January 30; Kupwara, Kashmir The floods that hit Kashmir valley in September last year, swelled the Khemil river that resulted in devastation of crops in Kupwara district. What made things worse for the residents was the lack of dredging in the river: the fertile land was fast turning barren. Community...
Video Volunteers has long recognised that there is a problem with the media coverage of Kashmir, and in response, we decided to bring our model of community video to Kashmir in September 2013, when we trained 11 Right to Information (RTI) activists as video reporters. The timing was fortuitous, because...
The Prime Minister said he “saw people’s faith in democracy” in the voter queues in Kashmir last month, and the Defence Minister claimed that Pakistan was “unnerved by the 72 per cent voter turnout” in the state. There was unusually high voter turn out in the recently concluded Kashmir state...
A month and a half after Kashmir saw the worst floods in a century, rescue and rehabilitation have yet to reach a majority of the survivors. It was civil society that stepped up and started the initial rescue efforts; the army and government’s response to the crisis was less than...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-talked-about sanitation programme, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA), is largely unimplemented in Jammu & Kashmir. The state has also lagged in the implementation of the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, with Rs 310.15 crore unspent in 2014-2015, with more than 60 per cent of the target unmet....
The Public Safety Act was brought into effect in 1978, primarily to adopt a tough measure against timber smuggling in the state. It was much later that the act was frequently used to control militancy-related incidents. Under this act, the government can declare any area as ‘protected’ and exercise authority...
An allopathic dispensary in rural Kashmir remained closed most of the time and no doctors were assigned to it. Community Correspondent Peer Azhar reported on the issue and with the help of his community brought change. Now the dispensary stays open for six-days-a-week and paramedical staff visits regularly. While the...
