MAY 07 -
It feels like hitting someone who is already down, but one cannot help but marvel at the ineptitude of our government to the earthquake. For starters, at a later date someone has to be held accountable for failing to immediately inform our prime minister about the quake. Not only had the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, received information about the disaster, but within an hour, had already managed to tweet: “News has come in about an Earthquake in Nepal…” That Sushil Koirala should have learnt about the devastation from a tweet, of all things, is indeed shameful. Sure, Koirala and his entourage were en route to Bangkok at the time, but it is hard to believe that the Government of Nepal could not have got word to him during the flight.
The man at the top
The same ineptness has been on play in the days thereafter. The papers and social media are awash with stories of one contradictory government position after another. Instead of a government in action, we have seen a government in reaction. Time after time, it has announced a policy only to modify it in response to a barrage of criticism. But, it is the prime minister who has been found most wanting throughout the crisis. That he was able to come up with a most insipid address to the nation more than three days after the earthquake was one thing. But to spend so much time thanking each and every country by name, a task that would be more complete and doable at a later date, just took away from the main message that Nepalis had been expecting to hear—that we have a functioning government which will do everything possible to help the affected.
We certainly were not expecting a ‘We shall fight on the beaches…’ kind of oration, with which Churchill had rallied Britons during World War II. But we were surely expecting more than a run-of-the-mill, it’s-my-duty-so-there kind of delivery. The last thing Koirala did was inspire confidence that we have someone in charge who knows what he is doing and is doing the best he can. It is no wonder that parts of the government continued to function with a similar lethargy. As Seira Tamang pointed out in these pages, an Israeli team had to wait two and a half hours at the airport before the authorised bureaucrat showed up late in the morning to grant permission for their flight to take off. If true, that is another head that should be rolling soon.
Contrast that with the appeal put out by British actor Joanna Lumley. Even allowing for the fact that she acts for a living, it is clear that her appeal had that heartfelt sincerity that was able to move thousands of people to contribute to help Nepal with £ 33 million up until two days ago. And, what was Koirala up to two days ago? Speaking to a group of party leaders at Charikot, the best he could come up with was, “You should come and see where I am staying [ie, the prime minister’s quarters]. The walls are all cracked. Imagine, how I have been living!” Koirala probably was trying his hand at empathy, but someone should tell him that that for a prime minister of the country to play victim at a time of desperate need is not what a leader does. No wonder the local politicians who had been clamouring for his attention till then were stupefied into silence.
Caught unprepared
If the top political leadership failed us, what of the permanent government that the bureaucracy represents? Particularly, since everyone knew that an earthquake-induced calamity was only a matter of time. Talking to a retired government official who had once headed the Disaster Management Division at the Ministry of Home Affairs, our state of preparedness (or lack of it) became quite clear. It was also telling of what the government was doing to meet the challenge. He recalled what an under-secretary under him once told a team of Japanese experts who had conducted an assessment of the Kathmandu Valley. After being informed about how the Valley would fare and asked what plans had been put in place, in the manner of some of our bureaucrats of seeming to be one up on visiting foreigners, the under-secretary quipped, “We are at the mercy of Pashupatinath.”
Reliance on divine providence is certainly not a strategy, especially for a government. But, as the former official put it, it also reflects the sense of helplessness they felt at the time. The Division gets reports of doomsday scenarios all the time, but they are also aware that the only way to stave off a huge loss of life and property is to knock down old buildings and retrofit those that can be retrofitted. But, all the agencies that churn out the reports do not come up with ideas on where the government or the people of Nepal are going to find the wherewithal to live in earthquake-resistant houses. That dilemma was put painfully by the wife of a now-paralysed newspaper seller to a reporter from The Guardian: “If we had had money we would have built a strong house. But we had none.”
Not having the money to strengthen our buildings is one thing, but to be caught wholly off guard by what in all reckoning was not the Big One that experts had been predicting is something else altogether. The chaos that engulfed our government machinery became apparent when the numerous search and rescue teams arrived. Rather than fan them out throughout the country, since time is the crucial factor during such an effort, almost all these teams wandered around the capital, looking for someone to save. As the New York Times reported, “A team of the United States’ most renowned search-and-rescue workers drove into the shattered city of Bhaktapur on Wednesday [29 April]…They brought with them sniffer dogs trained to detect live bodies, acoustic and seismic listening devices designed to pick up noises from entombed victims, and engineers capable of cutting through six-inch walls of reinforced concrete…But the next three hours brought a slow deflation, as they bumped into other international crews…” And, all the while, locals across the devastated zone were digging through the rubble and saving lives with the most rudimentary tools.
No longer business as usual
It is most unfortunate that lessons are being learnt at great cost to the country and we can only hope that living as we do in a calamity-prone area, the government will now consider adopting disaster management as a national campaign that will prepare every individual to spring into action the moment the next quake or landslide or some other natural disaster rolls around whether to save themselves and others or to engage in relief work in a coordinated manner. The current project-based approach towards disaster management should not be acceptable anymore. The results are there for all to see and it has had tragic results in many ways—as in the case of a colleague of mine who lost a cousin in Nuwakot. The young boy had been out in the open when the earthquake struck and probably remembering what he had been taught at school ran into a house to get under a bed before the building collapsed on him. Wonder how that would figure in the log frame of whichever project that had trained the lad’s teacher.
Posted on: 2015-05-07 07:11
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