(clockwise from top) Near Bachau salt-factories like that of Paras Mal Nahata (top) and some others are limping back to normalcy

Paras Mal Nahata still remembers the day the earth shook. At 8:46 am on January 26, 2001, the 46-year-old salt-factory owner was sipping tea at the Gujarat Chamber of Trade and Industry office in Bhuj, having just seen the Republic Day celebrations conclude. Then his world literally collapsed around him. His palatial house was reduced to a rubble, injuring five of his family members. His 1 lakh-tonne-a-year salt factory crumbled to the ground, burying eight workers. Nahata himself was stuck with 25 others in the chamber's office for half an hour before help arrived.

For the self-made entrepreneur it was a devastating blow. The Rs 10-crore business that he had built over 25 years had, in one fell swoop, been wrenched away from his hands. Life should have ended. But it didn't. Not for Nahata.

Today, he is raking in as much money as he used to prior to the Bhuj earthquake. Sure, his refinery is still defunct, but Nahata is making up by sourcing salt from other manufacturers in Bhuj and, thus, making good on his commitment to customer Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), which markets the Kisan Annapurna brand of salt. Simultaneously, he is talking to equipment suppliers to get his refinery back on its feet, and doing the rounds of banks and government offices to get clearances for his Rs 25-lakh loan.

A year after the massive Bhuj quake changed lives forever in one of India's richest states, this is what small and medium businessmen like Nahata are doing: using their native grit and ingenuity to rebuild their fortunes, with little help from the state government. That's not surprising, but this is: they are actually succeeding.

A recent government survey reveals that an impressive 80 per cent of the estimated 10,000 small and medium units that got shuttered-costing Rs 836 crore in business and damage-are fully back in business. That means the 50,000 artisans engaged in a range of industries including metal work, embroidery, and weaving and dyeing have once again a source of livelihood. Take the case of Morbi. Situated 200 kms from Ahmedabad, Morbi is a centre for sanitaryware and tiles, with nearly 600 units. Almost all of them either collapsed or sustained some kind of structural damage, costing the businessmen Rs 42 crore. Today, with the exception of a few, all the units are humming once again.

What made the recovery partly easy was the fact that none of the big industrial units, including those of Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum and HLL, suffered any significant damage. And where a big company did get hit-like IFFCO and IPCA in Kutch-the recovery has been quick and almost complete. At the iffco factory in Kandla, for instance, production was stopped for about two months, which contributed to the Rs 60 crore loss that the state-owned fertiliser manufacturer suffered because of the quake.

But now, it has rebuilt the damaged filler walls, conveyor belts, and the storage area, taking care to use quake-safe technology like mild steel structures. Even the Kandla port, which suffered damage to its oil jetties and five of the 10 berths, has managed to maintain its cargo throughput at 32.5 million tonnes (See Kandla Port: Ship-Shape). ''Gujarat was lucky that way (in that no big unit got damaged),'' says L. Mansingh, Principal Secretary (Industry and Mines), Gujarat.

Fighting Alone

Far from thanking such ''luck'', the local businessmen are actually angry with the administration for dragging its feet over relief and reconstruction. Says Baichur Bhai Patel, Proprietor, Super Tiles: ''We have been able to rise again only because we were able to support each other. The (state) government has not been with us at our moment of crisis.'' Although the state, with help from donors like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the Union Government, earmarked Rs 7,836 crore for relief and restoration, its response has, at best, been delayed and ineffective.

On paper, the state has launched schemes for almost all the industries affected, including the small-scale sector, rural artisans, salt workers, and agriculture, and tourism. Even the relief package has been structured in such a way that 60 per cent of it is by way of capital subsidy on restoration cost, interest subsidies, and sundry waivers-like the one for electricity. "No government has ever given money to rebuild factory sheds, machinery and equipment,'' says Sunil R. Parekh, the Confederation of Indian Industry's Senior Director in Gujarat.

May be. But rampant corruption and delays in disbursement of relief money have kept the benefits from reaching a large part of the affected industry. When BT visited Gujarat in early February this year, the state government had cleared only 2,361 applications of the 9,800-odd it had got for compensating damage to buildings, machinery, and goods-both finished and work in progress. For example, in Rajkot district, 3,200 units have been affected, but only 320 have been paid, and that too only part of the sum. Another 850 applications are pending, and as for the rest, they have been simply rejected.

KANDLA PORT: SHIPSHAPE

The Total cargo handled by the port has actually gone up this year Kandla port is the largest cargo-handling port in the country, and the January 26 earthquake severely damaged some of its facilities. The major damage was to the jetty-3,000 piles that support it had developed horizontal cracks. Out of the total 10 berths at the port, five were damaged. But despite the damage the port has stayed in business throughout. In fact, the total cargo handled so far this year is 32.5 million tonnes versus 32.3 million tonnes last year. ''Our cargo handling has been better this year,'' says Vipul Mitra, Deputy Chairman, Kandla Port Trust. Although the initial damage to the port was assessed at Rs 50 crore, it has been scaled down to Rs 30 crore. A Kandla Earthquake Relief Fund (KERF) was created to restore and reconstruct the infrastructure of Gandhidham-Adipur-Kandla complex. KERF is also undertaking restoration of social infrastructure-basically repairs and reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and colleges located at Gandhidham-Adipur-Kandla.

It's worse in Gandhidham, where of the 1,000 applications filed for compensation under the cottage industries scheme, only 12 have received money. Overall, the government's disbursements are a piffling Rs 23.34 crore.

Not that the government is not trying to speed up things. It has done away with its supervision of disbursements, allowing banks to make the call. But that's proving to be counter-productive. Reports of corruption and nepotism are rife. ''The documentation process is a long-drawn process and takes a lot of time,'' complains Ashok Chawla, President, Gandhidham Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Indeed. At a time when most of the people in Gujarat have lost everything in the quake, the banks are asking for a long list of documents, including those relating to property ownership and sales tax. That's proving to be a big problem for the small industries too, many of whom were not even registered. Some others are waking up to the fact that their insurance company may have stiffed them by renewing policies that did not provide for earthquake.

There are other problems, too. Gandhidham, which had a thriving hotel industry, lost at least 14 hotels to the quake and is yet to find its feet. The problem: the state government's relief policy covers small hotels, only nine of which had received 30 per cent of the promised amount a day before the quake's first anniversary. As for the bigger hotels, they get compensated only up to Rs 60 lakh, although the extent of the damage runs into crores of rupees.

OUT-OF-THE-BOX THINKING

Now steel containers double up as makeshift shops Bright orange coloured shipping-cargo boxes, 300 of them laid out in a row of 30 each, some sporting the GE Capital logo. It's not a dockyard and the nearest sea point is nearly 70 km away. Rather, this is the container market in Town Hall ground, Hungami Bazaar, in Anjar. 155 of these cargo containers, donated by GE, house everything from local handicraft to electrical items to tea and snacks to hair-cutting saloons. Some others are used as godowns. ''Most of us lost our shops in the quake and cannot rebuild in the original places because of restrictions till town planning is over,'' points out Jitender Bhardwaj, an electrical goods shop owner. The steel container, then, seemed like a convenient alternative. But business is dull because the market is out of the way. Most of the shopkeepers here are awaiting government subsidy. Meanwhile, their spirit and the gift from GE keep them going.

Therefore, their promoters have had to pay the repair bills out of their own pockets. ''It's strange that the government differentiates between Rs 60 lakh and Rs 1 crore, but treats Rs 1 crore and Rs 10 crore (investment) identically,'' says Chawla of the Gandhidham Chamber of Commerce.

And where the state is making efforts to help rebuild, it is either not doing its homework properly or coordinating inadequately with the multiple agencies involved. Artisans in towns like Anjar, Bachau, Rapar and Bhuj are facing a peculiar problem of not being able to reconstruct their worksheds because townplanning is still underway. Interestingly, though, there is a boom in construction business (prices of bricks have doubled), and jewellers and motor-cycle dealers are reporting record sales. Reason? People who got relief money are going shopping for big-ticket items.

For the not-so-lucky others, the only saving grace is the help they are getting from some NGOs and private sector agencies. For example, GE has donated containers to traders in Anjar, and the CII has launched income-generation schemes like biogas and vermi composting in 23 villages. The projects are being managed by the Jaipur-based Morarka Foundation.

But it is obvious that just one year isn't enough to rebuild a state like Gujarat-especially when for some the earthquake isn't over yet. ''For us the aftershock continues,'' says Madan Lal Patel, whose sanitaryware unit near Bachau hasn't seen a penny in compensation, even though the damage has been verified by Gujarat Industries Development Corporation at Rs 88 lakh.

Fortunately for Gujarat, there are many others like Nahata who will not be deterred by an indifferent state bureaucracy.