On November 1, 1755, an earthquake of a magnitude of 9 struck Europe’s Iberian Peninsula and destroyed the city of Lisbon. Churches collapsed upon thousands of worshippers who were celebrating the All Saints Day. In all, 40,000 people were killed. The tremor was followed by tsunami and fires. In the chaos that ensued, a fierce power struggle erupted between the Catholic Church and Lisbon’s political class.
The Church maintained that the earthquake was God’s punishment and actively opposed any rebuilding efforts. The Marqujs de Pombal, the prime minister to King Joseph I, known for his secular ideas, emerged a winner in the strife for power and became a virtual dictator. In 1759, he expelled the Jesuits from the country for their hand in a plot to assassinate him and executed the conspirators, some of them belonging to high nobility. As a result, the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order lost its influence in Portugal and the power of aristocracy was broken. Pombal carried out sweeping reforms, abolished slavery in its Indian colonies, rebuilt Lisbon in less than a year, made an important contribution to seismology and constructed the world’s first quake-proof buildings — now a tourist attraction in Lisbon.
French philosopher Voltaire wrote a satirical work Candide to refute the philosophy of “optimism”, — the belief that God had created a perfect world — on which the ancient regime was founded. Thus, the 1755 earthquake not only led to an intensive search for a scientific understanding of natural disasters, it also contributed to the intellectual ferment that ultimately produced the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Natural disasters of high magnitude, as history tells us, are often catalysts for important social and political changes, good or bad. What could be the long-term political and social consequences of the earthquake which Pakistan suffered on October 8 that killed nearly a lakh people, destroyed several cities and villages in Azad Kashmir and parts of the NWFP, created an unthinkable humanitarian crisis, drastically disturbed the status quo and forced the ruling elitist class to behave humanely, for a while, is too early to say. This is the second biggest tragedy to occur after 1970 East Pakistan cyclone whose inefficient handling by the General Yahya Khan regime sealed the ultimate separation of the erstwhile wing from the country.
Disasters stress-test a society. Not only do they bring out the best in people, but also highlight the worst in them. Calamities have often changed the course of history. Will it do it once more?
The geological upheaval, which was of 7.6 magnitude on the Richter scale, set in motion an extraordinary outpouring of solidarity, monetary assistance, relief goods and an influx of innumerable volunteer teams from all corners of the country and several countries. The havoc wrought by the tremor is a stark reminder that humanity is bound together as much by geological forces — often unseen and occasionally devastating — as by the tides of commerce and culture. This outpouring of fellow-feelings among ordinary people of different regions, a sudden upgrading of the common man’s station and his elevation to an important character on TV screens, gives an odd sense of deja vu — a feeling one experienced during the 1965 war with India which had, however, soon petered out.
Can this newly awakened spirit of caring be kept alive beyond the tragedy, properly harnessed, institutionalized and employed to create a new kind of society, as Pombal did? Apparently, not. The reason is simple. Firstly, such an effort goes against the spirit of neo-liberal order in which Pakistan is full embedded and till date remains a loyal disciple of the IMF theology and is too excited to carry out free market reforms. This theology recognizes no human bonds and that each service must be paid for. Secondly, those in high positions in the current power structure have no experience of either mobilizing humane and generous impulses among people, nor of putting them to benign use if already aroused. Most of them neither possess such an orientation nor have the courage to break with the past. Some of them have, in fact, already set their eyes on the huge amount of donations and foreign aid whose utilization is to start soon with the award of lucrative contracts.
Despite all the lofty rhetorics, frequent visits to the affected areas and getting themselves photographed with the quake victims, government leaders and beneficiaries of the status quo are intrinsically nervous of this awakening and would like it to fizzle out earlier the better. Many of them consider the continuation of selfless volunteer services, any attempt to save the dying before official help arrives and accessing the unaccessed in remote areas without helicopters, quite disturbing and least acceptable. This they find carrying seeds of a long-term threat to the oligarchic dispensation at least in the quake-damaged areas and to their unique financial and social status if they happen to call the shots there.
It is for this reason that the regime has initiated several measures to discipline popular enthusiasm, in fact, restricting it mainly to donating funds, by taking control of the entire disaster management work in its hands and by entrusting the army with the task of both relief and reconstruction projects. Similarly, a volunteers corps is being set up to drive out numerous popular voluntary groups from the area. This is deemed necessary to prevent the spirit of solidarity, awakened by the earthquake, from growing further and to compensate the volunteers with money so as to turn it into a selfish rather than selfless service.
So, like all other major natural disasters, this one will too cast a great and profound impact on the politics and economics of the country in the wake of gigantic reconstruction and rehabilitation work to be carried out by civil contractors, chosen on merit or as a favour. Too much money will be around to be paid and received, some going into building homes and some into invisible pockets — creating a new class of parasitic entrepreneurs and rendering most of the poor earthquake victims into a forgotten community. Disasters stress-test a society. Not only they bring out the best in people, they also highlight the worst in them. Despite all the good planning claimed to have been done, it soon becomes clear that normal methods of solving problems are not working. And in spite of all the technological resources available, leaders often find themselves failing in implementing the best reconstruction schemes they had prepared.
Even man-made disasters, on occasions, radically affect countries not directly involved. The 9/11 incident, it may be appropriate to recall, did change the world in general and the US in particular but was too quick to change the course of Pakistan’s history although it had no hand in it. The only sin Islamabad had committed, at the time, was that it had tilted on the wrong side of history by creating the Taliban, installing it into power in Afghanistan, and then making it a client regime. That was reversed in exchange for a handsome amount of money and by allowing the US to attack Afghanistan from our soil. Still, Pakistan remains on the wrong side of history.
What could be the long-term consequences of the October 8 earthquake? Pakistani economist Shahid Javed Burki has predicted a large-scale permanent migration of people from the mountainous regions of north-east Pakistan and Azad Kashmir to the plains of Punjab. Some of this may be slowed by the launch of an infrastructure development plan. This happened in Japan, too, in the aftermath of 1995 earthquake when several companies decided to move away from Kobe, the most damaged city, rather than use the compensation money to reconstruct the damaged structures.
Another consequence will be the reluctance of people in major cities of Punjab and the NWFP to live in high-rise buildings unless they are sure they are safe. It will take long time to create that confidence and only a visible implementation of a tight regulatory mechanism will provide that. Builders will have to import new technologies to protect high-rise structures from tremors.
Another instance of how disasters can become catalysts was the decision of the British government in India to develop new areas as a way to protect poor farmers from nature’s ravages — floods, droughts, famines — that visited the country frequently and affected food supply. This, according to Burki, led to the development of canal colonies in Punjab, turning it into the granary of India, an extensive network of roads and railways and the port of Karachi to ensure timely reach of grains to food deficit areas. Similarly, the flu epidemic of 1918 in India killed millions of people, reduced population drastically and brought about a change in the pattern of agricultural output. Some historians believe it was this situation that intensified Congress party’s campaign against the British rule.
In 1972, an earthquake in Nicaragua helped topple the Samoza government. Although Sandinistas was essentially a rural movement, it gained much popular following when government leaders were seen embezzling the international aid money received for quake victims’ help. The regime became focus of public hatred and the Sandinista movement finally overthrew the Samoza government in 1979.
An OECD study argues that the 21st century is going to be punctuated with more large scale disasters which will pose ‘unconventional’ risks to communities, countries and regions. It says that not only are the nature of risks changing, but also the ‘context’ in which they appear and society’s capacity to manage them are also undergoing a change. The October 8 earthquake in Pakistan is a continuation of a streak of shocking natural disasters during the past year: the Indian Ocean tsunami, drought in Niger, Hurricane Katrina and Rita and mudslides in Latin American countries. One thing common in all these events is that governments are not prepared to face heavy shocks, more of which are certain to come. This is because we are not prepared to use available scientific knowledge and expertise to protect ourselves to the extent it is possible. — By Ashfak Bokhari
On November 1, 1755, an earthquake of a magnitude of 9 struck Europe’s Iberian Peninsula and destroyed the city of Lisbon. Churches collapsed upon thousands of worshippers who were celebrating the All Saints Day. In all, 40,000 people were killed. The tremor was followed by tsunami and fires. In the chaos that ensued, a fierce power struggle erupted between the Catholic Church and Lisbon’s political class.
