The scale of the devastation of last week’s earthquake centred in Myanmar which sent shockwaves throughout southeast Asian countries is only now beginning to become clear. As of writing this, the official death toll in Myanmar is said to be around 2,000 -- a figure widely believed to be massively undercounted given the restrictions that the country is currently facing given the four-year-long civil war.
In neighbouring Thailand, which was also affected by the earthquake, the situation couldn’t be more different. Despite the earthquake massively shaking skyscrapers and water from rooftop swimming pools sloshing onto the ground below, the city has seen only one building collapse -- an under-construction government building that claimed the lives of mainly construction workers, even as rescue operations are ongoing.
It isn’t fair to compare the two countries -- one which was at the epicentre of the earthquake and isn’t particularly known for governance standards and another which is further away and has a constitutional monarchy with the flavour of a dictatorship. Nonetheless, one can’t help but admire the resilience of the buildings in the Thai capital Bangkok. To be at the receiving end of the strongest earthquake in decades and yet see only one major building collapse is the level of preparedness that every major country in the world should aspire for.
The less said about India’s governance standards the better. It is to this country’s good fortune that we’ve not had a major earthquake at least over the past few years, but it isn’t enough that we continue going the way things are and hope for the best. Hope cannot be a strategy.
Back home in Goa, the government has repeatedly promised a structural audit of buildings, especially government and heritage buildings. But a combination of red tape, corruption, greedy landlords, and lethargic governance has meant that no such moves have been made in earnest.
We had a horrible experience when the Ruby Residency under-construction building came crashing down during the construction phase tying down the buyers and the builder in years of litigation -- with no real solution in sight. As often happens with this, there is no one to claim ownership or take responsibility for such lackadaisical safety norms.
We live in a time where public safety is not a priority as the country is littered with examples of public infrastructure and private buildings collapsing even without there being any earthquake to speak of. Thousands of lives have been lost in the process even as government figures promise belated action -- nothing ever sees the light of day.
One should use the contrasting sagas of Myanmar and Thailand as a valuable lesson of what a big difference something as basic as building standards can make. The people of Thailand and enforcement authorities have quite literally saved thousands of lives by simply doing what they are supposed to do without any cost-cutting or compromise.
