KOKRAJHAR (ASSAM): The food is running out, children are falling ill, her only saree is fraying, and so is her spirit, rambles Zohra bewa, or Zohra the widow, as she introduces herself, stepping out of her makeshift home - a blue tarpaulin sheet propped up by bamboos.
Displaced on July 24, when her home in Sapkata village was burned down, the middle-aged woman and her children joined the human tide of more than 4.8 lakh refugees swept into hundreds of relief camps across three districts of western Assam - the largest displacement seen in the country in recent times.
Today, the number of people in relief camps has come down to 36,000-odd people. The emptying of the camps has led the outside world believe the worst is over. Even the government has showcased this as evidence of successful rehabilitation, downplaying the more revealing statistic - only 5,252 families have been given financial assistance by way of the official rehabilitation grant. Counting 10 members in each family, the number of beneficiaries comes to just 52,520 people, a fraction of those affected by the violence.
To start with, only those whose houses were burned or damaged have been considered eligible for rehab assistance - a cheque of Rs 20,700, three bundles with 7 tin sheets each, four tarpaulin sheets, eight poles of bamboo, and a month of food rations. It is bad enough that the grant is barely enough to rebuild homes and lives, say people. Worse, many who lost homes have had to go without it, since they do not own land, an additional eligibility criteria insisted by the Bodoland Territorial Council in the first round of rehabilitation. But what is the worst of all, they point out, several thousands who left the relief camps, keen to get back in time for the harvest season, haven't made it back and find themselves stranded in between.
Zohra is one of them. After nearly three months in Kathalguri relief camp, when she trekked back to her village in late October, she found her neighbours had propped up tents in a clearing outside the village. Their quarter of the village was not safe, they cautioned her, since it faced Bodo settlements. Better to live huddled with other Muslims. Soon, a hundred tents had sprung up in the clearing, a makeshift camp of sorts. In Horiyapet village, the makeshift settlement is even larger: a thousand tents scattered in the open, their blue and black plastic sheets glinting in the afternoon sun, sheltering people from as many as six villages.
Unlike the government relief camp they left behind, where supplies of food and medicines trickled in regularly, drinking water tanks were chlorinated, latrines were fumigated, and NGO's unloaded bundles of clothes every now and then, in the makeshift camps, the people have been left to fend for themselves. "We were given 10 days of ration but that's over," says Sobor Ali, who lives in Sapkata makeshift camp. "We are trying to make do by selling bamboo and wood, but that barely brings in any money."
District officials say they know of a large number of such makeshift camps in Gossaigaon division, the worst hit part of Kokrajhar district. They say they occasionally send food, but are wary of stepping up relief supplies to those who have returned home without going through the official process of rehabilitation, lest they be seen as aiding illegal immigrants. "We are trying to address the problem," is all that Jayant Narlikar, the deputy commissioner of Kokrajhar, is willing to say.
Meanwhile, as she wraps the pallu of her saree tighter around her shoulders, Zohra can sense the worst is not over -- with winter setting in, and no warm clothes available.
Assam's ethnic violence: Relief camps are empty but people are not back home
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Assam's ethnic violence: Relief camps are empty but people are not back home
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Assam's ethnic violence: Relief camps are empty but people are not back home
