My anthropologist friend Laura, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, was very lucky. She called around and some friends came to take her out from the collapsed building in which she and others had been trapped in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. “I hope my friends are alive,” a tearful Laura told the MSNBC at Port-au-Prince airport as she and many other American citizens were evacuated back to their country. Next day, another friend at the anthropology department of the same university, where I spent two years of my graduate student life, wrote saying some of Laura’s friends — among estimated tens of thousands others in Port-au-Prince and all around Haiti — were not so lucky. This was a sobering reminder about the precariousness of being alive in the world today. But this precariousness of lives is the result of the way urban spaces are built up mostly in the third world countries. The rich in the North have done a lot to keep themselves safe.

As I was watching the news streams on television channels, Kathmandu was already abuzz with experts discussing in no uncertain terms that Kathmandu will be Haiti if that magnitude of earthquake occurs here. They were saying earthquakes don’t kill — buildings do. In 2001, Geohazards International ranked Kathmandu first among big cities in the world in terms of the lethality of outcomes from seismic disasters. The report said that a minimum of 60,000 deaths is inevitable in the wake of 6 magnitude earthquake. That was nine years ago. Kathmandu’s growth has been phenomenal in the last few years. Over three million live in the city in houses 90 percent of which can’t withstand high magnitude earthquake.

Kathmandu is becoming unlivable. The air pollution is killing many from respiratory and heart diseases. There is no clean water for most of the people. The rich add more and more four wheelers on increasingly crowded space. The top elites have speeded up the process of sending their kids to the West. Many of them have already bought second homes outside the country or outside the valley. Those who have stayed have built themselves mansions, hired chauffeurs and some even have the luxury of breathing good oxygen in Thamel’s oxygen spas. And starting from the early nineties, the rich have barricaded themselves behind walls the size of which keep increasing each year. Even when the place is becoming increasingly unlivable for almost all, a few at the top are trying their best to shield themselves. But earthquake is a different matter.

The minimum of 60,000 deaths is already catastrophic. What is even more catastrophic is that, the way Kathmandu has been built up, it will be totally unlivable place for decades to come. Those who survive have to leave the place as there won’t be any possibility of cleaning the debris and reestablishing the infrastructure.

It is for this reason that the campaign for making the existing houses earthquake resistant has to be a society-wide effort involving municipalities, government, private sector and community organisations. Some rich might think that they can pay their way out by making their own houses earthquake-fit. But when the earthquake hits and the destruction is widespread, survivors will find the place unworthy of restarting their lives in even if their own houses might remain standing. It is for this reason we have to begin the dialogues and planning involving both the super-rich and super poor in the city before it is too late.

The dream of modernity has had irresistible lure for both the rich, semi-rich and the poor in Kathmandu and across Nepal’s burgeoning town and city centres and all of them share that lure in the form of concrete, cement and steel structures. This lure was not old. My hometown in Chitwan witnessed the transformations of architectural forms during the last 30 years. The hill migrants initially built modest structures out of brick and mud with thatched roofs. The indigenous Tharus had mastered the art of creating mud houses. In a very short time, all that gave way to increasing use of concrete and steel.

As I read the reports coming out of Port-au-Prince and saw the images splashed on news channels, I realised we will face a similar catastrophe unless we address the problems right away and on a massive scale. There are some building structures that simply cannot be made earthquake resistant. They have to be dismantled. Many can be salvaged with proper earthquake resistant retrofitting. The homeowners should consult immediately with engineers who specialise on this. Kathmandu’s built environment has to be the single biggest subject of public debate right now.

The potential fate of Kathmandu should bring everybody in a platform of dialogue for building a livable and safe place. The rich who want to live in Kathmandu cannot buy their way out even if they have unimaginable riches. What happened in Haiti is Kathmandu’s future at play — unless there is widespread campaign to create a built environment that is safe. In one of the reports, a BBC journalist showed the flattened bungalows and crumbling walls. Haiti’s elites, aided by American empire, served themselves with all the wealth in the country for a long time. Many shifted wealth to Miami and New York, while many went there to escape the brutalities of serial dictators put in place by the U.S. But those who remained set themselves apart from their subjects. While the rich built mansions and barricaded themselves behind walls, the poor took over the fragile mountain sides and built the cement and concrete houses. I don’t know what meaning these walls hold for the rich any more. I don’t know how long it will be before the city will be a livable place again. Thousands have already started heading out as the corpses begin to stink, and life’s essentials run in short supply.

Can Kathmandu’s rich — the business elites, the political elites, the bureaucrat elites, the military elites, bikase contractors — realise this before it is too late? The dream of walls keeping the poor out has led to the flourishing of gated spaces in Kathmandu. But those walls will be meaningless when the earthquake hits. An enclave of rich living in earthquake resistant houses will be impossible when the rest of the city will be rubble. Therefore, there is no other option than for all of us to work together to build a city for all — and not exclusive zones for some. This should be the first principle in the debates that have already started in Kathmandu.

Anil Bhattarai

anilbhattarai@gmail.com

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