmir’s famed saffron crop.

As these cement factories mushroom across the landscape, they have impacted the saffron harvests, according to Fayaz Ahmad Dar, a research scholar.

A few years ago Dar conducted research on the ill effects of the cement industry on Kashmir’s saffron crop.  He found that over 200 hectares of saffron fields were under severe threat from cement factories and as a result saffron production had been affected in fields located near cement plants, reducing production from the normal 3,000 grams to as low as 1,400 grams per hectare. 

“The losses were related to the amount of dust fall from the cement factories, similarly studies on impacts of cement pollution on morphology of saffron and its productivity revealed negative impacts on both parameters. Since most cement factories are located around the only area where saffron is grown on a large scale in the valley it has adversely affected the plant,” Dar said in his research.

However, Yasin, like other farmers, fears that new plans of industrialisation for the region by the Indian government will devastate saffron cultivation. 

While the government has stressed that it will not use any agricultural land for industrialisation, Yasin is not convinced saffron farmers will not be affected.

“The government is planning massive industrialisation in Kashmir. The lands, which were till now fertile, will now turn barren. The few cement factories have destroyed the saffron crop beyond imagination. Now imagine if industries in hundreds would come up here, what would be the scenario?” Yasin tells IPS.

Repeal of land laws

Kashmir was previously India’s only state with a special status and limited autonomy. And only permanent residents of this Himalayan region were eligible to sell and purchase land and property.

But after the removal of the region’s autonomy last year, this was set to change. On Oct. 27, through government order, Kashmir’s land laws were repealed and the new guidelines now allow all Indian citizens to purchase land and property in the region.

Days after the rules were amended, the government ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 acres of land to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in order to invite investment and generate employment in the region.

On Oct. 31, Hurriyat Conference, an amalgam of separatist outfits demanding Kashmir’s freedom from Indian rule, announced a day-long strike against the new laws. The conglomerate claimed in its official handout that the Indian government, by repealing the old laws, was planning to change the demography of the region where Muslims are more than 67 percent of the total population.

Government’s response

Kashmir’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has clarified that the government wants employment generation in the region and that is the reason the old laws were repealed. He stated that no agricultural land will be acquired in the process. 

“I want to say this forcefully and with full responsibility that agricultural land has been kept reserved for farmers; no outsider will come on those lands. The industrial areas that we have defined, we want that like rest of the country, here too industries come so that Jammu & Kashmir also develops and employment is generated,” Sinha said in a statement last month.

Potential environmental impact

But environmentalists and Kashmir’s civil society groups believe the move could drastically impact the biodiversity of the region where more than 19 percent of the land is covered by thick forests and has 1,300 water bodies and an estimated 147 majestic glaciers.

Dr Arshid Jahangir, who teaches Environmental Studies in University of Kashmir, told IPS that the possible construction large scale industries and subsequent overpopulation in Kashmir would have a direct impact upon the local resources of the region and could turn an otherwise picturesque valley into a concrete jungle.

“The  number of brick kilns, cement factories, and aggregate crushing units will  increase as you need more materials for the infrastructure build. Now imagine the level of pollution in a place which from all sides is surrounded by mountains and is completely landlocked. It will be a disaster in the making,” said Jahangir.

According to Tavseef Mairaj, a Kashmiri  research  scholar from the Institute of Waste Water Management and Water Protection at Hamburg University of Technology, Germany, Kashmir’s food system and food sovereignty will be among the worst affected due to the new land laws.

“Our food system is already under stress due to land use change, water scarcity, and extreme weather events. The area of land under agriculture decreased from 56 percent to 40 percent from 1992 to 2015, with a further reduction of 17 percent from 2015 to 2019. Now with the opening of land ownership to big industry, there will be further changes in land use patterns, resulting in dependence on external supplies for our food security,” Mairaj told IPS.

He said that water resources are vital for the sustenance of the food system and rapid industrialisation will endanger these resources in more ways than one.

“The area under open water has decreased by almost 50 percent in the same time period, from 4.9 percent to 2.5 percent, which is alarming given the importance of water to our food sovereignty, which mainly depends on our rice produce.

“Kashmir is already seeing the effects of non-industrial waste on our rivers and lakes due to improper waste management infrastructure. Industrial waste in comparison will be a herculean task to manage in a place like Kashmir,” Tavseef said.

Professor Nisar Ali, a leading economist from Kashmir, told IPS that Kashmir can never be a suitable place for massive urbanisation and ruthless industrialisation. 

“I remember in 1973, then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was on a tour in Kashmir. She was accompanied by her finance minister who in one public rally announced the setting up of mega industries in Kashmir valley. Minutes later, in the same public event, he was rebuked by none other than Ms Gandhi herself who conveyed it to her minister that Kashmir’s scenic beauty and fragile ecology should never be disturbed by the setting up of massive industries.

“More than 40 years later, the situation seems entirely different. It appears that the government is no longer concerned about the environmental aspects of the decisions it is making vis-a-vis the industrialisation and  giving land to non-residents in Kashmir,” Ali said.

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A boy pedals his bike along the desolated street of old city, which has been epicentre of protests and demonstrations. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah and Umer Asif
SRINAGAR, Kashmir, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

It is 50 days into the lockdown in Kashmir since roads were blocked off, schools shut, and internet and communication services stopped.

On Aug. 5, India’s federal government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a curfew in the Muslim-majority area after amending the law to revoke the partial autonomy and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir. Restrictions on movement were immediately placed through a curfew as internet and telecommunications were cut.

The government also decreed that people from other Indian states could buy land in the region and become permanent citizens here.

Local Muslims, who form 80 percent of Kashmir’s 8 million people, feared that through such a move, the Indian government was trying to change the demography of the region.

More than 4,000 people, including politicians of opposition groups, human rights activists and separatists have since been detained by the government.  

Though the government claimed that it is making attempts to restore normalcy and open schools, the efforts elicited no positive response from people as parents refuse to send their children to school for fear of violence. In a tweet the YFK-International Kashmir Lobby Group, a non-governmental human rights organisation, stated that the region’s economy had been devastated because of the clampdown.

Tourism in the region has been badly hit ever since the imposition of curfew by the Indian government. Hotels have zero occupancy and tourist resorts are deserted.

49 days of curfew#Jammu & #Kashmir‘s economy in tailspin pic.twitter.com/WdwogaHrRb

— Kashmir Lobby Group (@KashmirLobby) September 22, 2019

The Indian-administered part of Kashmir has experienced increased violence since 1989 when militants stepped up armed resistance here.

Rights groups estimate that 100,000 people have since been killed, but Indian official records put the number at 47,000. 

Kashmiri has seen 50 days of imposed restrictions by the Indian government since it imposed a curfew in the Muslim-majority area after amending the law to revoke the partial autonomy and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir. The area also saw an increased military presence. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A boy pedals his bike along the desolated street of old city, which has been epicentre of protests and demonstrations. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

An Indian paramilitary officer instructs his sub-ordinates about how to implement law and order in Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, as a curfew was imposed in the region. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

As schools continue to remain shut in the region since Aug. 5, amounting to 50 days tomorrow, kids are being taught in make shift schools, established by local citizens in several areas of Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A fleet of school busses parked in a garage in Srinagar outskirts as parents are reluctant to send their children to school due to the wave of uncertainty in Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

View of a desolated classroom of one of the schools in Kashmir. Schools, universities, colleges and government offices are all shut in the region. The government’s attempts to reopen schools have failed as parents are reluctant to send their children to school due to the wave of uncertainty. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

The family of Asrar Ahmad, a 16-year-old boy who was killed during protests in the Illahi Bagh area of Srinagar. Ahmad succumbed to his injuries in hospital a month after being injured during protests. According to the family, Ahmad was hit by pellet guns fired by police, a claim vehemently rejected by the government. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A para-military trooper guarding the main door of Kashmir’s largest mosque, Jamia Masjid. No prayers have been allowed inside the mosque since Aug. 5. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Army men patrol one of the busiest markets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, known popularly as Lal Chowk. Even as the government eased restrictions, locals continue to observe the strike against scraping of Kashmir’s autonomy. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A protester who was shot at with a pellet gun displays the X ray film showing the pellets that penetrated his body. He was protesting against the curfew the Indian government placed on Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

In the aftermath of protests. A road in Kashmir’s Anchaar area in the capital Srinagar. It’s the scene of pitched battles youth have had with the police on Aug. 5. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

The Indian government put an end to large scale protests by revoking the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution. Thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Amid the communication gag which includes an internet blockade, Kashmir’s journalistic fraternity were provided with a limited internet facility at a basement of a private hotel in Srinagar. It is from this place that IPS correspondents were able to file their reports and use the internet. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Shikaras — special boats used to take tourists to explore Kashmir’s mesmerising lakes — parked near on the bank of the world-famous Dal Lake. Tourism in the region has been badly hit ever since the imposition of curfew by the Indian government. Hotels have zero occupancy and tourist resorts too are deserted. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Rohingya refugee women in Jammu, India. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
JAMMU, India, Mar 6 2018 (IPS)

In the semi-lit makeshift tent covered with strips of cardboard, five women sit in a huddle. As their young children, covered in specks of mud and soot, move around noisily, the women try to hush them down. Hollow-eyed and visibly malnourished, all the women also appear afraid.

Aged 19-30, they have two things in common: one, they are Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and two, they all live in fear of being sent back to the country they were forced to flee.“In Burma, they are still killing our people. Here, they say we are Bangladeshis. We do not even speak Bangla. Where shall we go? --Ansari

“I came here when I was 13. Now I am 19,” says Nur Kalina, the youngest. She faintly remembers running with her parents from their village in Myanmar’s violence-wracked Rakhine state.

“From Akhyep (Akyab, currently known as Sittwe) we started. We ran through rice fields, then by the river. When we came to Cox’s Bazar (across the border in Bangladesh), our fellow villagers were there. My aunt was there. They said, there is no food, no work, no future here. So my parents came here.”

All the other women in the room – Leila, Shamshida, Taiyyaba and Rahena – nod. Their stories are not very different from Kalina’s. Each one of them came to Jammu in 2012. Since then, the rows of huts in the Kiriyani Talav neighborhood of northern India’s Jammu city have been their home. They all got married here and became mothers.

Each one of them has relatives who are still living in Sittwe who call every now and then to talk about the current situation. Every time, they share news of fresh attacks and new names of relatives and neighbors who have been murdered. “They always tell us, don’t come back here,” says Laila.

Rohingyas in Jammu

There are around 5,743 Rohingyas in Jammu & Kashmir state, according to the state government. Scattered over Jammu, the summer capital of the state, and neighboring Samba district, their number is a fraction of that in Bangladesh (858,898) or Pakistan (350,000).

Yet this tiny population is at the center of a controversy with some local factions accusing them of indulging in criminal activities such as land grabs, illegal settlement and aiding terrorists, and demanding their repatriation.

One of the political parties spearheading the opposition against the Rohingyas is the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JNKPP), a Jammu-based right-wing group led by Harshdev Singh. Singh, formerly a minister in the state, would not talk to IPS despite granting an appointment, but his party has been very vocal in demanding a quick repatriation of the Rohingyas. On March 3, he led a protest march in Jammu and urged the home minister of India to send back the Rohingyas, who he described as a security threat.

“The illegal immigrants pose a threat to communal harmony and pluralism of Jammu. The Union Home Minister should personally intervene and direct the state government to take necessary action in this regard otherwise the situation in Jammu could take an ugly turn like in Kashmir,” Singh was quoted as saying by local media.

Opposition to the Rohingyas intensified after a terrorist attack on an army camp in Sunjwan, an area on the city outskirts. Right after the attack, Kavinder Gupta, a local politican, accused the Rohingyas of being involved in the attack. Although he was criticized by other lawmakers, his party members stood by him.

India, which has not signed the International Refugee Convention, asked the states in August 2017 to identify the Rohingyas for a possible deportation. The decision, however, has since been challenged in the Supreme Court of India by some Rohingya refugees.

A child plays outside a makeshift home in a Rohingya camp, Jammu, India. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Fear in the air

Hazara, who asked to go by her first name only, is a 29-year-old Rohingya refugee woman living in a hut bordering the army camp in Sunjwan. Like all the other women Rohingya refugees, Hazara never went to school. With no education and no specific skills, the single mother of two was earning her livelihood by shelling walnuts for her non-Rohingya neighbors. The wages of INR 12 (less than a quarter) for each kilogramme of walnuts were not very high, but they helped the woman feed herself and her family.

However, since the attack on the army camp, it has become difficult to find work.

“The next day when I went to work, they said, ‘You are troublemakers, we don’t want you here.’ Everyone was looking at me suspiciously, as if I have done something very bad,” recalls Hazara, who is now working as a part time domestic for a Kashmiri Muslim family. This will help her pay the rent for the hut – a princely sum of INR 500 (about 7 dollars) – but not enough to feed herself and her children. Hazara is largely dependent on a Madrasa (religious school) run by fellow Rohingyas for her survival.

Mushtaq Ahmed, one of the 16 teachers at the school, says that right after the attack on the army camp, security forces entered the school to question them about the assailants. Since then, the attitude of the neighbors changed dramatically.

“Since 2017, we have been hearing things like we are collabrating with militants, helping them, etc, but this time, the attacks are more direct. Some women are still shelling wallnuts, but once the season is over, who knows what will happen?” Ahmed said.

Illiteracy, child marriage and poor health

There are 40 Rohingya refugee families in Kiriyani Talav locality. None of the women in these families has had a formal education. Uneducated and unskilled, they were married before the age of 18.

Nur Kalina was married at 14. “The elders in the community said it’s a sin to stay unmarried for long. So my parents got me married soon after I started to menstruate,” recalls Kalina. All of 19, the young woman already has three children.

“Child marriage is rampant in the Rohingya refugee community,” says Ravi Hemadri, who heads the Development and Justice Initiative (DAJI), a Delhi-based NGO that partnered with UNHCR until last month in documenting the Rohingya refugees and helping them access the aid and support they are entitled to.

At DAJI, activists have been campaigning against early marriage, Hemadri says, but the progress is slow. The refugees live in extreme poverty which drives the families to marry off their daughters early, he explains.

Laila Begum, 34, and Taiyyaba, 29, have asthma, while Taiyyaba has a 3-year-old daughter with stunted growth and weak limbs. As many as 12 women in the camp said they are suffering from respiratory diseases, while some, including Kalina’s mother Medina, 54, has tuberculosis. Kalina also has chronic lower back pain that often keeps her in bed.

None of the women gets regular medical treatment because they can’t afford it. Laila, who has visited the government-run hospital a few times for free medicine, says that the hospital asked her to pay INR 2000 (about 30 dollars) for medicine the last time.

“I don’t have so much money,” she said, adding that only the widows among them are entitled to some aid – 10 kgs of free rice each month.

Hope in the middle of hopelessness

Early this year, the UNHCR ended its partnership with DAJI in Jammu. The UN organization also advised the Rohingyas to move elsewhere in view of the growing political opposition. Since then, some of the Rohingya refugees – about 200 of them – have indeed moved out of Jammu.

But the women refugees say that despite the growing threat to their safety, leaving is not an option. “In Burma, they are still killing our people. Here, they say we are Bangladeshis. We do not even speak Bangla. Where shall we go? Why shall we leave? There is no safe place for us, so only way is to keep quiet,” says Ansari, a Rohingya woman.

Excerpt:

New construction goes on unabated in central Kashmir’s Shalteng area where people have given up farming and are selling their lands for development. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Oct 29 2017 (IPS)

In central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, 40-year-old Javaid Ahmad Hurra remembers vividly how his small hamlet used to be lush and green when he was a child. It is now subtly turning into a concrete jungle, with cement structures dominating the scenery.

Walking past new houses under construction, Javaid says the entire place was once filled with vast paddy fields. “Now, residential colonies have been built and no one is sowing crops anymore,” he told IPS."The easiest way to earn money for the farming community in Kashmir is to sell land or convert it into a concrete commercial structure.” --Ghulam Nabi Dar

Javaid is not alone in witnessing ruthless urbanisation in places that used to be the agricultural hubs of India’s northern state, Jammu and Kashmir. According to the state policy document on land use, due to rapid urbanisation and unplanned land use, the landlocked Kashmir Valley is losing a majority of its cultivable lands.

The December 2016 report says that every year, the Kashmir Valley is losing an average of 1,375 hectares of agricultural land due to rapid construction of commercial infrastructure, brick kilns, residential colonies and shopping complexes.

According to the department of agriculture in Kashmir, within the past 16 years, the region has lost 22,000 hectares of agriculture land. The survey conducted by the department reveals that farmland dwindled from 163,000 hectares in 1996 to 141,000 hectares in 2012.

Kashmir is a hilly state and its net area (in the Indian part) is 101,387 sq kms. Its population per the 2011 census is 12.5 million. The forest cover of the state is 20 percent of its total geographical area and the density is 124 people per sq km.

Agriculture plays a prominent role in the economy of this Himalayan region, with around 70 percent of its total population living in rural areas, and who are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.

According to Mir Yasir Ahmad, a researcher at the University of Kashmir, the shrinking of agricultural land can be attributed to rapid urbanisation and the unplanned emergence of residential colonies in paddy fields.

“The government isn’t taking any serious measures to preserve the agricultural lands here, due to which the concrete structures are coming up places that used to be vast paddy fields some 10 or 20 years ago,” Ahmad told IPS.

According to the state’s 2016 economic survey, the local production of food grains has not keep pace with demand, and yields of principal crops like rice, maize, and wheat have not grown over the years.

“Moreover, the scope for increasing net area sown is very limited and landholding is shrinking due to a continuous breakdown of the joint family system, growing urbanization and population explosion,” it says.

It concludes by warning that the state is facing a deficit in agricultural production and food grains are being imported from other regions of India.

Javaid Ahmad Hurra at his small orchard in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal area. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Yasir Ahmad says the situation on the ground is even worse than the government reports describe. He says independent surveys have revealed that the net area sown in Kashmir at present is a mere 7 percent, and the cultivable land in the state has shrunk to 30 percent.

Ghulam Nabi Dar, a farmer from North Kashmir’s Baramulla, told IPS that the basic reason for the shrinking of the agricultural lands in the valley is the desperation of farmers.

“There is no market for the rice crops in Kashmir and the government isn’t providing the irrigation facilities as it should to the farmers. The easiest way to earn money for the farming community in Kashmir is to sell land or convert it into a concrete commercial structure,” Dar said.

According to a recent survey conducted this year by the University of Agricultural Sciences, urbanisation and rapid construction on paddy fields has hit the region’s agriculture sector hard.

The contribution of agriculture to region’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has declined 11 percent in 12 years. The survey reveals that during the fiscal year 2004-5, agriculture contributed 28 percent to Kashmir’s GDP. Now its contribution has dipped to a mere 17 percent.

According to the survey, the conversion of agricultural lands into residential colonies and commercial complexes has resulted in a sharp decline in jobs. The workforce employed in the agriculture sector of Kashmir has declined from 85 percent in 1961 to 28 percent at present.

Javaid Ahmad Hurra, a fruit grower from central Kashmir, says climate change in Kashmir has also had a major impact. He says unseasonable rainfall and belated snowfall has been hitting the sector hard and the people associated with the business have incurred losses every year.

Javaid has a small orchard of two hectares where he grows apples and sells the fruit to dealers. He used to work paddy land, but shifted from agriculture to horticulture in hopes of turning a profit. However, according to Javaid, his earnings have been low over the past five years and he too is planning to sell land to start some other business.

Last year, the Kashmir Valley witnessed a prolonged dry spell during the peak winter months. The level of rivers fell, causing scarcity of water and hydroelectricity in the region.

According to the advocacy group Action Aid’s 2007 report on climate change in Kashmir, average temperatures in the region have shown a rise of 1.45 C., while in the Jammu region, the rise is 2.32 C.

Javaid says this March, unseasonal snowfall caused heavy losses to the farming community of Kashmir, which was already reeling under the crises due to five month long violent protests of 2016 and devastating floods of 2014.

“The farmers are now seeing an easy way to earn money. They sell a hectare of land every year and live a life of comfort. Why would we want to incur losses and gain nothing?” said Javaid.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is actively pursuing its vision for sustainable agriculture production systems across the globe and focuses on ways to ensure the transition to sustainable practices. The FAO focuses on managing ecological, social and economic risks associated with agricultural sector production systems, including pests, diseases and climate change.

It is also working on identifying and enhancing the role of ecosystem services, particularly in terms of their effects on resource use efficiency and response to risks, as well as their contribution to environmental conservation; and facilitating access to needed information and technologies.

For Ghulam Nabi Dar, a farmer from central Kashmir’s Budgam, still holds out hope the sector can be revived.

“We need a proper market for agriculture and also we need to have a proper irrigation system in place, which at present is missing. If an international agency would come forward and introduce the latest technologies and strategies, the sector would get a new life,” Dar told IPS.

Fayaz Ahmad Khanday plucks a lotus stem from Wullar Lake in India’s Kashmir. He says the fish population has fallen drastically in recent years. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Shah
SRINAGAR, Feb 22 2017 (IPS)

Mudasir Ahmad says that two decades ago, his father made a prophecy that the lake would vanish after the fish in its waters started dying. Three years ago, he found dead fish floating on the surface, making him worried about its fate.

Like his father, Ahmad, 27, is a boatman on Kashmir’s famed Nigeen Lake, located north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar. He says the lake has provided a livelihood to his family for generations, but now things are taking an “ugly turn”.“The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation." --Researcher Aabid Ahmad

The gradual algae bloom in the lake, otherwise known for its pristine beauty, led to oxygen depletion. Fish began to die. Environmentalists termed the development the first visible signs of environmental stress in the lake.

But no one was more worried than Mudasir himself. “We have been rowing boats on the lake for centuries. My grandfather and my father have been fed by this lake. I also have grown up here and my livelihood is directly dependent on the lake,” Ahmad told IPS.

He believes the emergence of rust-coloured waters is the sign of the lake dying a silent death, and he holds everyone responsible. “We have built houses in an unprecedented way around its banks. The drainage from the households directly drifts into the lake, making it more polluted than ever,” Ahmad said.

Blessed with over 1,000 small and large water bodies, the landlocked Kashmir Valley, located northern India, is known as the land of lakes and mountains. However, due to large scale urbanization and unprecedented deforestation, most of the water bodies in the region have disappeared.

A recent study by Kashmir’s renowned environmentalists Gowher Naseem and  Humayun Rashid found that 50 percent of lakes and wetlands in the region’s capital have been lost to other land use/land cover categories. During the last century, deforestation led to excessive siltation and subsequent human activity brought about sustained land use changes in these assets of high ecological value.

The study concludes that the loss of water bodies in Kashmir can be attributed to heavy population pressures.

Research fellow at Kashmir University, Aijaz Hassan, says the Kashmir Valley was always prone to floods but several water bodies in the region used to save the local population from getting marooned.

“All the valley’s lakes and the vast associated swamps played an important role in maintaining the uniformity of flows in the rivers. In the past, during the peak summers, whenever the rivers would flow high, these lakes and swamps used to act as places for storage of excessive water and thereby prevented large areas of the valley from floods,” Hassan said.

Fishermen cover their heads and part of their boats with blankets and straw as they wait to catch fish Kashmir’s Dal Lake. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

India’s largest freshwater lake, Wullar Lake, is located in North Kashmir’s Bandipora area. It too is witnessing severe degradation due to large-scale human intervention. Wullar Lake, which claimed an area of 217.8 sq. km in 1911, has been reduced to about 80 sq. km today, with only 24 sq. km of open water remaining.

Environmentalist Majid Farooq says large areas of the lake have been converted for rice cultivation and tree plantations. According to him, pollution from fertilizers and animal waste, hunting pressure on waterfowl and migratory birds, and weed infestation are other factors contributing to the loss of Wullar Lake’s natural beauty. The fish population in the lake has witnessed a sharp decline due to depletion of oxygen and ingress of pollutants.

Another famed lake known as Dal Lake has shrunk by 24.49 per cent in the past 155 years and its waters are becoming increasingly polluted.

The lake, according to research by the University of Kashmir’s Earth Science Department, is witnessing “multiple pressures” from unplanned urbanisation, high population growth and nutrient load from intensive agriculture and tourism.

Analysis of the demographic data indicated that the human population within the lake areas had shown “more than double the national growth rate.”

Shakil Ahmad Ramshoo, head of Department of Earth Sciences at University of Kashmir, told IPS that the water quality of the lake is deteriorating and no more than 20 percent of the lake’s water is potable.

“As the population increased, all the household sewage, storm runoff goes into the Dal Lake without any treatment — or even if there is treatment done, it is very insufficient. This has increased the pollutant load of the Dal Lake,” he said.

According to Ramshoo, when the study compared the past water quality of the lake with the present, it found ingress of the pollutants has increased and the lake water quality has deteriorated significantly.

According to the region’s tourism department, over one million tourists visit Dal Lake annually and around 300,000 people are directly and indirectly dependent on the lake for their livelihood. The multimillion-dollar handicrafts industry of Kashmir, which gives employment to over 200,000 people, is also heavily dependent upon the arrival of tourists in the region.

A study on the Impact of Tourism Industry on Economic Development of Jammu and Kashmir says that almost 50-60 percent of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir is directly or indirectly engaged in tourism related activities. The industry contributes 15 percent to the state’s GDP.

However, Mudasir Ahmad, whose livelihood is directly dependent on the lake, says every time he takes tourists to explore the lake in his Shikara (a boat), he is asked about the murkier water quality.

“My grandfather and even my father used to drink from this lake. The present situation is worrisome and if this goes unabated, tourists would cease to come. Who would spend money to see cesspools?” Ahmad said.

Fayaz Ahmad Khanday, a fisherman living on Wullar Lake, says the fish production has fallen drastically in the last three years, affecting both him and hundreds of other fishermen.

“Fish used to be present in abundance in the lake but now the scarcity of the species is taking toll. Every day we see dead fish floating on the lake’s waters. We really are concerned about our livelihood and the fate of the lake as well,” Khanday lamented.

The fisherman holds unplanned construction around the lake responsible for its pollution. Aabid Ahmad, a research scholar in Environmental Studies, says Kashmir has become vulnerable to natural disasters as region’s most of the water bodies have either disappeared or are shrinking.

“The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation,” Ahmad told IPS.

But, for Shakeel Ramshoo, it is still possible to restore the lakes and water bodies of Kashmir.

“Don’t move the people living on these water bodies out.  You just allow them to stay in the lake. We have to control the haphazard constructions that are taking toll around these water bodies,” he said.

“Hutments in the water bodies should be densified with STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants) installed in every household. Land mass can be removed and the area of the water bodies would increase. Also, the sewage treatment mechanism should be better so that the ingress of pollutants is ceased,” Ramshoo said.

X-ray of a pellet victim injured during the current protests in Kashmir. Credit: Umar Shah/IPS

By Umar Shah
SRINAGAR, Aug 5 2016 (IPS)

Hospitals in Kashmir’s summer capital are packed to capacity these days, their wards overflowing with pellet gun victims injured during violent clashes with government forces.

Sixteen-year-old Kaisar Ahmad Mir has been in hospital since July 9. As X-ray films dangle near his bed, Kaisar stares with haggard eyes at each passerby. Doctors had to amputate three fingers on his right hand after pellets were fired at him from close range during one of the demonstrations.“After the autopsy was done, there were 360 pellets found in [my brother's] body.” -- Shakeel Ahmad

“I felt some electric current when the pellets hit my right hand. Then the blood started oozing out, followed by intense pain,” Mir told IPS.

Deadly clashes between protestors and government forces engulfed this Himalayan region –  India’s only Muslim majority state – on July 8, a day when the army gunned down militant leader Burhan Wani during a three-hour gun battle in the remote south Kashmir region of the state.

The government quickly instituted a curfew across the Kashmir valley, severing internet and phone service. But people defied government restrictions and came out in hordes to protest in cities, towns and remote hamlets of the state. Since July 8, 52 protesters have been killed and more than 2,500 injured, around 600 of them due to pellets. Many of the victims are children.

Aaqib Mir, Kaisar Mir’s younger brother, told IPS that Kaisar was preparing for his class 10 exams this year.  “My brother is now crippled for life,” Aaqib said.

Eleven-year-old Umar Nazir received more than 12 pellets in his face that damaged his both eyes. He was shot during anti-government protests in the Indian state of Kashmir. Credit: Umar Shah/IPS

The pellets are loaded with lead and once fired they disperse widely and in huge numbers. Pellets penetrate the skin and soft tissues, with eyes especially vulnerable to severe, irreversible damage.

Pellets were introduced in Kashmir as a “non-lethal” alternative to bullets after security forces killed nearly 200 people during demonstrations against Indian rule from 2008 to 2010.The state government’s reasoning was that when fired from a distance, shotgun pellets disperse and inflict only minor injuries.

During this summer’s protests, pellets were extensively used against the protesters, injuring hundreds. According to figures issued by Kashmir’s SHMS hospital, out of 164 cases of severe pellet injuries, 106 surgeries were performed in which five people lost one eye completely.

Among those who lost their eyesight due to pellets is 11-year-old Umar Nazir. Umar received more than 12 pellets in his face that damaged both eyes. As he lost vision in his right eye, doctors attending him have told his family that Umar’s left eye is also deteriorating due to a severe injury to the optic nerve.

Human rights groups criticize the heavy-handed approach to dealing with the protest demonstrations, and contest the government’s claims that pellet guns are “non-lethal”.

Riyaz Ahmad Shah, 21, was killed on Aug. 2 after being hit by pellets.  An ATM security guard, Shah was returning home when, according to his family, state forces fired pellets at him from close range, killing him on the spot.

“After the autopsy was done, there were 360 pellets found in his body,” said Shakeel Ahmad, Riyaz Shah’s brother.

According to Al Jazeera, at least nine people have been killed in the region since pellet guns were introduced in 2010.

“Pellets are not being used against rioters in other parts of the country, but here in Kashmir they are being used quite openly without any remorse from the government,” said human rights activist Khurram Parvez, who is also a program coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society.

To protest against the use of pellets, the coalition has created posters with text written in braille to make the world aware of the suffering in Kashmir. “When you don’t see eye to eye with the brutal occupation in Kashmir, this is how they make you see their point,” reads a campaign poster.

Sajad Ahmad, a doctor treating pellet victims in Kashmir, said he had never seen such a “brutal use of force upon people in the past.” He added that while pellets may not kill most victims, they can still be left disabled for life.

“We have done hundreds of surgeries since July 8 and there are children who were crippled and can no longer work or earn,” Ahmad said.

Since July 8, 2016, 52 protesters have been killed in Kashmir and more than 2,500 injured, around 600 of them due to pellets fired by security forces. Many of the victims are children. Credit: Umar Shah/IPS

On Aug. 5, Amnesty International issued a statement asking the Jammu and Kashmir government to stop using pellet guns.

“Pellet guns are inherently inaccurate and indiscriminate, and have no place in law enforcement,” Zahoor Wani, a senior campaigner with Amnesty International India, said in a statement issued in New Delhi.

“Amnesty International India calls on the Jammu and Kashmir government to immediately stop the use of pellet guns in policing protests. They cannot ensure well-targeted shots and risk causing serious injury, including to bystanders or other protesters not engaging in violence. These risks are almost impossible to control.”

Kashmir’s High Court has issued notices to the state government and the national government of India seeking a response over litigation demanding a ban on pellet guns used by security personnel to deal with protests in Kashmir.

The state government says it is working to find alternatives to the pellet guns to quell the violent protests.

“We disapprove of it… but we will have to persist with this necessary evil till we find a non-lethal alternative,” J&K government spokesperson Nayeem Akhtar said.

Many people in Kashmir want an end to Indian rule and either full independence or a merger with Pakistan, which also claims the territory.

At least 50,000 have died in an insurgency that began in 1987. Over the years, anti-government rallies have occurred frequently, raising tensions between security forces and civilians, which have led to accusations of police heavy-handedness in trying to impose order.

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

Of the 100 patients seen at Kashmir’s psychiatric facilities each day, roughly 75 are women. Credit: Shazia Yousuf/IPS

By Shazia Yousuf
SRINAGAR, India, Nov 19 2014 (IPS)

It was almost midnight when Mushtaq Margoob woke up to the incessant ringing of his phone. It was his patient, a young woman whom Margoob, a renowned Kashmiri psychiatrist and head of the department of psychiatry at the only psychiatric hospital in Kashmir, had been treating for depression for many years.

“See me now. I don’t have time till tomorrow,” the patient screamed down the phone. “I might have killed myself by then.”

The woman was educated, had a PhD in Bioscience and came from a rich family. After her marriage last year, the symptoms of her depression had begun to fade away, and she had started crawling back to a normal life.

“I have gifted lifelong sadness to my daughter.” -- Shahzada Akhtar, a Kashmiri woman living with PTSD
But the day she made the hasty phone call to the doctor, she had learned something that shattered her life into fragments all over again.

“I have been diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Failure [POF],” she said to Margoob at his home. “If I cannot have any children, what should I live my life for?”

Although Margoob was able to pacify her with timely counseling and medication, the diagnosis and the constant reminder of being infertile have taken his patient back into deep depression.

“The mental stress due to ongoing conflict has taken a toll on the physical health of young women, especially their maternal health,” explains Margoob.

Downward spiral of mental and maternal health

The conflict here, which dates back to the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, has claimed some 60,000 lives as Indian armed forces, Pakistani troops and ordinary Kashmir citizens struggle to assert control over the bitterly contested region.

The “pro-freedom” uprising of 1989, launched by Kashmiris who resented the presence of Indian and Pakistani troops, morphed into a long-standing resistance movement that has left deep scars on Kashmiri society.

As a result, the area known as the Kashmir Valley, tucked in between towering mountain ranges in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, is witnessing an alarming increase in childlessness and infertility among local women.

Infertility is becoming increasingly common among young Kashmiri women, who are suffering from stress and trauma due to the long-standing conflict in the region. Credit: Shazia Yousuf/IPS

Physical and mental health experts cite conflict-related stress as the main cause of the health crisis among women, which has robbed thousands of their fertility.

The most recent Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS) indicates that 61 percent of currently married Kashmiri women report one or more reproductive health problems.

This is significantly higher in comparison to the national average of 39 percent. The percentage of POF among infertile women below 40 years of age is also abnormally high – 20 to 50 percent – when compared to the nationwide rate of one to five percent.

“Stress causes structural changes in the brain and disturbs the secretion of various neurotransmitters. These changes lead to various physical ailments including thyroid malfunction, which in turn can cause infertility among women of childbearing age,” Margoob explains to IPS.

According to statistics available with the Government Psychiatric Diseases Hospital, 800,000 Kashmiris are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and most of them are women. PTSD, like many other mental health disorders, directly affects women’s childbearing capacity.

Stress and stigma

In Kashmir, psychiatry OPDs are run at two hospitals – the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (S.M.H.S) facility in Srinagar, and the Government Psychiatric Diseases hospital – six days a week. Of almost 100 patients seen at each OPD every day, 75 are females.

One of the many women who frequents these facilities is 20-year-old Mir Afreen, who grew up watching her mother battling mental illness. In 1996, when Afreen was only two, her mother, Shahzada Akhtar, received a message about the death of her cousin brother in cross-fire.

“I had met him only a day before. I couldn’t believe he had died. I tried to cry out his name but had lost my voice,” recalls Akhtar.

Akhtar never recovered from the sudden, devastating news, and soon developed PTSD.

In consequence, her daughter’s childhood quickly slipped into darkness. Afreen often saw her mother sedated, sleeping for days at a time, going without food, and crying for no apparent reason.

She was always taken along to psychiatric clinics, hospitals and faith healers where her mother searched for a cure for her condition. Happiness was far, far away from their home.

“I have gifted lifelong sadness to my daughter,” Akhtar tells IPS tearfully.

Her statement is not too far from the truth. For the last several years, Afreen has been complaining about chest pains and breathlessness. Akhtar first thought it was due to stress, or her daughter’s recent obesity.

But when Afreen developed facial hair and her monthly cycles became irregular, Akhtar took her to a gynecologist.

“The doctor uttered a long name which I couldn’t understand, so I asked her to explain the [condition] to me,” Akhtar says. “She told me if this is not treated, Afreen will never have children.”

Afreen was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Unknown and almost non-existent before the conflict, the syndrome now affects 10 percent of Kashmiri females including teenagers.

A major endocrine disorder in women of reproductive age and one of the leading causes of infertility across the world, PCOS has emerged as another major cause of infertility among Kashmiri women in recent years.

Medical experts have identified stress as one of the main reasons for the emergence of PCOS in Kashmir. A study conducted by Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), the major tertiary healthcare facility in Kashmir, on 112 women with PCOS, found that 65 to 70 percent of them had psychiatric illnesses including PTSD, depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Akhtar feels helpless. Unlike other ailments, Afreen’s particular health issue is not up for discussion, not even with her own siblings. If the word spreads, she thinks, it will ruin her daughter’s marriage prospects and thus destroy her life.

“Even when I take her to the doctor, I make sure that no one sees us,” reveals Akhtar. “I first check the place and then let my daughter in.”

Afreen does the same. She has not revealed anything about her condition to her friends. When the girls talk about their grooms and life after marriage, she keeps mum. When it is the time for her medication, she secretly swallows the pills without water.

Current trends predict a bleak future

Nazir Ahmad Pala, an endocrinologist at SKIMS, says that more and more young females visit the endocrinology department for various disorders. A good number of disorders, he says, are born from depression.

Anxiety over the possibly loss of male breadwinners is prompting many women to choose education and employment over marriage. Credit: Shazia Yousuf/IPS

“In the past, the department received mostly older patients but now around 20 percent of our patients are school and college going girls with endocrine abnormalities. This trend is disturbing,” Pala tells IPS.

The young girls mostly complain of obesity and ovulatory disturbances that bring a temporary halt in their menstrual cycles.

The condition is called Central Hypogonadism and is common in depressed women, explains the doctor. Another equally frequent ailment is galactorrhea, a spontaneous secretion of milk from the mammary glands due to an abnormal increase of prolactin levels in the body caused by antidepressant intake.

“Unfortunately most of the [conditions], in one way or the other, lead to infertility. And the root cause of all these [conditions] is the stressful life that women have been living in the post-conflict era,” Pala asserts.

Experts here are sounding warnings about the catastrophic shape that women’s health in the Valley is taking. A study conducted at SKIMS on maternal health indicates that 15.7 percent of Kashmiri women of childbearing age will never have an offspring without clinical intervention.

Another conflict-related cause of infertility among Kashmiri women is late marriages. Over the war years, the marital age has risen from an average of 18-21 to 27-35 years. Because of economic insecurity and anxiety over the prospect of losing male breadwinners, women are choosing education and employment over marriage.

“Economic instability and insecurity is eating our society like termites,” says Margoob.

The doctor reveals that cut-throat competition in schools and colleges to earn a secure future has hugely disturbed the mental health of young girls as well.

Dissociative Disorders (DD), marked by disruptions or breakdowns in identity, memory or perception, are rapidly increasing in young school- and college-going girls, along with conditions like Panic Disorder, all of which interrupt the “smooth journey to motherhood”, Margoob says.

*Patients’ names have been changed on request.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

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.

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.

Caption: Activists protest against so-called amendments to the Right to Information Act in Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR , Oct 30 2012 (IPS)

Bashir Ahmad Malik was flabbergasted when a helicopter carrying an Indian official from Kashmir’s summer capital of Srinagar landed in his resident Drang village, just 17 miles away from its point of departure.

The 41-year-old local, whose village is devoid of basic amenities like clean water and electricity, could not reconcile Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s extravagance with the woes of Kashmir’s mostly rural population who are struggling to survive.

“Since I am part of the Right to Information (RTI) movement, I decided to file an RTI application to (get details) of the costs of the chief minister’s helicopter sorties,” Malik told IPS.

He first submitted his request for information with the chief minister’s office in June 2011 but didn’t receive a response, prompting him to file a complaint in Kashmir’s State Information Commission (SIC), constituted under the RTI Act of 2009.

Thanks to the empowerment of information commissions across India, Malik’s complaint yielded rapid results: within days he was informed that the chief minister and some of his cabinet colleagues had spent 120 million Indian rupees (2.5 million dollars) on helicopter sorties in just three years.

This expenditure is particularly significant when viewed in contrast to the basic needs of Kashmir’s citizens.

According to the official Economic Survey of 2011, 35 percent of the state’s inhabited areas are not connected to roads. The Valley’s only tertiary hospital, Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (or SKIMS), which caters to a population of six million people, faces acute shortages of the most basic medical supplies.

“We have just 10 ventilators when we need at least 25,” Dr. Showkat Zargar, director of SKIMS, told IPS.

Early this year, as many as 378 babies died in the G B Pant childcare hospital in three months, because of a shortage of ventilators and warmers.

According to data from Kashmir’s department of education, 77 percent of schools in Kashmir lack toilet facilities, while 64 percent of schools lack drinking water facilities.

RTI activists multiply

Though Malik was not aware of the full impact of his actions at the time, news of his bold move traveled swiftly across the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The chief minister and his cabinet have since been forced to take bumpy car rides to far-flung destinations, at least on some occasions.

Meanwhile, despite hurdles, villagers throughout Kashmir are now using the RTI mechanism to expose corruption at all levels of the government bureaucracy, though many of those found guilty manage to evade punishment.

In August this year, a sarpanch (village head) was made to refund half a million Indian rupees (10,000 dollars) of public funds that he had swindled from a rural housing development project, after Fayaz Ahmad Wani, a local villager, exposed the scam by filing an RTI application with the block development officer.

“I am so happy that my RTI application brought justice to myself and my fellow villagers,” Wani told IPS.

Before the implementation of the RTI Act in India in 2005 and in Kashmir in 2009 – which stipulates that public officials and authorities must respond to requests for information within 30 days – ordinary citizens had no channel through which to demand transparency in government decisions or transactions.

Prior to 2009, information was restricted by various laws including the Official Secrets Act (OSA) of 1923, “which is continuing even after the British left the sub-continent,” Dr. Showkat Hussain, a law professor at the Central University of Kashmir, lamented to IPS.

“Under the official OSA, which allegedly deals with cases of ‘espionage’, sentences (for so-called anti-national activity) range from three to 14 years,” Hussain said.

He recalled the case of the Delhi-based Kashmiri journalist, Iftikhar Gilani, “who was booked under the OSA in 2002 and finally only released after a sustained campaign by human rights activists determined that the charges against him could never be proved.”

According to Hussain, the RTI Act is the best antidote for draconian legislature like the OSA, since it  “empowers ordinary citizens and gives them the courage to take on bureaucrats and politicians”.

This past April, officials in the Kupwara district announced the completion of post-flood repairs on several irrigation channels, in a project that cost the state 2.6 million dollars. When a local RTI activist drew attention to possible corruption in the scheme, inspectors found that not  a single one of the alleged repairs had been carried out on the site.

Government skirts the law

But the Act is contingent upon the government following its rules and guidelines.

Early last month, State Information Commission (SIC) officials and social activists in Kashmir accused the Omar Abdullah government of weakening the law by skirting and amending it at will.

Recent government amendments have “taken the soul out of the Act and swept away our powers,” SIC Commissioner Ghulam Rasool Sofi told IPS.

“The old rules provided (guidelines) for the structure and functioning of the information commission such as division of labour and working hours. The new rules delete all these provisions,” Raja Muzaffar Bhat, one of the pioneers of the RTI movement in Kashmir, told IPS.

“The move (goes) against the basic spirit of transparency. This has been done just to stop the commission from exercising its powers.”

The Commission has also been divested of its judicial powers. “Repealing this rule means officials can simply ignore the summons and directions of the commission,” Wajahat Habibullah, former chief information commissioner of India, credited with drafting Kashmir’s RTI Act, told IPS.

Bhat says that the Kashmir government has never displayed a positive attitude towards the RTI Act.

“Despite the fact that the Act has been in existence for three years, the government is yet to obey one of its most basic rules, which requires every state authority to computerise its records and pro-actively publish certain categories of information so that citizens need only (go through the minimum channels) to request that data formally,” he said.

According to Pervez Imroz, a noted human rights lawyer, the new rules are silent about implementation of SIC orders and appeals. “The old rules made it binding for officials to implement the SIC orders. But the new clause says that citizens must go through the high court to get an order implemented,” he said, adding that this often discourages citizens from pursuing RTI applications.

(END)

He dreamed of one day running on international athletic tracks and worked hard for seven long years to make this a reality.

Tanveer Hussain, one of Kashmir’s top athlete’s, ran a 100-kilometre “protest” marathon to bring attention to government apathy towards sports. Credit: Sana Altalf/IPS

But today, despite Tanveer Hussain becoming the top athlete in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, his dream is quickly vanishing in the face of government apathy towards sports.

“Every time I won a marathon, all I got was a pat on my shoulder and false promises. The government has never supported me even though I am (one of the) top athletes in the state,” Tanveer, a 12^th-grade student, told IPS.

Tanveer has won numerous long-distance races, the most recent being the 42-kilometre Jammu Marathon organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, in which he outran 17,000 athletes.

“The authorities don’t organise any sporting events; the only competitions are those hosted by local banks or the police. There are no avenues for me, or other players, to reach national or international levels,” Tanveer told IPS.

“As a top runner in the State, the government should send me to participate in nationals, which would bring pride to the Valley. But no one takes any interest.”

A few weeks ago, Tanveer even ran a 100-kilometre “protest” marathon, but his action failed to move authorities.

“I am awfully depressed, watching my dream die. I am unable to decide if I should continue with the sport or quit.”

Tanveer is certainly not alone in his predicament. Scores of other athletes around Kashmir are faced with a similar decision: to follow their passion to master a sport, or give it up in favour of more “realistic” prospects.

Eleven years of experience failed to fetch Riyaz Ahmad a professional career in cycling, forcing him to abandon the sport forever. He said a lack of infrastructure and inadequate funding kept him and other cyclists from achieving success.

“We do not have a proper sports policy in Kashmir, which is a major drawback. There is no professional training, and no one to organise participation in different tournaments,” he told IPS.

A dearth of coaches in the Valley is yet another deterrent, Riyaz added. Often, senior sportspeople are forced to train youngsters. “We don’t even have a proper athletics track,” he said.

Mushtaq Ahamd, who gave up cycling four years ago, asked bitterly, “How could we run after something that will give us no job or financial security? No one ever cared for our talents and hard work.”

Almost all sportspeople in Kashmir are facing tough times due to government negligence. Experienced athletes are quitting in droves and disinterest in sports is rampant among youth in the valley.

“Our children who want to make sports their career have no security. Sports is the last thing the government thinks of,” Nayeema (not her real name), an international-standard sportswoman hailing from the Valley, told IPS.

Authorities have little to no interest in the condition of facilities or the quality of athletes, and funding is scarce, she lamented.

The Jammu and Kashmir State Sports Council, an autonomous body responsible for providing funds to various sports associations and monitoring their work, is also tasked with organising tournaments, training players, upgrading infrastructure and providing all necessary assistance to sportspeople.

Forty-eight associations are affiliated with the Council, and thereby entitled to government funding. Other non-affiliated associations, which numbers in the hundreds, receive no state subsidies.

Through associations affiliated with the Council, each of Kashmir’s 22 districts is allocated just 10,000 rupees (about 180 dollars) for training junior, sub-junior and senior players of all sports.

“We have hundreds of players from each district. How can this meagre amount suffice to train and support all our budding players?” Nayeema asked.

“All players suffer here, in varying degrees,” Nayeema told IPS. “The rights of players are undermined. Kashmir could produce hundreds of world-class players if only the government took them seriously.”

Ironically, the chief minister of the state, Omar Abdullah, heads the State Sports Council.

But “even after repeatedly pressing on authorities to improve sports in Kashmir, nothing is done. Our valuable talent and hard work is wasted,” Rashid Ahmad Choudhary, Kashmir’s international fencer, told IPS.

Nayeema remarked that though the Sports Council disburses funds to associations, there is no monitoring on how this money is being used.

“Whatever funds are released should be properly utilised. But with the condition of sports deteriorating, one wonders where all the money goes,” she said.

According to the official sources, rampant corruption in virtually every aspect of civil and political life in Kashmir undoubtedly affects the sports arena as well.

Afzal, an administrative officer of the Sports Council, admitted that inadequate funds have a negative effect on sports in the Valley, adding that the government has been asked to increase funds.

(END)