By MORT
ROSENBLUM, AP Special Correspondent
 | | Jayanti
Bhai Kothari Speaks from his Small Shop in Bhuj,... (AP) |
BHUJ,
India (AP) - It still looks as though an earthquake hit this place, but Jayanti
Bhai Kothari is right back where he has been for the last 40 odd years, selling
newspapers, soap and safety pins at the family kiosk.
Asked if he thought
Gujaratis were back on their feet after India's worst quake in 50 years, Kothari
replied with that distinctive Indian head shake that means yes. Or no.
"We're
here," he said, flanked by dailies that now talk of terrorism in Pakistan and
beef tallow in McDonald's french fries rather than tragedy at home. "Most of us
are coming back to life."
Among people who lost everything and the officials
trying to help them, feelings are similarly mixed.
Business bustles again
as traffic skirts the rubble of this old walled city, at the center of the 7.7
magnitude quake that struck on Jan. 26. New roofs and windows go up at a rapid
clip. Hotels and restaurants have reopened.
In devastated villages dotted
across the Rann of Kutch desert to the north, fresh mud walls and thatch roofs
are ready for monsoon rains expected next month.
But human dramas still
unfold as people go on searching for the missing, dead or alive.
"The
death toll was 20,800, to the dot," said Praveen Singh Pardeshi, on loan from
Maharashtra state to run U.N. operations here. "We have checked and rechecked
lists, eliminating names counted more than once."
Authorities pay 100,000
rupees ($2,130) to each victim's next of kin, he said, adding, "We are sure of
the total because relatives don't get payment unless they report their missing."
In New Delhi, however, other U.N. and International Red Cross officials
say the final toll may yet turn out to be much higher.
For the 365,000
families who lost homes, life is a daily struggle. Health conditions are not alarming,
doctors report, but many people still live under cloth or plastic, surviving on
whatever help comes their way.
In the immediate aftermath, aid poured
in from governments, international agencies, and aid groups by the hundreds. Then
former President Bill Clinton flew in, with cameras in his wake.
Now,
world attention has moved on.
"The relief phase is over, but recovery
hasn't started yet," Pardeshi said. International donors have promised $1.5 billion,
but it may be another month before funds are available.
Overtaxed authorities
have to fight theft of relief money and abuse of building codes while shaping
long-term recovery, he said.
Pardeshi warned that the tremor had damaged
487 small dams and 200 large ones, and only two months remain before heavy seasonal
rains test them.
And if the monsoon doesn't fill the dried out waterways,
he added, a fourth year of drought would pile worse catastrophe on a weakened
population.
"We've got to be sure we don't allow this to be a terrible
cycle, from earthquake to drought to flood," Pardeshi said.
Meanwhile,
repair work barrels ahead where it can. Gujarati businessmen are known in India
not only for amassing fortunes abroad but also for their attachment to communities
back home.
The newer periphery of Bhuj already looks like a normal Indian
city of 160,000. Fresh facades and paint hide much of the damage.
Still,
the old heart of town is gone, crumpled as though carpet-bombed. Multistory buildings
lie collapsed and cockeyed. Lame dogs and holy cows nose for food in the deserted
central square.
"We could clean all this up and rebuild within a year
if the government would just let us," said Abdul Majid, administrator of the 300-year-old
Takiyawali Mosque, which somehow survived almost unscathed.
Over the last
six years, Bhuj's small Muslim community had rebuilt the mosque, with its green
onion-domed minaret towering over the skyline.
But the mosque is surrounded
by calamity, structures that in many cases collapsed because of faulty construction.
Heavy rooftop water towers toppled off their flimsy pillars.
Inspectors
have found construction shortcuts and code violations.
"What we don't
want is a lot of people putting up just anything, in the wrong way," Pardeshi
said, drawing on experience from directing operations after the 1994 killer earthquake
in Maharashtra.
"If that happens," he said, "it will all come down again
during the next quake."
Across the Kutch, baking in heat well above 100
degrees and parched by drought, relief organizations pursue different approaches,
at varying paces.
New Delhi philanthropists adopted the destroyed village
of Eudhai on the Ahmadabad road. They bought new land nearby and are building
800 homes in 100 days, uniform cinderblock boxes with tin roofs set in tight rows.
"We want this to be a model village of India," said the group treasurer,
who calls himself only Harish, as he pointed to a future school and clinic. The
village is now Indraprastha, the old name for Delhi.
Praveen urges the
exact opposite approach. For all its damage, he says, an earthquake allows people
to rebuild on past strengths while preventing future disaster.
This requires
moving carefully and deliberately, constructing quake-proof homes with local participation
and available materials that retain the character of crippled villages.
A
U.N. program is helping to build 1,100 houses among several villages. Each has
a budget of $900, a quarter of the cost at Indraprastha.
"If you just
go build something, you take away people's involvement, and they lose their feeling
for it," said Jyoti Dahiya, a New Delhi architect who runs the U.N. program. "Whatever
we do, I don't want to spoil the character of a village." |
