Mercifully the country got away lightly from Thursday's earthquake with its epicentre at Kosamghat, 20 km from Jabalpur. This is not to underplay a tragedy that claimed over 40 lives and left at least 1,000 others badly injured. For the residents of Jabalpur and its rural environs the trauma will continue for a long time, as the fear of aftershocks seems to have instilled a feeling of claustrophobia in many. Humble homesteads and historic edifices, including a temple, a mosque and a church, have alike been reduced to chunks of plaster and brick reminding people yet again that nature is the Great Leveller.

Yet the Jabalpur tremors, fortunately, did not assume the dimensions of the killer quakes that devastated Uttarkashi in 1991 and Latur two years later. But even as relief is expressed over the relatively low number of casualties, it would be foolish to be complacent about it because complacency inevitably breeds ignorance and ignorance in turn breeds tragedy.

Before the earthquake hit it, Latur was actually identified by Indian scientists as an area of low seismic activity. Not entirely surprisingly, not one house in the Latur region was built in a manner that rendered it resistant to earthquakes. The result was a body count that crossed 10,000 when the earth decided to move on that terrible night of September 29-30, 1993.

It was not the quake as much as the materials that went into the average hut that wrought the greatest damage -- with mud and boulders raining down on a population that was fast asleep. Today this, at least, is one lesson learnt.

The new homesteads that have come up in this region of Maharashtra are all quake-proof. By the same token, all structures from houses to dams built in the region under the Narmada Fault, which is believed to run along the entire course of the Narmada river, must necessarily be earthquake-resistant if nature's tragedy is not to be compounded by man-made ones.

The trouble with earthquakes is that they are notoriously difficult to predict. The world rejoiced when, in 1975, Chinese seismologists actually predicted the Haicheng earthquake. As a result, measures to evacuate the affected population were taken in advance and although the quake measured over 7 on the Richter Scale casualties were limited to less than a thousand.

Unfortunately, the Chinese failed to monitor the tremors that tore Tangshan apart the very next year. The resulting death toll was in tens of thousands. But even while prediction is a tricky business, efforts to refine it must continue. India, especially, could do with better monitoring standards.

While the Latur earthquake measured 6.3 on the Richter Scale, Indian Meteorological Department monitoring stations registered readings varying from 5.5 to 6.5, indicating not just the seriousness of the quake but a sad lack of standardisation in the readings and the obsolescence of seismological instrumentation.

India cannot afford not to take precautions against such natural disasters. Given the density of its population and the general vulnerability of their living conditions, death and devastation will inevitably be multifold when an earthquake does take place.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.