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Bharatpur villagers count their blessings, await compensation

Amberish K Diwanji in Bharatpur

Alive it must have been a fearsome creature. In death it was harmless, rotting in the sun. The six-foot python was probably nestling among the ammunition boxes to escape the scorching Rajasthani summer. When the Bharatpur Ammunition Depot went up in flames on April 28, the unfortunate creature was blown almost 100 feet away from the main gate.

The explosion claimed three lives, a miracle as far as the villagers are concerned. "Yeh to kudrat ka khel tha ki itne bade aag se sirf teen log mare! (It is the hand of destiny that such a huge fire claimed only three lives)," said H L Chaudhary, a villager.

Worst affected was Madoni, a village that appears to have been quite forgotten by the authorities. There are no metalled roads leading to it, just a dirt track with loose sand that keeps blowing up as hot winds rush in to sear the face.

The village of about 400 huts is still recovering from the blast that occurred four days ago -- on April 28. Parts of the village look like a cremation ground with just grey-black ash remaining. The huts made of wood and mud just crumbled under the impact of the blast and the fire.

In other places, huts are partially burnt, with just one wall standing. The embers are still simmering, adding to the summer heat.

But what pains the villagers is that most of the fodder they had stored for their animals to see them through the cruel summer has also been turned to ashes.

The older villagers still appear dazed, trying to make sense of what has happened and pick up the pieces. The younger ones are busy guiding the stream of visitors to the village -- journalists, government officers, and soldiers looking for unexploded shells.

In the Harijan part of the village -- like in most Indian villages, there is a strong caste division within Madoni with the Harijans living further away from the village 'chabutra' (square) -- one victim tells of how her hut was burnt down by a blazing rocket. While none of the family died, her entire stock of pigs and some chickens was roasted alive. She showed one of the burnt chicken with its singed feathers still in place.

"We saw the fire start at around 3pm and immediately began to run into the fields or take shelter beneath our huts. But once the blasts began about 15 minutes later, we just fled into the open fields," explained our young guide, Chandan Singh.

The fire at the depot raged into the night. And so did the fires that began in the villages around it.

In what must rank as the greatest irony, villages in Rajasthan lack water to fight fires. The villagers of Madoni draw sustenance from four wells, all located some distance away and allocated by caste (not surprisingly, the Harijans' well is the farthest). And water is too precious to be wasted on dousing fires. (While northern Rajasthan, where Bharatpur is located, does have water and greenery, southern Rajasthan is reeling from a drought.) So the villagers just waited for the fire to burn itself out.

The fire tenders were too busy dousing the fire at the ammunition depot, but even there they could do precious little. "The fire tenders sprayed water on the grass around to prevent the fire spreading, but at the depot itself they just waited till it ended! The fire was so intense, nothing could have doused it. Only after burning itself out did the fire die down," a soldier explained.

In Madoni, the villagers are now busy fighting for compensation. The Rajasthan government has announced Rs 10,000 to each family that lost a member (none in Madoni) or whose hut was burnt. The villagers are busy arguing with the tehsildar (sub-district officer), each busy trying to claim their share or more.

The tehsildar says compensation will be paid in a day or two. But the villagers are worried that once the media attention dies down, they will be paid much less than what Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot announced in a blaze of publicity. So far, to survive the past four days, they have been paid a paltry Rs 500 each!

Help has come from other quarters. Social activists, non-governmental organisations and members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have gone to the various villages helping those affected. The administration too has been seeking to provide solace.

Besides the burnt huts, there are other symbols of devastation -- burnt-out shells and rockets, some an awesome seven feet long! The army has reclaimed most of them, but a few are still lying around in the dusty fields, too hot to touch (not from the fire but because of the sun above!). Just seeing these huge chunks of ammo, it is easy to understand why the villagers fled when the shells began raining on them.

As an army officer later explained, many of the shells were dummies without gunpowder, so the destruction wrought was much less. If the shells had been loaded, the devastation can only be imagined...

Now, the villagers have started returning, picking up the pieces of their lives. The summer sun makes it difficult to do anything in the day except stay inside the huts that haven't been destroyed. Construction can only happen in the mornings and evenings, but that too can start only after the materials arrive. And for that, the compensation must be paid first. So far, only the promise of help has arrived.

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