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EPW Commentary March 10, 2001Gujarat: Earthquake Plan Prepared in Haste

Vivek RawalTara S Nair

A major earthquake hit Gujarat on January 26 at 0846 IST, about 110 km north-north east ofJamnagar, with the epicentre at village Lodai near Bhuj in Kutch district. It measured 7.7 MS, i e, 6.9ML on the Richter scale. Mumbai and Delhi as well as Karachi and Peshawar in Pakistan, and someparts of Nepal too felt the tremors. It was reported that the earthquake occurred along anapproximately east-west trending thrust at a shallow (less than 25 km) depth. In terms of intensity, theGujarat earthquake was the largest after the one in a remote area in the Assam-Tibet border thatoccurred on August 15, 1950 measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale.

While damage assessment surveys are still on under various initiatives (there are about 200-odd suchsurveys reportedly going on in Kutch), preliminary exercises showed that damages in five talukas inKutch - Bhuj, Anjar, Bhachau, Rapar and Gandhidham - accounting for about 64 per cent of the

districts population, are extensive. Besides Kutch, the districts of Jamnagar, Surendranagar, Rajkotand Patan also had to face the wrath of nature. In all, 21 districts, 182 talukas and 7,904 villages arereportedly affected by the earthquake, covering nearly a third of the states population. In Ahmedabadthe casualties were largely due to collapse of high- and low-rise residential complexes (numberingabout 100), most of which were new constructions in the fast developing parts of the city and its busyand lively suburbs.

The most visible impact of the disaster has been on human lives, housing stock and livestock.Estimates of deaths vary among different sources. The official sources put the figure at around 19,000(equivalent to the number of bodies recovered from the debris), whereas non-official sources put itanywhere between 30,000 and a lakh. In Kutch alone nearly 19,000 cattle deaths are reported. About3.1 lakh houses are estimated to be fully damaged (including 1.53 lakh pucca structures) and 6.78lakh houses (including 3.7 lakh pucca houses) partially damaged. According to the preliminary

estimates brought out by the department of agriculture and cooperation (ministry of agriculture) theloss to personal and household properties, public utilities, public infrastructure and amenities,industrial and commercial establishments could be around Rs 20,875 crore. Railways andtelecommunications suffered loss of about Rs 60 crore and Rs 200 crore, respectively. The extent ofdamage to other physical and social infrastructure, comprising of minor watershed structures, culverts,water supply schemes, school buildings, panchayat buildings, community halls, anganwadis, etc, isstill being estimated. Only when this assessment is completed can one get a true picture of the totalloss to the Gujarat economy on the infrastructure front. Add to this the cost of lost mandays inproductive sectors, the figure could be exceptionally high.

The enormity of the disaster caused by the earthquake has left the citizen public and the state equallyagape. Inability to deploy equipments in adequate number and capacity for rubble removal, lack ofcoordination in organising rescue operations and relief material distribution, and complaints aboutbureaucratic inefficiency marred the image of the government seriously. The builder-political nexus, foronce, has been brought to the centre of heated debates. That 90 to 95 per cent of the housingcomplexes in the city of Ahmedabad do not have building use certificates and almost all of them havecome up merrily violating even the very basic rules of construction did not come as a surprise to mostof the citizens and policy-makers. But the furious retaliation of the nature has shaken them out of afake sense of prosperity and well-being, and demonstrated to them how powerless they are.

Confronting the Aftermath

While the response of domestic and international NGOs, conscientious citizens and public andcorporate bodies, in terms of sending immediate relief in the form of money, medical care, clothes,grains, vessels and other necessities, has been commendable to say the least, what worries the

government the most is the issue of rehabilitation of the affected families and reconstruction of thedamaged towns and villages. As it happens in most cases, the government of Gujarat reacted rather

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prematurely by announcing ambitious targets like construction of eight lakh houses in Kutch by June2001, and by publicising a rehabilitation package.

The government has announced four different rehabilitation packages with a total cost implication ofRs 5,000 crore. Separate cost estimates have been made for the municipal towns of Bhuj, Anjar,Bhachau and Rapar and for the rest of the rural and urban sectors in the state. The first package is

meant for those villages where more than 70 per cent of the houses have either collapsed or areunder beyond repair category. As per the governments estimate there are 229 such villages and thepackage offers to relocate all of them at an estimated cost of Rs 990 crore. Packages II and III are forpartially and totally damaged houses and huts that need in situ repair and reconstruction. The urbanareas and municipal towns other than Bhuj, Anjar, Bhachau and Rapar are covered under the IVpackage. Overall the package is deceptively silent on many crucial aspects, while being too fussy andcategorical about some others.

Relocation of Villages

In the proposed scheme of rehabilitation, the need for relocation is justified on the basis of the extentof damage defined in percentage terms. It is those villages where 70 per cent or more houses have

been collapsed or damaged beyond repair which are going to be relocated. On the face of it, theprecision in this definition seems impressive. Also impressive is the commitment that the decision torelocate will be a joint community-government decision with full involvement of village people, usingthe instrumentality of village committee/ gram sabha. The relocated villages are deemed as idealvillages with all amenities.

Is relocation, especially in the specific context of an earthquake-prone region, such an easy andmechanical task? A village is more than a cluster of strongly built houses, interspersed with standardamenities that usually come in a neat package. It is an organic entity with its own culture and historyand with deeply entrenched human relations built over a period of time. A disaster must have struckout some manifestations of all these. They should not, however, be allowed to be completely wipedout. We may also remember that our experience so far with planned settlements have not been veryencouraging. In Latur, only 48 per cent of the house owners relocated in 52 villages after the 1998

earthquake expressed satisfaction over the quality and seismic safety of houses, as against 97 percent of the owners of 1,80,000 houses reconstructed in situ. (See Praveen Singh Pardesi, Planning forRehabilitation - Experiences in Latur in his presentation made for the government of Gujarat and theWorld Bank Committee, February, 2001.)

Secondly, even as the validity of expressing damage extent in percentage terms seems highlyimpracticable, one wonders what is so sacrosanct about the figure of 70 per cent. If debris can becleared in villages with 69 per cent damage for in situ reconstruction, why not for those with 80 percent damage? Also to what extent can the gram sabhas exercise their autonomy in decision regardingrelocation? What if some gram sabhas say no to relocation? The rehabilitation package in its presentform conveys a definite impression that a gram sabha is left with no option but to formally pass aresolution favouring relocation, if it has to avail of the assistance. It is common knowledge that theinitial round of damage assessment done by the talatis and mamlatdars was amateurish exercise

and is not a sound basis for relocation. Any decision to relocate villages could be justified, if at all, onlyon the basis of land mapping and micro-zoning through satellite imagery to identify unsuitablelocations with local underground faults in its rock structure.

There are a number of other issues which need to be raised in relation to relocation. For instance,what is the nature of the existing land market that is likely to evolve in these areas? Who are in chargeof land development and housing construction there? It is a matter of concern that the government isactively promoting corporatisation of housing delivery by bringing in corporate bodies and even foreigncompanies so that the targets can be met without delay. All its talk about actively involving localcommunities in the planning and implementation of the resettlement programme could well remain onpaper, if detailed guidelines are not evolved and made available to the affected people. Moreover, ourexperience with mass housing schemes for the poor like Indira Awas Yojana, shows that the local

politician-contractor lobby is clever and powerful enough to siphon the funds off even when thebeneficiary is involved in the construction.

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If past experience is any indication, one cannot rule out, in the case of relocation, a possibility of moralhazard arising out of land hunger of the affected people. In Latur, for example, almost all the villagesdemanded relocation as they viewed it an opportunity to augment their landholding and the relocatedwere generally seen as lucky by those who were not. While the new plot came for free, the old oneremained with them anyway.

Table gives the proposed package for distribution of plots and built area across economic categories.The proposal contained in the Table, by no means, represents an egalitarian redistributive vision ofthe state with respect to housing resources. As the distribution of plots in the Gujarat package, (as inthe case of Latur), is going to be based on the current plot sizes of families, the richer people are likelyto derive the larger benefit. While there is some justification for the prescriptions regarding plot area (inview of the differential need for space for carrying out economic activities), the specification of built-uparea goes totally against the strategic goal of ensuring shelter adequacy to all. The most sensibleoption here would be to link the size of the built-up area (i e, the core house) to the size andcomposition of the household.

Plot Distribution Package (sq m)

Category Plot Area Built Area

Landless labour 100 30Marginal farmers with less than1 hectare land 150 30

Farmers holding 1 to 4 hectares of land, merchants and artisans 250 40

Farmers possessing more than 4 hectares of land 400 50

Lastly, from the point of cost-benefit also relocation does not appear as a logical option. It is obviousthat while a village is relocated, the existing foundations of houses and infrastructure such as wells,hand pumps, electricity and access roads are rendered useless. Relocation in the vicinity of existingvillages is invariably bound to result in loss of precious agricultural land, which, in any case, is in shortsupply in Kutch. The cost of debris removal, the stated reason for relocation, seems much less whencompared to the irrecoverable loss due to the disappearance of farmland or damage to water sources.Also, relocation is sure to increase the transport costs associated with recycling of debris (by those

who would want to salvage the maximum from the rubble), a process, which would otherwise havecontributed to cost-saving in in situ construction. It is essential to undertake such comparativeeconomic analysis before any decision of relocation is undertaken, especially, because the ultimatefinancial burden of reconstruction is borne by the taxpaying common citizen.

Repair and Reconstruction

For those villages where damage has been less than 70 per cent and where the owners want toconstruct at original sites, the package includes two separate plans: one for earthquake zones 4 and 5and another for zone 3. It may be noted that the very validity of devising packages based onearthquake hazard zone is questionable. Earthquake hazard zones, which are based on historicseismicity of the area and the probability of earthquake magnitude, cannot be considered a realisticground for devising a compensation package. Instead, building damage zonation based on

vulnerability class of the buildings (which in turn is based on the masonry and roof type) and thedamage extent observed on the MSK scale, (Scale developed by Medvedev, Sponheuer and Karnik in1964 based on observed impacts of earthquake intensity) is a much more rational method to decideon rehabilitation assistance. Detailed damage assessment enables classification of housing stock intechnically evolved categories of G(rade)1 to G(rade)5. These categories are arrived at after fieldstudies by aggregating damage extents of various walls and roof of a building based on damagezonation.

In India, we have developed reasonable scientific knowledge and capability in the area of damagezonation and assessment. Methodologies have been evolved by The Action Research Unit (TARU),Delhi in collaboration with Building Material and Technology Promotion Council (BMPTC) in theassessments during past earthquakes. Such information is available for Latur, Chamoli and Jabalpur

earthquakes. (Building Damage Zonation and Assessment for Repair and Reconstruction Options forthe Jabalpur Earthquake, TARU, Delhi, 1997; Chamoli Earthquake Repair and Reconstruction Plan,TARU, (in collaboration with BMPTC) New Delhi, 1999). A similar assessment study is under way for

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Gujarat with the joint involvement of TARU and the Ahmedabad-based National Centre for PeoplesAction in Disaster Preparedness (NCPDP). Such studies could provide useful direction, not only inmaking decisions regarding cost ceiling for reconstructed houses and financial assistance, but also inestimating the overall requirement of material for the purpose of repair and reconstruction. It needs tobe reiterated here that expressing damage extent (as represented by categories G1 to G5) inpercentage is not feasible as the damage types of walls or roofs cannot be expressed in such terms. It

is more logical to relate financial assistance with damage extent categories.

The problem of defining the need for assistance of households (with completely destroyed houses) onthe basis of previous house size remains with the packages for reconstruction also. In other words,here again, economically better off segments will be able to corner a greater share of assistance. It isfairly clear, from the point of social justice, that the package should have shown a bias towards thosevictims who are less capable than others to reconstruct their shelters on their own. Similarly, surprisingas it is, the package does not envisage upgrading of shelters in the case of completely destroyedkutcha houses or huts in zone 3, an opportunity it offers to those in zones 4 and 5 under the state-sponsored housing scheme Sardar Awas Yojana.

As per the package, the assessment of damage extent, which forms the basis of sanctioningreconstruction assistance, is to be entrusted to technical teams consisting of government officials as

well as NGO functionaries. Unfortunately, neither of these parties is capable of taking up such a task.It would be a colossal waste of resources to put them on the job of delivering seismically safe houseswithout giving them adequate training under a rigorous capacity development programme. Thelessons from Maharashtra Earthquake Emergency Rehabilitation Plan (MEERP) after Laturearthquake will be particularly useful in this regard (ASAG, Latur Earthquake Rehabilitation and itsAftermath, Ahmedabad, July 1998).

Finally, the present rehabilitation package does not provide for a critical disaster mitigation measure,namely, seismic strengthening of the general housing stock. As a result, no strategy is identified forpromoting the seismic retrofitting of the existing houses, which are as vulnerable as the damagedones. More conspicuous is the absence of a special package of support for seismic retrofitting ofhouses of the poor, who may continue to live in weak and unsafe houses.

The rehabilitation package, prepared in an unhealthy haste, predictably, in an effort of the governmentto be complimented for its speed and effectiveness, is based on conventional bureaucraticunderstanding and interpretation of peoples needs, woes and priorities. While it is incredibly vocal anddetailed about the estimates of damage extent and compensation packages, the overall objectivesand specific delivery mechanisms are shrouded in silence. It is concerned exclusively with physicalrehabilitation, whereas the associated processes like economic rehabilitation of the affected iscompletely ignored. Even with respect to the former, there is no mention of the mechanisms ofdelivery of inputs like finance, materials, technology and skills. While the NGOs figure as significantstakeholders in the rehabilitation programme, local self-governing bodies like panchayats andmunicipalities do not appear as partners in the process of recovery.

It is true that in the immediate post-disaster scenario, the most visible needs of the affected are

generally given priority. Emphasis on such short-term goals should not, however, be used as anexcuse to ignore the strategic goals of economic recovery, and sustainable and equitabledevelopment of the region. The latter would require that people and local administrators are trainedand empowered for managing disasters in future. On the ideational sphere, informed debates on theobjectives and processes of rehabilitation should take place at all levels, so that a sensible programmeof development for the quake-affected regions emerges from the wreckage of static ideas and myopicpolitical priorities.