Politic-Economic-Society-Tech

India Community Copes After Quake

When Hamida Ismail lost her two boys to India's worst earthquake in 50 years, her parents kept the news from her for days. 

Now, six months after an earthquake claimed some 14,000 lives and left 1 million people homeless, Ismail mourns 8-year-old Mustak and 6-year-old Imran. 

"I will always grieve for them," says Ismail, as her surviving child, 3-year-old Binkish, naps by her side. 

"Every day she asks for her brothers and keeps their toys aside for when they return. God saved this little girl so we would not be alone. And now, for her, we have to move on." 

The people of this middle-class neighborhood, Janta Nagri, are moving on. Most children are back in school. The flour mill has reopened, the barber shop is busy and people are rebuilding their homes, brick by brick. 

Yet this neighborhood in the hills surrounding Bhuj, epicenter of the magnitude-7.9 temblor that struck Jan. 26, is like so many others in western Gujarat state, where life is far from normal and sadness prevails. 

Hundreds of thousands remain homeless and relief tents line the roadsides, forlorn faces peeking out beneath their tarps in the monsoon rains. Rubble is piled high in many villages, and much of the state's drinking water is delivered by UNICEF tankers. 

Though first estimates of those killed went as high as 30,000, the government now puts the death toll at 14,000. The count fell as officials winnowed out false and repeated death claims, said state official P. Pannervel. 

Quake damage was estimated at $4.5 billion. Reconstruction of homes, schools and hospitals has been hindered by a sluggish bureaucracy, standard in this South Asian nation of more than 1 billion people. 

Many private agencies have pulled out because promised matching government funds for their projects never materialized. 

A housing scheme by the international relief agency CARE and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry is one of the few going forward, though it is plagued by government hurdles. Still, they have raised nearly $25 million and intend to build 10,000 homes in 30 villages over three years. 

In Janta Nagri, many homes that were destroyed were illegal, preventing owners from claiming government compensation. 

Ismail and her husband received $2,550 from the government for the death of their two sons. But the family only received the standard $43 for those made homeless by the quake, since they had no legal document for their two-story stucco house. 

They've used $650 to build a 12-by-12-foot room of concrete and sand bricks, covered with red clay tiles. 

Nearby, Hamida's aunt is camped under a royal blue tarp with several grandchildren. The 70-year-old matriarch has her sense of humor, though, joking that God took everything but the TV. 

"Everything broke except the television - our only form of entertainment is still alive!" Khatija Hamed said. 

The quake also introduced the potential for religious friction between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority in the hard-packed dirt roads of the neighborhood, where pigs root in the open sewers and seasonal monsoon muck. 

While sectarian tensions sometimes flare into violence, Hindus and Muslims have lived side by side in Janta Nagri for centuries. Children play together, and fathers watch cricket matches on TV together. 

In the days after the earthquake, Muslims claimed that the Hindu-nationalist government and its volunteer organizations were ignoring their needs. Young men in checked headscarves from the Student Islamic Movement went door to door in Janta Nagri, making sure that they, too, were getting food, water and tents. 

But the feeling six months later is there is no religious discrimination: The government now neglects all creeds. 

"Now everybody is being ignored," said Walter Francis, a Catholic contractor with the British medical charity Merlin. "They're not doing anything, for anyone." 

Francis's best friend from childhood, Abbas Sameja, a 26-year-old Muslim whose wife just had their first baby, agrees. 

"All the promises are just on paper. There's no help, or hope," he said. 

H.N. Chibber, the administrator for the district hardest hit by the earthquake, says the criticism is unfair. "When the task is so mammoth, it's going to take a lot of time. But we are trying to speed things up," Chibber said. 

But the pace is too slow for Abbas, who intends to leave his hometown and new job as a loan officer and take his family to neighboring Maharashtra state, mostly just to put the frustration and heartbreak of the earthquake behind them. 

"We will try another city, just to get away," he said. 

Hundreds of newcomers are moving in. Before the earthquake, there were about 300 families living in Janta Nagri. Today, another 100 families are believed to have moved into rental homes or are building their own. 

With the annual monsoon season setting in last month, the lower lands of Bhuj are typically flooded and, with damaged homes made worse by the rains, families are heading to the hills. 

Ashok Jathalal, owner of Ashok's Provision Store, struggles to keep up with new demand for peanut oil, cookies and candies, soap and other toiletries, laundry detergent, pots and pans. 

"Business is better than usual," says Jathalal, who has run the one-room shop on the corner of Janta Nagri's main street for 12 years. "People have lost everything, so now they have to buy things all over again. But now, it's just too crowded." 

source: Las Vegas Sun, July 27, 2001