Homelessness and Unemployment Stares Down at Uttarakhand Villages After the Flood

Reuters Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel searching for flood victims in a damaged house in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand on Wednesday.

NEW DELHI - Tens of thousands of pilgrims have been evacuated from the higher reaches of Uttarakhand, but tens of thousands of residents of towns and villages affected by the floods are facing the dire aftermath of homelessness and unemployment.  The population of the tourist towns in the flooded districts of Uttarkashi, Tehri Garhwal, Rudraprayag and Chamoli is more than 20,000, according to the 2011 census, not taking into account the residents of the manyvillages surrounding them.

A few years back, Hari Singh Gusain, a 40-year-old lawyer, moved with his family to Joshiyara, a village of 300 households that sits alongside the Bhagirathi River in the Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand.

Joshiyara, which adjoins the town of Uttarkashi, has benefited from the thriving tourism industry centered on the Chardham Yatra, a pilgrimage to the sacred Hindu sites of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.

Uttarkashi and Joshiyara are on the route to the first two sites, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) to Yamunotri and 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) to Gangotri.

Last week, Mr. Gusain watched helplessly as floodwaters washed away his newly constructed home on the banks of the Bhagirathi, a tributary of the Ganga River, taking with it not just his hopes of living in his own home, but a lifetime’s worth of savings that was poured into the three-story house.

“What do I do now; where do I start?” Mr! . Gusain lamented in a phone interview.

It’s a question being asked by many who have seen their homes and livelihoods disappear in the floods. The focus of the rescue efforts, which are continuing, has been on the thousands of tourists who have been stranded in different parts of the state.

“This tragedy is not limited to the tourists,” said Gopal Thapliyal, who is leading a rescue team from Sri Bhuvneshwari Mahila Ashram, a nongovernmental organization that has been working in the region for more than three decades. “There is a whole tourism industry here, on which lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of local people are dependent.”

Thousands of men from villages like Joshiyara come to Uttarkashi and other tourist towns to work as porters, drivers, guides, waiters and janitors.

“Their families are still waiting for them to come back,” Mr. Thapliyal said.

For Mr. Gusain, the move to Joshiyara had been a long-awaited fresh start, a homecoming planned while he spent a decae working as a lawyer in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, after Uttarakhand was granted statehood in 2000. Before they moved to Allahabad that year, Mr. Gusain and his wife laid the foundation stone for a house in Joshiyara with the intention of coming back one day to their home region.

Danish Siddiqui/Reuters Residents standing outside their damaged houses in Srinagar, Uttarakhand, on June 19.

Mr. Gusian had grown up in the village of Kankradi, about two miles from Joshiyara, but he decided to settle down in Joshiyara, which had prospered on account of growing tourism on the Chardham route.

He has been the village headman of Kankradi for ! the past ! four years, had moved his family to a rental in Joshiyara a few years ago and was eagerly making plans to move into the new home this year when the floods struck.

In addition to their life savings of 2 million rupees ($33,000), the Gusains had borrowed 400,000 rupees to pay for the growing construction costs. Now they are forced to pay back a loan for a house that no longer stands.

Though the rains this year were much heavier than anyone had anticipated, Mr. Gusain blamed local and central government officials for ignoring his increasingly frantic warnings of a possible repeat of the flash floods that hit Joshiyara and Kankradi last year. As the village headman, Mr. Gusain wrote to the district officials, the state’s chief minister and even the prime minister, asking them to take immediate measures to safeguard the settlements.

Luckily, there was no loss of life in the Joshiyara last year, as was the case this year, but many buildings suffered damage. People had to leave their homes, whih were seen as being in the danger zone, while they waited for the authorities to construct retaining walls to safeguard their homes against floodwaters.

Those retaining walls, which were under construction when the rain began to fall earlier this month, have been washed away. The work had been progressing very slowly, Mr. Gusain said. “Nobody responded to my pleas to hasten the process to build them after what happened last year,” he said.

“They did not even give us any advance warning about what was going to happen this time,” he added.

While it was under construction, Mr. Gusain’s house had survived the floods in 2012 but was not spared this time. “I worked all my life to see this house built,” he said. “Now I fear we will live as tenants all our lives and never have a home of our own.”

Amod Singh Panwar, 35, was one of the luckier ones as he has savings that he said could help him start over after he lost his two hotels, one in Joshiyara and one in nearby! Netala v! illage.

When the floods hit on June 16, more than 100 tourists had checked in at his hotels. Most of them had gone up to Gangotri and Yamunotri and had been scheduled to return by nightfall that same day. Mr. Panwar, 35, himself made the journey to Maneri village, about 15 miles up the Uttarkashi-Gangotri road, to bring back a tour party on Sunday, a week after they had left.

He said he was grateful that all his guests returned safely, but he feared for the future of his business and his 50 employees.

“I am devastated,” Mr. Panwar said, “I have been running these hotels for 15 years now. But I am worried the people who worked with me and many others in this village will have no way to earn a living now.”

Tourism provides employment, directly or indirectly, to a significant number of the people residing in villages near the tourist spots in Uttarakhand.

“In most of the areas affected by the floods, their entire economy is based on tourism,” said A.K. Dwivedi, a jointdirector in the state tourism department. The contribution of “trade, hotels and restaurants” was almost a quarter of the state’s total G.D.P. in 2010, according to state government estimates, the largest share among all the industries listed.

It is hard to put a number to the people employed in tourism in flood-hit tourist areas, Mr. Dwivedi said, as “people are employed both formally and informally in many private enterprises.” But government statistics show how the tourism industry’s reach has grown, with the number of tourists coming to Uttarakhand jumping from about 10 million in 2001 to 30 million by 2010.

“The Himalayan economy here has been completely destroyed,” said Anil Baluni, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand and former vice chairperson of the state forest and environment advisory committee. “This will likely affect the economy here for years to come.”

Mr. Panwar sounded equally despairing. “I don’t see the point in starti! ng over, ! this tragedy has affected people from all over India,” he said. “Now people will think a hundred times before coming here.”

He has plans to migrate from Joshiyara as a last resort, but for Mr. Gusain, that is not an option.

“I cannot go anywhere from here,” he said. “I work here. My children study here. My life is here.”

Vishnu Varma contributed reporting.