Covid-2019 if roughly translated inKashmiri would mean the”Wobah-2019″ which is now a global pandemic. The growing incidence ofthe pandemic in the Kashmir valley is a matter of worry. Kashmir has a miserablehistory of epidemics in the course of its history. The reporting of death and destruction largely took placein urban Srinagar which can give us an idea of what must have happened in ruralKashmir. It is precisely for this reason that the divisional administrationneeds to tighten its screws in deep rural clusters so as to keep the populationsafe in its fight against Covid -19.
Historical overview
Cholera has been historically a majorreason for death in Kashmir. The first officially recoded epidemic was in 1857.The horrible years were 1888, 1892,1900, 1907 and 1910. Ten thousand lives were lost in 1888. The 1892 epidemicresulted in 5,781 deaths in Srinagar alone. Sir Walter Lawrence writes aboutthe epidemic of 1892: All business was stopped and the only shops whichremained open were those of sellers of white cloth for winding sheets…..Thelong lines of coffins borne to the graveyards resembled an endless regiment onthe march……..Men telling me how they lost all members of the family”Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe the founder of legendary Biscoe school writes about thecholera of 1902: The epidemic of 1902 was my first experience of this terriblevisitation. The people were terribly scared, offices and schools were closedand the people sat in their hoses as they said, waiting to die….Ten thousanddeaths were reported in the city, there must have been hundreds moreunreported”. Similarly for fighting a disease like smallpox a British missionary doctor Ernest Neverecords that authorities took vigorousmeasures, at first burning down all plague-infested houses…..the diseaseapparently died but persisted in some isolated villages near Wullar Lake. Themortality all through was terrible—- over 95 percent”.
Covid-19 and District Administration
It is in the above context thatadministration needs to enforce the lockdown in the rural Kashmir in a morestrict manner. The lockdown is a successin urban areas but needs to be enforcedin rural periphery as well. The fight against Covid-19 is to be fought at alllevels but will be won or lost in therural areas where for understandable reasons there are problems in enforcement.In the the deep pockets of rural Kashmir the writ of the state is weak andinstitutions of governance particularly the law enforcement agencies are unableto enforce the lockdown. God-forbid, if the pandemic encroaches into those deeppockets it will not only create havoc in the periphery but even urban healthservices will come under severe pressureso much so that systems can easily collapse. The district administration needsto tame and utilize time tested mechanisms and old institutional framework at this hour ofcrisis. Historically, the local elite of the village power structure can beemployed to enforce the lockdown. The Awquaf president, Sarpanch, Lambardar,head master of the local school and Imam of the local mosque can together, beconstituted into a mechanism to be made accountable to law enforcement organsof the state. The SHO and Naib Tehsildar at block level can coordinate. TheAwquaf president can be head of thisinstitutional framework and can be asked to hold regular meetings to addressproblems of the village or cluster of villages and simultaneously enforce thelockdown. The problems related to agricultural activities can also be bestunderstood by this committee. This mechanism needs to be made accountable andanswerable for their day-to-day functions. The administration needs tounderstand that in spite of urban andconsumerist dent in village habitat there still are internal solidarities leftwhich can take care of day to day problems of the people lessening the burden on local administration.The element of fear rather than force can be used so as to ensure that there isno movement internally in the villages. The fact that Covid-19 so far appearsto be more an urban phenomenon should not prove illusionary. It is urban forthe simple reason that migration happens in the urban areas and even the firstCovid victim in Kashmir (though from Sopore area) was living in the Srinagarcity.