Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh

Corpses floating in rivers and lying buried on river banks from Uttar Pradesh to Bihar hit the headlines as the country battled the second wave of COVID-19. While this explained the horror of the pandemic, it also demonstrated the helplessness of the underprivileged, who did not have the finances to perform the last rites of their loved ones. 

“Cremating a dead body costs twelve to fifteen thousand rupees whereas burial of a body can be done in six to seven hundred rupees,” Chandrama, who had come to Buxar ghat of Ganga in Unnao on May 13 for a neighbour’s last rites, had told Gaon Connection. 

Also Read: Graves by the Ganga: a surge of COVID deaths and moneyless families burying, not cremating their kin

Since then, the state government has become vigilant and such practice of burials on the ghats has been stopped. 

In fact, to address this issue, last year, the Government of Uttar Pradesh made a provision to grant Rs 5,000 in financial assistance for the final rites (cremation) of the underprivileged. On June 2, 2020, Manoj Kumar Singh, Uttar Pradesh principal secretary, issued an order to this effect.

In his order, Manoj Kumar asked the District Panchayat Raj Officers (DPRO) and gram panchayat secretaries to identify eligible families and provide them with financial assistance.

Also Read: No peace yet for the dead in Unnao

Gaon Connection tried to find out how many such families have benefitted from the scheme in the last one year in Unnao, Kannauj and Sitapur districts. 

Explaining the allocation and its disbursal, Bhupendra Singh Choudhary, state Panchayati Raj Minister and in-charge of Kannauj district, had informed, “The State Finance Commission has allocated the budget to gram panchayats for providing financial assistance of five thousand rupees to low-income families for performing the last rites.”

54 in Unnao, 4 in Kannauj and 3 in Sitapur 

On being contacted, Rajendra Yadav, District Panchayati Raj Officer of Unnao said 54 people have been offered Rs 5,000 assistance each under the scheme till May 24 this year. So far, as per official figures, 223 people have died of COVID19 during the second wave in the district.

Also Read: Left behind: Meet the families of teachers who died after the UP panchayat elections

Meanwhile, Indra Narayan Singh, Sitapur’s District Panchayati Raj Officer told Gaon Connection that three people have been provided the financial assistance for cremation of their family members. COVID has claimed a total of 177 lives in Sitapur district.

In Kannauj district, from March last year till June 11 this year, four people received the said assistance. “The list of dead is due to be verified, but the DPM [district project manager] is taking care of it,” District Panchayat Raj Officer Jitendra Kumar Mishra said. 

On his part, Shalabh Tripathi, District Project Manager of Kannauj, said: “The secretary is yet to verify the list of seventy seven people. Those who are poor and unable to perform the funeral rites of deceased family members should be helped. So far, four people in the district have been given the grant.”

Also Read: “I have been digging graves morning to night… the work never ends”

There are eight ghats on the banks of the Ganges in Kannauj, and most funerals are performed at Mehndighat. “There is a drop in the arrival of dead bodies,” said ghat officer Rajnarayan Pandey. “Usually, we see twenty to thirty funerals a day, but during the second wave, this figure shot up to eighty,” he told Gaon Connection. 

Gaon Connection is collecting data from other districts of the state too. The story will be updated once we get the data.

Read the original Hindi story here: