Heed the Cry of the Hills

Land subsidence and cracks appearing in around 700 houses in Joshimath during the course of the second week of the year, has come as a grim reminder that warnings pertaining to damage to the environment can be disregarded only at the cost of human lives and habitations.

Studies had pointed out that the pilgrim centre that serves as a gateway to more important pilgrim centres such as Badrinath and Kedarnath is perched on fragile hills, and development works deploying heavy machinery can lead to catastrophes. An ecological assessment report submitted by the Mishra Committee in 1976 had stated that the town is located on a deposit of sand and stones piled up due to a previous landslide. Floods due to a glacial burst in February 2021 and intense rainfall on October 22 should have served as alarms about the fragility and instability of the hills.

Nearly 130 lives were lost and a wide swathe of infrastructure was knocked off by the gushing water. Reports had warned that the town was highly vulnerable to seismic activity and was categorised under Zone V and VI. Even as early as 2009, a huge discharge of water at the rate of 800 litres per second had led to the development of cavities underneath, causing apprehensions with regard to subsidence of the land.

Experts had related the water discharge to the ground aquifers getting punctured due to the use of heavy machinery while undertaking tunnel boring. The fragile hills have been bearing the brunt of huge development projects during the last decade. First among them is the 520 megawatt Tapovan hydropower station coming up at Vishnugad across the Alaknanda river, necessitating huge civil works, cutting of hill slopes and construction of barricades for the reservoir.

The second pertains to the plan to connect the small town with the over-800-kilometre Char Dham Expressway linking various pilgrim centres. Both have entailed massive excavation work and displacement of rocks and blasting of hills. Vibrations radiating from work on the 6-km Helang-Marwari Bypass coming up around the town have aggravated the situation of the quakeprone region sending shockwaves among the hills destabilised due to deforestation and widespread construction.

The town with a population of around 23,000 people was taking a heavy load of hotels, lodges, resorts, vehicles as also the infrastructure to house pilgrims, trekkers and tourists, all contributing to worsening of the ecological balance of the hills, which often take intense and focused rainfall. Over and above these, the town subsists upon a rudimentarily developed sewage system that 90 per cent of the homes have not linked to. They essentially use soak-pit latrines, which leads to soil erosion, pushing down the soil further, and consequent subsidence of land.

The authorities have though pressed the National Disaster Relief Force and are providing alternative accommodation to inmates of damaged houses and have also ordered demolition of certain highly vulnerable buildings, they will do well to order a fresh assessment of threat posed by the ecological disequilibrium and plan long-term remedial action to see that the damage is not irreversible. The response to the call of the hills is to see that development never overlooks the urges of nature.