Surviving Conflict in a Fragmented Borderland: Community Voices on Violence, Dislocation and Ill-Being in the Border Villages of Chirang

The previous chapters until now have established linkages between armed violence and the collapse of healthcare provision. The previous chapter attempts at providing a degree of institutional analysis, albeit at the micro-level, incorporating various sources of data including narratives. In this chapter on the other hand, we seek to record and analyse the direct experience of disruptions caused by repeated cycles of violence on the communities living in the border areas. Pushed even deeper into the forests, towards the international border with Bhutan, the displaced communities found themselves surviving at the margins of the state. Militarization, insecurity and daily violence were woven into the fabric of everyday life. Using diagrams and conceptual maps drawn from thick life-histories, we try to understand how conflict-affected families interpreted the reality of violence and coped with their losses in changed circumstances. Their losses are multiple, multi-layered and intricately linked into a complex web which tend to push the families beyond their coping capacities towards ill-health and ill-being. What would ordinarily have been manageable survival and health challenges then turn into catastrophes. Even amongst the vulnerable, a case is made for particularly vulnerable groups that need our special attention. Women, children, the disabled and the elderly are disproportionately affected through the various stages of a conflict—during fleeing, living in the relief camps and even resettlement in a new place. The struggle for survival brutalizes the bodies and minds of these groups leaving them with reduced resilience and higher risk of ill-health.