30 years of Latur-Osmanabad Quake: It is time we paid proper attention to rehabilitation as a concept, says Atul Deulgaonkar

The house given to one of the survivors of the quake. Photo: Atul Deulgaonkar

The Latur-Osmanabad Quake struck the eponymous districts in Marathwada, Maharashtra on September 30, 2023. Almost 10,000 people died, thousands more were injured and a million were displaced.

But 30 years later, the rehabilitation process, though declared complete by the government, has not been proper, according to Atul Deulgaonkar.

The environmental journalist, who has authored 15 books, and was a member of Maharashtra State Disaster Management Authority for 13 years, was closely associated in various phases after the quake in rescue, relief and rehabilitation.

Based on interactions with people from villages to World Bank consultants, tehsildars to the chief secretary, he portrayed multiple dimensions of rehabilitation in his Marathi book Earth Shakes.

He has now come out with a new work to commemorate 30 years of the disaster. In Aapattichakra, Deulgaonkar describes how survivors of the quake are still struggling to get a grip on their lives shattered by the quake.

This is in large part because of the shoddy rehabilitation work done by successive governments in the past three decades.

Deulgaonkar spoke with Down To Earth about his book and rehabilitation policy in India. Edited excerprs:

Rajat Ghai (RG): Why, in your view, did the Sharad Pawar Government in power at the time of the Killari/Latur Quake exercise extreme haste in promising rehabilitation and then acted on it?

 

Atul Deulgaonkar (AD): There could be many reasons for it. The Central government formed a High Level Committee at that point of time which advised that rehabilitation process should be gradual.

But it seems that Sharad Pawar was under pressure due to the agony that people had experienced and their demand for speedy rehabilitation.

The survivors of the quake were staying in temporary sheds. Summer temperatures in the region touched 42 degrees Celsius.  

Many of the survivors were wounded as well and having to recuperate in such squalid conditions. All this may have forced Pawar’s decision to be hasty. But in hindsight, the message of the Killari/Latur Quake is that rehabilitation is a gradual and long-term process.

There should be proper strategies in place for rehabilitation which should consider local culture and conditions. And we did not have it then.

RG: You write about Laurie Baker and how his ideas about traditional cluster design (which pre-quake Killari practiced) could have helped in rehabilitating the village post-quake, rather than the gridiron design of urban areas that was eventually opted for. What does this tell us about traditional knowledge?

AD: In the aftermath of the quake in Killari, the World Bank gave Rs 1,200 crore to the Maharashtra Government for relief and rehabilitation. Of this amount, Rs 900 crore were given for the construction of 40,000 houses.

The guidelines, which were prepared by World Bank and the Maharashtra government, clearly stated peoples’ participation was important and that there should be a proper procedure for taking it into account during decision making.

However, very few of the donor agencies that built new houses in the region made the effort of actually including people in the process — People were not inquired from as to how their new village and the design of their new house should be like.

People’s participation was almost zero. This was the biggest flaw of the rehabilitation process in Killari; something which never happened eight years later, when a massive earthquake struck Bhuj in Kutch.

I feel there were two monumental blunders done during the Killari rehabilitation process. One, the agencies just gave the keys of the readymade houses to the survivors. Second, the relocation of villages. People in the area still rue these two actions.

Villages in our part of the world have evolved gradually over time. They first came up on the banks of rivers and then spread to other areas.

Laurie Baker compares this to the ‘petals of a flower’. Give a voice to the people, Baker urged. This was not done. The agencies’ alibi was that they did not have time.

The village or a house in it should not be an alien structure for a farmer. India’s agrarian culture emphasises that utility and aesthetics must go together in architectural design.

But if you look at the new houses that have come up in these 30-odd years, there is hardly any space for the farmers’ cattle, agricultural implements or even utensils. What are they useful for, then?

I feel that after 30 years, we must take lessons from this because we are repeating or rather making more mistakes.

The interior of one of the houses showing the cramped conditions. Photo: Atul Deulgaonkar 

RG: The mistakes that were committed in Killari were not committed in Bhuj. So, Killari’s loss was Bhuj’s gain, right?

AD: Yes. Killari taught us some lessons which were never repeated in Bhuj.

Relocation was never considered. People’s participation was a must. Moreover, another view is that civil society in Maharashtra was not equipped at the time to deal with long-term rehabilitation work. They only worked on rescue and relief operations.

In other parts of the country like Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Andhra, there are very committed and specialised non-profits.

For example, a group called the Ahmedabad Study Action Group came to Latur in the aftermath of the quake. They were architects. They wanted to train our masons.

Also, some of the officials who were in Latur at the time of the quake, were stationed in Bhuj in 2001. They ensured that the same mistakes did not recur.

RG: In today’s world, disasters, especially due to climate change, are much more commonplace. What lessons can the world learn from the mishandling of rehabilitation in Killari?

Killari offers lessons not just to Maharashtra but to the entire country. I was a part of the Maharashtra State Disaster Management Authority from 2006-2019. In each meeting, I suggested that the Authority must build demonstative projects to showcase preparedness and risk reduction for all types of disasters.

Climate-resilient cities, agriculture and villages should be the final goal for the whole country. But there are no such projects. And that is not a good thing at all.

We must, for example, showcase how rehabilitation must be done in the event of droughts, earthquakes, cyclones, floods or landslides.

I have seen the trauma and rootlessness of people in and around Killari. The rehabilitation of people displaced due to the construction of the Koyna Dam in 1964 is still not complete. The less said about Sardar Sarovar, the better.

It is time we paid proper attention to rehabilitation as a concept and formulate a comprehensive policy for its implementation. We currently do not have a national or state-level discourse on this subject.

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