Ten months after the devastating earthquakes, people are still struggling to get on with their lives. Many are spending cold winter nights under flimsy plastic sheets while tons of relief materials gather dust in government warehouses. Thousands lost their lives while even more lost their homes and livelihoods. Inability of the government to deal with a disaster of such scale was not unexpected. But what has been truly tragic is criminal disregard of the political parties to earthquake victims.For months political parties kept squabbling over Reconstruction Bill and the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) when they should have been working together on a war footing to alleviate the sufferings of quake victims. With the passage of the bill and the appointment of NRA's CEO, there is a glimmer of hope that post-earthquake reconstruction works will finally gather speed.
However, for the NRA to be effective, it is important that there are widespread and vigorous debates about nature of reconstruction that goes beyond the usual issues of integrated settlement and safe housing and addresses larger socio-cultural and economic aspects of rebuilding.
After all, the earthquakes in April and May did not just destroy houses. Many people were forced to leave their homes and communities and take refuge in new and unfamiliar places. Religious and cultural lives of people have been disrupted. Among other things, the earthquake also destroyed agricultural lands and has affected important agriculture practices. The already impoverished have been rendered more vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation. Reconstruction initiative should take into account all these issues, not just focus on physical rebuilding.
Land relations, in particular, are at the heart of rebuilding. Landlessness, poverty and natural disasters are intricately related. Many people belonging to minority groups are devoid of access to and ownership of land. A huge number of Dalits, indigenous people and women in earthquake affected areas do not have formal ownership of lands they inhabit or cultivate and live as squatters, tenant farmers or sharecroppers. Unsurprisingly, they are also the groups worst hit by earthquakes.
The proportion of landless families in the earthquake-affected hill districts was comparatively low, but this has changed after the earthquake. It is important to ascertain the number of people who have been left landless by this disaster. Current data shows there are around 7,000 landless people in earthquake-affected districts.
One of the first problems that we witnessed post-earthquake with regard to landless people was the difficulty they faced in receiving government and donor support. Policymakers who made reconstruction support conditional on land/property ownership failed to see that many among the earthquake victims would be landless and squatters. This is just an example of how policies in Nepal often overlook land poverty and end up excluding the poorest and the most marginalized in the process.
Majority of landless people were living in unsafe and unregistered lands before the earthquake. Many who lived in landowners' houses lost their habitats, but under the current policy, they are ineligible for government support. Some landless families have received construction materials from NGOs, but since they do not have their own land to construct houses, they are still spending winter nights under plastic sheets.
Another example of how current reconstruction programs fail to address the land-poor is that landless families cannot really benefit from low-interest government loans since they practically have nothing to use as mortgage. Even if they are able to manage a joint mortgage, they do not own land to construct the houses. The NRA should work to resettle landless people in safe areas and provide them with tenure-security in the resettlement sites. The resettlement areas should preferably be in places where the landless can also find work opportunities.
The aftermath of the earthquakes made it abundantly clear that it is not enough to build strong infrastructures. The land on which the buildings are constructed should also be safe. This would mean mapping areas safe for human settlement before building permanent structures.
It has been estimated that five to seven percent earthquake victims have lost land and property ownership papers during the earthquakes. Although getting recommendation letters from the VDC secretary and reapplying for papers does not seem like a difficult task, there are many practical hindrances. To begin with, many of these people who have lost papers are disabled, elderly people, women and orphans. They require support to gather necessary documentation. The government needs to think of ways to rehabilitate them and ensure them benefits from reconstruction despite the lack of necessary documentation. Camps can be organized in VDCs to support such people.
Another issue that needs attention is the changes made by the government on the current building code after the earthquakes. There has not been much discussion on whether the changes are practical and pro-poor. Provisions like leaving a fixed space between houses and roads, and the criteria for leaving open spaces when building a house—while praiseworthy from a safety point of view—will leave many people landless.
Similarly, there has not been much discussion about whether integrated settlements are possible in the hill areas. Most families in non-agricultural jobs do not necessarily want to live in large settlements—their priority would be settlements with access to facilities like markets, schools and transportation. It should be possible to build new settlements for 100 households in every village. Existing settlements can be systematized and the practice of living in scattered settlements discouraged.
It is equally important to protect agricultural land while building integrated settlements. If agricultural lands are exploited to build new settlements, it will have a negative impact on food security. It is also important to allocate open and public spaces in resettlement sites. The protection of land should be done while prioritizing the social identity and culture of communities.
While it may not be entirely possible to stop building on agricultural land, the government can discourage such practices by providing subsidies for settlements that are built on non-agricultural lands. Similarly, those using local resources for construction could be given tax cuts.
We had a number of unresolved land issues before the earthquakes. They have been compounded since the disaster. Reconstruction should try to address the emerging challenges along with the past problems.
While fraught with challenges, reconstruction also provides us an opportunity to reconfigure unequal social relations. For instance, if joint land ownership is made mandatory for land distribution in new settlements, it will greatly help the cause of gender equality by improving women's access to and ownership over land resources. It is vital to ensure that reconstruction forwards social justice and equality and not impoverishes people through exclusionary policies and programs. Reconstruction that does not take into account land justice and the existing social inequalities would be cosmetic and fail to serve its true purpose.
To make reconstruction meaningful, land reform and reconstruction activities should be carried out hand-in-hand and the concerns of the land-poor should be addressed.
The author is Executive Director of Community Self-Reliance Centre, an NGO that works on land and agrarian rights
Related story
Nepal Inclusive Education Summit Convening on December 15
