Dateline: April 19

A year on on from Nepal’s earthquake, there’s little progress in rebuilding physically or politically.

Tonight on SBS Dateline meets the people trying to move on, in a country more vulnerable than ever.

Immediately after the quake, the world rushed to help in the rescue effort and almost $4 billion was pledged in aid.

But with a government infrastructure as shaky as the poorly-constructed buildings, efforts to rebuild have been hindered by bureaucracy and political power play.

“The donors failed us, the government failed us,” Gagan Thapa tells Tuesday’s Dateline. “Despite that, we are surviving, we are living with hope.”

He’s a rising star in Nepal’s ruling coalition, frustrated that so much aid money went into a central fund that’s only recently authorised rebuilding.

When Aaron Lewis arrives a year on from his last visit, he finds a country trying to modernise at a time when people are still living amidst the rubble, waiting for help.

“People have learnt a lot,” Krishna Dharel says. Dateline filmed with him last year in his badly damaged six-storey building. Forty to 50 people died in his neighbourhood alone.

Now his home only has three floors, but it’s been made safe thanks to the country’s new building code.

“People have started to sense that it’s not earthquakes which kill people, it’s the poorly built structures which kill people,” he says.

Kamal Bhattarai is a reporter for the Kathmandu Post. He looks back on the past year that also saw Nepal introduce a new constitution – after eight years of negotiation.

“After the constitution passed, there were high expectations that it would bring political stability, but that really didn’t happen,” he says.

“Almost half of the population living in Nepal’s southern belt didn’t take the ownership of the constitution, which invited political instability in the region.”

What if another earthquake hit Nepal now? Could the country cope?

9.30pm tonight on SBS.