Asia Times: Gujarat quake opens Indian minds


	February 07, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Gujarat quake opens Indian minds
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - The silver lining to the earthquake that devastated the western Indian state of Gujarat - death toll estimates vary between 30,000 and 100,000 - is that it is helping to rapidly globalize the Indian mind. The country that proudly claims to be an information technology superpower is at last learning the real value of information and the meaning of technology.

India's gallant police teams and fire brigade personnel who embarked on salvage missions with crowbar-level machinery two days after the quake learnt that the world is today capable of using industrial robots for the same role and deploying them within hours of a tragedy. They learnt from foreign rescue and relief missions about rescue equipment like trapped person locators that have two sensors - one acoustic for checking breathing and another seismic, to catch vibrations as low as those made by a fingernail scratching on a concrete slab. They learnt about portable generators for power tools, the many different kinds of drills that are used for cutting and breaking, and air bags that are thin sheets, slipped under a slab and then inflated to lift it.

Their bosses in the government learnt that the video-conferencing facility between Bhuj, the epicenter of the quake, and the state government in Ahmedabad - which was eventually set up - could have solved their communication problems on the very first day. They learnt that they could have easily used the Internet for putting out all the information they had on a website; this would have plugged the communication gaps between not just the national government in New Delhi and the state government, but also would have helped international agencies and non-governmental organizations ascertain what exactly was required and how to direct their resources.

Eventually, the quake gave rise to a veritable fever on the Internet. Scores of websites have sprung up, and according to the widely circulated newspaper The Hindustan Times, the mad rush for registering dotcoms with the domain name "Gujarat" or "earthquake" continues. All sorts of permutations and combinations are being tried. Net4India, a leading domain registration company, has already registered more than 40 Gujarat-related sites in less than a week, with names like aid2gujarat.com, help2gujarat.com, ingujarat.com, gujaratearthquake.com, and so on, says Jasjit Sawhney, CEO of Net4India.

The previously existing portals and news sites were not left behind. While leading portal rediff.com has been posting at least 30 new quake-related stories every day, Yahoo is offering free banner advertisements for quake-related sites. Says Rohit Verma, VP of rediff.com, "After the earthquake, the traffic on our news section has gone up exponentially."

Indians have realized how very useful the Internet has been during the disaster, especially for people trying to contact their families in Gujarat. Several websites have put up message centers and message boards where relatives of the victims have been posting their messages. Television channels, too, have been trying to render similar services, but the Internet has been most helpful for those living abroad.

One of the greatest problems the authorities faced was that the actual damage, in terms of both human lives and property, could not be assessed fast enough. Indeed it is yet to be ascertained properly, 10 days after the quake. India does not have facilities for high-resolution satellite imagery. With the kind of satellite imagery it has, it would only be able to interpret linear features of the quake-ravaged area, which would not indicate the extent of the damage. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) may easily have asked friendly governments like the United States for help - as it eventually did, after several days. Ikonos satellites can take pictures with one-meter resolution. Ikonos photographs can even be purchased from commercial satellites through ISRO, but no one in India thought about using these facilities until it was too late for those battling for their lives in the debris of multi-storey buildings in towns throughout the area.

Indians have now started demanding that advanced technology be tapped to learn more about earthquakes. It is well known that India is moving north toward the Himalayas at the rate of three inches per year. The enormous stress produced in the Indian tectonic plate due to collision with the Himalayas could lead to many more earthquakes, including in cities like Delhi. Countries like Japan, China, Turkey, the US and those of the European Union are using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites to monitor surface movement and collect data. This helps estimate the size, frequency and probability of future earthquakes.

Hundreds of lives, perhaps even thousands, were lost in Gujarat because the government wasted valuable time coming to terms with its usual paranoia about foreign rescue teams which lost no time at all in offering their best services and equipment, something India simply did not have. A Russian team with valuable experience from earthquakes in Armenia (1988) and more recently in Taiwan and Turkey (1999), was ready on the very first day but could not leave for India until the third day when the government of India decided that it did indeed need help.

To add insult to injury, political observers suggest that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government was able finally to overcome its old cussedness because it realized that the BJP itself ruled Gujarat and was facing elections soon. As this realization dawned, aid was increased from Rs10 crores (Rs100 million, or US$2 million) to Rs500 crores (about $100 million) and then to what was practically a blank check. None of this had happened in the case of Orissa, devastated by a super-cyclone in October 1990 and ruled by the opposition Congress party. Another factor that almost certainly played a role in the amount of aid for Gujarat is that Gujaratis are among the richest of non-resident Indians and most support the BJP.

Regardless of the politicking involved, the fact remains that India allowed for the first time foreign relief and rescue teams - British, Swiss, Russian, Norwegian, German, and even Pakistani - to fly direct to Ahmedabad, the state capital. This was a belated move and thus was robbed of much of its significance - all the foreign teams together were able to save only 40 lives - but it is nevertheless a great advance and has greatly helped modernize and globalize the Indian mind.

In the past, India had consistently refused to accept foreign aid and relief for any of its calamities. Even charitable relief was supposed to be channeled through official agencies alone. But now the government has acted on the need to cut red tape in getting foreign assistance for relief and reconstruction in Gujarat. Provisions of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) have been relaxed. In addition, there will now be "single-point" clearance by the Ministry of Civil Aviation for direct foreign aid. So far, 58 flights have come from abroad. The FCRA relaxation is to facilitate immediate acceptance of foreign donations and assistance in cash and kind by various agencies working in the earthquake-hit state and other parts of the country to provide relief. With immediate effect, and till March-end, associations other than political parties may accept contributions from abroad without getting approval from the New Delhi government. This is obviously a change for the better and will help open up and globalize the Indian economy.

(Special to Asia Times Online)