Shaken, not stirred

Published : Nov 04, 2005 00:00 IST

Even a major earthquake could not stir the Indian and Pakistani governments out of their entrenched unfriendly attitudes based on mutual suspicion. They failed to cooperate with each other in rescue operations. Will they do any better on relief and rehabilitation, and on disaster preparedness, while involving civil society organisations in the effort?

THE Muzaffarabad earthquake was Jammu and Kashmir's worst natural calamity in living memory, and without doubt the most destructive disaster in Pakistan's history. The earthquake at one fell swoop showed just how artificial and politically determined the India-Pakistan border is. The disaster had an unmistakably subcontinental character - in its geophysical origins and in its physical and social effects.

The earthquake thus confronted the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad with three important tests: Would they stand on prestige and false notions of national pride, and insulate themselves from each other, or would they cooperate with each other in rescue and relief operations? Would they mobilise all the resources at their command to help the victims with exemplary speed and encourage the larger society to contribute to relief? Would they involve civil society organisations (CSOs) with the relief and rehabilitation effort and tap the considerable expertise they have developed through experience over the past decade and more?

The governments of India and Pakistan clearly failed the first test. They placed their parochial notions of national pride and prestige above the task of saving their citizens' lives. Even if the intentions behind it were unimpeachable, India's early offer of help to Pakistan was bound to be seen as an assertion of superiority and strength in respect of delivering assistance and as part of New Delhi's bid to depict itself as an aid-giver, not as aid-taker.

That is indeed how India has behaved in recent years, especially after the Bhuj earthquake (2001) and the tsunami of last December. Although the government could not do enough for its own tsunami-affected people, especially in Tamil Nadu and the Andamans, it set out on a power projection exercise in the neighbourhood by despatching naval ships carrying doctors and relief material. India did little to reassure Pakistan's government or people that its aid offer after the October 8 earthquake was motivated by altruistic or universal considerations.

The Pakistan government's response was even worse. It cited domestic "sensitivities" while refusing India's offer of assistance and joint relief operations. It wasted a precious opportunity to reach relief to the people of "Azad Kashmir" across the Line of Control - even though it was self-evidently the best route given Kashmir's topography and the destruction of roads in Pakistan linking its part of Kashmir to the rest of the country.

Beneath the "sensitivities" was the Pakistani fear that accepting large-scale aid from India or conducting joint relief operations with it would be seen as a sign of "weakness". This would hurt "national pride" and "prestige". So what if a few thousand Kashmiris are left to die because Pakistan does not have enough helicopters or will not use access routes through India? It is strange but true that the subcontinent's governments, both of which claim to speak for the people of Kashmir, should show such apathy towards, or disdain for, the life and well-being of the Kashmiris.

Pakistan will find it much harder than India to handle the consequences of the disaster. The death toll there is at least 30 times higher. The destruction is relatively concentrated in hilly or remote areas. And according to United Nations agencies, one million people have become homeless. So huge are these numbers that it would be criminal for Pakistan to refuse any aid offers it receives. Only hubris and false notions of pride and honour can rationalise such refusal.

However, it is not as if the Indian government's relief effort is a model to emulate. The effort is largely top-down and dominated, indeed largely controlled, in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), by the Army. It alone determines who will get access to the affected villages, especially in Uri and Tangdhar. At the time of writing, several reports suggest that the Army is not enthusiastic about allowing non-governmental agencies (NGOs) and CSOs to go into the affected areas.

More important, there is a growing mismatch between the relief supplies and what the quake victims really need. Such mismatches occur frequently, especially because the military has inflexible attitudes and protocols. It cannot adapt itself to civilian needs very easily. Mismatches are best resolved through a responsive and efficient civil bureaucracy (which J & K lacks) or through CSO intervention. That is why the CSOs' role will be extremely important in the coming days and weeks. This is only one reason for emphasising CSOs. Another, and even more powerful, reason is that India's CSOs in the disaster management field have a far more impressive record than the government.

This brings us back to the remaining two of the three tests outlined earlier. The jury is still out on the second. It is unclear if the government can summon up the will to mobilise the larger society, including charitable organisations, industry associations and corporations to pitch into the relief effort. But the third test will be critical.

Experience shows that even more important than rescue and emergency relief operations (lasting three to 15 days) are rehabilitation programmes whose design must start in the first week and can go on for 30 weeks, sometimes for three years. People judge the success or failure of disaster relief or mitigation efforts by a number of criteria, in which long-term ones pertaining to full recovery of livelihoods and human capabilities are weightier than short-term criteria, such as efficiency of air-lifting people during rescue operations which last for up to three days. Therefore, the coming weeks will be crucial. And within that time-frame, the role of CSOs will be pivotal.

Indian CSOs have developed an impressive level of understanding, insights and expertise in dealing with the havoc produced by earthquakes since the Uttarkashi earthquake of 1991, and particularly since Latur (1993), Jabalpur (1997), Chamoli (1999) and Bhuj (2001). This expertise is especially valuable because earthquakes are, whether we like it or not, a routine, normal part of India's physical reality.

THE bulk of India lies in one of the world's most seismically active regions, stretching from the Alps to the Himalayas, slicing through Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and then through Pakistan, India, Nepal and Burma, and ending in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Each year, the great Indian tectonic plate thrusts under the Eurasian plate causing enormous stresses to be built up in the rocks that form the earth's crust. The 2,400 km-long Himalayas is a huge faultline, the world's youngest and most seismically active great mountain range. The enormous stresses built up in the rocks are released through catastrophic earthquakes every few hundred years.

And yet, India is building the large Tehri dam along the great faultline, near the very location where geophysicists the world over forecast another earthquake of measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale in the next 50 to 100 years. This would release more than 30 times the energy delivered by the Muzaffarabad event, probably breaching the dam, downstream of which live millions of people. Geophysicists and geologists predict that the Central Himalaya, stretching from Dehra Dun to Kathmandu will experience yet another monster earthquake of 8.0 or higher magnitude over the next 50 to 100 years. This is only waiting to happen. Such an earthquake would be at least 100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and proportionately far more destructive.

The Himalayas has witnessed four gigantic earthquakes in the past century, each of a magnitude 8.5 or greater, and accompanied by 200-300 km-long fault slips or ruptures of the detachment plane. More than half of India's land area falls within the most seismically active Zones 3 to 5. Zone 5 is the most hazardous and includes certain areas in the Kashmir Valley, the Chamba and Kangra Valleys of Himachal Pradesh, and parts of the northeastern region. The next riskiest zone (4) includes large parts of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. The Himalayas has recorded four of the greatest surface earthquakes of the world in the past century.

Gigantic earthquakes apart, an average of three earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or more on the Richter scale occur in India every year. We have seen what devastation earthquakes of even relatively moderate intensity of magnitude such as 6 to 7 can produce. Yet, we have not learnt many lessons from that experience. The greatest lesson is that earthquakes do not kill, buildings and other unsafe structures that collapse do. It is eminently feasible to design buildings in such a way that they do not fall apart when rocks are displaced in an earthquake and damage human life. It is equally feasible to take other measures, such as micro-level zoning of cities to identify the most vulnerable areas and take special precautions in public buildings, especially schools and offices.

Not only government institutions like the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) and Roorkee University, but also professional colleges (for example, the School of Planning and Architecture, (SPA), Delhi) and CSOs have devised or adapted and improved various methods to make buildings earthquake-safe or - resistant. CSOs, in particular, have also mastered the art and techniques of relief and rehabilitation.

Over the past week, I have been talking to representatives of CSOs such as the People's Science Institute (PSI), Dehra Dun, the Swayam Shikshan Prayog, Mumbai and Latur, and the Hazards Centre, Delhi, besides Professor Manjit Agnihotri, formerly of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture at the SPA. Their knowledge of what needs to be done in earthquake-caused crises is based on their own experience of disaster relief work for many years, as well as a degree of professional or scientific-technical expertise.

The range of their understanding and insight is truly impressive. Remarkably, they are able to communicate this in simple terms, which are easily understood by ordinary people. They have all worked with local communities and tried to train people, especially women, in disaster preparedness, prevention and management. Some have specialised in relief, some in building temporary shelters, yet other in permanent houses. The PSI, for instance, has produced booklets and posters which teach people how to build shelters using tin sheets and wooden or bamboo poles. It also tells people how to make old houses earthquake-safe.

The PSI learnt its lessons the hard way after the Uttarkashi quake. Its members conducted a survey and discovered that weak stone-in-mud walls had collapsed under heavy slate or concrete roofs and were responsible for most of the fatalities. "Badly designed modern structures such as schools, offices, and bridges had been severely damaged. But near the epicentre of the earthquake they came upon the remarkable pherols. These were large three to four storied structures, almost a century old and structurally intact. Further enquiry revealed that they had probably been built after the 1905 earthquake that shook Kangra and the Doon valley. So principles of earthquake safety could be seen vividly in these houses". The principles are that foundations must be anchored well in firm ground, stable flat stones should be used in walls, inner and outer surfaces of each walls tied together, and the house girdled with "tie beams" joined to vertical columns.

TODAY, earthquake engineering is evolving into a sophisticated body of work. An additional expense of 10 to 15 per cent can give a great deal of safety. But we in India have a long way to go before such earthquake-safe buildings become mandatory. We must take a number of steps to cope with seismic phenomena. To start with, we must freeze and abandon projects such as the Tehri dam, which are disasters waiting to happen. We must raise and enforce good building codes for all new construction. And we must undertake phased modification of existing structures, including informal village housing.

AS for relief and rehabilitation, I can do no better than summarise insights and the major lessons CSOs like the PPS and the PSI have learnt. If relief and rehabilitation is to succeed, it must be based upon the community and building confidence in people's decision-making capacities. This means empowering the poor, and among them women, to overcome established boundaries and limitations and involving them as active citizens, clients and consumers, and not only as target groups of subsidies. As Prema Gopalan of the SSP argues, it is not enough just to diffuse earthquake-resistant housing technologies; you need to have people's "information campaigns" to do so, so that they are demonstrated on the ground and community groups "own" them.

The success of relief efforts depends not just on the timely provision of materials, but on involving local people, so they "own" and participate in the process. Or else, they see it as someone else's problem. Women have a critical role to play because they are far more acutely aware than men of domestic needs, the space and attention required by children and old people, and cooking and cleaning facilities, and so on. "Natural" disasters unite people and temporarily obfuscate gender-role hierarchies, allowing women to play a more proactive role than would be normally allowed.

As important as material aid are community and social ties, communication networks, and governance structures or local bodies. Efficient communication is vital in rescuing people. A panchayat, run democratically and transparently, will provide relief more effectively than bureaucratic structures, however efficient.

It is in the coming few days and weeks that the seriousness of the Indian and Pakistani governments will be put to the test. It is of no mean significance that the test will take place in Kashmir, the greatest bone of contention between them as regards relief and rehabilitation. This adds political weight to a social issue in a unique way. It is far from clear that India and Pakistan will pass the test.

Sign in to Unlock member-only benefits!
  • Bookmark stories to read later.
  • Comment on stories to start conversations.
  • Subscribe to our newsletters.
  • Get notified about discounts and offers to our products.
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide to our community guidelines for posting your comment