SP SATI
The situation arising out of the recent events of alarming land subsidence in Joshimath is horrifying and it has opened up the old wounds again. This squid is a sad part of the Himalayan regions that they have to face a similar crisis year after year. The history of disasters is not new in this part of the country. With the advent of man on the Himalayas about three and a half thousand years ago, he must have had to contend with the sensitive ecology of the Himalayas, its active tectonics and severe climatic extremes. But a paradoxical aspect of all this is that with the development of human civilization the number and frequency of the disasters in the Himalayan regions have increased instead of decreasing. No matter how much we like to ignore it by adopting the Ostrichian attitude, there is a big question mark on the validity of the model of development adopted by us. What is happening in Joshimath was in the making for more than half a century. In fact, what is happening in the Himalayan regions including Uttarakhand in the last decades is not development; it is growth but unplanned and uncontrolled growth which is suicidal. There is a human aspect of development which is raising the standard of human life in a scientific and planned manner. In the case of Joshimath, we have shot ourselves in the foot by not implementing the report of the Mishra Committee -constituted on the problem of landslides in Joshimath which was submitted to the government in 1976 -in its letter and spirit. The question of Joshimath is colossal because it is a historical, mythological and cultural city and because this crisis is on the life, lifestyle and future of about forty thousand people residing there and nearby areas. The problem is that it is not only Joshimath itself which is getting ruined but there are many towns and hundreds of villages in Uttarakhand that are in a situation similar to Joshimath. This crisis is looming large not only in Uttarakhand but in hundreds of settlements of the entire Himalayas. It is also a fact that the causes of this looming crisis are more or less the same. It has now become known to all that scientists had told in the past that Joshimath is a town situated on the debris of an old landslide. The history of landslide incidents here is very old. There is a reference in history that in the seventh century AD, the Katyuri dynasty kings made this city their capital. But due to a landslide here in the tenth century, the Katyuris shifted their capital from here. In 1939, Swiss scientists Heim and Gansser also wrote in their book “Central Himalaya” that Joshimath is situated on the debris of old landslides. Following the incidents of landslides, a committee headed by the then Garhwal Commissioner Mahesh Chandra Mishra submitted a report to the Uttar Pradesh government in 1976, suggesting that construction activities in Joshimath need to be heavily regulated. Apart from this, it was also advised not to tamper with the big boulders located in the debris. A complete ban on blasting and felling of trees was recommended. However all these suggestions were put in the cold storage? Uncountable construction works were done in Joshimath; indiscriminate tampering was done on the mountain slopes. Major establishments of Army and ITBP were set up. Auli became the new tourist hub and there too the slopes were heavily tampered with. No arrangement for domestic water drainage was made in the entire Joshimath. Apart from this, the projects that the governments have started in this area in recent years and are in the process of construction have also proved to be inauspicious for these temporary shields. It also needs to be noted here -as has already been said- Joshimath is not the only town which is on the verge of collapse. There are dozens of such towns across the Himalayas and especially in Uttarakhand which are veritable time bombs. The case of Uttarakhand is also special because according to geologists, it is the region in the entire Himalayas where earthquakes of magnitude more than eight are most likely to occur. For this reason, geologists call this area the Central Seismic Gap. And to compound the problem even the simple standards have not been followed in the construction of buildings in the hilly areas of Uttarakhand. The situation is more or less similar in areas like Dehradun and Haldwani. In the 2015 Nepal earthquake, it was seen that though the epicentre of the earthquake was in the mountains in the north most of the destruction happened in the lowlands. It means that in the event of a major earthquake, there is a possibility of widespread destruction in the cities of Dehradun, Kotdwar, Rishikesh, Haldwani, Ramnagar, Champawat etc. A large number of school students were killed in the earthquake that hit the Bhuj city of Gujarat on 26 January 2000. Schools and colleges are most sensitive in the mountains of Uttarakhand. Most of the schools are hazardous due to unsafe location and shoddy constructions. Poor health services, lack of knowledge to deal with disasters, uncontrolled and unplanned growth of settlements, make Uttarakhand overall a very unsafe area. There are hundreds of villages for which various studies and surveys have recommended that they be rehabilitated at safer places immediately. We have found in our studies that dozens of towns and hundreds of villages are under landslide prone conditions. There are many settlements in the twenty-two river valleys from Kali in the far East to Kalindi (Yamuna) in the west, which are in sensitive situations from the point of view of landslides both naturally and also due to human activities. In the last twenty-two years, 45,000 km of roads were constructed in Uttarakhand and it is a common knowledge that standards are grossly ignored in the construction of roads. I estimate that in the last two decades, at least 3000 villages and towns have come under the threat of landslides due to the construction of roads alone. Apart from this, the bad effects of the Hydropower project and the railway project have added new dimensions to this problem. Overall, Uttarakhand is standing on the verge of irreparable damage due to extremely unplanned development. There is also no possibility that the governments would take some major corrective measures after taking lessons from the Joshimath tragedy. If we did not take any lessons from the Kedarnath disaster of 2013 and from the Rishiganga disaster of 2021, then what lesson will we take from the current crisis in Joshimath?
The author is a geologist and is head, department of Basic and Social sciences, Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali Uttarakhand University of Horticulture and Forestry, Bharsar. Views expressed are personal
