The Hindu Business Line : Still on shaky ground

KUTCH still shakes. Two years after a killer earthquake razed scores of villages in this region to memory, people still run out of their homes once or twice a month when the earth trembles. Reports say there were more than 1,200 mild tremors in the region over the past two years.

"It is frequent. The minor ones apart, we feel at least a couple of tremors in a month. The people here are quite used to it. You can distinctly feel the quakes if you are on the second floor," says Bishwas Patel, a construction worker at the site of a school being built by the Gem and Jewellery National Relief Foundation.

The school, with a reinforced steel foundation (said to be quake-proof) is coming up in new Anjar. More than 400 children died on January 26, 2001, when the earthquake buried them under the old school in this village. Currently, the school functions from a few large containers that double as classrooms with squares gouged out of the sides for windows.

Thousands of buildings, majority of them small, identical houses, dot the landscape of the little dusty villages of Anjar, Madhapur, Dudhai, Bhachau, Chitrod, Amran, Lakadiya, Samkhiyali, Lodai... and many more along the wide, impeccably laid out highways. Construction is in full swing in the whole region.

"It (construction) is the most intense activity in this area. It has attracted labour from far and near. There is a steady flow of labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh," says Vinodbhai, a construction materials supplier in Anjar.

After the earthquake, relief poured in from all parts of the country. The relief was both used, misused and abused, according to residents of this village which counted more than 1,500 of its people dead in the quake. Says Raju, who hails from Madhya Pradesh but has made Kutch his home: "Shiploads of food, clothes and medicines arrived at Kandla (the nearest port). A lot of it vanished without a trace. In one incident, police raided a godown in Gandhidham and found tonnes of grain meant for quake victims. Bahut logon ne paisa khaya (many people ate money)," he says.

Immediately after the quake, money and supplies flowed to Kutch. "Abhi idhar logon ke pas bahut paisa hai. Jis ke pas ghar nahi tha uske pas do-do makan hain alag-alag naam pe. (The people here have become rich. Some of them now own two houses in different names)," Vinodbhai said cynically. Some people claimed compensation money from the Government as well as got homes from private charities, which built houses for those who did not get monetary compensation.

According to Bishwas Patel, the relief and the subsequent construction boom also fuelled prices of commodities. "Kutch mein har cheez ka daam double ho gaya hai — chai patti se lekar gaadi tak. (Prices in Kutch have doubled — from tea to vehicles the prices are now double)," Patel says.

But for those who are not in construction, jobs are hard to come by. Bharat Shah lives with his young wife Bhavya and two children aged five and three in a small enclosure of asbestos nailed together into a `one-room-kitchen'. Shah's is one of about 200 Jain families huddled in 142 such homes on a large ground that the Arya Samaj gave them for two years. Bharat Shah has just lost his job as a petrol pump assistant that earned him about Rs 1,600. Now his wife tries to stitch up a living with her sewing machine. The women in the other families too earn a little from tailoring or making snacks that they sell in the market. The menfolk, most of whom ran small businesses, are trying to put them back together. Each family has got a container in which it has set up shop, literally.

"These shacks are also past their utility. When it rains they leak badly. With these children growing up, where will we go? The two years that Arya Samaj allowed us is getting over. We are yet to get compensation from the Government. We need to find a permanent place to stay. I do not know how it is going to be possible," says Shah's wife Bhavya.

In Kutch, the earth is yet not still.

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Still on shaky ground