FLOOD, FLESH AND POLITICS; IS MEDIA THE VULTURE HOVERING A CORPSE?

17-9-2014 6.20PM IST

Medhaj News: When my home is burning, you don’t ask me if I voted the other day; but rather ask about my family, food and shelter, said a Kashmiri resident, after a media person questioned him about separatists.

At a time when Kashmir is facing the worst floods in the country, people from every corner of India and also from outside the Himalayan borders have begun sending in help and relief material for victims.

It’s been a week since Jhelum broke its ends and swallowed the regions spreading upto miles. And with the operation ‘Megh Rahat’ on and NGOs and volunteers working effortlessly, the situation might have been a little better than what it is now if it was just the floods.

What is now hovering over Kashmir is politics, not just the floods. Sadly, the media too has been accused of playing cruel jokes on the disaster.

Kashmiri residents expressed unhappiness and rage over the reporting done by an English news channel. They are furious over the media talking about separatists and further politicising the catastrophe and not talking about their situation, rising epidemic and their rehabilitation.

Undeniably, there is politics happening in and out of Kashmir, which is not healthy by any means.

A rescue operation was allegedly disrupted and boats were hijacked on September 13 by separatist leader Yasin Malik and his troops in order to ‘personally’ distribute the relief items. Malik and his supporters are seen in a video, available on the social media and broadcast by an English news channel, asking relief workers to abandon a boat so that they could carry out the rescue operation themselves. The separatists are even seen allegedly forcing ailing female patients to disembark from the Army relief boat. Was this a stunt to get political mileage?

However, when Medhaj News contacted the people trapped in the valley, they said that the media was trying to paint the situation andgive a wrong twist to the Yakima Malik affair. Malik, they said, was only trying to help. The truth somewhere lies in between!

I am not concerned about who is delivering the relief items but it just needs to be delivered to my stranded brothers and sisters’, said Aamir, a Kashmiri resident.

Recently, there was a complaint over the politicisation of distribution of relief items.

Several voluntary groups are stuck at the airport in the drenched valley for days to get the relief items delivered. Many of them allege that some airlines are prioritising relief material sent by politicians over other necessities. “A consignment of tons of blankets from a Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda halted perishable food items and medicines – to be lifted by government airlines - for more than a day at Delhi Airport,” Hamid, who has been trying to dispatch fresh items like milk and baby food, says.

The water is receding with relief operations going on actively, but a new threat of epidemic is already seen before the older one is dealt with. The dead animals caught in deep flood waters, rising high by overflowing sewers can cause cholera and other diseases to many who are still stranded.

Relief workers are making efforts to purify water with chemicals with chlorine tablets but the danger still persists. There is not an outbreak yet, but the situation can get worse. A couple of cases of cholera have also come up, said Anees, a Kashmiri resident.

Kashmir to me seems struggling for life. More than 200 have already been declared dead and over 6 lakh are still stranded. The water has washed off villages, fields, women, men, animals and the place once known was the god’s home. From a chapatti to a tin shed, from a wooden plank to a woolen blanket, from water to ice...every little thing will play a crucial role in the rebuilding of Kashmir, which might take years. And when media and politicians are playing over this, it seems like a vulture hovering a corpse.