This village in Anantnag craves for basic amenities in the 21st century

Sameer Ahmad

Anantnag: Anderwan village, located on the foothills of the famous tourist resort Kokernag in Anantnag district, lacks basic amenities like potable water supply, road connectivity, schools, health facility, and other basic facilities like electricity.

In this day and age where technology rules everything there are villages like Anderwan where people have been struggling and continuing without amenities for many years now. Residents of this village described their ordeal about the hardships they face on daily basis ..Anderwan village which is about 10 km from the famous tourist resort kokernag, a remote area, has been facing the worst kind of neglect from all the quarters. Be it road connectivity, health facility, education, and water supply. Its neighboring villages Cherhard, Tanghard have no drinking water facilities, no health center, and have no school established to date.

Lack of basic amenities like drinking water, roads, and health facility is the most common reason for resentment in all the villages.

‘We carry the patient on our shoulders and travel more than 4 km to Hiller kokernag on a rough road just to see a doctor. This takes about 3 -4 hours by then the patient’s condition gets worse,” said Abdul Rasheed Khan a resident of Anderwan village.

Adding further,’ the administration has not established even a single dispensary in the village,said Khan.

Khan further expressed that they have no proper drinking water facility in the village. ‘We receive only two water tanks on weekly basis,’said Khan.

There is no proper educational facility in the area. At least 250 students are enrolled in a nearby school for which our children have to walk about  4 km to reach this nearby government school located at Hiller, kokernag,

Interestingly the FCS&CS department has issued ration cards to all the households, but not a single essential store can be seen anywhere, again villagers have to walk about 4 km to buy food supply from private shops.

Talking to Arising state a villager said that even in the 21st century we have to travel by foot or hire horses to reach our village.. We have been deprived of even basic facilities by the successive regimes as no one has even bothered to visit the village in the last 60 years. All we have is hope in the Almighty. The village is even more backward than Gurez Valley , though the village is located only 20 kilometers from the district Anantnag.

The village has around 350 households and is inhabited by Gujjars and Kashmiris.

Villagers said , ‘they have been fooled by the successive representatives of the district. They visit us only on election time with promises to lure the masses.’

Villagers have paid multiple visits to the government authorities ,ran pillar to post to get their problems resolved however, not a single issue has been sorted out till date. Sharing their distress the villagers through Arising state medium want the long list of issues rectified at the earliest.