Challenges of BFIs in Cash Transfer Program to Earthquake Affected Victims: Lessons from Nepal’s Earthquake 2015

The government of Nepal successfully managed the post-earthquake housing reconstruction and rehabilitation endeavours in the aftermath of Nepal’s earthquake 2015, where more than 800,000 Earthquake affected households were identified as beneficiaries and provided financial assistance to build their house. The purpose of this research is to explore the challenges faced by the Banks and Financial Institutions (BFIs) during the cash grant distribution procedures for the earthquake beneficiaries. This paper is prepared to explore the Government of Nepal’s private housing reconstruction initiatives as an effort to cope with the post-earthquake reconstruction and rehabilitation works and the role of BFIs in disbursing of the government’s conditional cash transfer program to the identified earthquake beneficiaries. The study had collected data from 16 BFIs where 53 respondents participated in the study. It is based on the qualitative design because structured interview was conducted to collect the data. The findings show that private housing reconstruction endeavours focusing on the cash transfer programs of the GoN were more effective, where 99% of the beneficiaries received the 1st Tranche as of June 2021. Though, there were several challenges shared by the respondents during the grant transfer mechanism such as human resource management, lack of financial literacy and understanding of bank-related services, lack of adequate coordination among the concerned stakeholders, merger and acquisition of BFIs, beneficiaries’ ownership/nominee transfer, cash management, mismatch of the beneficiaries name, and reconciliation and data verification.The study would be crucial to learn important lessons from Nepal’s post-earthquake reconstruction for future disaster resilience activities

Remembering Nepal Earthquake of 2015 and Updating Post-earthquake Reconstruction

Nepal earthquake of 2015, a massive earthquake that struck near the city of Kathmandu (Gorkha) in central Nepal on April 25, 2015. Nearly 9,000 people were killed, many thousands more were injured, and more than 600,000 structures in Kathmandu and other nearby 31 districts were either damaged or destroyed. The earthquake was felt throughout central and eastern Nepal, much of the Ganges River plain in northern India, and northwestern Bangladesh, as well as in the southern parts of the Plateau of Tibet and western Bhutan.

Croatia’s progressives could make gains in big cities

Significance In the first round of mayoral, municipal and regional elections on May 16, voters in Croatia’s larger cities and urban centres tilted towards challengers. This year’s local polls present a much better chance of political renewal than several recent national votes. Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek are electing new mayors, as incumbents are not standing for re-election. Impacts Mozemo!’s programme for Zagreb will focus attention on green energy, digital economy, health, culture and post-earthquake reconstruction. Challenger candidates would cut public-sector jobs to reduce city budgets, but it is unclear whether this will be followed through. A victory for Ivica Puljak in Split could boost centrist politics at national level and start dismantling HDZ dominance in Dalmatia. The election of an independent mayor in Vodnjan backed by local IT giant Infobip is a warning for the Istrian Democratic Assembly party.

Resilience in Postdisaster Reconstruction of Human Settlement

Disaster resilience is an ongoing learning process for individuals, families, communities, and society in general to prepare for, respond to, adapt to, and recover from disaster events. This capacity requires a synthesis of multiple elements, including natural, built, social, cultural, economic, and political environments. Architects are on the front line to facilitate postdisaster reconstruction of human settlement, overseeing the quality of structural and infrastructural systems to better support the various social and humanitarian recovery efforts. From the architectural perspective of disaster research and practice, this chapter examines various aspects of building resilience in human settlement. Using the post-Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction initiative in China as an example, this chapter illustrates how the lack of balance among different societal factors (such as social, economic, and cultural) in built environment reconstruction directly damages other aspects of recovery, which significantly delays the capacity-building process of resilience.

Kawabata Yasunari’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa and the Narrative of the Present

This chapter investigates the engagement of Kawabata Yasunari's novel The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa with the language of earthquake reconstruction as it reached a climax in the late 1920s. In the latter half of the decade, the major Japanese newspapers sought to track the progress of post-earthquake reconstruction efforts through a language of science and objectivity. These reports collectively announced and anticipated the finalization of these efforts in the spring of 1930 when municipal and national government bureaus had planned an extravagant festival to celebrate the successful renovation of the “imperial city.” The serialization of Kawabata's novel spanned the time period both before and after this festival with a suggestive hiatus during the few months in which the festival actually took place. The novel assimilated the language of this mass media reportage, reproducing statistical analyses and even reprising some of the exact language being used to describe the new bridges and parks. But the story is rendered through a kaleidoscopic narrative that shuffles and reshuffles a bric-a-brac of details and events into momentary patterns of coherence. Ultimately, Kawabata's novel subverts national attempts to suppress the traumas of the recent past, insisting on an alternate way of narrating the psychology of the city.