Arshid Malik

Shitrashahi-dilugedPolitics and politicians are game these days. With the elections over and a hung Assembly, speculations are rife as to who is going to make it to the “golden seat of power”. And the local news agencies are creating a hullabaloo by posting unauthenticated “news items” about people meeting people, and these people meeting people are in complete denial that they are meeting anyone. For, one thing, out of the context, media has sunk to its lowest possible these days while attempting to score. I wonder how much politics is more and more about politicians, settling their personal scores, attempting to gain power in order to enjoy the luxuries of being in power, “washing their dirty linen in public” – do excuse me for the use of the preceding sentence, for by all standards such language is certainly not to be used if you want your writing to be good, but I just could not help it. The electoral process has turned into a big fat joke nowadays, with it becoming an affair limited to galvanizing or petrifying the futures of the electoral candidates. The whole process is so sham.

Away from the elections and what the mainstream political leaders are going to do with the outcomes; who is going to sleep with whom and thus forth, I am perturbed by the agony of people “living” in my area. Ours is an area of Srinagar city that was one of the worst flood-hit areas. The area is Mandir Bagh. It was water logged for almost two entire weeks, and I figure around 50 per cent of the houses either collapsed or were damaged to an extent by the floods that had to be dismantled. Our house stood, somehow, with damages that one can live with. Around us it is a heap of rubble. People have been rendered homeless. Every morning when I go out to get fresh bread from the local bakery, which is half a kilometer away from my home and most of the way it is just fallen houses and construction material, I reflect upon what happened and how poorly the people of our locality are surviving. Given the dry harsh winters with the mercury dipping as low as 4 degree Celsius and not a roof above their heads my people are suffering and their suffering is my suffering and I am not able to do anything about it, since I am not a politician or a bureaucrat who could help them build new houses to live in along with their families – houses that would technically be converted into homes once the walls and the roofs would be there and of course people. My people deserve every right to snuggle up inside small but cozy and warm houses, away from the depravities that this winter brings. My people have the right to life and they are gradually denied the same while our political elite are busy bargaining over their petty interest without even thinking about the people they are eventually going to govern. Is this democracy?

Earlier this week, on a frosty Monday morning, at around 6:45, I wrapped myself in my traditional “pheren” and headed for the bakery. While I was cursing the weather for its harshness, I could hear a kid whimper. I stopped to listen closely and eventually found that the voice was coming from a tin shed which had been erected by one of our neighbors, whose house collapsed on the second day of the flood, as temporary shelter. The kid, I could tell that it was a girl, was complaining to her mother about the biting cold and why their house had collapsed and why they had not been able to build a new house. The mother reassuringly calmed the kid by telling her that she would buy her a doll later during the day and the kid started rolling out splutters of giggles. That is the dream we are giving our children down here. Definitely, no houses for them for the time being.

As the political uncertainty over who is going to be the new Chief Minister of the state and who is going to be his deputy and all, people here in our locality are in deep crisis. This crisis is life threatening, at least for the poor kids who are shelter-less. Would the political elite of our state care to listen to the stories of miseries of my people and do something about it, apart from the petty money they got which was entirely spent in clearing the rubble for new houses to be built. In the name of democracy and the electoral process which is the pivot of its very sustenance, would the political leaders of our land leave their personal tussles and attend to the poor people who are suffering every passing day.

Once the uncertainty is over and strange bed fellows start feeling cozy about themselves, will things change for the better? The people of my locality, will they get some respite from the chills of the winter and will they ever be able to see themselves surrounded by four falls and a roof? I surely doubt it. I guess they will have to make do with the gamut of relief material they got post-floods from NGOs in the shape of ORS packets, toothbrushes and cheap pulses.

I hate democracy for what it is doing to people down here. I did not vote because I knew all along that democracy is an urban hoax, as far as Kashmir is concerned.

Politicians only aim for seats of power so that they can mint money and create resources for their unknown cousins. People, the welfare of people, is a different story. It is a different story, a story that unfolds each chilly morning in Mandir Bagh and all other such localities which were devastated by the recent floods.

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