Almost as a warning, a quake with less a thousandth the strength of last week's disaster, hit a town in the same province in early January. Residents there woke to discover that new, government-built housing -- was most damaged, clearly because the building code had been ignored. PNS contributor Reyes Sacharoff reports from Bombay, India.

His sentiments were echoed by an angry group of the development's residents who staged a demonstration calling attention to the mishap and demanding accountability from an administration perceived to be squandering taxpayers' money on substandard buildings.

The Indian public has been aware for some time now that shady building practices and substandard materials are a major problem in many Indian cities. A report printed in the "Daily Star" late in 1999 alleged that poor construction in the Bangladeshi town of Dhaka would lead to a disaster if an earthquake were to hit there.

"Mushrooming of high rises, buildings growing like concrete jungles under bad supervision, use of adulterated cement, poor construction material make the post-quake possibilities look more like a nightmare than anything else," architects and engineers interviewed by the Star said.

Researchers at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) say that they are preparing a database that would help prepare for a quake. The country lacks this rather badly, including the capability to respond to post-quake scenario above Richter scale impact of even 6.

On a more sinister note, Mafia-controlled construction and adulterated concrete probably caused much needless tragedy during the recent quakes. A report printed by the "Times of India" estimated that as much as 40 percent of all building in the city of Ahmedabad, where damage was particularly severe, is done illegally.

Deviations from codes include the particularly dangerous practices of adding stories to apartment blocks without strengthening the foundations, using cheap, adulterated materials, and the common practice of simply building without permits, utilizing cash so the city government looks the other way.

Local and Bombay-based "Mafia" organizations, linked to extortion, smuggling and other lucrative trades put up the money needed for construction, exploiting the ready availability of manual labor and the constant demand for housing caused by India's rapidly growing population.

Under such circumstances, buildings routinely go up with no emergency exits, without earthquake-safe foundations or secure electrical work. Use of cheap labor leads to some odd construction practices that skimp on materials in favor of expidience over sturdiness.

One such practice, is to build an apartment block starting with a concrete frame and filling in the walls with brick. The final product is sturdy enough under normal conditions, but a strong tremor can bring down the brittle stack like a house of cards. Added to this is the common practice of diluting cement with sand, making inferior, more brittle concrete.