Repair of schools devastated by the Gujarat quake carries lessons for others on how to cope with such disasters

Huma Siddiqui

It's nearly one year since one of the worst ever earthquakes rocked Gujarat. Relief work is still on. The progress report on the education front is impressive, though. The repair and rehabilitation work of schools by the Department of Primary Education Programme (DPEP) under the aegis of the state education department is right on target. Says education secretary Varesh Sinha: ‘‘We are doing quite well as compared to other sectors and will soon wind up the repair work of all the 45,000 classrooms.’’

The education department is flush with funds totalling almost Rs 300 crore under the DPEP project. It’s a non-refundable grant. The Netherlands government is contributing 85 per cent of the total fund involved in the DPEP’s projects, which means that they have given the DPEP a total grant of Rs 264 crore.

“External agencies generally give 70 per cent of their funds in grants and the rest as loans, but we have convinced them that this is an extraordinary situation, which led to the entire fund being turned into a grant,” says Avinash Joshi, director of the DPEP.

Mr Joshi adds: “The new improved infrastructure is likely to bring down the dropout rate in schools. Apart from erecting classrooms, we have provided better sanitation and drinking water facilities, which the schools did not have earlier.” At present 9,483 schools in 18 districts with 44,819 classrooms are being repaired.

The DPEP is also monitoring the ongoing project closely. This has helped them make proper fund allocation and utilisation along with successful garnering of support and community involvement. The monitoring team says that the first round of the work has already been completed and the total spending so far stands at Rs 65 crore on repairs.

The DPEP has also involved the community in the repair works. It has engaged villagers by way of formation of village civil works committees. On its part, the DPEP has on its rolls 300 supervising engineers and each of them visits 30 villages in a week.

This model has been highly successful in Gujarat because of community co-operation and participation. Educating the community seems to be the first step in adopting such development models by other states. There is also tremendous scope of participation by NGOs in such projects taken up in the respective areas, explains Mr Joshi.
This ongoing project in quake-hit Gujrat can be a model for sustained development in other states as well. States such as Orissa, Assam and West Bengal, which are often affected by floods and cyclones, can take a leaf from Gujarat’s efforts, adds Mr Joshi.

“A proper disaster management programme drawn out after making a situation analysis will be the first step in dealing with such unforeseen natural calamities,” explains Mr Joshi.