PATTAN, KASHMIR, INDIA – Nazir Ahmad rushes to approach the owner of a horse-drawn cart, called a “tonga” here, and begs him to carry his ailing mother to the hospital.
“She suddenly caught fever and complains about pain in chest,” says Ahmad, a resident of Trikolbal, a village in Pattan.
Ambulances are unheard of here in Pattan, an administrative division in the northern part of Jammu and Kashmir state.
“We’ve to rush her to a hospital, and there is no transport facility available,” Ahmad says.
His wife, Jameela Begum, and his daughter, Sabreen Bano, support their ailing mother-in-law and grandmother to reach the tonga. With great difficulty, the elderly woman steps up into the cart, which has the capacity to carry six passengers.
Ahmad and his wife sit on either side of the ill elderly woman to make her feel at ease. But uneven roads marred with bumps and deep potholes make it a difficult journey for even a healthy passenger. Still, Ahmad says there’s no other transportation option.
“This is a routine affair here,” he says. “Whenever anyone falls ill or is in need of medical assistance or treatment, either we’ve to hire a horse cart or load carrier or order a sumo [four-wheeler] from Pattan town. Often they overcharge, but we’ve no other option.”
Horse carts are the main mode of transportation here in the northern villages of the state. As the horses gallop through deserted and deteriorated roads, they pull passengers in large wooden carts. After passing through vast paddy fields spread across Pattan’s several villages, passengers heave a sigh of relief upon reaching their destinations.
Villagers say that the lack of transportation options here hurts them socio-economically. Education is one main area that suffers because of poor transportation. Routinely overcrowded tongas and poor road conditions also present safety risks. Residents say that various factors have slightly improved transportation from the past, but that they are still living behind modern times. The government is building a bridge and has allotted two buses to the area, but villagers say the bridge project has been going on for years and bus service is limited.
Horse-drawn vehicles are called tongas here. The cart tied to the horse has two big, wooden wheels and a wooden roof over the seat. The tonga driver steers the horse with a “chabuk,” a thin stick with a nylon thread tied to it.
With no cars and limited other options for transportation, residents rely on tongas in several villages in Pattan, including Buren, Trikolbal, Moulabad and Mundyari. Residents say that the lack of transportation options has an adverse impact on various socio-economic aspects of life, including education, health and trade.
“Absence of transport facility makes life dull and difficult here,” says Khazeerah Begum, a middle-aged woman from Moulabad. “Even horse carts aren’t available all the time. We’ve to walk down all the distance, which is painstaking.”
As Begum continues to speak, Ali Mohammad, a local from Trikolbal, hires a tonga to transport the fodder for cattle and a few sheets of glass for construction that he just purchased from a market in Pattan town.
“Imagine the difficulties it would have incurred had there even been no horse cart,” he says while traveling on a tonga. “In contemporary world, where distance has lost its meaning, we continue to live in an area with no modern transport facility at all.”
Another group that suffers is students.
Print
