Given the massive scale of physical and psychological injury inflicted upon the victims of violence, there is an urgent need to plan and implement rehabilitation measures. Some issues which emerged in this regard are outlined below.

Physiotherapy, disability prevention and prostheses: During the visits to the camps and hospitals, the team met several persons with sequelae of injuries. It met people with amputations of the hand or foot, burn victims and persons with post-fracture disabilities.

Such persons suffering from various forms of disabilities obviously need regular physiotherapy from trained specialists, which is currently largely unavailable. Those with burns require physiotherapy to prevent disability due to contractures. Those with amputations and orthopaedic disabilities may also require prostheses.

Counselling, psychological and social support: The scale and depth of psychological trauma undergone by the victims of violence has already been described. There are clear indications of the prevalence of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially among women and children who have suffered or witnessed horrific physical violence and sexual abuse. Such victims need sensitive counselling and psychological support, and for a sustained period of time. The survivors of sexual assault, and traumatised and bereaved children, need special professional support. attention. Families and community volunteers in the camps are informally counselling victims, in an extremely difficult situation. However, there is a definite need for training and continuing support to such volunteers, so that they can assist in the counseling process more effectively.

Continuing fear and anxiety also compounds the mental trauma already undergone by the victims. Keeping this in mind, there is a need to create definitive and effective safety mechanisms for victims and their families, so that their lives may return to normal as soon as possible.

Victims' psychological trauma is aggravated by their feeling that injustice has being perpetrated on a massive scale. This underlines the need for legal and social assistance to the victims, to get redressal and justice.

Justice: While the team concerned itself primarily with health issues, it could not ignore the larger context in which all rehabilitation must take place. Assistance to survivors of violence should integrate medical care, provision of security and legal investigation, towards rehabilitation. However, this has not happened in Gujarat. There is some medical care, but this is of limited use as there does not seem to be any intention to control the violence and ensure justice.

In conversations with the camp inmates and volunteers, it became clear that there were many obstacles to any real rehabilitation. First, people cannot go back to their homes unless they are assured of security. There does not seem to be any sincere effort to enable people to file complaints, take action on those complaints, and punish those found guilty. In sum, there is no sense of any law and order in the state. Second, a completely pauperised community, which has not been able to earn money for the last two months, was not in a position to return to living outside the camps. Finally, people didn't want to go back their homes. On many occasions, camp inmates asserted, “After what has happened, we can't live in the same areas, we will have to live separately.” 

We are grateful to the camp inmates, organisers and the volunteers working in the relief camps for all the information they shared with us.

We would like to thank friends Sandhya Srinivasan, Nandita Bhatla and Ranjan De for their help in the process of editing, layout, cover design and final production of the report.