Saturday, September 12, 2015

Community, survivors, government and the politicians after the Earthquake!


The aftermath of the April 25th, 26th and 12 May, 2015 Earthquake has devasted many peoples’ lives in Nepal. People are having many difficulties to survive and different loops are looms in the society. Nepal Government has big challenges to reconstruction of the Nepal. According to the National daily news papers, there are more than 8800 people killed, injured more than 22000, damaged and destroyed half million homes. We not only have lost physical infrastructures, but also many things such as natural, cultural, social, economical, geographical and political infrastructure due to the earthquake. We can analyze the time and situation from different ways such as from the perspective of receivers, perspective of donors. Most of the people lost their shelter, some of them had lost their family members, and some of them lost their family, land, property and hope. However, thousand people became victim of it and they got different ways to live and became survivor. During this two month period of crisis there are many opportunities raises for few people in the community.
After the mega earthquake of Nepal, most of the communities in the worst hit region are still struggling for the take a position to come back to their daily lives. During relief action we saw many helping hands get together for supporting to survivors. Those who are living in abroad and inside the countries, people engaging with organization, people without organization, and individual; they have volunteered as much as they can, people provided economical, physical, and moral support for the vulnerable people. In that period people showed their real humanitarians’ feelings: people from different caste and class coming together with ethos of belonging, sisterhood and camaraderie. From riches to poor, from Muslims to Hindus, and from Brahmins to Dalit sharing same ground or even same traps during the quakes. Youths all over Nepal from various class and caste are joining hand in hand to help the victims. They have showed the unification in the society as being in liminality phase but it is just a temporal stage. However sprit needs to be cashed in by I/NGO, and government and learned from it. The spirit of togetherness, and learn from how volunteers have come out as a lending hands. According to THT 24th June, there are more than 100 INGOs are working in Nepal, some of them are working through the government body, collaboration with local NGOs and themselves as individual. It might be that they their own interest such as getting individual or social benefit.  However they are working for the community, they are working for the survivor. Which was really good symbol of unification of Nepalese people. Even in these torrid times, instead to sharing and helping each other out, some people have become materialistic and lost the humanity. However, people are struggling to survive with the multiple challenges and problems. There are many humanitarian organizations are supporting in the worst hit region, they are providing different materials as support for the earthquake victims. But the human nature is strange, some of the people are very satisfied with whatever they are getting, some of the people are looking more support and some of the people are cashing from this crisis. Most of the survivors have made the temporary shelter themselves, some of them are still looking for others support whether they really need a help or not. Some of the people really need aid that they can’t afford to rebuild their house but some of them are losing the humanity, as they already have enough materials to rebuild still they want to get more from other.
Government is trying to reach survivors through different ways possible, such as providing security & physical support through army and police. Moreover, they are sending different NGOs and INGOs towards hit region by dividing the VDCs, they are channeling to them to implement. However, People are blaming that ‘government is not reaching yet to the village’. Police and army personals have worked beyond their call of duty. Along with this, the government is planning to provide 15000.00 rupees per house as compensation.  
We all know that Nepal is not standing strongly as a position due to fluid stages of Politics. In these days political parties also taking the opportunities that they have developed the all party mechanism to distribute relief materials. That every relief has to go through party system and there was competition among political parties for who can distribute more. They are using relief as their vote banks. However, the political parties also showing their existence by going to villages and supporting to rebuild the new houses in different districts of hit region. Some of the political leaders are getting opportunities to making themselves known in the community, some of them are showing presence but most of them are concentrating relief in the center. Few political parties namely, CPN UML, NC, and Moist Party went to the different villages and help to destroy the cracked houses and rebuilding the new houses. Thus, it seems some of the political parties also showing the power in the community which is their weapon of the power. However, this is not enough for their side they must take a lead to recover the villagers’ life in this situation, so that they can get more vote of they can influence them for future politics.
So called most important ‘International conference on Nepal’s reconstruction’ was held in Kathmandu last week. And all media covered news with high importance as an achievement because Nepal got the 4.4billion support, including loan, for the reconstruction from the different donor and neighbor countries. However the biggest hurdle the transparent implementation of the plan and precise use of money.  So Nepal government should have a proper planning for implementation, Gov should have to prepare sincerely for not to miss-use the fund in the ground. There are so many loops where implementation may fail to deliver the support for the survivor. I have been in the hit region last month for the distributing relief materials from one of the re-known humanitarian organization; we wanted to deliver our support as much as for the real destitute people in the community that We had 11 different criteria and process to identify actual quake victims. We went to the village, conducted meeting at VDC office with VDC level leaders and secretary. Divided the beneficiaries’ number as per the criteria. Then finalize the ward wise leader to have another ward wise meeting, and conducted ward wise meeting with ward wise leaders including around 40 villagers, that we wanted to reach till excluded, after that we have selected the beneficiaries name list with the help of villagers. We had spent a lot of time meeting with the community and visiting the houses for the verification. We end up distributing relief support as the name we have given by the community. However, we found, we missed and excluded the few of the real victim from the community. At last, while we were distributing the relief we got comment from many oldies and disabled people, as we fail to choose all the right persons from the community. While the distribution day, few of them came to ask why I was not in the list? after few investigation we knew they were really poor and deprived compared to some of beneficiaries. So govt have to very careful while choosing the beneficiaries

There are so many challenges to reach till real victim or excluded from the different ways. After reaching to community we found that the power and politics dynamics are adding another problem in the community, hence Donors and volunteers have to overcome various obstacle to get to real victims. The game of power starts and problem begins with the local level leader where s/he decides who are most deprived people, they provide the name of victims based on the nepotism and favorism, alienating those who are really deprived from the society.
Nepal Gov/ Prime Minister Shusil Koirala made the promise in the conference that he will show no tolerance for corruption or misuse of foreign aid, in country with a history of weak oversight and as much as the government will control and try to provide the quality of service for beneficiaries.
To conclude, community people are getting support from different ways and forms However, the entire survivor should be take an ownership to rebuild the nation or village by making the model village with the help of any organization or villagers themselves. The political parties and its leaders also should have vision to implement the fund in proper way, thus government need to develop strong Planning, and monitoring mechanism for implementation. Moreover, all the Nepalese youth and the villagers also take an opportunity to rebuild and reconstruct the nation accordingly so that all the Nepalese people can get the face of new Nepal very soon.  

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