Earthquake: Next steps

Emergency relief and rehabilitation efforts are on, but the need is enormous

Now that long-term tasks have to be focused on, it is time to think in perspective. The President Pervez Musharraf has explained the organisation of relief and what is immediately to be done. Although one deprecates his total reliance on Army's organisation, it has done good work after the initial delay. Musharraf has substituted the organs of state with the Army's structure for rehabilitation and reconstruction work. This ought to be the responsibility of government as the state's executing arm. The state's organisations have to be kept distinct from the Army, a subordinate department, for its own professional ability. More on this presently.

Gratitude is due to countries sending help. But let us not forget that foreign aid for victims of natural disasters is short lived. After first few weeks, the interest progressively diminishes and aid for long-term projects progressively shrinks and eventually dries up. Are we prepared for aid's fading away? It is not good to depend too much entirely on foreigners anyhow. What is needed is clear thinking, self-reliance and expertise that should be bought, borrowed or stolen. Pakistan has to rebuild villages and townships. Whoever selects new sites for villages or townships should consult ecologists, seismologists, geologists, public health experts, and sociologists; forests should not be cleared for founding entirely new villages or towns. Sociologists say people prefer rebuilding their old habitations.

Anyway new or rebuilt townships should be so planned as to be as much protected against floods and earthquakes as possible. Such planning should include adequate public spaces, proper sewerage system in addition to the provision of electricity, water, gas and other amenities. Instead of rushing and hurrying haphazardly, forethought about human needs, safety precautions and priorities is important. Needless to say, water supplies should be potable and their pipes must be safely distant from sewerage lines. Scientific knowledge and town planning expertise should be matched with the technology of building structures that must be quake-proof and fire-resistant.

Big question is who will pay for it? As noted, foreign aid's tapering off is sure to happen. On principle, the nation should pay for its own reconstruction work. It is not that the state should build houses to give them away free. Planning by state is necessary in association with civil society representatives. Those who occupy new houses must pay for it. Similarly the government must pay for the rebuilt structures it will occupy. Repayment should be made easy for the poor and now shelterless and unemployed. That translates into providing them jobs. Jobs in what? There are no running industries; shops have disappeared with their stocks. Shops will need to be rebuilt and restocked. In short, the planning should include job creationan apparently stupendous task!

Prefabricated houses, as the President himself said, must be produced in local factories close by with appropriate technology. Some materials will be required to be imported. The state will pay for that initially while new houses are being built. Reconstruction of houses, infrastructure and state's own structures would create much initial employment. The people should be encouraged to form cooperatives both for house building and for selling vital supplies, including foodstuffs. Let cooperatives buy in bulk and sell it with minimum profits. That's the way to keep individual greed in check.

Cooperative's approach means that people must become organised for specific purposes in locality committees to facilitate their own rehabilitation. The state should assist with provision of schools, dispensaries, hospitals, sanitary facilities, including disposal of solid and liquid waste on scientific bases. This tragedy is also an opportunity to recreate a region where people can live cleanly, at a reasonably higher standard of living than before and finding employment more easily.

Paying for houses or shops is clearly linked with the provision of employment and creation of conditions in which self-employment becomes possible. Whatever monetary aid is available from foreigners and loans from international institutions are what will fund the state effort. These will have to be repaid with interest. Individuals acquiring houses or shops with state aid will pay the cost in easy installments after being employed. Various stages should be dovetailed in time sequence. Community development experts have also to be found and engaged.

The tragedy has created a major issue: A large number of girls and boys are now orphans, with no traceable relatives. There are many destitute women with nobody left to look after them. Similarly, there are decrepit old men and women with no one to support who will need state support. The state has also to rehabilitate these people. State has to take extreme care that motivated individuals do not get hold of these children or women on any pretext. The state should provide housing for these women and children properly. Their looking after includes providing education, vocational training, depending upon the aptitude of the boys and girls, besides boarding and lodging.

These homes-cum-schools-cum-social welfare centers should be run by the government. They should be run mainly by female staff including experienced administrators and supervisors. Males should only be employed for outdoor work or for inescapable security duties. These women and children too cannot pay for their keep. Let these expenditures be incurred willingly as an investment in future. These boys and girls would in time enrich the state in myriad ways by becoming responsible citizens who do useful jobs. Most will repay their own keep through taxes and other means in future.

Pakistani volunteers and Army personnel have done a good enough job of providing relief supplies. But one feels keenly the absence of a well stocked government agency for coping with natural calamities, with trained personnel. Pak Army has acquitted itself well enough. But that it is not its main job; it should be there to help when called upon to do so, though in this case their help would have been anyhow necessary. But the state's civilian apparatus ought to be made capable of coping with the consequences of natural disasters.

In this context, the way President Pervez Musharraf has entrusted the entire relief operations to Army as such is open to objection. It is true that civilian agencies of the state had collapsed there or in many cases disappeared. Utilising the Army facilities was inevitable. But the way the new comprehensive re-organisation is conceived substitutes Army, qua-Army, for state structures. It is minor coup against AJK government. The need was to restore it.

Another constructive criticism concerns the way Indian offers of aid were treated. Two things are obvious: in the situation created by the quake, any aid no matter from where should have been welcomed without looking for a hidden agenda. Secondly, both Indian and Pakistani governments are supposedly determined to solve their disputes. For the purpose, they are trying to hammer out as many CBMs as possible. Accepting Indian helicopters with pilots and private Indian volunteersdoctors, social workers and othersdoing joint relief operations would have constituted the whale of a CBM.

Unless Pakistan is only going through the motions of building trust on someone else's urgings without any inner desire to do so, its refusal of visas to hundreds of Indians of all specialities and kinds was a mistake. It showed needless narrow mindedness. Some Indians say they were ready to bring a hospital for AJK. Pakistanis should thankfully accept as many hospitals as they or anyone else may want to bring. There is also a doctor's facility in Rajasthan that produces first-rate artificial limbs. Let us ask for them, as their want is acute. If necessary, they should be imported from India; their price and transportation costs are likely to be low and time for delivery will be small.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.