As the anniversary of Nepal’s devastating earthquake came and went last week, Tilakmananda Bajracharya, a priest, peered up at the mountainside temple his family has tended for 13 generations, wondering how long it would remain upright.
Seeing the face of a foreigner last week, the priest brightened. Many people here pin their hopes on promises of foreign aid: After the disaster, images of collapsed temples and stoic villagers in a sea of rubble spread across the world after the earthquake were beamed across the world, and donors, principally India and China, came forward with pledges of $4.1 billion in foreign grants and soft loans.
But those promises, so far, have not done much to speed the progress of Nepal’s reconstruction effort.
The delay is misery for the 7,70,000 households awaiting a promised subsidy to rebuild their homes. Because a yearly stretch of bad weather begins in June, large-scale rebuilding is unlikely to begin before early 2017, consigning families to a second monsoon season and a second winter in leaky shelters made of zinc sheeting.
Veterans of immense relief efforts in Haiti and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami say it is normal for spending to remain low for the first year after a disaster, then ramp up only after legislation and construction standards are in place.
Aid dries up Sites like the ancient, battered town of Sankhu were a major reason foreign donors came forward so readily. Just before noon on April 25, the earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, sent century-old brick buildings crashing into the streets, crushing 45 people and destroying 1,200 homes. Centuries-old temples sacred to Hindus and Buddhists tumbled down the hillsides.
Relief efforts kept pace during the weeks after the disaster, when half a million homeless families received about $140 in emergency aid. The goodwill reached Sankhu: By summertime, a foreign country had promised $5,70,000 to rebuild Bajrayogini and surrounding structures, said Christian Manhart, who represents UNESCO, the U.N. cultural heritage agency, in Nepal.
That early progress then halted. Leaders swung their attention to the fast-track adoption of the country’s first Constitution, and its division of power infuriated ethnic communities in the south.
The Nepali authorities say they must maintain control over the actions of nongovernmental organisations and foreign donors.
Bhishma Bhusal, an undersecretary of the reconstruction authority, said nongovernmental organisations had used relief funds “to distribute Bibles and Qurans and the Gita, when the people needed food and shelter.”
China and India, Mr. Bhusal said, seemed to have geopolitical motivations, proposing projects in sensitive zones near their borders. — New York Times News Service
