Jhamak Ghimire’s ‘Jiban Kanda Ki Phool’ won this year’s prestigious Madan Puraskar. Ghimire has been afflicted with cerebral palsy all her life and can only move her feet. She can hear but not speak and has limited eye sight, yet she not only overcame these disabilities but has written eight books of poetry and essays. In this chapter from Jiban Kanda Ki Phool, Jhamak describes the joy she felt when she first wrote the letter “ka” in the dirt with a stick.

Here is my translation of the chapter from her book with pictures by SITA MADEMBA.

The world of words
JHAMAK GHIMIRE

I still remember that day, and the joy I couldn’t share with anyone. That was the day I wrote my first letter on the ground, and pronounced it in my head.

I was so happy that I wrote the letter ‘ka’ many times, erasing it and writing it again and again. I had practiced with a stick, I had sores in my toes from trying to write the letter on the ground. Sometimes, I dipped my finger in the dew that had collected on leaves and wrote the letter cover and over on a stone until my toe bled.

The reason I put myself through all this was simple: I needed to teach myself to recognise alphabets and write them. I was so happy the first time I wrote ‘ka’ that I threw the dirt in the air and covered myself with dust. I had made my first ‘ka’ really big because I wanted everyone to see it. But instead of noticing my creation, they trampled over it, and soon it was gone.

After all, life is like an alphabet in the dirt. We have to take it as it comes, it is never permanent. I was like the letter on the ground, there was no one to rejoice with me, be sad when I was sad. When shoes trampled my first ‘ka’ it seared my soul. I couldn’t bear it, and let out a scream, outraged at those who had stepped on the writing on the ground. And they thought I was hungry, or afraid of something. They didn’t understand why I was crying out. This was a dramatic period in my life, that I haven’t shared with anyone before. I am telling it for the first time.

It was not as easy for me as it is for people to learn to write with a pen on a copy book. I was surrounded by thorns, and I had to learn to write removing them and practicing on the open earth.

My second letter was ‘u’ and I was really happy when I wrote that too. This time, tears welled up in my eyes, and I wiped them, afraid someone would see me and think I was crying. The third letter was also on that ground, ‘wa’. Writing these alphabets was not easy because my limbs weren’t completely under my control. My fingers would shake. It took me a long time to struggle to write. I had to be patient.

Before I learnt to write, it was difficult for me to communicate. If I was hungry, I couldn’t write or sign it, I just opened my mouth wide and people would understand that I wanted to eat. If I was thirsty, I pointed at the water pot. If I need to go, I just pointed at my behind. To say ‘yes’, I grunted, and to say ‘no’ I shook my leg.

People say: “Wherever there is life, there is also the art of survival.” I had to survive, so I learnt the art of living. I was born like everyone else with a mouth and a stomach, which I had to learn how to deal with hunger, thirst and waste disposal. I had problems going to the bathroom, I had problems cleaning myself afterwards. I was nine-years-old, and when there were no older people around I had to take care of myself.

There aren’t too many moments from my childhood of which I have happy memories. Even after throwing up the dust on myself after writing my first alphabet on the ground, I was sharply reprimanded by my mother. And when I refused to listen to her, I was even spanked. But neither the scolding nor the beating dampened the thrill of knowing I could write.

Even so, it hurt me that there wasn’t anyone to share my joys and sorrows. It would have meant a lot to me if someone would have been there to be happy with me, or to caress my shoulder with warm hands and say: “Don’t worry everything will be all right.” But there was no one, everyone who saw me would mutter “Poor girl” and I could tell they would hope that I would die soon and not have my agony prolonged.

But I have no ill feeling towards anyone, I love them all. They couldn’t help their ignorance and their mistaken outlook on life. Perhaps if I hadn’t been pierced by those thorns early in life, I wouldn’t be the strong person I am today. Life has thorns and flowers, you have to learn to live with both. I picked the flower of happiness of having written my first letter, and I also picked the thorns of my sadness and pain.

The first word I ever wrote was the word ‘kalam’, and that must have been because I had a great need to own a pen. After writing my first letter in the ground, I had laughed and shouted with joy but no one had tried to find out why was suddenly so happy. I started working on words after learning to write alphabets, and life kept flowing drop by drop. Learning to write opened up a world of words, and it made me start looking for the meaning of life.

My father was teaching my sister ‘ka kaa ki kii’, showing her the consonants with his fingers and making her pronounce them. I would sit beside her and look at the letters and copy them on the ground. I used the pages of the copy book that my sister left behind to practice writing the letters I had memorized. I used to write all day long until my father, mother, brother and sisters returned home. I would hide the papers before they entered the house, and pretend to be in the same position I was in when they left in the morning. That is how I learnt all the alphabets and words.

Human beings need to communicate, and even if they are not allowed to they find ways to get across. I was a human being, I wasn’t an animal, I had consciousness and the ability to think, I could hear and could see enough, I still had some strength left in my toes. These were what I had to work with and make the best of to build bridges to the world around me. I had to overcome not just apathy but also negativity. When they saw me writing letters on the floor, they would say: “What is the use, she can’t achieve anything with that knowledge.”

What a culture we Nepalis live in, instead of showing compassion to those who are weak we try to keep them weak. It wasn’t surprising that I was treated like that. But I didn’t let that dishearten me, I followed my destiny.

It wasn’t easy. It was a path with obstacles every step of the way. There were boulders and craters, I would be stung by sharp stones and thorns. But I got to love that path, the path I am still on today. It still isn’t easy. Learning to write made it bearable, the joy of the written word poured bliss into my soul.

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If you flip through the 180 channels on the dish these days in India you can’t distinguish between real news and reality TV.

Journalism is only a narrow segment of the spectrum we call the “mass media”, and that segment is just getting narrower.

Current affairs programmes have turned into voyeuristic entertainment posing as news. There is a raucous reporting of trivia, or there is overkill.

Breathless live coverage of issues with five talking heads on the screen talking at the same time, so you can’t tell what the hell is happening.

The public service role of media has vanished

Recently in a hotel room in India, I flipped through Hindi and English news channels. The main news in all of them was cricket.

Cricket was not just the main news in the sports section; it was the number one item in the main news lineup. This went on for a day or two as long as the tournament lasted.

I teach journalism, and all this makes me wonder whether there is any point training college students in mass communications just so that they can feed the media industry’s voracious appetite for escapist entertainment masquerading as news.

Such content keeps us ignorant of the real state of our countries, the structural problems within our societies. It doesn’t throw the light on social injustice, discrimination and exploitation.

At a time when we need it the most, the public service role of media has vanished.

Journalism and democracy are two sides of the same coin. If one is undermined, the other is also weakened. If one is strong, it protects the other.

But the over-commercialisation of media is governed by an unspoken compact between advertisers and publishers that journalists will not be too controversial so that, in return, advertisers will have access to the widest possible audience.

Censorship by exclusion

We now have to deal with what John Pilger calls “the censorship by exclusion”. Commercialisation of media ownership sanitises the content of what journalists are allowed to report.

Censorship by exclusion is much more insidious because it happens in countries where the press is supposed to be free. Readers and viewers are lulled, and the TV set turns into an anesthesia machine.

Media gatekeepers argue that they are just giving the public what the public wants. But do we really know what the public wants? Do we really care what the public needs?

It is because the mainstream media has abdicated its public service role as a defender of media independence that I think there is new relevance for new media.

Online sites, social networking and citizen journalism complement what the established press can’t, or doesn’t, touch because of state control, commercialisation or sheer laziness and complacency.

So, you see, new media isn’t just a fad. It is a tool that democratises delivery, takes journalism out of the hands of business and government. But it is just a tool. And like any tool it can be used, or misused.

We sometimes tend to get carried away by the medium. It shouldn’t be technology just for the sake of technology.

We shouldn’t be so mesmerized by gadgets and the planned obsolescence of gizmos that we lose track about what that technology is supposed to do.

To turn Marshall McLuhan around: the message is the message.

Wake up calls for traditional press

Online media and citizen journalism are wake up calls for the traditional press to re-invent itself, for journalists to relearn what their profession is all about. We need a paradigm shift in the way we do journalism.

Half the children in South Asia are stunted because they are undernourished, but the covers of our news magazines are about how to lose weight.

In parts of India the maternal mortality rate is at sub-Saharan levels, but our newspapers must have a “tits and ass” section.

Nearly 200,000 Nepali women are trafficked to prostitution in India, yet the only sex our newspapers cover are about adulterous film stars.

The trouble begins with what we define as news.

Journalism schools have set the criteria: for a calamity to make it to the news pages the people who die have to do so in sufficiently large numbers, they should preferably be well-to-do, they have to die suddenly and all at once, in one place.

There have to be good visuals, and the victims should speak English.

Which is why the fact that 150 children in Nepal are killed every day due to preventable diseases isn’t news because they are from poor families, they don’t all die in one place but pass away silently, scattered in homes across the country.

The mainstream media has not sufficiently upheld the citizen’s right to know what is important and relevant to a majority of them. And that is why citizens have become journalists themselves.

Citizen journalists complement traditional journalists

Convergence of technology is making online journalism possible, and it is filling a gap that mainstream media has abandoned.

Just about every media conference I have attended in the last five years has dealt with a debate between old media vs. new media. This subject has been flogged to death.

Let’s not get distracted anymore by the debate between digital vs. analog. After all, it is not an either-or question. We need both. Citizen journalists complement traditional journalists.

What is important is not the platform. What is important is the content. And the delivery is dependent on the content: you choose the medium that best reaches the public that the message is meant for.

Also, just because we have grown tired of talking about the digital divide doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Things are changing fast, but affordability and accessibility because of language and bandwidth keep computers and the internet out of the reach of most citizens.

Actually the digital divide is just the manifestation of structural inequities within and between countries. There is the income divide, there is a school divide, there is a health divide. These are all problems that the mass media should be in the business of finding solutions to by improving governance and making democracies more accountable.

In our enthusiasm for digital media, we have to remember that it tends to be an echo chamber. When you can customize your news feed, subjects or viewpoints that you don’t agree with can be blocked out.

This hardens opinions and works against the politics of compromise that is essential to make democracy work. Instead of being a bridge, therefore, the over-connected Internet fragments and compartmentalizes public opinion.

Virtual thought ghettos then populate cyberspace.

Press freedom is like a rubber band: to make it work you have to stretch it. Media pluralism has to be protected by its constant and maximum application so that journalists (citizen or otherwise) maintain our credibility and protect our agenda-setting role.

Finally, the real challenge for both new and old media is therefore to be relevant, to enhance our credibility, and to protect our freedoms.

This is true for whether our delivery platform is the Internet, broadcast or print, whether we work for a newspaper, we blog, or we tweet. Or we do all of the above.

The above is an edit of a my presentation at the Mediafabric event organized by Sourcefabric in Prague 21 October, 2011. First appeared in http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/advanced-journalism/641-the-importance-of-journalisms-public-service-remit

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Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai is inNew Delhi  this week for the first time as head of government. The sights and sounds of the Indian capital will be familiar to him, having done his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and spent most of the war years in and out of Noida. The Indian media has been gushing about Bhattarai being one of their own ever since he was elected nearly two months ago.

Bhattarai’s advisers have warned the press not seek dramatic breakthroughs on issues like the Indo-Nepal Treaty, regulating the border, or water deals. He doesn’t have a choice since he heads a shaky coalition, and party colleagues are itching to pull the rug from under him.

New Delhi  has decided that it can do business with Bhattarai, but it should also be realistic enough to know that whatever is agreed in New Delhi  the prime minister will find it difficult to sell to his own party, let alone to the opposition. As part of his strategy to undermine his rival, Pushpa Kamal Dahal has hung an albatross around Bhattarai’s neck by publicly calling him an Indian lackey.

That said, Bhattarai should try to take his visit beyond symbolism. Pomp and ceremony will not redress our yawning balance of payments deficit with India. It is important to know what is important to Delhi, and try to get from them what is important to us. Too often in the past, Nepali officialdom has been so insecure about India, and so sure that we will get bullied, that we have stonewalled.

Lately, through various channels, the New Delhi  establishment has let us know that its primary concern is “security”. This includes the gamut of issues from infiltration of terrorists and underworld criminals across the open border, to extradition, allowing air marshals in flights and controlling fake Indian currency. So far, fears of backlash have held back Nepal’s political leaders from agreeing to anything that would erode our sovereign rights. This is the same misplaced nationalism that produced that ridiculous airport ramp 50 cm above the tarmac, just to prove that Indian security wasn’t frisking passengers on Nepali territory.

It’s time to transcend such hollow symbolism and address the real issues that affect our nationalism and sovereignty: the growing trade deficit with India, the fact that two million Nepalis are working in India, the huge lines in Pokhara of recruits wishing to join the Indian Army, and the paralyzing disunity among Kathmandu rulers that is undermining our national interest.

Indian investors have pulled out, and those still here are being harassed by national and local extortionists. Bhattarai’s party says it wants to renegotiate 14 hydropower projects with Indian investors that were approved by the all-party government in 2007-8. How is the prime minister going to assure them that it’s not a case of his party wanting its cut?

On the Indian side, we see a new willingness to engage with the Maoists and a realization that the past policy of open intervention was counterproductive. A stable Nepal  is in India’s national interest, keeping Nepal  politically weak and economically backward will prolong the instability.

Perhaps the most important message Indian leaders can give Baburam Bhattarai is something he doesn’t seem to have learnt at JNU: that there is no alternative to democracy, pluralism, rule of law and non-violent politics.

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Photo Essay by TAKAAKI YAGISAWA

When Radha Mainali went to see her husband last month in prison, he thought she had come to take him out. Still, Radha says his morale was high and he was confident he would be released soon. “I had been living like a widow these past 15 years, our daughters haven’t been able to grow up with their father. But for the first time there is hope,” Radha told Nepali Times last week in Kathmandu. “I am thankful to all our Japanese friends who have helped to prove that my husband is innocent and wrongly imprisoned.”

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Govinda Mainali in 1997 at the Indian restaurant where he worked. He was due to return to Nepal a few months after this picture was taken. (ALL PICS: KYOHEI IMAI)

KUNDA DIXIT

New DNA evidence has prompted Japanese activists and relatives of a Nepali man serving life sentence for the murder of a woman in Tokyo’s Shibuya district in 1997 to call for a retrial and acquittal.

Govinda Mainali, now 44, was convicted of killing a 39-year-old woman after paying to have sex with her. But new DNA techniques used to re-examine evidence shows that the semen found inside the victim’s body was not Govinda’s, and matches that of another person’s hair found in the room where she was killed.

The last time I met Govinda was in November 2006 in a jail in Yokohama. At that time he was required to speak in Japanese through an interpreter, but we did manage to sneak in a few sentences in Nepali. He had put on some weight and was balder than the last time I’d seen him five years previously in a detention centre in Tokyo, and he was thankful for support from Japanese activists who were paying for visits by his wife and daughters as well as defending his innocence.

Govinda’s brother and wife hold hands in solidarity with Japanese men recently acquitted after new DNA evidence found him to be innocent.

I asked him if I should keep sending him Nepali magazines because the news from home was so depressing. “Any news from Nepal cheers me up,” he had replied.

During both meetings, Govinda had convincingly maintained his innocence. He admitted having paid for sex, but said he had been framed for the murder of the woman who worked for the Tokyo Electric Power Company by day, and was a prostitute by night.

Now, new DNA techniques not available in 1997, prove that there was another man involved who could be the killer. Govinda’s lawyer, Katsuhiko Tsukuda, says the “basis for the conviction has collapsed”. Japanese legal experts say there is now sufficient grounds for a retrial because the original court decision had not taken this evidence into account.

In 2000, the Tokyo District Court had acquitted Govinda saying there wasn’t enough evidence. But the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office requested a remand,  and the Tokyo High Court approved it. The High Court later found him guilty, and the Supreme Court upheld the ruling sentencing him to life imprisonment in 2003. The police was under pressure to make an arrest in the high profile case, and reportedly suppressed evidence.

The apartment in Tokyo’s Shibuya district where the Japanese woman was murdered in 1997.

A group of Japanese with links to Nepal set up the ‘Justice for Govinda’ pressure group that has been struggling to keep the case alive and to prove his innocence. Over the years, the group has been paying to fly Govinda’s wife, Radha, and two daughters to Tokyo to visit him in prison to keep his morale up. I asked Junko Hasumi of ‘Justice for Govinda’ the reason why her group had taken up the case so relentlessly. “Most of our members have never been to Nepal,” she replied, “they are involved because they know there has been a miscarriage of justice, and it is to draw attention to the need to reform Japan’s judicial system.”

After the new DNA evidence came out, ‘Justice for Govinda’ issued a statement saying he should be released immediately. There are suspicions that the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office is trying to delay or even stop the retrial by suppressing 42 pieces of new evidence that could prove Govinda did not commit the crime.

Govinda’s case has become headline news in Japan again, with regular follow-ups in the mainstream newspapers and television. All major stations covered the visit last month by Radha and Govinda’s brother, Indra Mainali, to the Yokohama prison.

Radha Mainali faces the Japanese media last month in Yokohama after seeing her husband in prison. (PIC: TAKAAKI YAGISAWA)

On return to Kathmandu, Radha told Nepali Times: “I had been living like a widow these past 15 years, our daughters haven’t been able to grow up with their father. But for the first time there is hope.”

When he saw Radha in prison last month, Govinda thought she had gone to get him out. “But his morale is high and he is convinced that he will be acquitted soon,” she added.

Indra Mainali says his brother was happy to see them, but is puzzled about why he still needs to be prison. “He is also worried that he will not be able to see our mother who is in frail health,” he said.

Govinda’s defence team say there is precedence from recent acquittals based on new DNA evidence in other murder cases in Japan, and lawyers are confident the High Court will accept retrial.

Court will accept retrial.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations also came out publicly in support of a retrial based on new evidence because of recent cases of innocents being incarcerated. It has accused prosecutors of withholding key evidence that would exonerate the accused. The Federation’s Keita Miyamura told the Japanese media there were serious questions about miscarriage of justice and called for judicial reform: “We must create a system under which all evidence is disclosed.”

In 2001, Japanese activists took me to interview Shinichi Sano, the author of a book on Govinda, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Office Lady Murder Case. After visiting Govinda in prison and traveling to Ilam to interview his family, Sano was convinced of Govinda’s innocence.

He told me he wrote the book to expose Japan’s judicial system and the hidden tensions within Japanese society. “In Japan we have a saying: when something is rotten, cover it up,” he said. “And that is what happened, the truth was so ugly we tried to cover it up. And have a fall guy from a poor country that didn’t dare make a fuss take all the blame.”

See also:
Govinda by Kunda Dixit, #39

‘Something that he never did’ by Shinichi Sano’, #189

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Yet another crash. Yet more tv visuals of police and army searching the scattered wreckage. Once again, bodies being unloaded from the army chopper at the airport. Reporters interviewing grieving family members. The news beamed worldwide.

And once more: the questions about aviation safety. How could this happen yet again? The inevitable speculation about causes: pilot error, air craft malfunction, lax enforcement of aviation rules.

Up on the ridge of Kot Danda on the eastern rim of Kathmandu Valley on Sunday morning, the clouds hung low and those questions sounded banal, almost callous. The lifeless forms of passengers with horrific bruises were being ferried in stretchers to a waiting helicopter. Amidst the wreckage, a ladies’ shoe, a camera bag, bits of clothing and shredded seats.

The army rescue helicopter had finally landed nearby after circling to find a gap in the clouds. Hundreds of people from surrounding villages gathered immediately, sometimes blocking rescue vehicles with their motorcycles parked in the narrow road leading to the accident site.

The Buddha Air Beechcraft 1900D with 19 people on board, including three crew, was returning halfway from a Mt Everest sightseeing flight because the mountains were covered up by late monsoon clouds.

There were two other aircraft ahead of the Buddha Air, and the pilot appears to have flown lower than he should have to keep below the cloud ceiling. He was also too far to the east probably to keep distance with preceding traffic. It hit the steep south-facing slope at about 7:21 am.

On the vertical wall of a terrace farm there is a long scar ploughed by the right wing of the plane as it hit. The gash is at an incline, indicating the crew may have been trying to pull up at the last moment.

The aircraft hit the mountain wall, its fuel tanks exploded and the cabin
catapulted up the slope beyond a road. Part of the tail and left wing
disintegrated and fell into some trees. The starboard engine was hurled
40m on another side of the mountain.

Further inspections have to be carried out of both engines, the black box and cockpit voice recorder will give an indication of any malfunction. But the crash had all the hallmarks of what aviation safety experts call Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT).

Nearly all the crashes that have occurred in Nepal in the past 60 years
have been CFIT (see list below). Even in good weather, Nepal’s rugged
Himalayan terrain is difficult to fly in, during the monsoon with the
mountains covered in clouds it becomes even more hazardous.

Pilots being trained in Nepal are told “Never fly into clouds unless you
know exactly where you are because clouds have rocks in them”. It is not supposed to be a joke.

Too many lives have been lost to preventable crashes. Too many lessons have been not been learnt. Too many investigation reports have just gathered dust.

No air crash has only one reason, usually it is a combination of factors. In Nepal it can be weather, terrain, lack of training, pilot error and the lack of equipment. New equipment like state-of-the-art satellite-based ground proximity warning systems on board, or the new RNP-AR approaches to airports in mountainous terrain would make CFIT less likely.

The human factors are not just to do with the pilots, it is about airline policy that recruits pilots depending on whether or not they can afford to pay up to Rs 2.5 million for their simulator training and conversion licenses. Salaries and poor pay mean the best pilots migrate to work in foreign airlines.

The following table is a list of crashes in Nepal since 1990 in which CFIT
is suspected. Most of the accidents occurred in the monsoon and all were
planes that flew into mountains in cloud:

Date            Airline Equipment         Fatalities          Location
30-7-92      Thai Airbus310                      113                          Langtang
30-9-92      Pakistan Airbus310              157                         Lalitpur
31-8-97      Everest Do228                        18                             Bharatpur
24-8-93      Lumbini DHC-6                       18                            Kaski
9-6-99        Luftansa Boeing727              5                              Kathmandu
5-10-98      Necon Air HS748                  15                            Kathmandu
27-6-00    Nepal Air DHC-6                     25                            Dadeldhura
22-9-02     Shangri La DHC-6                   18                            Kaski
25-5-05     Yeti DHC-6                                3                              Lamjura
23-9-10      Shree Air MI-17                     24                           Ghunsa
8-10-08      Yeti DHC-6                               18                           Lukla
24-8-10      Agni Air Do-228                     14                           Makwanpur
15-12-10    Tara Air DHC-6                       22                          Okhaldhunga

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Army men lift a person wounded in a landslide following Sunday's earthquake in Bhedetar, Dhankuta. (Picture: Sita Mademba)

Twenty-four hours after the 6.9 magnitude earthquake on Sunday night, it is becoming clear from Sikkim and Nepal that the death toll will be much higher than the official 60.

Large parts of northern Sikkim are still unreachable by road because of landslide blocked highways as well as heavy rain and overcast monsoon skies over the region. The same goes for the districts of Taplejung, Sankhuwasabha and Panchthar.

So far, the only reports that have come in are from district capitals and towns with phone connections. Everything else beyond that is still unreachable.

The biggest danger is that since the top soil is saturated because of three months of monsoon rains, the earthquake combined with more rain has increased the probability of massive landslides blocking the tributaries of the Arun and Tamor rivers. Experts say these could impound large lakes that then burst, unleashing destructive flash-floods downstream.

Such disasters have occurred before in the Himalaya, the floods killing more people than the original earthquake. Yet, neither the Nepal Army nor the home ministry felt it necessary to conduct an aerial inspection of eastern Nepal and its rivers on Monday morning even though the rains had let up.

The other danger is of glacial lakes bursting. Eastern Nepal, Sikkim, Southern Tibet and Bhutan have at least 200 glacial lakes that are dangerously swollen due to the effects of global warming. In the monsoon, there is even more water in these lakes. The worst-case scenario for geologists is a multiple glacial lake outbursts caused by a major earthquake that could send destructive “Himalayan tsunamis” racing down the narrow valleys downstream.

So far, there haven’t been any reports of flash floods on rivers. Just like in a tsunami, locals have to watch out for rivers suddenly running dry, indicating a blockage upstream. Which is why it is grossly negligent of the government not to have conducted aerial reconnaissance or requested satellite imagery to pinpoint potential dangers.

The US Geological Survey says that the M6.9 earthquake on Sunday evening was preceded 20 seconds earlier by a M6.0 foreshock on the border of Taplejung district and Sikkim, just southwest of Mt Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. The two big M5 aftershocks, however, took place well within Sikkim.

Geo-technical experts say that preliminery indications show that the main quake was caused by a “strike-slip” fault within the Eurasian or Indian plate below it, and not because of a rupture in the main boundary of the two plates.

Indian scientists estimate that the slip could have lifted the entire mountainside by a couple of metres in a southerly direction. Since the earthquake was relatively deep, the tremor was felt over a wide area in the region from Delhi to Mandalay, but with comparatively low shaking except in the immediately vicinity.

The aftershocks appear to have occurred on a different fault system altogether, which has led some scientists to suspect that there is still some unreleased tension in the rupture that caused the main quake.

While scientists analyse seismic data for clues about the kind of rupture, the faultlines, depth and the aftershocks, for India and Nepal this is a dress rehersal for the next Big One. Nepal, especially its western half, hasn’t seen a major M8 earthquake for 300 years, indicating that there is tremendous tension building up in the colliding tectonic plates below.

Sunday’s quakes could have loosened up some of the faultlines, hastening a break. A major earthquake is long overdue, and if it hits the casualty level and physical damage of Sunday evening’s quake will look like picnic.

Earthquake experts like to say that quakes don’t kill people, buildings do. Which is why it is important to strictly enforce building codes, retrofit schools and hospitals, and prepare for quakes with storage of digging equipment, food, water and shelters in open spaces. You have to prepare for many months of provisions since relief will be late in arriving because highways and airports will be destroyed.

Nepal’s political instability has meant that the Constituent Assembly is too distracted to ratify an important Disaster Management Legislation.

In some communities of Kathmandu valley, neighbourhoods are not waiting for the government to get its act together and setting up disaster preparedness groups.

When the disaster strikes, as one day it will, it won’t be the government that will come to our aid. Families and communities have to help themselves the best they can.

See also:
Not if, but when, #536

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