10. Februar 2001
Indien:
Gujarat's Earthquake:
"Natural" disaster - Inhumanly made
It is anybody's imagination as to how many have died in the worst ever earthquake that India has seen in the last two cen
turies. Ahemadabad , Bhuj, Bhachau and the entire Kutch district have been devastated. It was the proverbial pack of cards that comes to one's mind, when the Television Channels beam the destruction.
Ten days after the disaster the most conservative estimate puts the body count at 100,000and those who are still under the concrete rubble will be at least four times that number as the day of the earth quake was a holiday and people mostly remained home.
"The more we tried to run, the more we stayed in the same place. There was a sound like a screaming train, and then, the silence". Syed Husain Miya, of Bhachau village, who lost his entire family, explains the horror. Ironically his village Bhachau means in Hindi "Save us."
Gujarat, which was India's second mos
t developed state, has been reduced to ruins. The state of Gujarat which had a growth rate 10% per annum all through the '90s,had an industrial growth 22% per annum and 11% of India's GDP came from Gujarat. Naturally with such a high intensity of Capital,
Gujarat also has a sizeable chunk of upper middle class with sufficient disposable incomes.
Ahemadabad, which is one of the most affluent cities of India, had seen rapid urbanisation and real estate boom in the '90s. Concentration of buildings in prime are
as had sky rocketed the land value of some of the suburbs around Ahmedabad. The Land mafia, corrupt politicians and the bureaucracy, which worked as a nexus, are the real culprits behind this "natural disaster".
Two ministers of the Gujarat's BJP govt. ar
e a part of this unholy nexus, Vajubhai Wala and Narottham Patel are leading property developers. Because the administration is under focus the govt. is making all the right sounding noises, but it is certain that only eyewash enquiry will be done and a s
titch-up will be worked out.
"An earthquake itself never kills people. It\rquote s the badly constructed buildings that do," points out V.Suresh, chairman of the Housing & Urban development Corporation (HUDCO). Proving his point, their stands 30,000 Gujarat Housin
g Board flats which was designed and built by HUDCO with very little damage.
Almost all of the high rise buildings and skyscrapers built flouting all the building bye-laws and architectural specifications have been reduced to rubble, and the lives of those who were living in them has been finished.
Gujarat earthquake came as no surprise. The Rann of Kutch has been marked as extremely high risk earthquake zone since the first seismic hazard surveys in 1935.Earthquake-resisting designs have been known to stru
ctural engineers since 1960's, and the National Building Code of 1983 clearly identifies structural designs in terms of earthquakes and cyclones. But like the innumerable laws and statutes made ineffective the corrupt capitalist system flushes down the dr
ain all the warnings and expert opinions for obscene profits.
The district of Kutch in Gujarat is cursed in one more way, that the underground water tables are shifting and disappearing very fast, according one independent survey by 2020 the entire Kutch re
gion would become a desert. This phenomenon has puzzled many, but many fingers point towards the some secret and many not so secret nuclear bomb tests that were carried out in the neighboring Pokhran village of Rajasthan. Though the media savvy scientific
experts brush aside any hint of Pokhran test blasts triggering the intercontinental plate shifts which caused the earthquake, it's for sure that the govt. has lot to hide in it's closet.
After this horrific earthquake, it was estimated that both Delhi and Bombay lie in the next most threatened area \endash Zone 4 of the seismic survey. (Bombay felt at least 20 tremors immediately afterwards).
Experts say that 36% of buildings in Delhi and 50% in Bombay would collapse under an impact half as strong as that experienced in Gujarat. These cities and the way they are built represent an even greater disaster waiting to happen.
For capitalism, though, everything has its uses. The calamity of Gujarat has come as a blessing in disguise to the administration. With a daunting task of balancing huge fiscal deficit, the Prime Ministe
r has already warned that people will have to be ready for harsher times. It is certain that the direct and indirect taxes will go through the roof when the budget is announced later this month.
In the garb of humanitarianism, the burden of disaster manage
ment will be put on the backs of the ordinary people. It is the criminal nexus of politicians, the land and building mafia and the corrupt bureaucracy who must pay for this not so natural disaster.
Capitalism is incompetent to save the lives of the people; in fact it breeds destruction through its greed for quick and more profits.
Make the Builder-Land Mafia pay. Seize their ill-gotten wealth and assets.
For a programme of massive public investment in affordable, safe and modern government housing.
Give decent housing to the migrant labourers, who were living in appalling conditions before the disaster.
No fresh taxes on the poor; tax the rich!
Take land and building into public ownership. Run the provision of homes through democratically elected bodies of ordinary working people and the poor.
Build a new socialist alternative to end the corrupt Capitalist System
Jagadish G Chandra, New Socialist Alternative, Indien
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