Yet we must ask: Was it really the earthquake that killed, maimed and injured nearly 23,000 Nepalis and international visitors? Was it really the earthquake that wrecked more than half a million family dwellings and other public buildings? Was it the earthquake that inflicted misery upon several million householders—and the elderly, children, disabled, sick, and so on?

Disaster’s genesis

To some, the question may appear a bit trite and rhetorical rather than substantive. This, however, is not the case. It is, instead, fundamentally important to ask this question in the shrillest possible voice and to pursue the answers in as persistent a manner as

possible. On the shrillness and persistence may depend

the scale of our loss during the next earthquake. Indeed, on the shrillness and persistence may depend the scale of our loss during the next landslide, flood, cloudburst and lake-burst, epidemic, fire and so on.

A geophysical or ‘natural’ event such as an earthquake does not necessarily lead to a disaster. An earthquake inevitably wrecks the innards as well as the surface of the earth, but it is not at all inevitable that it kills and injures human beings and destroys their livelihood. Disasters that result in a huge loss of life, assets, and livelihood are, instead, socially created. Earthquake is natural but disaster is social. This is nicely captured in the adage that earthquakes do not kill people, houses do. Indeed, Prof Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado, who has also worked on earthquakes in Nepal, tells us that houses and other buildings, during earthquakes, can function as weapons of mass destruction.

Now, houses and other buildings, however, do not stand by themselves. They are erected under distinctive economic, political, administrative, etc, regimes. Houses and other buildings, as it were, merely ‘embody’ specific economic, political and administrative regimes. Economies that harbour high levels of unemployment and underemployment as well as poverty and those that have remained stagnant for long or have otherwise been sliding down are unlikely to build earthquake-resistant dwellings.

Economies with high levels of regional and household inequality are also unlikely to ensure that all or even most dwellings are resistant to an earthquake. The large-scale loss in Nepal attests to all of these economic markers, including the unequal and ‘class-conscious’ nature of a disaster. The economy of the rural areas had long remained stagnant and had failed to draw any investment. The rural economy, instead, had been transformed into one from where value-creating labour-power and other resources were siphoned off. These components of disinvestment had turned entire rural areas, among others, into a region of derelict family dwellings. The derelict quality of the dwellings was an outcome of a specific economic regime. Thus, it was the regime and not the dwellings

or the earthquake as such that inflicted mass death, injury

and destruction.

Earthquake-resistant structures, in addition, are also the outcomes of political and administrative, that is governance, regimes. Governance regimes that are insensitive to popular wellbeing, ineffective, corrupt, unaccountable and opaque do not often formulate and implement laws and regulations that mandate housing that can resist an earthquake in concert with the governed. Economic, political and administrative regimes, thus, are foundational to the scale and nature of death and destruction.  

Leadership’s role

To put it another way, unlike an earthquake, which is an event that occurs at a specific moment in time, economic, political and administrative regimes that might lead to a disaster accrete over a long period of time. A disaster is not a sudden event; it is in the making for a long period of time characterised by economic, political and administrative stasis and irresponsibility. The future makings of a disaster can, thus, broadly be discerned at present by gazing at the nature and dynamics of an economy, polity and administration. Most of all, it can be discerned by gazing at the attributes of leadership that encapsulates how a state and society is governed.

If the nature of an economy, polity and administration makes a disaster more or less likely, so also is the case with the nature of post-disaster rescue, relief, and reconstruction. Certain political, economic and administrative regimes are more likely to lead to much more effective and efficient rescue, relief, and reconstruction than other regimes. The nature of a household, kinship network, and a community is also likely to contribute to more or less effective rescue, relief, and reconstruction. Elected local governments, under a competitive political system, would generally—although not always—have been forced to deliver in a manner akin to Amartya Sen’s democratic governments that could not sit idly in the face of a famine. A progressive and prosperous government and political system goes much further than others and successfully blurs the distinction between ‘private’ woes and ‘public’ redress.

It is of fundamental importance, therefore, to identify the key features of political, economic and administrative regimes that lead to a disaster in the first place as also to identify features of a regime that promotes or inhibits effective rescue, relief and reconstruction. In addition, mutual relationships among these features should be mapped. This calls for an examination of the nature of institutions and processes that are put into place (or not put into place) both to reduce the scale of disaster as well as to render remedial initiatives of rescue, relief and reconstruction prompt, effective and efficient. In essence, it is necessary not only to locate the contours of the fault lines underneath the crust of the earth but also of the ‘fault lines’ in the innards of economy, polity and administration. It is only such an initiative that can substantially reduce the scale of an earthquake-led disaster and enhance the capacity to make provisions for rescue, relief and reconstruction.

Comparative analysis

In order to generate valid and actionable knowledge about where the geophysical and political-economic fault lines interface, it is important to examine not one but several episodes of disasters. Thus, for valid and actionable knowledge one should juxtapose and compare such fault lines across several physical locations as well as historical periods. Thus the ongoing disaster in Nepal should be compared with similar ones that happened in the past, including the one that took place in the 14th century. Similarly, economic- and governance-related factors that contributed to the ongoing disaster in Nepal and are shaping rescue, relief and reconstruction here can be compared with those in Gujarat, Kashmir, Turkey, Haiti, and so on.

A historical and comparative stance is important not only because it potentially enables one to amass evidence on disaster from a variety of sources. The stance is even more important because it enables one to build categories and frameworks of thoughtS and allows one to judge evidences that are admissible and adequate and those that are not. Such categories and frameworks also allow one to judge why a piece of evidence is admissible and why another piece of evidence is not. The essential point here is that a comparative and historical outlook is germane in identifying both correlates of disaster as of disaster management.

Juxtaposition and comparison is fundamental to knowledge and policy gains because concepts gain weight and resilience only through such comparisons. A comparative perspective is germane to the development of categories of thought that enable us to better grasp and map the social correlates of disaster. A comparative perspective, finally, is important not only because it allows one to identify the key questions and to analyse the answers more succinctly, but also because the knowledge and policy gains made of the 2015 Nepal earthquake-led disaster can contribute to some extent to refine the knowledge and policy on disaster at the world scale.