On a sunny winter evening, the tricolour flag is flailing in the breeze at the centre of Darula village on the outskirts of Delhi. This high-mast tricolour flag was installed by the Delhi government to instil patriotism among citizens.
However, the blue-tinted water containers outside every home and rough roads suggest that while patriotism has reached the village, development is still a long way off.
“Is gaon ke har ghar me ek fauji hai” (At least one member of every home in this village serves in the army), said a resident with a Haryanvi accent.
Famous for the place the Indian Army holds in the hearts of Darula’s residents, its army deceased even today don’t get a decent burial. Recently, locals of the village was shook when they failed perform the last rites of martyr Havildar Shiv Kumar in a dignified manner. The village’s decrepit crematorium is to blame.
Recalling that day, Shiv’s elder brother Diwan Singh, 64, a retired army officer himself, said, “On the cremation day, there was incessant rain throughout the day. The downpour worsened when we gave fire to our brother’s pyre. There cremation ground has no proper roof. We had to pour diesel on his pyre to keep it burning.”
Diwan continued to say in a stern tone, “It is a shame for our village that we could not pay a dignified last tribute to a martyr.”
Shiv Kumar, 39, was posted as Havaldar (Constable) in the 36 grenadiers of the Indian Army at Jaipur when he contracted dengue. Later, on September 22, he was admitted to the Army’s Research Referral Hospital, and the following day his dead body was brought to the village.
Shiv was survived by his wife and two children.
Darula is the last village on the Delhi-Jhajjar border, and has 300-odd households. The village is famous for its love of the Army, as every youngster from the villager harbours dreams of serving in the Army. Shiv was also one of those who accomplished this dream.
The village comes under the Matiala constituency of West Delhi. “I will bring a big cake,” was his last promise to his kids, as Shiv was planning to celebrate his 40th birthday at home on September 23 – the same day his pyre was set on fire.
“When the dead body of my brother reached the village, the whole village on its own prepared the burial ground with the help of a JCB machine and tractor. The water was filled up to the knee at the crematorium ground,” said Raj Kumar, while holding the portrait of his brother.
The Army personnel who carried his brother’s coffin had to pay tribute by standing in the water, Raj said. Finding our way through the rough road, Raj, among a dozen locals, showed us the cremation ground. Despite the structure being a designated “crematorium”, its roof was not covered. The lack of a good sitting area and other necessary facilities on the ground just makes matters worse.
For a new crematorium
The angsty residents of Darula said that they had appealed to Aam Aadmi Party legislator Gulab Singh. However, their request to make a suitable crematorium was brusquely turned down. “We lost trust in the local representatives. On one hand, our MLA is not heeding our woes and on the other, our MP Parvesh Verma has the time to inaugurate a gym nearby but would not condole the family of a martyred soldier,” said a local.
“We had given a call to the mahapanchayat of 36 villages denouncing this disrespect to our martyr,” said Raj Kumar. In contrast, AAP MLA Gulab Singh rebuked the claims that he did not pay heed to the woes of the villagers. “To date, we have not received any complaint from the locals. If I receive any letter from them, then I will surely take action,” said the representative.
“We have immense respect for the Indian Army and we will surely take the necessary steps to get compensation for the family. But there is government protocol that we need to follow,” Gulab Singh said, adding, “Once we get an official letter from the Indian Army, then we will immediately release the Rs 1 crore compensation for the family.”
On the need for a new crematorium, he said that the existing cremation ground is on gram panchayat land and that any local politician, even a councillor can revamp the cremation ground. He later assured that in the next MLA fund, he would allocate the budget for a new crematorium for Darula village.
Darula village is a microcosm of every nondescript peripheral village in the capital which lacks basic amenities. In this case, it is a crematorium.
Same story, different village
Recently, residents of Fatehpur Beri village on the Gurugram border had to run from pillar to post for the renovation of a cremation ground there. Ansh Tanwar, who was born and brought up in Fatehpur Beri, said, “The local MLA often swung the responsibility to the local councillor whenever we approached him. He said that he cannot do anything as it was central government land.”
Tanwar said that once the villagers lost their hope in the MLA they decided to revamp the crematorium on their own. “When we began to demolish the old structure, then god gave the wisdom to our legislator and he allocated the budget for the crematorium,” said Tanwar.
Similar to Fatehpur Beri, villagers elsewhere in outer Delhi took to fundraising to build cremation grounds after local politicians ignored their requests. Ritesh Kumar Rana, of Bakhtawarpur, said, “Villagers in Tigipur, Sundarpur, Majra, Bakhtawarpur and others collected anywhere between hundred to one lakh rupees to build the crematorium nearby the Yamuna River.” According to him, the crematorium had no adequate roofing.
‘Budget constraint’
The Centre for Youth Culture Law and Environment (CYCLE) had helped with pressing the authorities for bettering local amenities, specially crematoriums. CYCLE began work centered around peripheral villages in March 2021, said the non-profit’s co-founder Paras Tyagi.
“We had raised complaints about the dilapidated living conditions in villages through all proper bureaucratic channels. Within a month, we received responses indicating that budgets had been proposed for all pending development projects. But, to our great disappointment, neither the Delhi government nor the municipal corporation has done anything since then.”
“We have written to the Chief Secretary of the Delhi government as well as the Lieutenant Governor about this matter. Cremation grounds in all the villages are suffering from this apathy of administration,” Tyagi said.
In village development, not even 30 per cent of the money earmarked for public amenities is spent, Tyagi said one alarming detail from CYCLE’s analysis of budgets proposed in the last five years. “That should expose the reality of the ‘Delhi Model’ rhetoric. They propose a budget surplus, but in reality no work is done.”
According to an answer given in the Delhi assembly, the budget allocated for the development work in rural Delhi was `50 crore for the year 2020-21, which increased to `121.30 crore in the next year. Out of the allocated budget, in 2020–21, `47 crore was spent on the capital’s villages. This rose to `76 crore in 2021–22, spent till March, in rural development.
Rights of the deceased
The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated its commitment to upholding dignity and rights of the deceased. The top court in the landmark case of Parmanand Katara versus Union of India (in 1989) recognised that the right to life, fair treatment and dignity, extend not only to a living person but also to their dead body. These rights have been derived from Article 21 of the Constitution of India.
In addition, recognition of posthumous legal rights gives the deceased significant moral standing within our legal system. Condemning the Delhi government, Tyagi said, “ Whatever the Delhi government has promoted as their revolutionary work exists in villages like Darula and Fatehpur Beri.
This is the reality of villages in Delhi that are rural by character, while on paper the government declares villages as urban – after which all public works get stuck in red tape. This gets dissolved in the din of the politics of blame between the two opposing political parties.”