NEW DELHI, January 22: India which produces the largest amount of seismic activity in the world and has suffered Rs 3,500 crores worth of damage in the last two earthquakes alone, does not have a seismological policy or research institute, says an expert."The damage in the Killari earthquake in 1993 and in Jabalpur last year amounts to Rs 3,500 crores -- five times the expenses incurred in holding the current elections. Yet India does not have a seismological policy or research institute," Janardhan G Negi, scientist emeritus at the Hyderabad-based National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) told PTI. The country is all the more vulnerable because of its increasing infrastructure and population, he said. But unlike Japan, China, and even Nepal, that have institutes to study quakes, India does not have any such laboratory, NEGI said.
Even the appointment of a chief seismologist recommended by the B K Rao committee set up after the Killari quake, has not been effected, he pointed out. Negi, who
predicted that Jabalpur could be the site for a major quake as early as 1993, four years before the city was rocked, warned that the north-eastern region could be the next "hot spot" for a quake, measuring 7.5 on Richter scale.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
