DESTRUCTION IN BIHAR

Evening Star, Issue 21709, 2 May 1934, Page 3

DESTRUCTION IN BIHAR

AH ALL-INDIAN PROBLEM The Government of Bihar and Orissa and the Government of India are jointly faced with the colossal task of restoration in the earthquake-stricken region of Bihar (writes a correspondent of ‘The Times ’). Years of labour and croros of rupees will be needed for the work, and before rebuilding can begin temporary shelters will have to be found for the hundreds of thousands of people who have been made homeless by the calamity. '■ Twelve towns will practically have to be rebuilt. This should offer opportunity for some attempt at scientific town planning. The old bazaars of Monghyr and Muzaffarpur were congested and insanitary, but they meant “ home ”to thousands. Already in these towns, along the margins of such streets as have been cleared, pathetic little piles of bricks have been assembled by owners who want to start putting up new houses on the sites ot their old ones. Clearly town planning will be attended with difficulties. Railways and roads lie distorted and broken; sugar factories are in rums. Large sums will be required for their restoration. But the most formidable part of the reconstruction will be the reconditioning of the countryside, the “ garden of India ” is to-day Ivmg derelict. The flat, alluvial land that has attracted the peasant cultivators to the district in increasing numbers is now swamped with sand, and the changes in the levels of the region imply a flood menace when the monsoon breaks in October. An alarming possibility is that the fertility of the soil may be permanently impaired by the great quantities p.f coarse material which the earthquake brought to the surface. In some districts years may elapse before full productivity can be restored. A PROSTRATE PROVINCE. The earthquake may have been a nine days’ wonder elsewhere, but Bihar is prostrate, and the extent of the dainage goes beyond anything that charitable relief can alleviate. Generosity in gifts and services have met immediate needs. Doctors and organisers have done wonders, and something like ordered existence has already been restored; of food and blankets there is now no lack. There is nothing from which municipalities and district boards may get an income for reconstruction work. J-inan-eial measures will have to be on a mi p c scale, and for some time Bihar will bo able to make little or no contribution The province has a competent lelief committee at work. All who can are helping An experienced civilian has been made relief commissioner, but reconstruction in a large sense cannot be taken in hand until after tho lams, since the levels of land and water have been altered. The Survey ot India is already at work on this, but Bihai i l .i s no good contour maps, and the results of the monsoon must bo awaited. An aeroplane trip from Patna uoi tilward over the affected areas is an astonishing experience. Patna itself was< off the main line of disturbance, and is relatively undamaged; probably about 75 per cent, of the houses were to some degree cracked and many collapsed, killing sixty .or seventy people But the real earthquake zone was at Muzaffarpur, thirty-five miles nearer the Nepalese border, ibis town, like twelve others with populations varying between 10,000 and 60,000, has been almost completely wrecked, and looks as if it bad been subjected to bombardment with high explosive. A few roots still stand; white tents and thatched shelters tor the homeless now fill the town’s open spaces, the provision ot temporary relief having been admirably organised. belts of fissures. Whether one flies east, west, or north, one is over country the suitace of which was profoundly altered by tin; shock within a space oi three minutes. The fissures appear generally to traverse the fields m belts, and individual cracks persist over surprising distances of half a mile or so. Along them, and also separately, are clusters of craterlike objects, from which subterranean matter, mainly yellow and grey sand, was profusely spouted. The general impression from the air is that thousands of square miles ot the Indo-Gaii-getic plain have been treated like a sediment of moist sand which wasi Allowed to settle in a shallow rubber basin and then violently compressed at the sides. , , , . The villages, consisting, of low-roofed mud huts, appear but little damaged except where fissures have opened across them or gushers appeared in their midst; but bridges are down m all d - rections and hundreds ot miles of railway line destroyed, the metals in many offices having been flung clean oft the track. Most of the sugar mills on which depended the promising new industry that has taken the p ace ot mrli.ro ni Bihar have collapsed, and appear from above tangled heaps of sheet iron, brick debris, and smashed machinery. . Considering the immense scale on which the seismic forces operated, a total death-roll of 6,000-1,000 seems surprisingly low. The mam explanation of the relatively small casualty list in the Bihar disaster is that the area affected was entirely agricultural. Uut of a total population of 13.000,000 only 500,000 were urban, and of the twelve towns they inhabited several were little more than inflated villages. Meanwhile the problem ,is to find the money for the work of reconstruction. The province itself could never hope to complete the task of restoration from its own resources, and as the I inance Member announced ii) ™ , semblv on February 14, the Cential Government has decided to regal d it as an all-India commitment.