No napping here

The government should not be caught napping on the humanitarian front. Thousands of people have been driven from their homes by heavy fir...

The government should not be caught napping on the humanitarian front. Thousands of people have been driven from their homes by heavy fire from Pakistani forces in the Kargil-Drass sector. No official figures have been compiled as yet but journalists reporting from the area put the number of migrants at over one lakh.

Most of Kargil town and some nearby villages were evacuated after a munitions dump was blown up there last month. An estimated 10,000 have been forced to flee Drass. Several border villages have emptied out. Apart from the exodus, there is the condition of people who stay on to consider. Food supplies in Drass are said to be running down. Water supplies in many parts have been reduced to a trickle. Civilian transport and commerce are disrupted.

Further away in Uri, fields cannot be tilled because of the artillery barrage. What emerges is a picture of distress on a much larger scale than usual. Although people in the towns and villages of the Kargil-Drass sector have coped with annual borderskirmishes, this year the shelling is much more intense and more settlements have fallen within range of hostile fire.

As far as is known most migrants have found refuge in villages or in public buildings like schools at distances upto 50 or more kilometres from their homes. Some are in makeshift camps and the Jamp;K government is providing funds for a colony of 1,000 houses. These are temporary arrangements until such time as the migrants can return to their abandoned homes, shops and fields. But even so the official response appears to be far too modest given the size of the exodus.

More serious thought will have to be given to accommodation. Having lost their own sources of income, the migrants put a strain on their village hosts and the infrastructure. The state government is arranging for rice rations and kerosene but will have to ensure that supplies are adequate and well distributed and deal promptly with complaints of shortfalls. It will also have to think of providing transport for those unable toget out of conflict zones who live in daily fear of the booming guns.

While the priority is assessing the numbers in need of official assistance on a short-term basis, it will be prudent for the government to make contingency plans for a longer period and for an addition to the numbers.

Some intelligence reports suggest that as the infiltrators are pushed out of Drass, Kargil and Batalik they will attempt to widen their area of operations in order to divert Indian forces away from the key sectors. In that event, more migrations may be triggered as more villages come under fire. The task is difficult because the time scale and dimensions of the problem are uncertain but the government cannot shut its eyes to the distress or pretend things will take care of themselves.

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The wrong approach is to wait for a crisis to develop and then look for ways of dealing with it. Innocent victims of this war-like situation need to be reassured they are not forgotten. The state and the Centre need to be more sensitive totheir hardships and do everything possible to make life a bit easier.