Yashoda Singh, who has been living on a Delhi roadside after her compensation was hijacked, virtually with government connivance. Picture by Prem Singh

Yashoda Singh pulls her dupatta tighter around her body and edges closer to the chulha fire as a chilling December draught blows in.

She shouldn’t be squatting on the roadside, shivering without warm clothes: she is the rightful owner of Rs 15 lakh, already paid by the government. But the money flew past her cold fingers like a winter gust before she had a chance to see it.

What the 15-year-old has seen, from too close, is death. She was hanging out clothes to dry when the most destructive of the September 13 bombs in Delhi went off a hundred metres away.

The Ghaffar Market blast in Karol Bagh killed nine of Yashoda’s family, her parents and 25-year-old brother among them. Four relatives are still in hospital. But Yashoda survived without a scratch.

“I have simply been maimed for life,” she sobs, her hands kneading dough for the rotis she would make on the chulha to feed the family — two adults and 10 children apart from those in hospital.

“For a poor family, if the breadwinners die, life for the living turns worse than death,” she says.

Her aunt Chandrawati, who lost her husband and son in the explosion, kneels to comfort her.

But hasn’t the Delhi government compensation — Rs 5 lakh for every slain victim’s nearest kin — made the two of them richer by Rs 25 lakh? Aunt and niece exchange glances and laugh.

“That’s what everyone thinks. Why am I complaining then, why do we live like this when the money has already been paid?” Chandrawati asks.

The family lives on the roadside, at the mouth of a narrow lane known as Gali No. 42 in Ghaffar Market’s Beadonpura, surviving largely on the charity of neighbours and local shopkeepers.

Yashoda, her great aunt Krishna and Chandrawati have possibly been the best-known residents of Ghaffar Market since the blasts, jokes Satish Shukla, owner of an electronics shop across the street.

But they have no home, only an address.

The four men in the family were construction labourers, occasionally foraying into ragpicking. The family would find shelter at the construction sites where the men worked. “With the men gone, so has any hope of shelter,” says the aunt.

Rahul of Jaipur who still has 30 pellets lodged inside his body. Picture by Surendra Jain Paras

Their possessions include the chulha on which Yashoda bakes rotis and cooks a watery dal, apart from four utensils, a broken cot, two discarded tarpaulin sheets and the clothes on their bodies.

“Shopkeepers and people who live nearby give us atta and lentils,” says Chandrawati, advising her niece to use less dough per roti and flatten it out thinner instead.

So what about the Rs 25 lakh? “It has been paid but I haven’t seen a paisa,” Chandrawati says. Her in-laws — Yashoda’s grandparents — have grabbed the entire sum and plan to build a house in Najafgarh, she alleges.

“My father-in-law is 70. He is the only adult male alive in the family. The money came to him and he has refused to share it. He argues he was the common link between all those who died and deserves all the money.”

It’s a story being echoed across India’s bomb-hit cities, in Jaipur as in Delhi. The government is happy to pay compensation promptly to the “family” and wash its hands of the matter — it doesn’t care which member gets the money.

Widows or orphaned girls are the easiest to cheat, and they are cheated by the men in their families, social activists say.

To claim the compensation, one must furnish documents such as the FIR or death certificate. Since it’s usually the males who go to the police station to file the FIR or to the hospital to get the death certificate, they are on a stronger wicket.

Or, as in Chandrawati’s case, the government sent the entire compensation for the nine victims directly to the father-in-law, its clerks happy to be rid of the headache. A police officer delivered the amount in a single cheque for Rs 45 lakh at the Beodonpura street corner where the rest still live.

Chandrawati says even her father-in-law’s grandchildren — Yashoda, Chandrawati’s four children, and another six — cannot hope for any help from the “evil” grandparents. “I had timidly asked my grandfather if he would at least marry me off, but he refused. He told me my place was here, by the roadside,” says Yashoda, beginning to sob again.

The family is lucky that the four injured members are receiving free care in hospital. “But they are last on the hospital’s priority, the doctors only visit them once in four-five days,” Yashoda alleges.

Her sister Sunanda still has a few pellets lodged above her abdomen. “She keeps suffering infections and the doctors said she would be vulnerable all her life,” Yashoda says. “I feel bad that she is in hospital but at least she has a bed to sleep on and the doctors do attend to her once in a while. There is no way we could have taken care of her.”

Jaipur boy Rahul too is assured free treatment in any government hospital — Rajasthan’s sop to blast victims — if only he could afford it. The 15-year-old was riddled with 70 pellets by the May 13 blast, and 30 are still inside him, three in the chest.

“Often, government hospitals don’t have the infrastructure for the treatment and patients have to move to private hospitals,” says Kavita Srivastava, Rajasthan chief of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties.

Rahul’s family — his father has a small flower shop in a market — has received Rs 1 lakh from the state government, Rs 50,000 each for Rahul and uncle Surendra who has a pellet in the brain. The Centre has sent another Rs 50,000.

“Rahul has had several operations and needs more. Even now, our medical bill comes to several thousand a month,” says mother Radha.

“The state needs to take responsibility for the injured. We need a policy of continuous medical attention,” Srivastava says.

Rahul hasn’t been to school since the blasts. His hands and wrists hurt, he can’t lift anything, his bowel activity is severely affected. His sister, in her first year of college, has quit studies to take up a minor job.

Chandrawati believes rehabilitation is better than compensation. “If all earning members of a family have died, the government should provide a job or regular dole to each survivor instead of a lump sum that can be hijacked.”

Also, she wants the government to assume responsibility for educating victims’ children. “That’s what I really want now, to give my children an education,” she says.

Jagdish Parshad, whose son Pawan died in the Karol Bagh blast, has another worry. The state government has paid the Rs 5 lakh, but there’s no sight of the Centre’s Rs 3 lakh. The blasts’ proximity to the Delhi polls, and the longer gap before the general election, aren’t lost on him.

“I just returned from the office of the police special cell and they assured me the central compensation too will arrive,” Parshad says, straddling his scooter. “I hope we receive it before any government change, else there can be more delay.”

In the days after the blasts, “everyone visited us”, recalls Chandrawati. Chief minister Sheila Dikshit came to her pavement settlement; so did the BJP’s shadow chief minister, Vijay Kumar Malhotra.

“We were made to believe they would take care of us. Look at us now,” Chandrawati says, her face contorted half in grief, half in irony.

Out in the cold

How are the families of Jaipur’s 68 blast dead living? Rakhee Roy Talukdar finds out

NUMBERS

22 households where women are left to fend for themselves
55 children have become dependent on mothers
7 families have withdrawn children from school
5 families have withdrawn all their girls from school
14 of 22 widows living in shared households — and only 3 have own homes — despite most having received the Rs 5-lakh cheque
12 families have unpaid loans of Rs 4,000 to Rs 7 lakh
10 children without mother; living with father, grandparents, uncles or aunts
71% of slain men were sole earners
11% were sole earners of joint families
29% families have no source of income left
19% families have lowered food consumption
33% families haveoutstanding loans

WORST OFF

Victims’ children getting less food, education than before. Often breakfast stopped, sometimes even the daily glass of milk
Young girls being pulled out of school to be married off
Widows shattered economically, socially, psychologically

What Govts need to do

Provide children scholarships and money for studies
Make the children the state’s responsibility
Give jobs to widows, houses under Indira Awaas Yojana to homeless
Provide food under Antyodaya: 35kg of grain per card per month
Ensure marriage opportunities of fatherless girls

SOURCE: People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Jaipur

With inputs from Rakhee Roy Talukdar