Zahoor Gulzar
On January 13 an IndiGo aircraft came close to a snow mound at Srinagar International Airport. The flight IndiGo 6E 2559 operating from Srinagar to New Delhi which was on the runway and about to take off got stuck in the snow, triggering panic among its 250 passengers.
The Indigo says while taxiing out, the aircraft came in close contact with the snow which was accumulated adjacent to the taxi-way. On the same day the aircraft was held at Srinagar for further inspections. An alternate flight was organized from Srinagar to Delhi to accommodate all the passengers.
According to the Airport sources, the crane was used to pull out the Aircraft from the accumulated snow. At the same time, the Airport security ensured that no one dared to take pictures of it citing security concerns, thus saving both the government and the Airport Authority of India from embarrassment.
The divisional administration in Kashmir which failed to clear snow from the roads and lanes and by-lanes of the Valley quickly washed its hands from the incident saying that the snow clearance at Airport comes under the jurisdiction of the Airport Authority of India.
While the Director of the Airport at Srinagar told reporters that they have done their bit and removed the snow from the runaway. Outside the Airport the three-day snowfall from January 3 to January 6 proved that the administration failed to do its work.
In a public indictment of the government’s failure, the Mayor of Srinagar announced that he has no machinery available to lift the snow. With criticism mounting from all sides, the government declared the snowfall as a natural disaster, with it announcing its surrender.
The snow resulted in the closure of the 270-kilometer Srinagar-Jammu National Highway and the suspension of flights at the Srinagar Airport for four days.
The wet-spell occurred on January 3 onwards contrary to the forecast of the Meteorological Department, which had predicted weather in Jammu and Kashmir will remain “mainly dry” until January 14.
As usual, people took to social media and criticized the MeT department for not issuing prior weather advisory regarding the snowfall.
Widespread snowfall cut off the Kashmir Valley and led to blocking of roads and power outages and, for the first time in decades, the government ordered rationing of fuel.
The snow and the government’s failure to anticipate challenges has thrown life completely out of gear in the Valley and angered people. Many roads are still blocked. Unable to clear the roads, the government made several appeals to people to stay indoors so that roads could be cleared. Even the BJP in Srinagar hired the JCBs to clear the road in a bid to “shame” the government.
As many village roads and lanes remained under the snow, at several places, people complained that patients and pregnant women had to walk for kilometers to reach hospitals. J&K Police say they carried several patients to the hospital on foot. Power supply to the city and towns was restored relatively quickly, but several villages in the north and south Kashmir continued to be dark and cold.
In Shopian a family of a woman who was pregnant cleared the snow off the village road to take her to hospital. The family was helped by neighbours who had to carry the woman on a makeshift stretcher on a nightmarish 12-km (7-mile) journey. The woman could not make it to the hospital on time and delivered a baby boy on the road. As it continued to snow and temperatures fell to freezing, the woman and her newborn, wrapped in a blanket, continued their journey on the makeshift stretcher till they reached the hospital. In another such incident from Shopian, a family of a woman who had died after being discharged from hospital, had to take her to her village walking around 12 km in a snow filled road.
And for the first time, Kashmir reported death by cold temperature after two young men from north Kashmir’s Kupwara district who were stranded on the Jammu-Srinagar highway froze to death. They were found dead inside a load carrier they were traveling in at Banihal along the highway. They were identified as Shabir Ahmed Mir and Majid Gulzar Mir, both residents of Kralpora village of Kupwara.
In summers, public transport is not available after the sunset and in the winters it is not available even during the day in city and on village roads, forcing the people to negotiate slippery roads and snow on their own. This winter, the heavy snowfall has resulted in roads being cut off for weeks together.
On January 13 the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir closed the Srinagar-Jammu highway for ten days due to the sudden collapse of the retaining wall and approach road to a bridge at Kela Morh in Ramban. Hundreds of passenger vehicles and trucks carrying essential commodities were stranded on the road.
On January 30 another order issued by the government says Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only surface link connecting Kashmir Valley with the outside world, will remain closed for next four consecutive Thursdays for repairs.
“In order to undertake major repairs and maintenance of the highway, the Government has declared every Thursday falling on February 4, 11, 18 & 25 as dry days. Please avoid journeys on the above notified days on the Highway,” reads an advisory issued by Deputy Commissioner Ramban and shared on twitter.
The highway has become a nightmare for those traveling by it including transporters. On average, every day, around 1,200 trucks and as many tankers, besides 1,000 vehicles ferrying passengers, ply on the Srinagar-Jammu highway. There are also over 500 vehicles of government forces on the road on a routine day. Nearly 7,000 vehicles cross the Banihal toll post on an average day. The four-laning of the Ramban-Banihal (32.10 km), and Udhampur-Ramban (40.07 km) stretches of the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, now called NH-44, was approved in 2015 after the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave the go-ahead.
The Ramban to Banihal stretch comprises two bypasses, six major and 21 minor bridges, 152 culverts, seven pedestrian and cattle underpasses, and six tunnels with a total length of 2,967.50 meters.
The Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), a leading infrastructure firm, has been allotted the work for this stretch. The HCC is being accused of carrying out an excavation in an unscientific and haphazard manner.
Officials say the excavation is being done in a way that makes the top portion of the mountain cave in and slide down. However, a senior official from NHAI says, there is a continuous flow of traffic on the road and the excavation for the widening of the road is taking place at the same time forcing them to start widening from the top end of the mountain. This winter the heavy snowfall complicated things further leading to closure of the road many times due to the accumulation of snow at Jawahar tunnel.
This winter’s worst-hit from the snowfall was the entire Valley.
In Srinagar, for the first time the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC), which is ruled by the BJP-Apni party alliance, had taken up the snow clearance of inner links from the district administration and Roads and Building department. After the snowfall in the first week of January, the whole city came to standstill, throwing the people in shock. With snow on roads, several fatal accidents were reported from Srinagar. Shops were shut, ambulances stuck on roads, doctors could not reach hospitals, and tuition centers were closed.
After three days of complete surrender before the one-foot snow, the SMC Mayor Junaid Mattu appeared in a press conference, saying SMC has only fifteen JCBs and loaders to clear fifteen thousand lanes across the Srinagar city.
Mattu told reporters, “I have asked for the procurement of twenty-five snow clearance machines but for unknown reasons machines were not procured despite having sufficient funds at disposal.”
He urged Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to find out why the situation on the ground was ‘ugly’.
“I will write to him (Sinha) to ascertain why it took too long to clear the roads,” Mattu said while announcing the administration’s surrender before the one-foot snow that blocked the main roads and lanes in the city.
Not only the city but the situation also remained similar in towns and villages as well.
In Wagoora tehsil of Baramulla, the administration could not press in snow cutters for two days to clear the snow. Roads were blocked and restoration of power supply was hit.
Patients mostly suffering from respiratory illnesses and dependent on oxygen concentrators were worst hit in Wagoora. They could not get an adequate oxygen supply in absence of a power supply. One of the patients also died at Wagoora after he could not get oxygen supply. Locals say they could not even complain against the power outage because the Power Development Department’s Wagoora Sub-Division office works from an Army camp. They say the government over the years has failed to improve the power infrastructure in Wagoora, causing huge hardships for the people.
By the end of January, Kashmir Valley is facing one of the harshest winters in decades which has given rise to the worst water crisis in three decades. Plummeting temperature led to the freezing of lakes, water supply lines, taps, water tanks, and motors.
All the traditional de-freezing techniques used by the people have failed to yield desired results. The problem was compounded by the accumulated snow on the roads in Srinagar and other districts which made driving difficult on frosty and slippery roads. However, the water crises remain an immediate concern.
On January 31, the worst affected are the people living in the villages of South Kashmir. That day in South Kashmir district of Shopian, the temperature was recorded -15 degrees Celsius. In Kulgam and Pulwama districts of south Kashmir, the temperature was recorded -12 and -10 degree Celsius respectively.
“An elderly man in our mohalla, aged around 70, tells me he hasn’t seen as harsh a winter in Kashmir as this year’s. He says this is clearly the harshest Chilai-Kalan he has seen in his lifetime. He says it is wrong to say it is harshest in 30 or 40 years,” writes Mir Faheem, a Srinagar resident on Facebook.
At the same time the frozen taps and chilly cold made people nostalgic about the old homes. People took to social media talking about faulty structure of the present concrete homes and insisted that people should return to age old and time tested Kashmiri architecture.
The harsh winter will not be the last but this winter has shown that people mostly have been less critical of the government and have been urging for a correction course within the community. It should be construed as a welcome sign but at the same time it is an alarming sign of the government as people don’t have many expectations from it. It is assumed had there been an elected government, peoples’ reaction to the present unprecedented crisis would have been different and they would have held the government accountable. The present government needs to ponder about it once snow gets cleared from roads by warm spring and water supply gets restored as the temperature rises.