Showing posts with label Politics of Nepal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics of Nepal. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

A Looming Disaster

The monsoon is going to be tough.

 
one month after the disaster the situation in the affected areas is an unimagined nightmare...... 70 Village Development Committees (VDCs) have received no relief ..... These VDCs are administrative units, each covering several square kilometres and including perhaps 1,000 households, and many thousands of people. They have very little food or shelter. ....... the mess that Nepal was already living with. ..... Many of the worst affected areas received little, or almost nothing, in terms of government or donor-driven support even before the earthquake. ..... There has always been an incompetent administration and political class, which is obsessed with control of resources, but callous in its lack of urgency in providing for needy rural people. ...... the army's top leadership has displayed its undue power over the civilian government, and its chauvinism, by blocking the deployment of British Chinook helicopters which would have been invaluable to the relief effort. ....... Western donors, who are perceived to want to undermine the status of the dominant sections of society. ..... The donors were providing over $1bn a year to Nepal before the disaster, around 70 percent of it channelled through the government system. But, while the donors behave like they have all the answers, they've never been able to deliver on their rhetoric. ....... They are, in fact, as deeply entangled in the dysfunction, and as much a part of the mess as everyone else. The complete failure of the multimillion dollar "earthquake preparedness" schemes of recent years is only one obvious and topical example....... The government is seeking $10bn in reconstruction funds........ One major scheme of the past decade - designed to fund infrastructure construction - was called the Local Government and Community Development Programme. This delivered hundreds of millions of dollars through complex, donor-designed systems. In the absence of an elected local government, committees of unelected politicians called "All Party Mechanisms" misused vast sums intended for the poor, for the benefit of themselves and their cronies. There is once again talk of reviving All Party Mechanisms now. ....... One of the NPTF's programmes was intended to provide compensation to victims of Nepal's conflict. In practice, many genuine victims received nothing, while district-level politicians and administrators gave the money to local supporters. This is worth remembering now when it comes to earthquake victims. ......

Giving reconstruction funds directly to survivors could cut out a great deal of corruption and administrative waste, and give true meaning to the rhetoric of "transparency" and "empowering beneficiaries"

Friday, May 22, 2015

The Chinook Mistake Was An Impeachable Offense

And if the Nepal Army had anything to do with it, I think that criminal act negates 50% of the good work they have done in the aftermath of the earthquake. The Chinook was so badly needed. This is not a time to emphasize the chain of command. This was and is the time to take relief supplies from the Kathmandu airport straight to the villages. The Chinook deliberate mistake is enough reason for Sushil Koirala to resign. How dare the Nepal Army play asinine politics with the best relief helicopters money can buy at this time of tragedy?
 
In a town called Dhap, so many animal carcasses were trapped in wrecked buildings that the whole stretch of road reeked of decay, and people jogged by with handkerchiefs clamped over their mouths. ...... The families from Dhap were huddled in a schoolhouse, their eyes wide: If they even approached the rock piles that had been their homes, flies swarmed around them in such numbers that they turned back. Here I saw, for the first time in Nepal, something like despair. As we passed that town, I saw a woman sitting on a hillside, staring into empty space, as if part of her had already left this earth.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Shifting The Capital To Chitwan

English: Map displaying Village Development Co...
English: Map displaying Village Development Committees in Chitawan District, Nepal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I just read on Facebook, and I like the idea. Chitwan/Narayanghat is ideal for capital city.

Kathmandu must be rebuilt, but the rebuilding has to be as a cultural city. Kathmandu has historic importance. And the heritage must be preserved.

But this tragedy has given the country a very real option to build a new capital city for itself. And I do think Chitwan/Narayanghat is most suited for it.

It has a central location. There is no drinking water issue there. There is no land issue. There is no air pollution issue there. It might be cheaper to build new buildings in Chitwan than to rebuild many of the damaged government buildings in Kathmandu.

Relief and reconstruction are not enough. The country has to seek resurgence from this terrible tragedy. This can also be a point of new departure for the country.

If the state is restructured for federalism, the federal government will be smaller in size, and fewer buildings will be needed.

Most buildings in Kathmandu deemed uninhabitable or unsafe following quake
More than three-quarters of the buildings in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, are uninhabitable or unsafe following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake nine days ago, a new survey has revealed. ...... Assessments of 2,500 buildings carried out by more than 1,000 local engineers during the last four days have revealed that a fifth are no longer habitable and three-quarters need repairs before they can be considered safe....... “The sample is a random one and so representative of the city as a whole. The damage is bad. We are still discovering its extent and will have to do a full and thorough final assessment at some point,” said survey coordinator Drubha Thapa, president of the Nepali Engineers Association (NEA). ....... The new assessment indicates a much greater number of buildings will need repairing than previously estimated by the Nepalese government. Local officials have so far counted 153,000 buildings that are in ruins across the country, with another 170,000 damaged. The government of Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, has already said post-quake reconstruction may cost more than £6.5bn ($10bn). ...... Aftershocks continue to shake Kathmandu, convincing tens of thousands of people who are living under tarpaulins on open spaces that it is still too dangerous to return home. ...... “We have hardly met 20% of the demand of the people. We are having difficulties reaching affected areas due to a lack of vehicles and helicopters,” said Krishna Gyawali, the most senior bureaucrat in Sindhulpalchowk district. ...... “People are furious they haven’t anything,” said Uddhav Timilsina, chief district officer of Gorkha. However tensions have emerged between the international community and Nepalese officials. Major donors and western nations are frustrated by infighting within the deeply divided Nepalese government. .....

“It’s all about control, not coordination. They are not coming together to do the best they can for the people of Nepal,”

said one senior western aid official in Kathmandu. ....... Western officials have repeatedly forced the Nepalese prime minister, Sushil Koirala, 75, to overrule suggestions by ministers seeking to centralise the distribution of aid funds under government control. ...... There has also been a battle for overall responsibility for the disbursement of aid money between Ban Dev Gautam, the minister for home affairs, and the prime minister’s office. There are widespread fears that corruption too may weaken the relief effort....... “Everything is politicised, including many local NGOs,” the western official said. ..... The UN said eight million of Nepal’s 28 million people have been affected, with at least two million people needing tents, water, food and medicines over the next three months.