After Pulwama attack, call for uniform compensation across states for war widows grows louder

No one has borne the brunt of insurgency and the increasing spiral of ceasefire violations along the India-Pakistan border more than the widows of armed personnel. Between 2014 and 2018, a total of 339 security personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir, a 176 percent jump from the Manmohan Singh regime, according to figures released by the Ministry of Home Affairs this month. The figures of security personnel killed by Maoist extremists has also shown a rise. It should therefore come as no surprise that India has the largest number of widows of armed personnel in the world. Most of these women are widowed before they turn 30. While 90 percent of these widows live in rural and semi-rural areas and have minimal levels of education, their husbands’ abrupt deaths leave them with a huge emotional gap and few employment opportunities. The majority, following the death of their husbands, spend the next three to four decades of their lives struggling to make ends meet and to the raise their children with little support from either their own or their husbands’ families. Baby Singh, wife of Gajinder Singh, who was in the CRPF and who died in 2011 battling Naxals in Jharkhand, epitomises this struggle. Gajinder Singh, who had put in 18 years of service and received a gallantry award posthumously in 2013 had, also served several for years in Kashmir and the North East. Baby had two young boys at the time of his death and felt some of her problems would have been eased over if she could have got a job in the CRPF. “I applied for the post of a havildar and although I cleared the written test, I did not pass the typing exam. I then applied for the post of a peon but again, I failed to make it because I could not provide an original high school certificate,” she said. [caption id=“attachment_6088471” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Around 40 CRPF personnel were killed in the Pulwama terror attack. PTI[/caption] After receiving all the emoluments and insurance dues that amounted to around Rs 30 lakh following Gajinder’s death, the first thing she did was have a statue erected in his village in Bachlota in Hapur zilla. “It cost me nearly Rs three lakh and it was made in Jaipur, but I wanted it there so that there was a symbol of my husband and so I went ahead and ordered it. At the prodding of my brother-in-law, I invested in some land in my village which is being looked after by him. I had no one to give me advice and I was completely at a loss. The result was that most of that money got spent,” Baby said. Following her husband’s death, she decided to move to Delhi. “I was living in Hapur at my parents-in-law’s house. My father-in-law had died many years ago and my mother-in-law was very old. I had no father or brother to turn to and I decided it was best I move to Delhi in 2012 and bring up my children. The CRPF has acquired some Janata flats in Dwarka and I was given accommodation in one such two-room flat. My sons are studying in a CRPF school in Rohini.” “I am surviving on a pension of Rs 25,000 per month. My boys are now in Class 11 and 9, and all I can say is that life without my husband has been one huge struggle,” she added. Dr Shubha Tripathi, wife of late Colonel Sarvesh Tripathi of the Signals Corps, lost her husband on 21 October, 2001 during shelling in the Rajouri sector. “I was emotionally and physically shattered and even today, so many years after his death, I continue to feel his absence at every step of my life,” said Tripathi. Tripathi was fortunate that she had extremely supportive parents-in-law and lived with them in Kanpur for some time following his death. She also decided to bring up her children in Delhi and lived in a house in Delhi Cantonment for four years before shifting to a flat in Dwarka that has been allotted to her by the Central government. “My daughter and son were pretty young when my husband died. After his death, my daughter became extremely protective towards me. She became very closed and in some ways, unusually alert. My son was younger and did not understand the consequences. At the time of Diwali, I remember him saying, ‘I am not going to pray to God because he has cheated us and taken my father away’.” Tripathi believes that every war widow faces tremendous financial setbacks despite the emoluments she will go on to receive. “Being a homeopathic doctor, I had my own clinic that I shut down for some years. I fond myself fearful about the future. It took me a lot of time to come to terms with everything. I’m still grieving. No one can share in that grief,” she said. Binu Jha lost her husband Deputy Commandant Hira Kumar Jha while he was fighting the Maoist insurgency. He was in the CRPF and died in an encounter on 4 July, 2014. “He was hit by a bullet below his eye. He was wearing no helmet. He had no bulletproof jacket. Even today, the CRPF men have no bulletproof jackets. They have been given no helmets. There are no helicopters to fly out the wounded. That is the least the State should do for them,” said Jha. Jha was offered a job as a constable. “I declined it. I was a BEd and BSc graduate and I did not want a transferable job. Today, I have to look after the needs of my son and daughter and be both a mother and father to them. I wanted a job as a teacher in a CRPF school but today, a teacher has to clear a Central Teacher Eligibility Test before she can get a job,” said Jha. One of the biggest problems she has faced is that despite her husband having died four years ago, she has not received the insurance money due to him. `He died in an encounter in Bihar but the insurance company wants him to receive the reimbursement on the basis on him being posted to Giridih which is in Jharkhand because then they have to give less money. I hope this issue gets sorted out soon,’ she said. Jha also decided to move to Delhi to take care of her children and is living in CRPF accommodation. “My husband’s colleagues have been very helpful. I do however feel there should be a uniform policy of reimbursement across all states. The Jharkhand government gave me Rs 2.5 lakh after my husband’s death, but there are other state governments that give much more in compensation,” she said. Meera Singh’s husband Satveer Singh was also from the CRPF and he died in a Maoist encounter in Dantewada on 3 May, 2011. Earlier, he too had served in Tripura, Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir. Like others, she too had two small children who found it difficult to come to terms with losing a father. Like the others, she too decided to shift to Delhi and get her children admitted to a Kendriya Vidyalaya. “A large chunk of my pension was spent on the children’s education and on paying rent for my quarter given to me by the CRPF. This lease is renewed on an annual basis,” Meera pointed out. A number of organisations have come forward to help these widows. Sixteen-year-old Mumbai student Gauhrishi Narang started Mission Widows Empowerment initiative to help widows with funding and training on how they too can become self-sufficient. Others have found support with Subhashini Vasanth who founded the Vasanthratna Foundation for Arts to use art to mitigate the grief of losing their husbands. Vasanth, the recipient of the Neerja Bhanot Award in 2016, lost her husband Colonel Vasanth Venugopal, who laid down his life while fighting insurgents in Jammu and Kashmir in 2007.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government decided, following the Kargil War, to increase the pensions of war widows. Earlier they were getting as little as Rs 30 per month. After Pulwama, the widows of the 40 jawans who died are much more vocal and are not afraid to speak out against the present dispensation.

Mita Santra, wife of Bablu Santra — one of the 40 victims in the suicide attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama on 14 February, made a strong pitch for peace insisting that war should be avoided at all costs as it would result in even more widowed women, mothers without sons and children without father. Her remarks saw her face a deluge of criticism over the social media but Mita, who has a postgraduate degree in history, pointed out, “It is easy for people who do not have family members in the armed forces to say so many things. It is only when one loses a family member that one realises the heavy cost of war.” Other Pulwama widows have even asked the government to provide them with details about the exact number of casualties in the IAF air strike on the JeM terror camp in Balakot. Two widows, Geeta Devi, widow of Ram Vakeel and Sarmishtha Devi, wife of the CRPF jawan Pradeep Kumar from Shaml, both of whom lost their husbands in the Pulwama attack believe it is incumbent on the government to provide the public with greater details. Neither of them are exponents of war. They also feel the government should provide them with jobs so that they and their children can enjoy a sense of both emotional and financial security. The problem is that following their husbands’ deaths, states and Central government make a large number of promises which, as time passes, are not kept. Tripathi was promised a petrol pump. Others were promised land which too has not materialised. The government needs to come up with a uniform policy for all such widows.