Is India ready to handle a Nepal-like situation?
April 29, 2015
I was posted as a correspondent of a prominent daily in Ahmedabad when tremors rocked Gujarat on the morning of the Republic day in 2001. Soon thereafter, almost all the communication networks came to a standstill. Mobiles hung and landlines got dead. There was an absolute chaos. No one was aware of the extent of damage that had occurred in Kutch- the epicentre of the earthquake and the neighbouring Saurashtra region. With the breakdown of communications channels, rumours ruled the roost to the extent that even a prominent television channel flashed wrong news, saying that the building that housed the United News of India office in Ahmedabad had collapsed. For a large part of the day, it was difficult for the media people to trace Gujarat’s Chief Minister because he was neither at the Secretariat nor at his official residence in the capital Gandhinagar. The hapless CM had no other way than to be at the state’s police control room in Ahmedabad to desperately track the situation in the state. Much of the communication
could only be restored only because of the efforts of the armed forces and also
after a few ham radio operators flew down from Hyderabad to establish their
network. All the rescue missions were carried out by the Indian Army personnel and local volunteers. The government came quite late in the picture making shoddy efforts that invited much criticism then.
There is a lot of similarity between the 26 January 2001 earthquake of Gujarat and the 25 April 2015 earthquake of Nepal in terms of intensity and devastation that they had brought. The difference, though, is in the promptness with which the Indian government reacted in launching the rescue mission to Nepal. Within hours of the earthquake, already five Indian Air Force MI17 helicopters were airborne from Gorakhpur and were on their way with relief materials to the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, which had suffered massive destruction due to the earthquake.
The Prime Minister of Nepal Sushil Koirala, who was in Thailand, when Nepal was rocked by tremors, came to know about the temblor though the tweets of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and that actually speaks volumes about the wakefulness of the Indian authorities. Modi, by then, had already spoken to the President of Nepal Ram Baran Yadav.
The Prime Minister of Nepal Sushil Koirala, who was in Thailand, when Nepal was rocked by tremors, came to know about the temblor though the tweets of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and that actually speaks volumes about the wakefulness of the Indian authorities. Modi, by then, had already spoken to the President of Nepal Ram Baran Yadav.
What is equally positive is the way the Centre responded to the situation in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Indian states neighbouring Nepal, which were also affected by the tremors and reported loss of lives and properties. A few days earlier, when a devastating storm had swept parts of Bihar, the prompt response by the Centre had even fetched PM Modi accolades from one of his bitterest political opponents, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Obviously, such promptness in affecting rescue operations at a short notice in the country and even in a foreign land is a welcome departure from the past. And that is, particularly, because earlier, the government had seemed to have learnt little from the past and looked simply incapable of dealing with disasters considering the disaster that shook Uttarakhand in 2013. It remains etched in our memories as cloudbursts and landslides claimed thousands of innocent lives in the Kedarnath Valley. On the day of the disaster, 17 June, when a team of volunteers met with the state’s Disaster Minister, Portfolio Minister and Disaster Secretary to inform, appraise and suggest them about the severity of problem, the team claimed the approach of the authorities as “very casual”. A year later, in August 2014, when floods and cloudbursts caused over 50 deaths in the state, the initial reports suggested that there was no rescue operation in place to attend over 4,500 residents, in over a dozen villages, who were left to fend for themselves and that it was only after media bashing that the state government woke up to the crisis and pressed into getting service helicopters so as to accelerate the rescue and relief operations!
The fact that none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken charge in recent times has, indeed, made a difference. The last year he personally oversaw the relief measures and announced a Rs. 1,000-crore rehabilitation package for the flood victims in the Kashmir Valley.
This year, his government’s successful efforts to evacuate Indians from terror-stricken Yemen were laurelled globally and even the USA requested India’s help for the evacuation of the American nationals from Yemen.
Now, in Nepal, which faced the worst earthquake in 80 years, the Indian government has scaled up its relief and rescue efforts at a short notice and launched “Operation Maitri”. Within 24 hours, India deployed two dozen military aircraft and choppers, pressed into service nearly 1,000 trained personnel of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and undertook a “big evacuation” plan through the road route.
PM Modi is being praised for India’s humanitarian efforts in Nepal as reflected in the #ThankYouPM tweets that were multiplying at the top of Twitter just two days after the Nepal earthquake.
Obviously, India has gained its reputation internationally for its recent exploits on rescue fronts. Now even Spain on 27 April sought India’s help in evacuating its nationals from Nepal and this is a testimony enough.
Considering Nepal President’s statement, “We do not have any words to thank the Indian PM”, the efforts made by India in Nepal will surely serve India better in the long run diplomatically.
Such a thaw in the Indo-Nepal relationship, particularly after Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Kathmandu in 17 years, in August last year, is nothing short of a diplomatic coup at a time when China, which overtook India as Nepal’s biggest foreign investor last year, had made a strong presence in Nepal. The extent of the clout that China today wields on Nepal could be gauged by the fact that in this hour of crisis too, Nepal declined Taiwan’s assistance in the earthquake relief effort.
However, terming India’s efforts as “disaster diplomacy” by certain quarters of media, though predictable, would be unfair as the efforts should largely be seen as humanitarian. The speed with which India reacted to the crisis in its neighbourhood, becoming the first country to send aid and relief materials to Nepal, also demonstrates the country’s new found ability to respond to a crisis situation. This instils confidence in the government’s abilities back home too, where years of lopsided planning has pushed the country to a brink of a disaster.
The calamity in Nepal is only a mirror of what could be in the offing for India considering that at least 38 Indian cities fall in moderate- to high-risk seismic zones as per the assessment of the Indian government on 27 April this year. The country is ill-prepared to cope with such a situation as very few buildings in these cities meet the standards prescribed in “Indian Standards Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design”- first published by the Bureau of Indian Standards in 1962 and revised in 2005. A 2006 report of the United Nations prepared for the Ministry of Home Affairs had noted: “Typically, the majority of the constructions in these cities are not earthquake-resistant”.
It is time when Prime Minister Modi needs to plunge into formulating an action plan to avert any such crisis situation in India. He has shown the resolve; however, he faces a Herculean task ahead of him
.
.
Comments
Post a Comment