Political
Diary
New Delhi, 9 February
2021
Death Ravages
Uttarakhand
DISASTER WAITING TO STRIKE
By Poonam I Kaushish
It was a tragedy waiting to strike, of anger
and anguish, despair and desperation, morbidity and mortality. Words fail one once
again as India was rocked by a glacier burst in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district
Tapovan-Reni area which have left a trail of death and destruction, whereby
over 200 are feared missing, 11 bodies have been recovered so far and many
still stuck, houses damaged resulting in
massive flooding in Dhauliganga and Alaknanda rivers. While some feel
it’s God’s way of course correction many blame the Government.
As villagers grapple with the calamity our netas cursorily went through the ritual political circus preoccupied as they are with
the continuing Government-farmer logjam, Opposition tearing into the Centre’s
handling of the situation in Parliament and the BJP dubbing criticism as
international conspiracy.
All lament the deaths. Prime Minister Modi
keeps track, Home Minister Shah reviews the situation regularly, Opposition
leaders parrot grief and vouch to help people, and State Chief Minister Rawat announces
ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakhs to kin of those who lost their lives. The Government
sets up a crisis management team. Rations are air dropped. Everyone is satisfied that they have done
their bit, while the military, Air Force, NDRF and ITBP carry out rescue
operations.
Raising a moot point: Does anyone really care? Given that cloudbursts,
landslides and flash floods are an annual affair in Uttarakhand and other hill
States wherein thousands die, lakhs are rendered homeless and property worth
crores is lost. Why does the Government only react after people have lost their
lives?
Shockingly, most leaders are unaware that
the Himalayan area is the least monitored region which only underscores how
vulnerable we could be. So why can’t the
powers-that-be implement basic suggestions? Why do they not develop a long-term
response to cloud-bursts, earthquakes and floods, which are annual predictable
crisises?
Moreover, why do politicians
feel that merely sanctioning monies will solve the problem? Little do they
realize that, neither the Central Disaster Management Authority nor the State
Disaster Boards implement any project properly. Millions of words have been
written and millions more will continue to be written. But it’s like water off
a duck’s back.
Think last year a PIL against the Rishi Ganga
(Tapovan
Hydro-Electric Power Dam) power project was filed
in the Uttarakhand High Court alleging unfair and environmentally
hazardous practices by the private firm involved in the project which had
damaged the sensitive areas around the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve and Valley
of Flowers but the authorities exonerated the firm.
Worse, it is a
tell-tale of total apathy of an insensitive Administration under various State Governments
that did not spare even ecologically sensitive zones to satiate their greed
thereby making them more vulnerable to climate change. Of rulers who ignore experts
who in turn, blame it on lessons not learnt by successive Administrations,
given Uttarakhand’s history of natural disasters.
In 2013 the State was
rocked by devastating flash floods in Kedarnath which left a trail of death and
destruction, over 5000 feared dead with scores of bodies strewn across the
40,000 sq km affected area and the temple town in ruins.
In 1999 an earthquake
hit Chamoli resulting in landslides and changes in the water flow. A year
earlier Pithoragarh’s Malpa village was wiped out in a landslide killing 300
with resultant debris blocking the Sharda river and in 1991 an earthquake
killed over 1000 people alongside abnormal rise in temperature, reoccurring
landslides, cloud bursts and flash floods in vast regions of Tehri, Pauri,
Chamoli, Uttarkashi and Almora. Yet nobody paid heed.
Add to it the
mismatch between the haste in commissioning projects in the ecologically
fragile zone has rung alarm bells among glaciologists as there is every chance
such incidents will only become more common in the Himalayas. Given that it
occurred in winter, it would signal that global warming was a major
contributing factor as winters in the northwest Himalaya have been getting
warmer and wetter in the last 25 years according to scientists from the Snow
and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) Chandigarh. A view echoed by
Bengaluru’s Divecha Centre for Climate Change as average temperature had risen
by 0.66º C since 1991 – an increase much higher than the global average.
In fact, scientists accuse
the Government of transforming the whole region into a resource frontier devoid
of any ecological value, treating it as a barren wilderness that could be the
source of supposedly low-carbon energy. Discounting that infrastructure and
power projects affect the region first when they are constructed --- and then when
they come in the way of powerful natural forces. Plainly, high-velocity flows
turn into disasters when they have to mediate with the built-environment
present in the way.
Pertinently, a major
post-2013 consensus was to insist on appropriate land-use planning and
watershed management practices for the Uttarakhand Himalaya and to adopt ‘best
practice’ norms for constructional projects --- both to minimise damage to
ecosystems. But State and Central administrators chose to throw caution to the
winds and grant approvals to dozens of hydroelectric projects unsuited to a
terrain that is already vulnerable to unpredictable natural hazards.
Recall, in 2014, a
Supreme Court constituted high-powered committee had recommended scrapping of
23 out of 24 hydel projects slated for construction above an altitude of 2,000
metres in the aftermath of the 2013 floods but for reasons best known to it the
Government ignored it.
Undoubtedly, the
Chamoli disaster is a wakeup call of our obtuse developmental priorities and
proves our inability to sustainably develop ecologically sensitive zones. It is
another alert against unregulated construction throughout Uttarakhand’s river
valleys and floodplains. The Government needs to highlight its priorities,
formulate policies based on needs and find solutions. Time it spent more
resources in monitoring the region better so that it has more information about
the change process whereby it could develop better adaptation practices.
The powers-that-be
need to involve experts and environmentalists with a genuine track record who
would evaluate the ecological problems in the Himalayan region, rethink the
current development model, study its context and be involved in decision and
policy-making. With special emphasis on problems created by burgeoning
population and its impact on the local eco-system, growth of hap-hazard
housing, environmental insanitation and
decay.
It is now imperative
to weigh up our management strategies, see how effective they are, establish
responsive early-warning systems including radar-based technologies along-with approaches
to safeguard the environment, build infrastructure, improve service delivery,
establish close links between research and service with the aam aadmi at the centre of development.
The writing is
clearly on the wall. Development cannot happen at the
cost of the environment. Our polity needs to pull up their bootstraps
and focus on long-term rather than short-term planning. One needs neither a
bleeding heart nor blindness to know what should be done. For if we still elect
to do nothing about disaster it only holds out promises of more misery, more
wrenching news bulletins and more cries. Bringing to mind words from an old
comic: We have seen the enemy and it is us. ---- INFA
(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)
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