While this meeting was on, some of my Nepali friends shared in the break what could have averted so many deaths and so much of destruction. Each had different answers. A friend suggested single storey wooden homes for safety. Another suggested Japanese skyscrapers technology that can send buildings swinging during the earthquake, but not collapse. Others suggested Denmark-like housing technology. Some amazing ideas were shared.With the belief in science as a force capable of bending nature to man's ends, industrialized countries began to build homes and cities that suited their circumstances. Nepal followed their path, but without a well-regulated and planned city infrastructure, the result was haphazard and chaotic urbanization.
The unification of what is today Nepal was accomplished through the conquest of Kathmandu Valley in September 1768 by King Prithvi Narayan Shah. After 1951's pariwartan (change/transformation) began what Eugene B. Mihaly calls a "friendly invasion" in his book Foreign Aid and Politics in Nepal. This was invasion of industrialized countries to help Nepal catch up with the 'progress'. That bikasi thinking appears to have shaped the present haphazard urbanization of Nepal. The belief that the entire world is the same, all the people must live in similar houses and similar ways appears to be the work of modern science and the key problem in Nepal.
A well thought out plan for human settlement that would suit the geography of Nepal would have saved more lives. Nepalis needed a strong state to plan their future, which never happened after 1990. Dor Bahadur Bista writes that the Ranas declined US $100,000 each from France and England after the 1934 earthquake for fear of growing foreign interference in Nepal, even as more than 10,000 people died. Now we have 818 'development projects' in Nepal financed by more than 60 international donors. It appears that this massive international intervention is not about securing Nepal against disaster but how to provide relief after it strikes. How is it that the state in Nepal didn't think of this disaster while making national plans and housing regulations? This question may be simplistic given the complexity of truth about Nepal, its history, geography, culture, and foreign aid policy. I am rather interested in the current melting of hearts around the world towards Nepal.
Whether the Indian and Eurasian plates colliding around Nepal has caused this devastating earthquake is beyond my scope. Also beyond the scope is whether the tectonic movement below the surface has been responsible for what is today Mt. Everest and other highest peaks in the world. This is a truth accessible only to modern science and to God himself. I am interested in international responses to Nepal.
More tears are pouring in, be that of Bollywood actors, world football stars, or our small Ryparken Badminton Klub in Copenhagen. Niels Warring, study director at my own university (Roskilde University) asked me how his university could help Nepal. A small downtown restaurant owner was ready to forgo a month's income. Local Danish students wrote asking if they could do anything for Nepal.
There was a trigger. Looking at the images of babies being pulled alive out of debris, even my wife couldn't control her tears. Her manager was doubly moved. She was ready to give a couple of hundred Danish kroners she earns from her small business to Nepal. Tears do not come to the eyes just like that; they need a trigger. Earthquake itself or scale of devastation is one thing but the general Nepali psyche is more important here. The quality of not being panicky and nervous is a typical Nepali psyche which the world came to know about from the earthquake. So much of wealth in the West and yet this quality of being contentment and calm are far from being assured.
At the heart of the issue is the general calmness shown by ordinary people of Nepal, which appears to melt hearts around the world. This morning, a woman and her husband shared their feelings with CNN when they said without any sense of anxiety, Hamilai thikai chha. It could be translated as, "We are cool, why worry!" The couple wasn't getting electricity for 12 hours a day; they were sleeping in a relative's home without running water. Yet, the smiling faces. How do we conceptualize 'happiness', 'progress' and 'development'?
If at all things must change in Nepal, it is this deterministic attitude which needs to change.
The author is a Phd candidate at Roskilde University, Denmark
nitya@ruc.dk
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