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THE NATIONPublished: June 26, 2013 00:00 IST | Updated: June 26,
2013 12:50 ISTUTTARAKHAND
Himalayan tragedy
The havoc that followed torrential rains in Uttarakhand had been
in the making for many years. Rampantconstruction and unmindful
digging and blasting of the hills had been going on, and the States
successivegovernments ignored the warning signs. By PURNIMA S.
TRIPATHI in New Delhi
HUNDREDS dead, thousands marooned, scores of villages washed
away, an unknown number of people still missing and the
eighthcentury Kedarnath temple inundated. The unusually early and
immensely heavy rains in Uttarakhand have devastated the hill State
tosuch an extent that it will take months for the government to
restore normal life. While official figures put the death toll as
on June 20at 150 odd, government officials in Uttarakhand said the
actual figure could be much worse as rescuers had still not been
able to reachall the affected areas and many villages had been
totally wiped out, with entire habitations disappearing into the
swirling waters of the
Bhagirathi, the Alaknanda and the Mandakini rivers. The
Kedarnath temple is in Rudraprayag district, and hundreds are
feared deadinside and around its premises. Also, as this is the
season in the State for the Char Dham yatra, some 75,000 people,
mostly pilgrims,are thought to be stranded.
We cannot put a figure to the number of casualties yet because
the details are still awaited. A disaster of this magnitude, so
early inthe season, was just not anticipated and it will take us
time to get our act together, said a senior government official.
The Stategovernment was obviously caught napping because cries for
help from those stranded went unheeded by the authorities. The
Centrehad to step in with the Army, the Indian Air Force (IAF), the
Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Border Roads
Organisation(BRO).
Instead of initiating immediate rescue efforts, as the tragedy
struck for the first time on June 14, the Chief Minister went
running toNew Delhi to seek help from the Centre. No wonder, once
he went back to the affected areas after four days of devastation,
he facedhostile people. A senior official in the Home Ministry
confessed to this correspondent: The political leadership in the
State simply failed to deliver.
Now, even as vast areas in the upper reaches of the State remain
unreachable, personnel of the Indian Army, the IAF, the ITBP andthe
BRO are struggling 24 hours a day to get the stranded people out.
The real extent of the destruction is yet to be understood.
From
whatever sketchy information is available, it is on a
mind-numbing scale. Devastation on this scale has never been seen
before because this is unusually early for such heavy rains and
flash floods to come, says Mallika Bhanot of Ganga Ahvaan,
anon-governmental organisation that has been campaigning for many
years now to save the Ganga from dams and tunnels built
forhydropower projects. According to Ganga activists, even though
the havoc wreaked by natures fury is unfortunate, it could be
agodsend if it jolts the government into doing something about
saving the ecology of the area from unchecked development
projectsthat are damaging the environment.
We have been saying that the Garhwal Himalayas, where the
maximum devastation has happened, are unstable hills that are still
inthe process of growing. Blasting them to make tunnels, dams,
roads and other such projects destabilises the entire mountain
range.The earth and rocks become loose, and when there are
torrential rains, they come tumbling down with a humongous amount
of slush, which destroys everything in its way. Stop digging, stop
blasting, stop this unmindful construction activity, otherwise the
e ntire hillState will be destroyed, Mallika Bhanot says.
Facts seem to prove her right. As early as 1991, when
Uttarkashi, on the banks of the Bhagirathi, was struck by a massive
earthquake,Jhamak, a village situated above the tunnel for the
Maneri Bhali I hydroelectric project, suffered more extensive
damage than other villages closer to the epicentre. In 2007, when
blasting for the Vishnuprayag hydroelectric project was under way,
many houses in
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Chai Gaon sank, many others developed cracks in their walls and
roofs, and many people had to move out of their houses. In 2008,
when Maneri Bhali II became operational, Dhanari Patti, a set of 13
adjoining villages, saw frequent landslides, and groundwatersources
in the area mysteriously disappeared. In 2010, there were heavy
rains and the Koteshwar powerhouse in Uttarakhands Tehridistrict,
then under construction, got flooded, causing damage to the tune of
Rs.100 crore. Once the Koteshwar dam was emptied afterthe rains
stopped, there were landslides in the adjoining areas. Also in
2010, the Loharinag Pala hydropower project, then
underconstruction, caused massive landslides in a nearby village,
Bhatwari, and sent many houses tumbling into the Bhagirathi
river.Subsequently, the work was stopped.
According to environmentalists from the area, nature has been
sending warning signals for many years, but the authorities chose
toignore them. Even last year, a cloudburst caused massive floods
in Uttarkashi district. The flood waters of the Asi Ganga river
enteredthe village of Barsu. Many lives were lost and there was
widespread destruction. According to activists, cloudbursts
becomecatastrophic in areas where there are hydropower projects and
where digging, blasting and tunnelling work is taking place.
Even though work has been stopped on many projects since 2010 on
directions from the Centre or the Supreme Court, the tunnelsthat
had been dug and the hills that had already been blasted are
destabilising the area and triggering further landslides. The
situationgets compounded when there is heavy rain, and now the
result is there for everyone to see, says Hemant Dhyani, a Ganga
activist, whohas been campaigning for long to stop big power
projects on the Ganga and its tributaries in the Himalayas. The
situation acquiresurgency because while only a few projects, such
as the Srinagar hydropower project, the Asi Ganga hydropower
projects and ManeriBhali I &II, are being executed or completed
on the Ganga, 70 more such projects are being proposed on its
tributaries such as the Alaknanda, the Bhagirathi and the
Mandakini. Activists ask why new projects are being considered when
those that have beencompleted have caused such demonstrable
damage.
Even though the Central government is aware of the gravity of
the situation and has initiated some half-hearted measures such
asdeclaring a 130-kilometre stretch of the Ganga, from Gangotri to
Uttarkashi, an eco-sensitive zone, logical follow-up
measuresforexample, putting an immediate end to all construction
activities or banning sand mining and blasting of hillshave not
been taken. And the Centres half-hearted measures are being
undermined by the State government. On May 6, Uttarakhand Chief
Minister Vijay Bahuguna led a delegation of Members of Parliament
and Members of the Legislative Assembly belonging to his party, the
Congress,to the Prime Minister to demand revocation of the
notification of the 130-km eco-sensitive zone.
Unfortunately, even declaring the Ganga the national river and
constituting the National Ganga River Basin Authority to
monitordevelopment in the Ganga river basin have been of no use
because the authority, which is led by the Prime Minister himself,
has notmet after a couple of initial meetings.
What, however, is even more unfortunate is the fact that though
everybody agrees it is important to save the Himalayan
region,nobody seems to be doing much. There have been two debates
in Parliament and all parties unanimously agreed that
rampantconstruction in the Himalayan region must stop, yet nothing
happened. All under-construction and proposed projects on the
Gangamust be stopped immediately, a minimum of 60 per cent of the
water from all power projects must be released into the river all
the year round, and proper planning for the conservation and
protection of the Himalayan region must be done, says Samajwadi
Party MP Reoti Raman Singh. A parliamentary forum led by him has
decided to mobilise people to direct action to save the Ganga.
It remains to be seen whether this initiative will deliver the
desired results, but this years floods must make the Centre sit up
anddecide not to fiddle with nature in this fragile ecological
region. Meanwhile, G.D. Agrawal, the former Indian Institute of
Technology professor whose fast in 2010 resulted in the declaration
of the eco-sensitive zone and the stopping of the Loharinag Pala
and otherpower projects, began another fast on June 13 to demand
that the Ganga be restored to its past glory.
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