[For the moment, India — Nepal’s giant neighbor — is at the
forefront of relief efforts, and on Sunday India’s foreign secretary, S.
Jaishankar, announced that 13 military aircraft were being used to ferry 10
tons of blankets and tents, 22 tons of food and 50 tons of water. India has
also sent six helicopters and 10 disaster response teams.]
 |
|
Nepal Searches for
Survivors After Earthquake
Niranjan Shrestha/Associated
Press
|
NEW DELHI — Her home and village near the
earthquake’s epicenter were destroyed, her grandfather was killed, and no one
from outside the village — not a soldier, police officer or rescue worker — had
arrived to help.
Bhima Lama, a Nepali living in New Delhi, pieced together this
picture of despair from patchy cellphone calls to villagers now lacking
shelter, and making do with little food and a trickle of water. It is a story
that will probably be told again and again in the coming weeks as rescuers
fight their way over broken roads and past landslides to reach Nepal’s
countless remote areas.
The nation of 27 million was in political and economic disarray
well before a powerful earthquake on Saturday shattered buildings and lives.
And the natural disaster seemed sure to complicate attempts to repair the rifts
opened by decades of war and political paralysis.
Nepalis are known for their toughness. Sherpas and Gurkhas, both
Nepali peoples, are so renowned for grit that their names have become synonyms
for strength and bravery. But the country they and other Nepalis have been
navigating for years is one that tests resolve.
A 10-year Maoist insurgency ended in 2006, but political leaders
have since been unable to agree on a constitution, despite two elections and
repeated promises to reach consensus. Even the Chinese sent help for Nepal’s
most recent elections, despite their relative lack of experience and enthusiasm
for such endeavors at home.
That Nepal’s prime minister, Sushil Koirala, was outside the
country when disaster struck was emblematic of the government’s weakened state,
particularly since part of the trip was for a doctor’s checkup into whether his
cancer remained in remission.
In interviews in the past two days, Nepalis said they were
forced to deal with the tragedy with hardly any government help and
complained that their leaders had made the nation vulnerable, with a tolerance
of poor construction and development norms.
On Sunday, Achutraj Subedi, a businessman in the construction
industry, lay contorted in pain in a hospital in Katmandu, his spine, skull and
left leg battered in a building collapse caused by the earthquake.
As his brother-in-law, Youraj Sharma, tended to him, he said
both men knew well that the country was a victim of more than just natural
tectonic forces.
“We’re both in the building business, and people have built
buildings without pillars, without iron rods in the concrete and with very
loose concrete,” Mr. Sharma said. “He was on the ground floor of a hotel,
meeting with six friends in the business, and the hotel just fell down on
them,” Mr. Sharma said.
Two of the men died, three others were wounded, and one was
still missing under the rubble, he said. “That shouldn’t happen, but it did.
Like many things we have seen here.”
The country has vast hydropower potential, but electricity has
long been in such short supply that lights are generally out for up to 14 hours
each day in places like Katmandu. Many places have not seen power since the
quake hit.
Manufacturing has declined for years and now represents a paltry
6 percent of the country’s economy. Poverty is endemic, air pollution is
choking, and health statistics are terrible.
With few jobs at home, the country’s youths have become part of
a modern exodus. The scale of emigration has long astonished development
economists, yet it continues to grow.
On average, about 1,500 Nepalis officially left for temporary
jobs abroad each day in the 2014 fiscal year, up from six a day in 1996,
according to the Nepali government. Even more are thought to have left
unofficially for India; because the border is unchecked, no one knows the
precise figure.
In some seasons, one-quarter of Nepal’s population may be
working beyond the border, economists and labor officials estimate.
Almost no other country earns a greater share of its wealth from
emigrant workers. That means that just as they are most needed, Nepal’s
strongest backs are mostly working in construction projects throughout the
Middle East and other parts of Asia.
The result is that the remote villages like Ms. Lama’s that were
destroyed Saturday are home mostly to the elderly, women and children. Young
men are present only in photos, and fund transfers.
Experts and historians have long debated the roots of Nepal’s
particularly toxic political culture, which, for instance, has stymied the
adoption of a constitution for years. Many have concluded that Nepal’s nearly
impassable mountains have created such a kaleidoscope of communities that
consensus is all but impossible (although Bhutan, with similar geography, has
managed to avoid this curse).
Ruled for centuries by monarchs, Nepal has 125 ethnic groups,
127 spoken languages, scores of castes and three distinct ecosystems that have
divided it into feuding communities. Elites have long refused to share power
with the lowland Madhesi people, and the royal family eventually imploded when
the crown prince massacred the king, queen and
others in 2001.
“I’m hoping this terrible disaster might finally force a
political consensus among Nepal’s political elite,” said Shyam Saran, a former
Indian ambassador to Nepal.
For the moment, India — Nepal’s giant neighbor — is at the
forefront of relief efforts, and on Sunday India’s foreign secretary, S.
Jaishankar, announced that 13 military aircraft were being used to ferry 10
tons of blankets and tents, 22 tons of food and 50 tons of water. India has
also sent six helicopters and 10 disaster response teams.
Whether these efforts will be enough, or welcome, is far from
clear. Many Nepalis express deep ambivalence about the country’s relationship
with India, feeling that India has for decades alternated between intrusive
meddling and hurtful neglect. That is a crucial reason Nepal consistently
refused over the past 50 years to accept India’s offers of development
assistance or closer connections.
The poor state of roads connecting Nepal with India, symbolic of
a lack of shared purpose and development efforts, has already hampered
evacuation efforts and is bound to crimp relief work.
For now, it remains to be seen how the twin themes of Nepal’s
modern history — personal perseverance and public disorder — will play out as
the country struggles to recover, and then rebuild.
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Katmandu, Nepal, and
Nida Najar and Suhasini Raj from New Delhi.
