1. Community, survivors, government and the politicians after the Earthquake!
The aftermath of the April 25th, 26th and 12 May, 2015 Earthquake has devasted many peoples’ lives in
Nepal. People are having many difficulties to survive and different loops are looms in the society. Nepal
Government has big challenges to reconstruction of the Nepal, According to the National daily news papers,
there are more than 8800 people killed, injured more than 22000, damaged and destroyed half million
homes. We not only have lost physical infrastructures, but also many things such as natural, cultural,
social, economical, geographical and political infrastructure due to the earthquake. We can analyze the time
and situation from different ways such as from the perspective of receivers, perspective of donors. Most of
the people lost their shelter, some of them had lost their family members, and some of them lost their family,
land, property and hope. However, thousand people became victim of it and they got different ways to live
and became survivor. During this two month period of crisis there are many opportunities raises for few
people in the community.
After the mega earthquake of Nepal, most of the community in the worst hit region are still struggling for the
take a position to come back to their daily lives. During relief action we saw many helping hands get together
for supporting to survivors. Those who are living in abroad and inside the countries, people engaging with
organization, people without organization, and individual; they have volunteered as much as they can,
people provided economical, physical, and moral support for the vulnerable people . In that period people
showed their real humanitarians’ feelings. People from different caste and class coming together with ethos
of belonging, sisterhood and camaraderie. From riches to poor, from Muslims to Hindus, and from Brahmins
to Dalit sharing same ground or even same traps during the quakes. Youths all over Nepal from various
class and caste are joining hand in hand to help the victims. They have showed the unification in the society
as being in liminality phase but it is just a temporal stage. However sprit needs to be cashed in by I/NGO,
and government and learned from it. The spirit of togetherness, and learn from how volunteers have come
out as a lending hands. Not only individual and community people, there are more than 100 INGOs (24th
June, The Himalayan times) are working in Nepal, some of them are working through the government body,
some of them are working collaboration with local NGOs and some of them are working themselves as
individual. It might be that they their own interest such as getting individual or social benefit. However they
are working for the community of Nepal, they are working for the survivor. Which was really good symbol of
unification of Nepalese people. Even in these torrid times, instead to sharing and helping each other out,
some people have become materialistic and lost the humanity. However, people are struggling to survive
with the multiple challenges and problems. There are many humanitarian organizations are supporting in the
worst hit region, they are providing different materials as support for the earthquake victims. But the human
nature is strange, some of the people are very satisfied with whatever they are getting, some of the people
are looking more support and some of the people are cashing from this crisis. Most of the survivors have
made the temporary shelter themselves, some of them are still looking for others support whether they really
need a help or not. Some of the people really need aid that they can’t afford to rebuild their house but some
of them are losing the humanity, as they already have enough materials to rebuild still they want to get more
from other.
Government is trying to reach survivors through different ways possible, such as providing security and
physical support through army, and police. Moreover, they are sending different NGOs and INGOs towards
hit region by dividing the VDCs, they are channeling to them to implement. However, People are blaming
that ‘government is not reaching yet to the village’. Police and army personals have worked beyond their call
of duty. Along with this, the government is planning to provide 15000.00 rupees per house as compensation.
We all know that Nepal is not standing strongly as a position due to fluid stages of Politics. In these days
political parties also taking the opportunities that they have developed the all party mechanism to distribute
relief materials. That every relief has to go through party system and there was competition among political
parties for who can distribute more. They are using relief as their vote banks. However, the political parties
also showing their existence by going to villages and supporting to rebuild the new houses in different
districts of hit region. Some of the political leaders are getting opportunities to making themselves known in
the community, some of them are showing presence but most of them are concentrating relief in the center.
Few political parties namely, CPN UML, NC, and Moist Party went to the different villages and help to

2. destroy the cracked houses and rebuilding the new houses. Thus, it seems some of the political parties also
showing the power in the community which is their weapon of the power. However, this is not enough for
their side they must take a lead to recover the villagers’ life in this situation, so that they can get more vote of
they can influence them for future politics.
So called most important ‘International conference on Nepal’s reconstruction’ was held in Kathmandu last
week. and all media coverd news with high importance as a achievement because Nepal got the 4.4billion
support, including loan, for the reconstruction from the different donor and neighbor countries. However the
biggest hurdle the transparent implementation of the plan and precise use of money. So Nepal government
should have a proper planning for implementation, Gov should have to prepare sincerely for not to miss-use
the fund in the ground. There are so many loops where implementation may fail to deliver the support for the
survivor. I would like to add my experience in this context. I was in the villages last week for the distributing
relief materials from one of the re-known humanitarian organization, we wanted to deliver our support as
much as for the real destitute people in the community that We had various criteria and process to identify
actual quake victims. We went to the to the village, conducted meeting at VDC office with VDC level leaders
and secretary and divided the beneficiaries numbers as per the destroyed household. Then finalize the
ward wise leader to have another ward wise meeting, and conducted ward wise meeting with ward wise
leaders including around 40 villagers, that we wanted to reach till excluded, after that we have selected the
beneficiaries name list with the help of villagers. we had spent a lot of time meeting with the community and
visiting the houses for the verification, we went to the door visit to verify. We end up distributing relief support
as the name we have given by the community. However, we found, we missed and excluded the few of the
real victim from the community. At last, while we were distributing the relief we got comment from many
oldies and disabled people, as we fail to choose all the right persons from the community. While the
distribution day, few of them came to ask why I was not in the list?, after few investigation we knew they
were really poor and deprived compared to some of beneficiaries. So govt have to very careful while
choosing the beneficiaries
There are so many challenges to reach till real victim or excluded from the different ways. After reaching to
community we found that the power and politics dynamics are adding another problem in the community,
hence Donors and volunteers have to overcome various obstacle to get to real victims. The game of power
starts and problem begins with the local level leader where s/he decides who are most deprived people, they
provide the name of victims based on the nepotism and favorism, alienating those who are really deprived
from the society.
Nepal Gov/ Prime Minister Shusil Koirala made the promise in the conference that he will show no tolerance
for corruption or misuse of foreign aid, in country with a history of weak oversight and as much as the
government will control and try to provide the quality of service for beneficiaries.
To conclude, community people are getting support from different ways and forms However, the entire
survivor should be take an ownership to rebuild the nation or village by making the model village with the
help of any organization or villagers themselves. The political parties and its leaders also should have vision
to implement the fund in proper way, thus government need to develop strong Planning, and monitoring
mechanism for implementation. Moreover, all the Nepalese youth and the villagers also take an opportunity
to rebuild and reconstruct the nation accordingly so that all the Nepalese people can get the face of new
Nepal very soon.
Man Kumari Thada Magar
Former Student Nepa School of School social science and humanities
Kathmandu