What to Read in The Hindu Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: Quakes may well sharpen India’s seismic readiness

Context

India must shake itself out of its perilous innocence and be prepared for the reality beneath the earth’s crust.

 

Introduction

Two years ago, on February, 6, 2023, the people of Türkiye and Syria were jolted out of their sleep. At least 17,000 were killed, with their numbers mounting within minutes, as a great earthquake shook those countries in the early hours after 4 a.m., at 7.8 on a scale of 0 to 10. A second jolt came like a collaborator of the first, nine hours later, destroying whatever buildings stood on or around the scene of the first trauma.

Fault Lines

• Expression Usage: ‘Fault lines’ is an expression that we come across and use as we might ‘glaciers’or ‘deserts’. That is, without realising that it refers to an intensely volatile and totally unpredictable phenomenon, like the temper of the proverbial sleeping dragon or demon.
• Location and Structure: Fault lines lie between the 15 log-jammed major tectonic plateson which the earth’s thin crust sits.
• Dormancy: These lines can slumberfor decades, even centuries, quietly, one may say so ‘sweetly’, that their very existence can be forgotten by all except seismologists.
• Awakening and Impact: Until…the fault lines stir, rise, shakeand then go on to mutilate, destroy and kill whatever lies on and along those lines. Depending on the degree of the awakened one’s temper, the fury lasts or abates till such time as it lasts or abates.

 

Nature’s brewing tension

• Formation of the Himalayas: India’s Indian Platepressing onto the Eurasian Plate sculpted the Himalaya.
• Fault Line Location: The fault line involved runs right along the Great Himalayan Arcthat stretches from Kashmir to the North East. It also implicates adjacent tracts in Pakistan, the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Nepal, and Bhutan.
• Perception vs. Reality: We are but dimly aware of this. For those of us who do not live in those stunningly beautiful tracts, that region means and evokes snow, pure air, clear waters, holidays, and leisure. But we must know, must understand, the concurrent ‘scene’which is about potential rubble, ravaged hillsides, mutilated river courses, and trauma.
• Seismologists’ Warning: We must shake ourselvesout of our dangerous illusion, our perilous innocence about the reality beneath our feet. Seismologists tell us that the two great tectonic plates, the Indian and the Eurasian, have now slept their really deep sleep long enough and that the built-up pressure inside their folds cannot be expected to hold its tension much longer.
• Recent Earthquake: Sure enough, a little over just one month ago, on January 7, 2025, at 9:05 a.m., an earthquake measuring Mw 7.1struck Shigatse city of the Tibet Autonomous Region of Southwestern China. Between 126 and 400 people were reported killed and 338 were injured.
• Impact Beyond Borders: Unmindful of national bordersand oblivious of lines of actual or notional control, the quake made itself felt in Nepal and in Northern India.

 

In the media

• Earthquake impact: If the epicentrehad been located closer to India, the damage could have been manifold.’ It added, ‘Earthquakes in the Himalayas evoke a special kind of dread in the country.’
• Need for planning and action: Dread they do cause. But have they occasioned the kind of intense and urgent planningthat is needed? Have they occasioned national alertness, resolve, and action?
• Challenges in prediction: The Editorial noted, ‘Predicting the day and timeis outside the ambit of current science.’ The best hope is insulation against projected damage.
• Infrastructure concerns: Infrastructure development in the Himalayan regionmust consider landslides, glacial lake outbursts, and the fragility of the region. Every project, whether a power plant or dam, must factor in the imminence of a major earthquake.
• Building code adherence: The Editorial emphasized adhering to building codes, not just in the Himalayasbut also in the Indo-Gangetic plains, to limit damage. However, the earthquakes that shook Delhi on February 17and Siwan in Bihar within four hours suggest that adherence alone is not enough.
• Public reaction and social media: Some people in Delhifelt they had never experienced such a strong tremor. One post said, “today Delhi and Bihar, tomorrow West Bengal…”
• Government responsibility: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, just back from the United States, urged people to stay calm and take precautions. However, real precautionsmust come from the government and the state.
• The cost of preparedness: We are now in a contingency that must consider: high probabilityof earthquakes, high financial and physical costs if preventive measures are taken, and incalculably higher costs if they are not.
• Insurance analogy: The principle is the same as in any insurance arrangement: the higher the risk, the higher the premium.

 

Time to act, and quickly

• Engineering regulations in seismic zones: We need, not just quickly, not just urgently but quite immediately, to provide for state expense on, first, fore-closing and rolling back engineering enterprisesthat weaken the earth’s crust, especially rocky terrain, in India’s seismic risk zones in the ascending calibration of II, III, and IV.
• Enhanced seismic zonation maps: Second, super-imposing on the existing seismic zonation maps, which are really x-ray plates, new carefully drawn mapped-plans for the protection(which can include evacuations, demolitions, and re-building) of highly vulnerable structures, and assessing the seismic status of high follow-on secondary risk structures such as like hydel projects and atomic reactors (Narora in Uttar Pradesh is located in Zone IV).
• Seismic building insurance: Third, setting up a seismic building insurance schemewherein premiums for insuring against collapse can be offered and encouraged.
• Cost assessment for disaster response: Fourth, doing an assessment of the costs of rescue, temporary sheltering, and rehabilitation zone-wise, of dislocated populations.
• International collaboration: Fifth, fast-forwarding collaboration with countries that are experts in the field on earthquake anticipation through sensorsand architecture nostrums. This would involve expenses on hiring consultants.

 

Conclusion

All this sounds grim. But we should tell ourselves that there is the ‘good news’ that we are, as of this moment, ahead of the big seismic shock that has been anticipated by seismologists. We are capable of planning with some composure, even as we recover from the shock of February 17, not in a post-shock trauma accompanied by fiscal crippling. And, we have an institutional advantage in the shape of a Ministry of Earth Sciences and a Disaster Management Authority waiting to be harnessed in any scheme towards seismic resistance. The ‘motto’ is brief: earthquakes are not to be prevented, they can scarcely be predicted, even in our age of Artificial Intelligence. But they can be prepared for. Is anyone doing that