Shamsheer Hakla Poonchi
I too belong to a border village of J&K. I have very closely seen the poverty and helplessness of border people and being a resident of border area. I have personal experience of manifold hardships and difficulties of the public of borders including myself. This state of affairs compelled me to use my pen to display it to the public and administration. These areas of J&K are situated adjoining Pakistan and are generally mountainous. These people are economically, socially, educationally and politically outright backward leading a life of helplessness, poverty and fear. Afar from dense population, these people are connected with mountain ranges and valleys where they are born and die. The modern era of science and could not provide them with the light of science. Besides being backward these people are honest, gentle, and hospitable and have always been nationalist. They have a history of fighting the enemy (Pak-agents) tooth and nail of which living examples can be quoted such as in 1947 they fought against Qabailis and defeated them in 1965, they drove off Pak infiltrators, and again during 1971 Indo-Pak conflict, these people protected J&K State and defeated the evil designs of Pakistan with might.
At the borders where Indian and Pak forces always resort to firing, these people have been facing migration from time to time facing untold miseries and loss of life and property due to heavy cross firing. They lose their men, live stock and their houses get destroyed which resultes in their being backward continuously. Pakistani heavy shelling destroys their crops which renders them more backward even in this advanced modern times. The backwardness of an average border family can be seen from the fact that each of them has four or five goats, two or three cows, one or two buffaloes and barely two or three kanals of land to cultivate. They have a kacha room of eight metres to live in which they call kotha. This kotha provides shelter to them and to their family in all the seasons of year. In this kotha their living condition is such that in one side their cattle chew the Kud on the other side their goats bleat. On one side, they have a fire place. The room is full of smoke and smell of cow dung. Their kotha has only one exist to go in and out for them and their cattle. Their aged people, with tattered clothes on, continue coughing. The head of family is perplexed with poverty and lack of education. The house wife nurtures the children under unsuitable conditions.
As for their daily diet, they eat maize bread, sarson vegetable, chilli salt chuttney with whey or butter milk. They earn their livelihood by working as labourers. By day break their head man goes out in search of labour work from his village to city and after having walked a dozen kilometers on foot, they work with any contractor, then in the evening again return to home.
Educationally backward they have been involved in internal fights and conflicts. The clevermen of actual line of control become so called leaders and these innocent people by misleading them. Thus their earnings out of hard labour is spent on court expenditures and fees of advocates. If they refuse any suggestion of their leaders they are nominated as militants and Pakistan’s agents by the influence of these cruel leaders. As a result, they are locked in jails. The onset of militancy in 1989 has increased their hardships and problems. During militancy activities and cross firing with Indian forces many innocent lives become the victims. Many of them get seriously injured and loose their body organs and become handicapped.
They do not have proper water supply and electricity due to which they face great hardship. Due to lack of higher secondary schools in these areas, children are imparted education only upto 10th standard. Their poor economic conditions do not allow them to go to cities and far off places for higher studies. Proper hospitals and road facilities are also lacking. Due to false framed cases by Forest Department they also suffer at the hands of corrupt forest officials. In order to please these officers, these poor have to grease their palms.
In order to bring these socio-economic backward people to the mainstream of the development, the Government should pay special attention to their grievances and constitute various schemes for their development so that they can stand in to some neck to nec competition with rest of the people.
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