India’s own earthquake plan moving at snail’s place
India reacted fast to help the victims of earthquake in Nepal but has been slow in implementing its own action plan to make cities earthquake proof. So much so that most of the plans initiated after devastating earthquakes in Latur and Bhuj have not moved ahead much.
India reacted fast to help the victims of earthquake in Nepal but has been slow in implementing its own action plan to make cities earthquake proof. So much so that most of the plans initiated after devastating earthquakes in Latur and Bhuj have not moved ahead much.
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The most ambitious programme of the ministry of earth sciences and the Indian meteorological department (IMD) to prepare a seismic hazard and risk microzonation map of major cities has not been completed.
According to a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) submitted in Parliament in 2013, the government initiated a programme in 2007 to create a national database for seismic hazard and regional risk appraisal to provide resources for remedial upgradation and for land use planning for policy makers.
Even though the government allocated `298 crore for the scheme, not much work could be completed till 2012 as standard guidelines for microzonation work in the country were released only in October 2012. As a result, microzonation of major Indian cities could not be completed.
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Another major programme to strengthen and modernise the National Seismological Network for improving the detection and location capability for earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3 on the Richter Scale was still in the “preliminary stage”
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Another major programme to strengthen and modernise the National Seismological Network for improving the detection and location capability for earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3 on the Richter Scale was still in the “preliminary stage”
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The CAG report also said the ministry of earth sciences was supposed to prepare an earthquake management plan but it was not able to do so till July 2012.
The CAG also found that the National Disaster Management Authority’s earthquake risk mitigation project was still in the preparatory stage though the work was awarded to the Buildings Materials and Technology Promotion Council in June 2011.
Under this project, the buildings in cities vulnerable to earthquakes were to be identified and retro-fitted to make them safe. Most of the lives lost during Bhuj and Latur earthquakes were because of building collapse, the scientific studies on two disasters had concluded.
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Highly earthquake prone states like Uttarakhand had set up hazard safety cells in May 2005 to identify vulnerable lifeline buildings such as hospitals and fire stations. The cell had identified 7,374 buildings of which 1109 were found to be vulnerable to moderate earthquake. “These buildings were to be retrofitted, but no measures had been taken,” the CAG report said and quoted the state government to blame the safety cell officials for failing to make these important buildings safe.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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