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TIMES NATION | Himalayan Tragedy
THE TIMES OF INDIA, CHENNAI *
MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015
Nepal’s spirits battered but not broken
We appreciate
India’s help,
says deputy PM
Keshav.Pradhan
@timesgroup.com
Kathmandu: Nepal’s deputy
PM Prakashman Singh has
said his country appreciates
the sensitivity India and its
people have shown in its hour
of crisis.
Speaking to TOI on Sunday, Singh said, “Everybody
in India — from ministers to
common people — have come
Piyal Bhattacharjee
DROPS OF HELP
forward to help us overcome
the gravest challenge our nation has faced.”
Referring to the West Bengal government’s decision
to send 1 lakh tarpaulins, he
added, “We need tarpaulins
the most. Minister Narayan
Khadka will go to Jhapa (near
Bengal) to receive the aid.”
Singh sounded a warning
on the speed of aid coming in:
“Considering the magnitude
of the devastation, we need
maximum support from the
international
community.
Whatever has been pledged
has not come in full. Whatever we have till now is not
enough to face the crisis.”
He added, “Village after
village has collapsed. The
number of casualties is going
up by the day. Aid should reach
us as quickly as possible.”
On the Communists’
claim that too much involvement of foreign countries,
especially India, in relief
work may threaten Nepal’s
sovereignty, Singh said, “The
international
community
has the expertise to meet a
crisis like this. They have
specially trained personnel.”
On Indian aircraft flying
to Nepal’s northern frontier
(in other words, China border), he said, “Some people
are talking about this without trying to understand the
ground realities. These are
Indian aircraft. There are
Chinese aircraft too. US aircraft are coming soon. All of
them are working under the
Nepal army. Where else will
they go when most affected
districts are in the north?”
The deputy PM said the
need of the hour is unity.
“That’s why we are in the
process of forming an allparty monitoring committee. We have already held two
meetings with opposition
parties, including the ones
which do not have any representatives in the Constituent Assembly. This is not the
time for blame games.”
On the allegations that
the government failed to rise
to the occasion, Singh said,
“Considering Nepal’s topography and limited resources,
we have done a pretty good
job.” He added, “Some people, who are anti-democracy
have launched a campaign
to discredit us. They say we
imposed taxes on relief material. We are not so foolish
that we’ll tax those who want
to help us.”
He said the government
was hopeful of Nepal having a new constitution soon.
“We will not allow anyone to
use this national disaster to
delay the drafting of the constitution, which is in its final
stages,” he said.
INDIA DIGEST
8 Assam Rifles jawans
killed in Nagaland
t least eight Assam Rifles personnels have been killed and six others
injured in an ambush by suspected
NSCN (K) militants in Mon district of Nagaland on Sunday. Four other jawans are reported missing. Of the six wounded troopers who received bullet injuries, two were
in critical condition, Nagaland police chief
L L Doungel said. The Assam Rifles official
said there were over 20 personnel in the
vehicle. The militants attacked the troopers with rocket propelled grenades (RPGs),
a Nagaland police official said. NSCN (K)
recently abrogated the ceasefire agreement with the government.
A
No privatization of railways, says
Prabhu: Notwithstanding recommendation by government panels, Union railway
minister Suresh Prabhu has outrightly
ruled out privatization of the public transporter, saying it was a “bogey” being
raised by those who do not want any
change.
SP wins Pharenda bypoll: Samajwadi
Party snatched the Pharenda assembly
seat from BJP in the bypoll held on April
30. Its candidate Vinod Tiwari defeated
Congress’s Virendra Chaudhary by a margin of 9,231 votes.
Parked aircraft hit by lightning, repaired: A Boeing aircraft parked at Kolkata
airport was struck by lightning on Saturday night, affecting the plane. The aircraft could have suffered greater damage
had the strike triggered a fire.
‘Can join hands with Cong only in
House’: CPM says it is ready to forge a
front with Congress in Parliament on issues like land bill and secularism but ruled
out being part of a national front or alliances outside because “they are not credible”.
NASA’S FINDER IN NEPAL
Finding Individuals for Disaster
and Emergency Response
Nasa’s remote-sensing radar tech
to detect people buried in debris
has been deployed in Nepal
MISSION NEPAL
➤ Nasa & partners
are pulling optical and
radar satellite data
from international and
domestic partners and
compiling them into a
variety of products
➤ ‘Vulnerability maps’
are used to determine
risks present
WHAT’S FINDER
➤ New radar-based tech
developed by Nasa
➤ Created to detect human
heartbeat beneath 30 feet (9
metres) of crushed material,
hidden behind 20 feet (6
metres) of solid concrete,
and from a distance of 100
feet (30 metres) in open space
➤ One prototype was used to
conduct over 65 test searches
Current tools
to detect life
under debris
Canines, listening
devices and video
cameras
HOW IT WORKS
➤ ‘Damage proxy maps’
determine type, extent
of existing damage
➤ Its microwave
➤ Also help assess
radar tech
damage to infrastructure
sensitive enough
➤ Tracking remote
to distinguish
areas inaccessible to
unique signature of a
relief workers
human’s breathing
➤ Maps areas
pattern and heartbeat
Satellite data
at risk of
from that of other living
used to compile
landslides,
creatures, such as rats
river
maps of ground
➤ Allows first
surface deformation damming,
responders to quickly
and to create risk floods and
ascertain if a living human
avalanches
models
is present in the debris
Govt struggles but people
open their homes & hearts
Deeptiman.Tiwary
@timesgroup.com
Kathmandu/Jiwanpur:
As the Nepal administration struggles to help its people, young Nepalis and local
groups are going where the
government hasn’t. Across the
country, do-gooders are rising
to the occasion.
For every fleecing taxi driver, there is another one going
the extra mile to ferry relief
workers to remote places at
nominal rates. For every overcharging hotel, there are those
who have opened their courtyards for people to sleep in.
In village after remote village, better-off Nepalese have
loosened their purse strings.
In Jiwanpur Ayush Khare
and Siddhi Arial are distributing tents, filters and grains.
Arial is a Nepali working in
Thailand. “After the quake,
I rushed back to do my bit,”
he says. He has distributed 40
tents, which he concedes are
inadequate. He is also running
TOI IN
N E PA L
a Facebook page, ‘Hatemalo
Thailand’, to raise funds.
Veterinary Chemist and
Druggist Association of Nepal
too has been distributing tents
and sleeping mats in villages.
Their efforts are small given
the scale of the disaster, but
for villagers who have lost
everything, any help is wel-
For poor villagers, no time to mourn
Piyal Bhattacharjee
[email protected]
Jiwanpur (Dhading): Shekhar
Dunghana, 32, is not at his home
or what is left of it in the hilltop
village of Jiwanpur in Dhading,
Nepal. His father and nephew
died when his house collapsed
on April 25. But on the third day,
he pushed out of the village to
search for work.
A couple of kilometres away,
Dorba Bhetuwal, 35, is perched
on a bamboo structure hammering nails into tin sheets to erect
what will be his new home.
Of the 2,100 homes in Jiwanpur, none is standing or liveable. It has seen close to 60 of 650
deaths that Dhading witnessed.
But no one in Jiwanpur seems to
have time to mourn the dead or
wait for relief. Their desperate
poverty has ensured that life continues to move, without a pause.
There is still severe scarcity
of food and tarpaulin shelters
and an overstretched government has been unable to reach
all. Help from NGOs is too small
to match the scale of the disaster.
Till Sunday, only about 260 tents
brought by NGOs had reached
STONES INSTEAD OF HOMES
Jiwanpur, a village of 10,000 people spread over an entire hill.
But the poor villagers are
used to fending for themselves.
“Our crop is also destroyed.
There is nothing left with us. My
husband has gone to town to look
for work and get some money,”
says Dunghana’s wife Kalpana
even as she comes out of a tin
shed that she erected from the
rubble of her house — much
before the government even announced distribution of tents.
Pulling out wooden planks
from his fallen house to resurrect a new one, Bidur Keshi, 55,
said, “I have 13 members in my
family. All need shelter. It’s very
cold at night. We can’t keep waiting for help. Life must go on.”
And it has, with villagers
helping each other tide over their
troubles. When no relief came to
the village for four days after the
quake and people began to run
out of food, Krishna Prasad Gartola, the 76-year-old local grocer,
opened the doors of his store.
People picked up grains and
supplies on credit. “I have no
hope of getting that money back.
But you can’t refuse people in
trouble. They are all my neighbours. Now, I myself have little
to eat,” he said.
Narayan Subhedi runs a community radio from a small office
on the road below Jiwanpur hill.
“I don’t know how many people
can access it at the moment. But
I have been trying to give tips on
survival and information about
when any help is arriving. Where
to go and collect what,” he said.
But Jiwanpur may need more
than that. Balbahadur Thapa
Magar, 24, and his sister are both
blind. The only skill they have
is rearing goats and cows. But
their entire livestock is dead.
Their father Deepbahadur, 61,
is worried. “I can feed them till
I am alive. I don’t know what will
happen later,” he said.
A relief worker put the matter in perspective. “Just food and
shelter won’t do. Government
should give one goat and chicken
at least to villagers to help them
kickstart their lives,” he said.
come. “None of the help that
has come is from the government,” says Sanjeev Bhandari,
a villager.
In Kathmandu, too, help
has been pouring in from
locals. College students are
helping people retrieve household items from the rubble. In
Thamel, several hotels have
opened their courtyards for
people to sleep as intermittent tremors still keep many
scared and out of their homes.
Ramesh Giri, a manager
at Hotel Manang, stayed back
in the capital even when three
of his houses in Sindhupal
Chowk collapsed. “Most of
our staff fled. But we kept
the hotel open. Served food 24
hours... I personally cooked
and served,” he says.
Temple will miss
Buddha Jayanti for
first time in years
[email protected]
Kathmandu: “Monday is Buddha
Purnima. For the first time, we will not
celebrate the birth of Gautam Buddha,”
said Ishwarratna Buddhacharya, a priest
at Swayambhunath, Nepal’s most ancient
and revered Buddhist site.
“Look at the devastation here. This place
has become unsafe for big gatherings,” the
60-year-old priest said, showing the damage
by the quake. He and Rajyalaxmi Shrestha,
a member of Nepal’s constituent assembly,
said the celebrations would be shifted to a
venue outside the temple. Pratapur and
Anantapur, the two temples that flanked
the stupa with 13 eyes on the eastern side,
lie in ruins. “Pratapur was built by King
Pratap Malla (16th century) to end drought
in Kathmandu. Anantpur is dedicated to
his consort,” said Ishwarman.
The quarters of all Buddhacharyas
have collapsed. Swayambhunath’s Buddhacharyas, all Newars, are descendants
of four brothers who came as priests centuries ago. Temples like Shantipur, Karma
Raja Mahavira, Manjushri and Bhajan
Ghars are also damaged. Despite the destruction, daily rituals have not stopped.
Go home Indian Can Nepal save riches beneath its ruins?
‘Contraband
media, says
entering India
Nepal Twitterati
via relief routes’
Piyal Bhattacharjee
[email protected]
Piyal Bhattacharjee
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: If the Indian
media has devoted wall-towall coverage of the Nepal
earthquake,
they
were
shown their place on social
media on Sunday, the top
trending hashtag being #GoHomeIndianMedia, which
until evening had collected
about 144,000 tweets.
The online outrage is connected to the accusation that
Indian TV channels have engaged in “insensitive” reporting of the aftermath of the
earthquake. The TV channels,
with their penchant for shoving microphones at suffering
victims, have been accused of
gross misconduct, in some situations even confronting security forces at the site of the
devastation. They have intruded into family cremations, questioned grieving relatives, and generally shown a
picture that many have found
to be cringe-worthy.
The Indian media, and
here a distinction would
have to be made between the
TV channels and the print
media, have also been accused of showing the efforts
of the Indian Army, and Indian disaster-relief personnel
at work in Nepal, in a glowing light.
Some of the tweets were
scathing – “dangerous insensitive journalism without
any humane elements, such
a tragedy in the aftermath of
one”; “Indian media ruining
harmony, neighbourhood,
respect and affection between Nepal-India by their
unethical
journalism”;
“Dear
vultures,
you've
picked the bones of the dead
clean. Go home now”.
In the hours after the devastating earthquake, Indian
TV channels were the first on
the ground. Their stories
and their pictures brought
the massive destruction to
living rooms across the country and the world. It generated a massive response from
the Indian public, with
schools and Bollywood all
pitching in with relief and
assistance. In many ways, it
A brother carries his sister
as they pass by a damaged
house near Kathmandu
12 trekkers rescued
from Mt Makalu
welve stranded trekkers,
T including an Indian
national, were rescued on
Sunday from Makalu Base
Camp in eastern Nepal, eight
days after the killer quake.
Those rescued from the
mountain area in
Sankhuwasabha include
three Spanish, three
Nepalese, two Belgian, two
Austrian and one each from
India and Andorra. They have
been flown to Kathmandu on a
helicopter. PTI
has driven the global response to Nepal.
But in the week since the
tragedy, the TV channels’ relentless quest to feed the 24/7
news networks have elicited
stories that may have been
exaggerated, while the pressure of competition may
have led them to resort to hyperbole in ways that probably should have been reined
in. But the stories have been
aired without question by
the channels.
“Stop your media-quake!!
We are already in pang by
devastating earthquake and
your news are not helping
the victims!!” said an anguished tweet.
Of course, the part of the
story that no one talks about
is what would have happened
if the Indian media was not
all out there? The first, and
most justified criticism,
would have been again about
an insensitive media. But on
an instant high, Twitter has
stood in judgment.
Kathmandu: Two days after the
earthquake had ripped through Nepal, bringing down most of its centuries-old monuments and flattening some of them beyond repair, a
few old residents at Durbar Square
watched both in helplessness and
disbelief as locals pillaged bricks
and bits of ancient wood from the
Kasthamandap temple, a threestorey shrine from which Kathmandu derives its name. Many feel that
though not its most famous monument, this is perhaps the one structure with the greatest historical significance that the country lost.
As the death toll on Sunday, eight
days after the 7.8 temblor of April
25, crossed 7,200 and left as many as
14,000 injured in its stretched-to-capacity hospitals, a growing worry
among conservationists, temple supervisors and Nepal’s still-rattled
common people was the vulnerability of its many religious places to
loot and exposure to artefact sharks.
Civil rescue workers cleaning up debris
on the outskirt of Kathmandu on Saturday
Walk through Durbar Square,
Kathmandu’s famous temple and
palace complex, and it’s easy to spot
a divine broken head here, a sacred
limb there. A keen eye can glimpse
the glint of gold leafing at one place,
the dull weight of an ornate wooden
beam at another — all out in the cold
like the city’s population, defenseless and utterly exposed.
People have been caught carrying away wooden beams, bells and
carved bricks — if someone has surreptitiously taken off with figurines, it hasn’t yet been brought to
Moga girl’s father
to get govt job,
say reports
From P 1
T
he compensation amount was revised to ` 24 lakh and a government
statement said it the amount would
be given by Sukhbir’s firm, Orbit
Aviation.
Sukhdev
Singh, who works
as the father of
the girl who was
gruesomely
killed in Moga,
The bus took the wrong lane will get a government job, accordto pick up the accused who
ing to news agenthrew the girl off the bus
cy reports. Singh
is a class four employee in a private firm.
The girl’s body was in a freezer at Mritak Deh Sambhal Kendra mortuary in
Singhewala, a village 3km from Moga
where she was thrown out of the bus. Although none of the Badal family members
was present at the cremation, government
officials confirmed that the CM had met
the girl’s father at a rest house in the evening.
“My daughter died five days ago. I realised that I must not disrespect her body and
it should be cremated so that she can rest in
peace,” the father told reporters after his
meeting with the police. The cremation began amid chanting of hymns by a Sikh
priest as the family members and locals
carried the hearse and prayed for her.
the notice of the government or the
Archaeology Department — and
there are others suspiciously milling around collapsed temples with
no apparent work or motive. Nepal
punches above its weight, housing 8
Unesco world heritage sites — three
royal cities and Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha among them —
and it is not possible for a meagre police force to guard even these zones,
let alone the dozens of other ancient
temples. Truth be told, there wasn’t
even need to. Till now.
Officials admit the issue of looting has in the past few days become
“immediate and urgent.” Bhesh Narayan Dahal, director general, Archaeology Department, said he has
requested the police to beef up security at the heritage sites, something
high-ranking cops concede is important but can’t be done right away.
Dahal has also ordered that warning through posters against looting
be pasted at all relevant places.
For the full report, log on to
www.timesofindia.com
Agra: Smuggling of drugs and
arms has proliferated along the Indo-Nepal border in the last few days,
as cartels exploit the opening of passages meant for quick supply of relief aid for victims of last week’s
earthquake that jolted the neighbouring country, according to Government Railway Police in Agra.
The revelation comes after three
men were arrested last week from
Etawah with 46kg of Kirmichya
ganja, a variant that is locally produced in Nepal. During interrogation, one of the men revealed how
drugs syndicates were deploying
poor people for as little as Rs 1,800 to
supply contraband to India. TNN
For the full report, log on to
www.timesofindia.com
B’luru climber back after
brush with death on Everest
[email protected]
Bengaluru: Praveen CM stood
with his arms thrown out, desperately trying to keep his balance as tremors rocked the
mountain he and his fellow climbers stood on.
After narrowly escaping the
avalanche that brought snow and
boulders down from three sides,
Praveen and his team were
standing outside a tent when the
earth began to heave.
“I expected the ice to break
open, for crevices to form. I think
everyone there felt the same.
That’s often how people die on
the mountain, by falling into a
crevice, never to be found again. I
kept looking behind me to see
where I would fall and alternately at the ground waiting for it to
open up. I think we stood like that
for five minutes. I don’t know....
And then, just as the earth went
still, there was silence,” he recalls.
The 28-year-old JP Nagar resident returned home on Friday. It
was Praveen’s first attempt to
climb Mount Everest and his second mountaineering expedition.
Initially, none of the climbers
knew that the avalanches had
been caused by an earthquake.
PEAK OF DANGER
The calamity occurred
early in the climbing season
on Mount Everest
● 42 teams were attempting
to scale Mount Everest
● Around 350 foreign climbers
and double the number of
Sherpas were on the mountain
● More than 200 were
trapped at Camp 1 at a height
of 6,400m or Camp 2 at 6,750m
● Climbing gear was swept
away, leaving mountaineers
stranded on the mountain
● Helicopters were sent to
camps 1 and 2 to evacuate
them after a day
● 18 people, including 14
Sherpas, killed
● 61 were injured in avalanche
● Unknown number still
missing in the region
“We threw our luggage to the
ground, dropped down and covered our faces, partly with our
hands and partly with the luggage so that there would be some
air to breathe if the avalanche
lasted long. If you continue
standing and breathing, the snow
will get into your airways and
choke you,” Praveen says. When
the climbers finally descended to
base camp, the destruction
shocked them. “The camp was
destroyed by boulders. We could
see blood splatters on the boulders,” he says. The quake may
have ended Praveen’s expedition
midway but he plans to go back.