India Sets Aside Pride to Accept Quake Aid

Shocked and humbled by one of the most frightful tragedies in its history, India has set aside its long-standing doctrine of proud self-reliance and is accepting--even seeking--foreign help.

“Twenty-two countries have sent assistance, and every day, more and more are arriving,” K.N. Shelat, the Gujarat state official in charge of coordinating international aid to quake victims, said Friday.

An Algerian air force Ilyushin-76 bearing tents and medicines, a Polish transport carrying a 150-bed mobile field hospital, and a British flight laden with water jugs and electric generators were among the many aircraft to have landed this week at Ahmadabad’s airport.

The Bush administration has pledged $9 million in help so far. On Friday, a U.S. medical team and water-purification equipment were expected in Bhachau, a town in western Gujarat where at least 7,352 people died and not a single home is now reported fit to live in.

Even two military transports carrying relief supplies from Pakistan, India’s enemy in the long-running border conflict in Kashmir, were allowed into Indian airspace to disgorge tents and blankets for the stricken populace of Gujarat.

And Friday, in the first reported conversation between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Indian leader thanked his Pakistani counterpart for the aid. Musharraf initiated the call “to convey his sympathy at the great loss of life caused by the earthquake,” a Vajpayee aide told the Associated Press.

The world’s response, and India’s willingness to take advantage of it, has been “exceptional,” Shelat said. And the elected leaders of Gujarat unabashedly make it clear that they hope for even more outside help.

“This is the first time we are seeing an example of brotherhood and solidarity for the people of the state,” Haren Pandya, Gujarat’s home minister, said Friday. “All the aid is welcome, but we need more help, as we have to rebuild the state and the lives of the people.”

During the struggle for this immense country’s freedom from the British Empire, one of the national watchwords became swadeshi, or self-sufficiency. After independence in 1947, that came to mean self-reliance for India’s economy, with punishing tariffs to discourage imports.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which leads the country’s coalition government as well as Gujarat state, appropriated the slogan in the 1990s to mean that foreign corporations should be allowed in to do business only on Indian terms.

In the initial days after the Jan. 26 earthquake, some leaders echoed the old nationalist thinking--and the certainty that this land of 1 billion people could deal with its own problems. Agriculture Minister Bhaskar Barua said it wasn’t the policy of his government to seek international aid.

But as the appalling magnitude of loss from the devastating earthquake became known--more than 15,000 people are confirmed dead--policy underwent a sea change, and Barua expressed thanks for the foreign aid.

“This is simply too large a calamity for us to cope with by ourselves,” said Archana Dholakia, associate professor of economics at Gujarat University. The professor noted that officials had begun easing economic regulations in 1991 to allow more outside companies to do business on Indian soil.

It was at an ashram here in Ahmadabad that Mohandas K. Gandhi perfected the doctrine of swadeshi, calling for a boycott of British-made goods.

“In the ‘90s, we already had started to bring down the high walls that we used to surround ourselves with,” Dholakia said. “I’m sure that if Gandhi were alive today, he would have changed his ideas.”

Indians’ often prickly sense of pride also might have been mollified by recent examples of two other nations that were victims of earthquakes, Turkey and El Salvador, which readily accepted the helping hand extended by the international community.

“Now, it would be not accepting assistance that would seem odd,” an Indian government official here said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

When a cyclone flooded the eastern Indian state of Orissa a year and a half ago, killing 10,000 people, neither local nor national officials made a concerted pitch for help from abroad. Instead, news reports said, the state’s top civil servant flew to the United States five days later to visit his daughter.

In contrast, Gujarat’s government, in a document issued Friday, explicitly stated that it is counting on more “generous assistance” from foreign governments and charities, and made detailed suggestions about how the aid might best be channeled.

For $450,000, the document said, an entire village of 100 families could be “adopted” by a philanthropic organization, which would build new, sturdy homes; restore water and electricity connections; and provide furniture and kitchenware, clothing, food grains and other necessities. For a family of six, which is the average size in rural Gujarat, the cost of adoption would be $4,500. Large-scale donors could even propose names for the new communities, the government document suggested.

Hard economic realities might be one significant factor why Gujarat, the western state that bore the brunt of the earthquake’s lethal fury, is so keen to seek assistance abroad. In recent years, it has been ravaged by two droughts, a cyclone and the heaviest rains in half a century, which dumped 23 inches on Ahmadabad in a single day.

Output in the agricultural sector has been dropping, and many textile mills, a key sector in Gujarat’s industry, have been closing.

According to state officials, as of Friday afternoon $763 million in earthquake relief and reconstruction aid had been pledged by foreign governments and international donors such as the World Bank and European Union. That is more than five times the sum allocated by the central government in New Delhi.

“There is no dearth of relief material. I thank the foreign governments for extending all help,” Prime Minister Vajpayee said earlier this week.

But the effectiveness of some of the aid is another matter. Two French rescue teams with sniffer dogs arrived in Ahmadabad on Wednesday, the same day their British counterparts decided that there was no more hope of finding survivors in the rubble and that it was time to pack up.

Aid convoys heading for the devastated Bhuj region often stop and give food, water and other relief supplies to victims they spot by the road, said Zia Choudhury, program coordinator for Oxfam, a British charity. Many times, he said, people in more dire need are passed by, “though they may live only a kilometer from the road.”

As for red tape, a notorious Indian scourge, exceptional measures have been taken to ease the way for aid from overseas. Processing of visa applications at Indian consulates has been accelerated, the External Affairs Ministry has issued a wish list for governments and private charities that want to help, and an Indian diplomat has been dispatched to Ahmadabad to smooth the way for arriving aid workers.