Whenever Kashmir is mentioned, people tend to think either of an idyllic paradise, or of a valley wrought with the suffering of two decades of violent conflict. The aching reality of the convergence of both these images have tended to exclude Kashmir in the popular imagination from the more everyday discourse of poverty and hunger, governance and the delivery of programmes for disadvantaged people.
Official data suggests that indeed levels of poverty are negligible in the valley. As compared with 28.3 per cent people officially estimated to survive below the poverty line in India in the year 2004-05, the comparable ratio for the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the same year was pegged by the Planning Commission a meagre 4.5 per cent. Kashmir is one of the most egalitarian societies in the country, in which land reforms were implemented with greater vigour than in most other regions of India. In the first decade after India's Independence, big farms were abolished resolutely, and subsequently surplus lands were distributed among landless farmers.
A couple of years ago, I spent 10 days touring villages and slums in Kashmir, investigating the impact of the two decade long conflict on children. Although I did not find evidence during my visit of extreme destitution of the kind I had observed in Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, I still observed widespread visible poverty, and struggles for livelihoods and food, across the valley.
Lagging behind
A careful examination of the disaggregated official data also suggests that although overall ratios of poverty are much lower in Jammu and Kashmir than in the rest of India, the state lags behind many others in several specific indicators of poverty. This is a predominantly agrarian economy, in which 80 per cent of the population of the state is dependent on agriculture directly or indirectly. Ninety-seven percent of the cultivators are small or marginal farmers, with average land holdings as small as 0.7 hectares. There has been a worrying deceleration of agricultural production in the state. The valley suffers from a 44 per cent deficit in food grain production, 33 per cent in vegetables and 69 per cent in oilseeds, all of which are imported into the state from the rest of India. These crises of livelihoods have been aggravated by the collapse of the carpet weaving industry, and setbacks to tourism. The per capita income of the state is only two thirds of the national average, at Rs. 17,174 against Rs. 25,907 in India taken as a whole. Its unemployment rate is 4.21 per cent, against a national rate of 3.09 percent.
The great socialist and humanist L.C. Jain who recently passed away, on his deathbed was worried most about the teenaged children who were driven by despair and anger to throw stones at policemen in Kashmir. His dream was: This winter why does not every Indian resolve to wear Kashmiri clothes? “If those young hands have work,” he said with characteristic compassion and wisdom, “only then will they not lift stones.”
The two decade long conflict has gravely impacted on the normal functioning of government at local levels, but it also provided an alibi for public officials to not perform. The failure to hold elections to Panchayats for two decades has meant that people do not have local elected representatives from whom they can seek redress for everyday survival problems. It has also impacted badly on actual implementation and reach of various food, social security and livelihood programmes, critical to the survival with dignity of poor and vulnerable residents of the region.
We decided therefore to undertake a survey of the status of actual implementation of food, social security and livelihood schemes in 50 villages in Kashmir. We took the help of students and alumni of the Department of Social Work in the University of Kashmir in Srinagar, led by my young colleague Tanveer Ahmad Dar.
The researchers found it difficult to even find five job card holders in each of the surveyed villages under the employment guarantee programme JKREGS (the local version of the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA). Those who did could not access an average of more than seven days of work in an entire year. The programme anyway was designed for failure, with wage rates until recently pegged at Rs. 70 rupees a day, whereas the prevailing wage rate is almost double this figure; and no work is provided in winters when hunger and the demand for work is highest. Many officials claim that there is no demand for public wage employment in the valley. But when wages were raised to a more realistic Rs. 110 a day, there was a massive expansion of demand. An unfamiliar state administration is still to gear up now to meet their statutory duty to provide work to all who seek it.
Irregular payments
Only around six per cent eligible women received maternity benefits. The coverage with old age pensions was only slightly better, with 35 per cent eligible aged people being able to access pensions. Pension rates are low, and distributed very irregularly. An old woman we spoke to recalls getting pension only twice a year, on the two Eids. And when the pension dues are accumulated in this way for many months, it is easy for local officials to make large cuts.
Given that this is a food deficit state, the contribution of the Public Distribution System to food security of the residents of Kashmir cannot be over-stated. The researchers found functioning ration shops even in the deep interior, and less than four per cent people did not have ration cards. Most reported that they were able to access the subsidised grain, even if sporadically. But the shops are opened only one or two days in a month, and if they miss their chance, their allocations of food lapse, and are presumably sold in the black-market.
The study found gaps in the opening of ICDS centres in some remote locations, but the supply of hot cooked food to children was heartening. However, in most locations, the centres functioned as little more than feeding points. Children were not weighed, and malnourished children not identified or treated. Few centres run pre-school classes, and expectant mothers are not examined or advised about their nutrition and that of their children. Ninety-eight per cent children reported that they ate hot cooked meals at school, although there are many months in which the meals are not served as supplies to do not reach. Teachers are burdened with this work, instead of this being entrusted to women's groups as in some other parts of the country.
This study indicates some pointers of the colossal unfinished agenda for public officials in the state, to implement various programmes that are critical for the everyday survival, and social and economic development, of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Even as people and the government must struggle to find a just and peaceful solution to the on-going militant conflict in the Kashmir valley, impoverished women, boys and girls who live in this beautiful but troubled land must in the meanwhile be enabled to survive with dignity. The state government must be held far more accountable than it is at present to secure the rights of people, to food, healthcare, education, livelihoods and security.
In villages I visited in the valley in the past, I heard everywhere grim stories of violent deaths, detention, disappearances, crackdowns and searches. During the study it was strangely almost a relief to hear people clamour instead for ration cards, school meals, pensions and feeding centres. It was an important reminder that even as ‘big' battles play out, the ‘small' battles of everyday survival never cease. People still have to struggle to ensure sufficient food for their children, for decent work, for survival for the aged and infirm. No government should forget this.
