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The sorrow of India

The effects of the most destructive earthquake in independent India’s history were made worse by human shortcomings

“THE sort of devastation you might expect from a nuclear explosion,” was one rescue worker’s description of what an earthquake had done to parts of the western state of Gujarat on January 26th. The disaster has stunned（使晕倒, 使惊吓, 打晕）a country already too well acquainted with natural furies. About 25,000 people died, guesses the state’s government; others fear as many as 100,000 could still be lying under the rubble. The United Nations thinks that 60-80% of the 5m people living in Kutch, a largely barren district bordering Pakistan where the quake had its epicentre, and in the five surrounding districts, are “highly affected” by the quake. Estimates of the economic cost to one of India’s richest and most industrialised states are also colossal(巨大的, 庞大的)and vague: the state’s chamber(室, 房间, 议院, 会所) of commerce put property damage at 250 billion rupee（卢比，货币单位）(about $5.5 billion) and production losses at 4.5 billion rupees a day. Even on the more conservative estimates, the earthquake is independent India’s worst disaster.

Help is coming. Teams from Britain, Russia, Turkey and elsewhere joined the Indian armed forces in searching for survivors, and celebrated the few they were able to pull out of the rubble. Money, manpower and material are coming from the central government, multilateral bodies such as the World Bank, dozens of foreign governments and NGOs and Gujarat’s prosperous business houses. A plane-load of medicines, blankets and tents arrived from Pakistan, India’s long-standing antagonis（敌手, 对手）, which India accepted with as much grace as it could muster（集合, 召集, 征召）. A militant（好战的） group opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir offered 100 pints of blood. Volunteers are bringing in cars full of food.

The scale of the disaster has muffled（包, 蒙住, 压抑）, though not silenced, the usual criticism of officialdom（官场, 官僚作风）. “All officials are themselves victims,” points out one foreign helper. It is “quite remarkable that so many have shown such fortitude(坚韧).”

Along with heroism(英雄品质, 英勇, 勇敢的事迹, 豪侠的行为, 英雄主义), there is chaos. Supplies are piling up at the airport in Bhuj, the district capital, where there are too few lorries(卡车, 铁路货车 to transport them and too little information to direct them to where they are most needed. Relief agencies say that the hardest-hit towns, such as Bhuj, are getting help while outlying (无关的, 题外的, 边远的, 偏僻的) villages are being neglected. Four days after the event, small villages just ten kilometres (six miles) from Bhuj had not been reached, says an official of Oxfam, a British-based charity. Some have received rice but no water for cooking it. Relief lorries are being looted(掠夺, 抢劫, 劫掠) by desperate villagers.

This is happening in part because there is not enough co-ordination among the agencies that have so commendably(很好地) rushed to help. These include not only the state government, which has the main responsibility for disaster relief, but also foreign and local NGOs, each with its own ideas. The director of one NGO based in Ahmedabad, the commercial capital, says he knows of “more than four co-ordinating mechanisms”. “Everybody is just confused right now,” says Namrata Bali, of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, which has sent teams to help 200,000 members who have been affected.

The confusion(混乱, 混淆) may now begin to clear as the United Nations’ Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which many NGOs expect to co-ordinate the work of non-government agencies, finishes assessing(估定, 评定) the damage. Attention is now shifting from rescuing people to keeping them healthy, providing shelter and restoring their shattered(破碎的）livelihoods（生计，谋生）.

What happens before disaster strikes and long after journalists（记者）have forgotten it matters even more than rescue and relief. No one will ever know how many people were killed by shoddily（翻制的, 以次充好的, 假冒的）constructed buildings allowed by lax（松的, 松懈的, 不严格的） inspectors and inadequate building codes, but the suspicion is that the number is high. Two years ago India’s urban-development ministry published a report calling for states to upgrade building codes and promote the strengthening of existing buildings. Almost all state governments ignored it. Experts lament（哀悼，哀叹） that neither the central government nor most states have agencies dedicated to disaster planning. The agriculture ministry handles disasters for the central government, an arrangement born of the view that farmers and the food supply are most at risk after catastrophes（大灾难, 大祸）.

The Gujarat calamity has prompted the usual introspection. The prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said he will set up a national disaster agency. Legislation is in the works to encourage states to improve planning and prevention. But the usual fate of such ideas is that they die once the emergency passes, or are ignored even if they survive the journey from proposal to policy.

Neglect can also halt recovery from disasters. CARE, an International NGO, had wanted to build 5,000-10,000 houses for victims of a cyclone that struck the eastern state of Orissa in November 1999, but has money enough only for 1,400. Its chief in India, Tom Alcedo, guesses that CARE can afford to build only a fifth of the planned 1,000 cyclone shelters, which were to double as schools. “Funding has all but dried up for Orissa,” he says.

The same will happen with the even greater tragedy in Gujarat without the attention of government, the tenacity of private charities and the generosity of donors. It took a minute to destroy Kutch. It will take years to rebuild it—safely.

From The Economist print edition