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Nepalese slam Indian media, #GoHomeIndianMedia trends

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GoHomeIndianMedia

Kathmandu: The Indian media is facing flak for its coverage of the earthquake disaster in Nepal with complaints in the social media that it was treating the tragedy as a “public relations exercise” on behalf of the Indian government.

As Nepal picks up pieces in the aftermath of last month’s devastating earthquake that killed over 7,000 people and injured more than 14,000, some have picked holes in the “relentless and aggressive” coverage by the Indian media.

By Sunday evening #GoHomeIndianMedia, which was created on Twitter for slamming the Indian media, was the top trending hashtag in Nepal with more than 60,000 tweets on the topic.

As grief-stricken people in Nepal took to social media in droves to complain what they called as Indian media’s “insensitive” reportage of the worst earthquake to hit the Himalayan nation in 80 years, the criticism ironically came on the occasion of the World Press Freedom day today.

At the same time, there have been critical responses to the negative reactions in the social media with comments like the Indian media coverage being “largely responsible” for how the rest of the world saw the Nepal tragedy and even driving global response.

While grateful for the aid and help in rescue efforts, some sections of the media were panned on the social media for pitching the tragedy as a “Public Relations exercise” for the Indian government.

“…Media humiliated poor Nepal in order to take credit & cheap publicity in the hour of crisis. Sad,” said one tweet.

In a blog published on CNN, Sunita Shakya of Nepali origin writes, “Your media and media personnel are acting like they are shooting some kind of family serials.”

She also goes on to describe a couple of instances where she says the reporter did not do enough to help the injured person in need.

“Thanks to tons of reporters who came to Nepal from those rescue planes of India, you took a seat where a victim could be transported to hospitals/ health camps. Thanks to you all reporters, you took a seat where a bag of food and supplies could be placed to send to those hardly hit places,” she added.

Kunda Dixit, a veteran journalist, was quoted has having said that some Nepalis, not all, feel India media is a bit patronising in their attitude and that is perhaps why such sentiments are being expressed. That is how a section of the Nepali media also feels, according to Dixit.

The Indian media was accused by the Twitterati of being insensitive to survivors, asking them irrelevant questions such as “How are you feeling?” and not rendering help to those needing immediate medical aid.

“If your media person can reach to the places where the relief supplies have not reached, at this time of crisis can’t they take a first-aid kit or some food supplies with them as well,?,” asked Shakya.

Some tweets said that Nepal is a sovereign country and not a “satellite state”.

Dear@narendramodi our Dharahara may have fallen not our sovereignty! Sinerely Nepalese #GoHomeIndianMedia, said one tweet while another sarcastically said, “Mr. @narendramodi please call your media back. They r just hurting us more.”

“The height of event management!!! Shame on media’s sycophancy,” read another tweet.

“#GoHomeIndianMedia is about Indian Media. It has nothing to do with Indian Government. Indian Government was the first to reach Nepal,” was another tweet.

Ajay Bhadra Khanal, a veteran journalist, was quoted as having said that the Indian media’s “aggressive presence” and the way they are highlighting only their government’s role in resuce and relief efforts has affected the perception among Nepalis of the Indian government.

Here are some of the tweets:

A tweet from a person followed by Indian Embassy Kathmandu shows how serious the matter is #GoHomeIndianMedia pic.twitter.com/2i5s2Zd2KF

— I Blocked Aajtak (@umeshd516) May 3, 2015

Stop your Media-quake!! We are already in pang by devastating Earthquake and your news are not helping the victims!! #GoHomeIndianMedia

— सूचना घिमिरे ツ (@artless77) May 3, 2015

Dear Indian media, we shall welcome you back once you learn the basics and ABCs of journalism. For now leave. #GoHomeIndianMedia

— prakriti khadka (@khadka_prakriti) May 3, 2015

#GoHomeIndianMedia @aajtak @abpnewstv @IndiaToday Mr. @narendramodi please call your media back. They r just hurting us more

— लुरे (Nishan Aryal) (@fantastic_fan) May 3, 2015

According to the Nepalese police, the death toll recorded in Nepal till date is 7,040 and nearly 14,123 people have been left injured.

(PTI)

Why women are more at risk than men in earthquake-ravaged Nepal

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Nepal_quake

by Shelly Walia & Akshat Rathi, Quartz

Natural disasters are thought to be indiscriminate killers—but is that strictly true?

It turns out disasters affect women much more than men. A 2007 study by researchers at the London School of Economics and the University of Essex found that between 1981 and 2002, natural disasters in 141 countries killed significantly more women than men, and that the worse the disaster, the bigger the gender disparity.

The latest figures from Nepal show that among the 1.3 million affected by the earthquake, about 53% are female—a small but not yet statistically significant bias.

That might soon change. According to the Women Resilience Index, a metric developed to assess a country’s capacity to reduce risk in disaster and recovery for women, Nepal scores a paltry 45.2 out of 100. Japan scores 80.6, by comparison, and Pakistan 27.8. 

And lessons from previous disasters show that the bias affecting women can worsen in post-disaster relief.

Is biology destiny?

There are many factors that contribute to this bias—both social and biological.

For instance, the excess female deaths during both the 2001 Gujarat and the 1993 Maharashtra earthquakes, which killed 20,000 and 10,000 people respectively, were blamed on the fact that more women were indoors while men were in open areas.

In 2004, when the third-largest earthquake in recorded history triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, up to four women died for every man in hard-hit Aceh, Indonesia. One factor: women in Indonesia do not usually learn how to swim or climb trees.

During and after the 1998 floods in Bangladesh, many women suffered from urinary tract infections, due to the lack of sanitation and the taboo attached to menstruation.

“Common cultural practices dictate that women’s needs for privacy tend to be higher, so relieving themselves in public is harder than it is for men. Menstruating women face additional difficulties when access to water is lost or limited,” a spokesperson from the international aid agency Oxfam told Quartz.

After the calamity

The discrimination doesn’t stop after the immediate search and rescue is over. Sushma Iyengar, a social educator who works in Gujarat, told Quartz that during the 2001 disaster, “there was a much higher percentage of orthopaedic injury—and a lot of people got spinally impaired. And among those who became paraplegic, a huge number were young women, because they happened to be inside their houses.”

The paraplegic young women then became more vulnerable to the risks of their husbands leaving them if they were alive. “Not immediately after the calamity, but as the reality unfolded, and families come to know that the woman is not going to bear children, and that she is spinally impaired, and dependent, and she will not be earning, so she was abandoned,” Iyengar said. “It’s too early to figure out the extent of injuries, but what happened in Kutch [site of the Gujarat earthquake] might unfold in Nepal, too.”

Women are typically more vulnerable than men, especially in patriarchal societies, due to issues of personal safety and violence and access to scarce resources. Therefore, when a calamity strikes, the situation is accentuated.

“In calamities, you’ll see the best of humankind for the first few days. And then slowly, as the struggle looms large that you’re going to be without shelter and livelihood, that’s when a lot of conflicts occur,” Iyengar said. “At such times, women are vulnerable to different forms of trafficking and exploitation.”

A report by the UK department of international development refers to this as “double disaster,” where indirect or secondary impacts make life worse for women. But some efforts are being made to address the disparity.

Flipping the situation

In Nepal, the plight of thousands of pregnant women is being given particular attention. The UN Population Fund, for example, is distributing hygiene and reproductive health kits.

Such efforts have in the past been shown to have a two-fold benefit. Not only are the lives of women improved, but many of them then get involved in relief activities. Local women, for instance, are the most effective at mobilising their communities.

For instance, an Indian non-governmental organisation, Swayam Shikshan Prayog (Hindi for “learning from one’s own experiences”), which had been focused on helping women in disasters for 15 years, helped spearhead a programme to help rebuild homes after earthquakes in Maharashtra and Gujarat.

So those working on relief efforts in Nepal would do well to pay a little more attention to the needs of women. The rewards would be well worth it.

Disease outbreak threatens Nepal's earthquake survivors

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Medical workers try to prevent spread of disease in quake’s aftermath, with clean water and toilets in short supply.

Disease Nepal earthquake

by Al Jazeera

Survivors of Nepal’s major earthquake are facing the threat of a disease outbreak due to a severe shortage of clean water and toilets.

Al Jazeera’s Subina Shrestha, reporting from the village of Dukuchap in Lalitpur area, said on Friday that locals were suffering from diarrhoea, stomach cramps and other diseases that could turn into epidemics if the cause of the problem was not stopped in time.

“The water is thick and smelly, but we have to drink it,” Kalpana Tamang, a Dukuchap village resident, told Al Jazeera.

Dr Kishore Rana, a major general in the Nepalese army, said that in a number of villages the health centres and hospitals have been ruined and the areas depended on mobile medical teams – often foreigners.

“Our plan is for other medical teams that can come here and stay here for a longer duration – three to six months,” he said.

“We’ll be sending these teams to the areas were health posts and hospitals have been destroyed.”

Shrestha reported that “even at the best of times, the health system in Nepal has been rather poor”.

“For this village of Dukchap, the only health post is half an hour further up and the only thing they have is paracetamol.”

Essential medicines

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that a quick assessment of Nepal’s worst-hit districts has found some hospitals damaged or destroyed, but most were coping well with no extra staff or beds required.

According to the WHO, there was a need for essential medicines, equipment and materials.

The organisation said it was focused on preventing the possible spread of diarrhoeal diseases among at least 2.8 million displaced people, especially those living in 16 makeshift camps in the capital, Kathmandu.

The death toll from Saturday’s earthquake has reached more than 6,200 people. Almost 14,000 have been injured and thousands are still missing.

Many of the monuments and temples in Kathmandu Valley, which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, for seven distinct locations, were destroyed in the earthquake.

Search and rescue teams continue their operation, clearing debris from crushed buildings and the centuries-old temples as well as getting aid to remote locations.

The government has announced it will give every family, which has had a member killed in the earthquake, about $1,000 in compensation.

The key role of NGOs in bringing disaster relief in Nepal

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by Alejandro Quiroz Flores, The Conversation

On the ground experience. EPA/Palani Mohan / Red Cross and Red Crescent

On the ground experience. EPA/Palani Mohan / Red Cross and Red Crescent

The relief operation is underway in Nepal – under extremely difficult circumstances. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play a crucial role in disaster management in the 21st century – and this will be especially true in Nepal following the devastating recent earthquake.

In contrast to the donations of national governments that are often tied to political favours and strategic considerations, NGOs are less susceptible to political imperatives and seem to distribute aid according to sincere humanitarian needs. Moreover, NGOs such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent have long-standing disaster-prevention programmes that cover a large range of natural hazards. This places them in an ideal position to help vulnerable countries such as Nepal.

Longstanding presence

Historically, large earthquakes in Nepal account for approximately 6.5% of all natural disasters while floods and landslides account for 35% and 18% respectively. In this context, NGOs are crucial because they are able to address multiple natural hazards.

For instance, data from the Financial Tracking Service, which monitors international aid donations, show that NGOs such as CARE Nepal and Save the Children, among others, steadily donate and appeal for donations for flood and landslide emergencies in Nepal. These efforts bring millions of dollars in disaster aid. It also means that they have experience in coordinating relief efforts on the ground in Nepal.

The steady efforts of some NGOs are as important as the breadth of hazards they cover. For instance, since 2012 the British Red Cross has been working on a disaster preparedness program that identifies local hazards, provides disaster education, complements the training of emergency responders and broadcasts disaster warnings. Oxfam also has a history of work in Nepal where it contributes to reducing flood vulnerability. Clearly, NGOs also have the ability to collect significant disaster aid.

International aid has already started pouring in. EPA/ISPR

Comparative advantage

Perhaps the most important comparative advantage of NGOs in disaster relief is their relative lack of electoral incentives in the recipient country. A large body of research indicates that disaster aid is often misappropriated and channelled to political supporters. The degree of misappropriation depends on political institutions and economic conditions – and on both these counts Nepal does poorly according to the UN’s Human Development Index, Transparency International and the World Bank.

This does not mean that NGOs are free of political or administrative pressures. Neither does this mean that NGOs are completely humanitarian. They have been closely scrutinised for their misuse of funds in the past, their failure to meet their own development goals, and a system of destructive competition.

But research into these problems finds that US-based NGOs, at least, seem to distribute aid according to sincere humanitarian needs. Indeed, NGOs are not subject to the same political pressures as local politicians and therefore are in a good position to use their local knowledge to effectively distribute aid.

Challenges and obstacles

NGOs do face a number of challenges and obstacles in the provision of aid, however. Some governments are more co-operative than others – and restrictions on aid are not uncommon. For example, the government of neighbouring Myanmar placed stringent conditions on the distribution of international disaster relief in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, including the delaying of plane landings and the issue of demands that supplies were unloaded and distributed by the government.

To give credit to the Nepalese government, it immediately requested aid this time around and aid has already started arriving. But even in the face of full government co-operation, co-ordinating relief efforts among multiple NGOs is by definition challenging. In Nepal and other countries affected by disasters the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has been successfully implementing a cluster approach to organise multiple humanitarian organisations – including NGOs. As is the case with NGOs, OCHA has maintained a presence in Nepal since 2005.

Making the response easier for them, social media now also plays a vital role. The UN have suggested it is part of a fundamental shift in disaster response whereby people in need of aid will play a more active role in disaster management by expressing their needs. Both Facebook and Google Crisis Response are being used to share information about missing (and safe) persons. And, in terms of providing relief, social media can also be used to help raise awareness and funds.

Alejandro Quiroz Flores is a Lecturer at University of Essex.

The Conversation

Nepal quake: Man pulled alive from rubble after 80 hours

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nepal

Kathmandu: A Nepali-French search and rescue team pulled a 28-year-old man, Rishi Khanal, from a collapsed apartment block in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu after he had spent around 80 hours in a room with three dead bodies.

Khanal appeared to have had no access to food or water during his ordeal, which began at midday on Saturday when a 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit Nepal, destroying buildings and killing at least 4,600 people.

“It seems he survived by sheer willpower,” said Akhilesh Shrestha, a doctor who treated him.

Khanal had been on the second floor of a seven-storey building when the quake struck. The top floors were intact and the teams drilled down to him after he shouted for help and responded to questions in Nepali.

The rescue took five hours.

Khanal had just finished lunch at a hotel in Kathmandu and had gone up to the second floor when everything suddenly started to move and fall apart. He was struck by falling masonry and trapped with his foot crushed under rubble.

“I had some hope but by yesterday I’d given up. My nails went all white and my lips cracked … I was sure no one was coming for me. I was certain I was going to die,” he told The Associated Press from his hospital bed on Wednesday, surrounded by his family.

“There was no sound going out, or coming in. I kept banging against the rubble and finally someone responded and came to help. I hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink so I drank my own urine.”

It was not clear if he was a hotel employee or a guest.

“It feels good. I am thankful,” he said. He was taken away for surgery before more details could be obtained.

More than 5,000 people are known to have died and over 10,000 injured in the Nepal earthquake. There were also deaths in India, Tibet and Bangladesh.

(Reuters)

5.5 magnitude earthquake jolts parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan

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The intensity of the earthquake was recorded as 5.5 on the Richter scale. Reuters

The intensity of the earthquake was recorded as 5.5 on the Richter scale. Reuters

by Ali Akbar, Dawn

Peshawar: An earthquake jolted parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday, creating a sense of fear and panic among the residents.

According to Meteorological Department, the intensity of the earthquake was recorded as 5.5 on the Richter scale and its epicentre was the border area of Tajikistan at a depth of 144 kilometres.

Earthquakes tremors were felt in Malakand, Swat, Upper and Lower Dir where residents evacuated homes and buildings out of fear.

There was no immediate report of any casualty or damages.

Pakistan and the region, along an active continental plate boundary, is often hit by earthquakes. In September 2013, a magnitude-7.7 quake struck Pakistan’s Balochistan province, killing at least 376 people.

In 2005, the country was hit by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless.

The science behind the Nepal earthquake

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Motorcyclists use both sides of a wide crack in the Koteshwor-Suryabinayak Highway caused by the earthquake in the Bhaktapur area near Kathmandu, Nepal on 26 April, 2015 -- twenty four hours after a devastating quake which so far has taken the lives of at least 2,400. EPA/Hemanta Shrestha

Motorcyclists use both sides of a wide crack in the Koteshwor-Suryabinayak Highway caused by the earthquake in the Bhaktapur area near Kathmandu, Nepal on 26 April, 2015 — twenty four hours after a devastating quake which so far has taken the lives of at least 2,400. EPA/Hemanta Shrestha

by Mike Sandiford, CP Rajendran & Kristin Morell, The Conversation

Saturday’s Nepal earthquake has destroyed housing in Kathmandu, damaged World Heritage sites, and triggered deadly avalanches around Mount Everest. The death toll is already reported as being in the many thousands. Given past experience, it would not surprise if it were to reach the many tens of thousands when everyone is accounted for.

Nepal is particularly prone to earthquakes. It sits on the boundary of two massive tectonic plates – the Indo-Australian and Asian plates. It is the collision of these plates that has produced the Himalaya mountains, and with them, earthquakes.

Our research in the Himalaya is beginning to shed light on these massive processes, and understand the threat they pose to local people.

The science of earthquakes

The April 25 quake measured 7.8 on the moment magnitude scale, the largest since the 1934 Bihar quake, which measured 8.2 and killed around 10,000 people. Another quake in Kashmir in 2005, measuring 7.6, killed around 80,000 people.

These quakes are a dramatic manifestation of the ongoing convergence between the Indo-Australian and Asian tectonic plates that has progressively built the Himalayas over the last 50 million years.

Belts of earthquakes (yellow) surround the Indo-Australian plate. Mike Sandiford

They are but one reminder of the hazards faced by the communities that live in these mountains. Other ongoing hazards include floods and monsoonal landslides, as exemplified by the Kedarnath disaster of 2013 which killed more than 5,000 people.

Earthquakes occur when strain builds up in Earth’s crust until it gives way, usually along old fault lines. In this case the strain is built by the collision or convergence of two plates.

A number of factors made this quake a recipe for catastrophe. It was shallow: an estimated 15km below the surface at the quake’s epicentre. It saw a large movement of the earth (a maximum of 3m). And the ruptured part of the fault plane extended under a densely populated area in Kathmandu.

From the preliminary analysis of the seismic records we already know that the rupture initiated in an area about 70km north west of Kathmandu, with slip on a shallow dipping fault that gets deeper as you move further north.

Over about a minute, the rupture propagated east by some 130km and south by around 60km, breaking a fault segment some 15,000 square kilometres in area, with as much as 3m slip in places.

The plates across this segment of the Himalaya are converging at a rate of about 2cm this year. This slip released the equivalent of about a century of built up strain.

Predicting quakes

While the occurrence of large earthquakes in this region is not unexpected, the seismological community still has little useful understanding of how to predict the specific details of such ruptures. While the statistical character of earthquake sequences is well understood, we are still unable to predict individual events.

Questions as to why such a large earthquake, in this specific location at this time, and not elsewhere along the Himalaya, continue to baffle the research community, and make for problematic challenge of better targeted hazard preparedness and mitigation strategies.

But with each new quake researchers are gaining valuable new insights. As exemplified by the ready availability of quality data and analysis in near real time provided by organisations such as the United States Geological Survey and Geoscience Australia, the global network of geophysical monitoring is providing an ever more detailed picture of how the earth beneath our feet is behaving.

Seismic gaps

New techniques are also helping us read the record of past earthquakes with ever greater accuracy. Our research collaboration – involving the University of Melbourne, the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and the Indian Institute of Science in India, the University of Victoria in Canada, and the Bhutan Government – is studying the earthquake geology of adjacent areas of the Himalaya in the state of Uttarakhand in India and in Bhutan.

Together we are mapping indicators of tectonic activity that link the earthquake time-scale (from seconds to decades) to the geological time-scale (hundred of thousands to millions of years).

Using new digital topography datasets, new ways of dating landscape features and by harnessing the rapidly growing power of computer simulation, we have been able to show how large historical ruptures and earthquakes correlate with segmentation of the Himalayan front reflected in its geological makeup.

This is shedding new light on so-called seismic gaps, where the absence of large historical ruptures makes for very significant concern. You can read our latest research here.

The most prominent segment of the Himalayan front not to have ruptured in a major earthquake during the last 200–500 years, the 700-km-long “central seismic gap” in Uttarakhand, is home to more than 10 million people. It is crucial to understand if it is overdue for a great earthquake.

Our work in Uttarakhand and elsewhere is revealing how the rupture lengths and magnitude of Himalayan quakes is controlled by long-lived geological structures. While little comfort to those dealing with the aftermath of Saturday’s tragedy, it is part of a growing effort from the international research community to better understand earthquakes and so help mitigate the impact of future events.

Funded as part of the Australian Indian Strategic Research Fund and DFAT aid programs, our collaborative work is a reflection of the commitment of our governments to international earthquake research.

Mike Sandiford is a Professor of Geology and Director of Melbourne Energy Institute at University of Melbourne. CP Rajendran is a Professor, Geodynamics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Kristin Morell is an Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at University of Victoria.

The Conversation

Doctors' team from Karnataka leaves for Nepal

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Karnataka-Nepal-Doctors

Bengaluru: As many as 10 doctors from Karnatala have left for Nepal to provide medical aid to the earthquake victims.

While six doctors departed on Monday evening from the residence of Health Minister U T Khader, the other four left on Tuesday morning with almost 200kgs of drugs.

According to Minister Khader, the team will treat the patients not only from India but also foreign countries at army camps in Kathmandu.

Dr Srinivas, Dr Manjunath, Dr Ramesh Dr Dakshin Kumar, Dr Asha are Dr Jayanthi among the doctors who have departed to Nepal.

(Agencies)

Words from the lunatic fringe: Rahul Gandhi ate beef, visited temple and caused earthquake, says Sakshi Maharaj

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Sakshi Maharaj

New Delhi: Well-known for his controversial remarks, BJP leader Sakshi Maharaj has made heads turn again by stating that Rahul Gandhi’s ‘impure’ visit to Kedarnath has led to the disastrous earthquake in Nepal.

Sakshi Maharaj stated that Rahul Gandhi ate beef and visited Kedarnath without ‘purifying’ himself and hence, the earthquake took place, according to a report published in The Times Of India.

Reacting to Sakshi Maharaj’s insensitive remark, Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev has asked the Modi government to take immediate action against their party member.

The Nepal quake has claimed nearly 4300 lives till date, as per reports. The stranded people in Nepal, filled with grief and fear, are spending nights out on streets.

Relief and rescue operations are on and countries across the globe are stepping forward to their bit for the quake victims.

(Agencies)

Nepal quake toll could reach 10,000, govt on 'war footing' – Nepal PM

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nepal

Katmandu: The death toll in Nepal’s earthquake could reach 10,000, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala told reporters on Tuesday, ordering intensified rescue efforts and appealing for foreign supplies of tents and medicines.

“The government is doing all it can for rescue and relief on a war footing,” Koirala said in an interview. “It is a challenge and a very difficult hour for Nepal.”

A home ministry official put the latest death toll at 4,349. If the death toll does reach 10,000, that would be even higher than the 8,500 killed in a massive 1934 quake, the Himalayan nation’s worst disaster to date.

Koirala was abroad when the 7.9 magnitude quake struck on Saturday. He returned on Sunday. He has issued orders to his government to improve coordination of the relief effort and will address the nation later on Tuesday, an aide said.

Appealing for foreign assistance, Koirala said Nepal needed tents and medicines. Many people are sleeping out of doors because their homes have been destroyed or may not withstand the dozens of aftershocks that have hit the country, he said.

“The government needs tents, much medicine. People are sleeping in fields and rains,” he said. “There are more than 7,000 people injured. Their treatment and rehabilitation is going to be a big challenge.”

(Agencies)

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