Paying for the damage

The town of Bhuj was devastated by the quake

By Mark Tully

BHUJ, India -- Shortly after the Gujarat earthquake, when India and the rest of the world were responding generously to appeals for disaster relief funds, a friend of mine said, "I am not going to contribute because I know that eventually I will be forced to do so. I know there is going to be a Gujarat surcharge on income tax."

Sure enough within a day or so the government announced that there would be a two percent surcharge on both income and corporate taxes to pay for the damage caused by the earthquake.

No one yet knows what that damage amounts to because everyone has been so busy rescuing the victims, providing them with food and shelter, and preventing the spread of disease that estimates of the cost of the earthquake have been nothing more than guesstimates which could be out by billions of dollars this way or that.

Sacrifices need to be made

As an Indian income tax payer it would be churlish of me to object to the surcharge were it not for one point. No one from the prime minister down has said anything about the government itself making sacrifices for Gujarat.

Sacrifices it could easily make, by cutting its bloated staff, reducing the number of ministries -- many of which serve no better purpose than feeding the vanity of a member of parliament -- cutting the perks and privileges of those ministers -- most of whom never seem able to go anywhere without an accompanying fleet of cars -- and above all taking measures to introduce modern management methods, cut administrative costs, and plug leakages.

When he was prime minister in the 1980s Rajiv Gandhi acknowledged that only 15 percent of government funds reached their intended destination. The rest were syphoned off en route, and there is little or no evidence to suggest that there has been any improvement since.

Challenges lie ahead

The editor of one of Indian's financial paper said to me, "There is little point in raising a Gujarat surcharge until we have a government which can manage its money."

A young survivor awaits treatment in a makeshift hospital

That is now the challenge before both the central government in Delhi and the government of the state of Gujarat. The governments have to see that the money they are taking from the taxpayers does reach the earthquake victims. What's more they have to see that the reconstruction is sounder than the original construction.

It's been said often that earthquakes don't kill but that buildings do. There is abundant evidence to show that many, many people have died because of the faulty construction of the buildings they lived or worked in. This represents a failure of the government to enforce planning and building regulations.

As for us journalists we have to keep an eye on Gujarat. Now that the international impact of the earthquake is lessening, and the story is no longer at the top of news bulletins, we must not just pull up our tents and move on to the next big international story, we must keep the eyes of India and the world focused on Gujarat to ensure that surcharge is properly spent and indeed all the other funds contributed by less reluctant donors than my actor friend.

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