The Disaster of Joshimath
13th April, 2023 marks the 100th day of the protest movement of the locals of Joshimath against the continuous appearance of fissures and land subsidence in that area and the indifference of the Government to the entire issue. Till now some hundreds of families are living in temporary camps. People are voicing for their permanent rehabilitation and compensation. The locals have formed the ?Joshimath Bachao Sanghrash Samiti? for this purpose. Though the local residents have for long been demanding security measures along with fast rehabilitation to the government and administration, neither the government nor the administration has shown any initiative on their part so far (Joshimath crisis: 100th day of protests by locals, Times of India).
Joshimath is really in grave danger. The locals are suffering from deep rooted anxiety after the emergence of extensive deep fissures on the roads, in their small farm lands and homes. The entire region is sinking, that is there is a subsidence of the land. The land has subsided by 5.4 centimeters only in 12 days during last December and by 6 to 6.5 centimeters during the preceding 18 months. The groundwater has reduced significantly in farm lands due to the fissures and subsidence of the land. As a result lot of vegetable crops are withering before harvest. Many houses are not inhabitable due to the cracks. Almost 700 families out of the 4500 houses in that area have been compelled to vacate their homes and leave their small farm lands, which had been their only source of livelihood, just to save themselves from the collapse of houses. The locals are indeed in deep distress.
But is this a new phenomenon? For the past few years natural disasters like sudden cloudburst, flooding and landslide are on the rise continuously not only in Joshimath, but also in different places of the western Himalayan region. Along with Joshimath, the areas like Karnaprayag, Uttarkashi, Nainital, Pithoragarh are also witnessing land subsidence in various degrees. Can we forget the sudden disastrous flooding of Kedarnath in 2013? The incident claimed at least 5000 human lives. In 2021, a sudden inundation in Rishiganga had totally devastated the adjacent habitations and the hydroelectric power plants. More than 200 people died and two hydroelectric power plants were severely damaged as a consequence. In between, in 2016, there had been a huge landslide in the Pithoragarh region. According to the information provided by the Disaster Management Department of the state, at least 5731 people lost their lives and 2000 were injured due to natural calamities, mainly sudden flood and landslide since the year 2000, which is much higher compared to other periods.
The major disaster that Joshimath faced was being anticipated for quite some time. When a tunnel cutting machine of the Tapovan-Bishnugarh hydroelectric project broke an aquifer in 2009, for over the next few weeks, some lakhs of litres of water had been spilling continuously. That was the time when the geologists had expressed their apprehension that this will lead to land subsidence. But despite this the act of drilling a 13.22 kilometers long tunnel below Joshimath for this project is still on.
On the other hand, the decision to construct the Chaar Dham Highway for facilitating travel across the four famous Hindu pilgrimages e.g. Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri that was initiated in 2016 by the Modi Government, has faced restrictions by a High Powered Committee of the Supreme Court on the felling of trees and construction of very wide roads. But still for the Helang Bypass under this same highway project, another big tunnel is being constructed on the way through the foothills of Joshimath.
Such breaking of hills and construction activities are going on in a region like Joshimath which itself is located on the weak foundations of rubble of stones and sand broken and accumulated due to landslides. Long back in the year 1886, a British expert had written that Joshimath is standing on a very weak foundation of broken stones and sand and therefore is very prone to experience land subsidence any time. Then in the 1970s, Joshimath was observed to have been sinking and cracks started occurring in several houses, following which the Central Government constituted the M.C. Mishra Committee in order to investigate the reasons for these. The report of this Committee repeated the same observation as the British expert that Joshimath is not standing on very solid, strong stones and the two rivers, Alakananda and Dhauliganga, flowing below this region are leading to continuous erosion of the sides of the hills as well as their banks thus enhancing the proneness of landslides. But still tunnels are being dug, hydroelectric power plants and highways are being constructed on such weak foundations, totally ignoring these warnings, the consequences of which we are witnessing in Joshimath today. These are the chief reasons for the distressed environment and situation in Joshimath.
If we carefully look at the entire Uttarakhand region, the reasons for these kinds of man-made disasters become more glaringly visible and the degradation of environment of entire Uttarakhand towards grave consequences becomes very explicit. Young mountains like the Himalayas, according to geographical history, are extremely sensitive and fragile. Moreover it is very earthquake prone. For quite obvious reasons, under the given situation, there had been various natural calamities in the past too. But they primarily resulted from natural reasons which could not be controlled. But due to disturbance in the environment-ecology balance, the way natural disasters are on the rise over the past few decades, it is not difficult to see that they are contributed by various human activities.
The way global warming has induced changes in the climatic conditions causing flood and untimely rain, the same is visible in this region. The geologists and environmental experts have held global warming responsible for the sudden, massive flood in Kedarnath in 2013. Their opinion is that due to global warming, glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, the snow-line in the Himalayas are retreating, thus causing a huge amount of snow to melt, which in turn is giving birth to glacial lakes in several parts of the hills. The Kedarnath incident in 2013 point to this which resulted from breaking of the side of such lakes leading to the landslide disaster. In this context it needs to be remembered that over the last few decades the incidence of melting of glaciers due to global warming has increased tenfold (glaciers in the Himalayas are melting at the fastest rate as shown by a survey - bangla.hindutantimes.com). Thus global warming resulting from the pollution caused by humans is creating the possibilities of Kedarnath like incidents of cloudburst and sudden flooding.
Another major reason is the massive amount of felling of trees from the surfaces of the hills. The famous Chipko Movement by the locals of Garhwal took place 50 years back as a protest against deforestation in that region after a massive flood. Still despite that Uttarakhand has been declared as one major hub of hydroelectricity generation and to build up hydroelectricity plants on one after another tributaries of Ganga a huge number of trees along the hill surfaces have been felled.
In addition to this, the Governments and ruling classes are coming up with various construction plans which are perpetually damaging the environment. Digging of tunnel for the Tapovan Hydroelectric Project has clearly shown how creation of tunnels and changing the course of a river to make it flow through a tunnel can lead to adverse consequences. Besides these, increasing density of population, construction of multistoried buildings on the hills for the purposes of business and tourism are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem and environment of the hilly region. Quite naturally this has disturbed the environmental balance and created a consequent chaos.
The constructions of roads, highways through the valleys and beside the river tracks have involved digging up river sides for which the many rocks and boulders which occupy positions at the bases of mountains and are the main bearers of their weights have been crushed. Moreover dynamites have been extensively used to break hills for drilling tunnels through them. The tremor that these generated has disturbed the alignments of rocks thus disturbing the balance and leading to large scale occurrence of cracks here and there. The proneness of landslide is also on the rise.
Further the huge amount of remains and rubbish thus generated are being deposited in rivers or along their banks. This is reducing the depth necessary for flow of the rivers and thus whenever there is slightly heavy rain, the rivers being unable to carry the extra water are flooding the villages on their two sides (Geologist explains why Uttarakhand tragedy was man-made _ India News - Times of India; Greed sank Joshimath. I saw it happen?Shruti Jain; Ravi Chopra on Joshimath: ?Nature has decided that enough is enough?- Rajat Ghai).
The question may arise whether at all any developmental projects for this region can be conceived of. Does development necessarily imply disaster in this region? Certainly that is not the case, though this involves a lot of complexities and exercising a lot of care and preventive measures. Keeping the specific topography and nature of this region in mind, appropriate technology, scientific tools and measures can be applied though they may not be completely fool-proof. The main question is, is the Government really interested to adopt the appropriate technology that addresses the issues of environment and ecology specific to this region?
For example, let us consider the issue of highway construction. The roads for vehicles are constructed along the sides of the hills through the river valleys. To protect the slopes of the hills and the sides of the rivers, no construction is permitted at least within 200 meters from the sides of the rivers. Due to Government?s persistent appeals, this was reduced to 100 meters. But even that is not followed in actual implementation. So as an obvious consequence of this, the rocks and boulders at the foothills have been further loosened. The number of places prone to landslide is thus increasing.
The Government and governmental organisations have assumed the same role in case of the Chaar Dham highway project. It is a plan of building a 889 kilometer long highway through the hills. There was no possibility of getting a permission for such a long construction due to environmental concerns of this region. So did the Government amend its plans keeping the environmental concerns of the scientists in mind? Not at all. Rather the Government adopted a roundabout way to implement the original plan. Completely ignoring the environmental issues, the Government, instead of showing it as one big project, decided to show it as a conglomeration of 53 small projects and thus secured permission from the Ministry of Environment. The National Highway Authority of the Central Government wanted to construct a 12 meters wide road. When there was litigation due to apprehensions regarding this, the Supreme Court put an injunction on the construction of such a wide road and large scale felling of trees for that. The experts had suggested that in that region, keeping parity with the prevailing situation in that area, a road of 5 and half meters width can be constructed. But the Government then shifted its focus from the issue of Chaar Dham Pilgrimage and instead raised concerns about the security of the borders which has a direct bearing on national security. It reported to the High Powered Committee constituted by the Supreme Court that the Ministry of Defense has themselves suggested that a 7 meter wide road will be sufficient. But in spite of all this within a few months again, the Government started working on construction of the 12 meter wide road which was the original plan in the Chaar Dham Pilgrimage Project and thus took a decision to cut down as many as 8000 deodar trees.
The expert committee of the Supreme Court had put a limit on the number of pilgrims to 5000 per day keeping the capacity of the region to carry the tourists and pilgrims in mind. But the Uttarakhand Government has raised that limit to 9000 too. Despite that fact that the adverse consequences of the large number of tourists and pilgrims in that hilly region is repeatedly being in discussion, still the Hindutvavadi politics driven Government is recklessly going on with the huge advertisements of and arrangements for the Chaar Dham Project.
Due to environmental concerns, the hotels and other housing constructions are to be made at lower altitudes in that region, but who cares? The administration is silent and the businessmen are only interested in profits at any cost. The roads have been continuously widened and now the construction of a highway for round the year transportation is on the way. Already 200 places along the track where the hills have been blasted and broken for the highway project have experienced landslides.
Were the sanctions followed while drilling tunnels in Joshimath itself for the NTPC Tapovan-Vishnugarh project? No, not at all. When asked whether the use of explosives was put on hold to protect the region from cracking and landslides, the Government replied that no explosive was ever used, only tunnel boring machines were in operation. But the truth is that though on one side the tunnel boring machines were used, on the other side dynamite was applied. In a place like Joshimath that stands on such a fragile foundation, this required extra precaution. But the government agencies themselves did not exercise any precaution and did not abide by the legal restrictions. On the contrary they tried to keep the entire issue under wraps. In fact, since there have been many accidents over the years while pursuing the hydroelectricity generation project, whether the project at all should be implemented required serious consideration. The Joshimath incident provides evidence that the concerns of the scientists were actually justified.
The same thing is observed at the higher altitudes of the Himalayas where the glaciers are large in numbers and nature is more fragile. One after another hydroelectricity generation projects are being constructed on the tributaries of Ganga even in that region. From the very beginning the scientists had expressed concerns regarding these. After the flood disaster at Kedarnath in 2013, the Supreme Court had imposed bans on the construction of hydroelectricity projects even before the reconsideration of the Ministry of Environment. Even the expert committee of the Ministry of Environment identified 23 out of the 24 projects as dangerous for the environment. Despite that the Government and its Environment Department have resorted to various tricks. Pressure was built up by 6 private project developers that they had got permission prior to the Kedarnath incident, citing which the Government decided to constitute a committee for reconsideration. These projects did not get approval through that, and so the Government constituted another committee involving the expert who had been the only one to give a verdict in favour of the private project developers and got the projects sanctioned bypassing earlier restrictions. Another point to be noted in this context is that, in 2011 there was a PIL complaining about the irregularities in the plan of 56 hydroelectricity projects. However, quite peculiarly just one day before the hearing, the Government declared all these projects cancelled. But when it was enquired through an RTI exactly how many hydroelectricity projects were planned to be launched, no definite information was available. Disobeying all concerns, in 2013 the Government, as revealed by a RTI, had planned more than 700 and according to Government's data in 2016 there was a plan of constructing 450 hydroelectricity projects.
What does the action of repeated bypassing of the legal restrictions by the Government prove? Keeping the environmental sensitivity of that region in mind, construction, highways and hydroelectric projects can be designed. A stable development of the region was perfectly feasible by working out the appropriate limits and boundaries compatible with the environment of the region. In many cases, not just the experts, even the government agencies had taken decisions to work within those boundaries. But the Government and its ministries responsible for the overall planning and supervision ultimately at the ground level never cared for these and using various legal loopholes, at times changing the committees, or changing the rules, at times even raising new alibis and thus violating all norms related to precautions and care, have continued with their ploy. If the Government and its agencies themselves behave like this, the private companies with contracts would definitely never care for any bans or sanctions. What emerges is that the issue of designing a project keeping the environmental concerns in mind is being deliberately bypassed.
Not just these, the Government has never stepped back even from distorting information for hiding the incidents of violation of rules and regulations. For example the report based on the ISRO satellite image which captured the land subsidence in Joshimath was quickly removed from public view by a quick order from the National Disaster Management Agency under the Ministry of Home Affairs. In spite of the demand for independent investigation by scientists in the Tapovan-Vishnugarh Hydroelectricity Project, permission was never granted for such a move. Whenever questioned, time and again they publish reports prepared by their hired consultants or developers stating that everything is as per rules based on some testings which are mere eyewash. There is a complete denial of the fact that the drilling of the tunnel as part of the Tapovan Hydroelectricity Project has caused the land subsidence in Joshimath. Thus it is more or less clear that not only the private companies, contractors and businessmen, but also the Government is deliberately neglecting the issue of an environment friendly construction. As a consequence disasters are occurring repeatedly and great damage is being done to the environment.
The Government must be having some motive behind these deliberate actions despite knowing about its adverse consequences. What is that? A careful observation reveals that this entire region has economic activities mainly in two sectors - one is tourism and the other is the hydroelectric projects. Why is the Government so keen on developing these two sectors?
Let us first look at the tourism sector. Information suggests that tourism is an important business as well as source of income for Uttarakhand. Besides the hill stations and forests like Corbett National Park, a huge number of pilgrims visit the state of Uttarakhand every year. Uttarakhand is termed as Devbhoomi due to the location of very old pilgrimages like Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Haridwar. According to an account, during the one month preceding the big disaster in Kedarnath in 2013, up to 13 lakhs of pilgrims and tourists have visited Uttarakhand. By 2019, this was reduced slightly to 5 and a half crores visiting Uttarakhand in a year. Out of these 3.9 crores are Indians from various states and 1.6 crores are foreigners. During 2002-03, this figure was around 2 crores, out of which 85 per cent were pilgrims (Tourism Footfall Down to a Fifth in 2 years ?TOI, Sept. 11, 2021 ; Tourism Sector In Uttarakhand: A Brief Overview After State Formation ?Dr. Bharti Jaiswal & Dr. Madhu Bisht, IJRESS). This means that the number of pilgrims and tourists have been rising fast, though after the Covid-19 pandemic this number has somewhat got reduced. Another account shows that in 2013-14 the Uttarakhand State Government?s income was projected to be 25000 crores of rupees from tourism alone. According to NCAER?s records, prior to Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, in 2015-16 tourism contributed 9.68 per cent in the GDP of the state while the corresponding figure for the entire country was 7 per cent. This accounted for 17.10 per cent of total employment while the corresponding national average figure was 10.17 per cent. All these clearly suggest that tourism including pilgrimages constitute a very important sector in the financial arena of the state.
There used to be narrow roads leading to the pilgrimages through the hills and valleys of this region since many years prior to British rule. Then the Britishers had widened the roads for tourists after setting up a number of hill stations. In independent India, for the military men in the borders and their heavy vehicles and most recently for arrangement of mass scale pilgrimage for the huge number of pilgrims in the Chaar Dham and also for adventure sports, the number of plans for new larger highways, tunnels and bridges through Government patronage is continuously increasing. The roads are getting wider and now highways for traveling throughout the year are being constructed. The number of tourists and pilgrims are increasing enormously, and along with that the number of transports, multistoried hotels, resorts. Centering around all these activities and businesses, densely populated towns are coming up in small places which are turning into business centres. Consequently the pressure on this already fragile region is increasing.
The sudden enthusiasm behind the hydroelectric projects is rooted in the business motive of generating electricity through exploitation of another type of natural resource over the past few years - the drive to exploit the rapidly flowing hilly rivers. The plan to set up 450 small and medium sized hydroelectricity projects in the 28 valleys of Ganga and its tributaries had already been formulated in 2013. The central and state governments have announced many measures to attract the capitalists for developing this possibility. That is why, to facilitate the business activities of the capitalists, the governments according to the ?ease of doing business? modality, which is quite trendy today, have declared the above 25 megawatts hydroelectricity projects to be in the category of renewable energy, have given the capitalists a lot of autonomy in deciding the rates for selling electricity, have offered a lot of financial incentives for them in the budget and have taken the responsibility for constructing roads etc in the areas adjacent to the dams. Even they have set the rules to ensure that the companies associated with generation and distribution of electricity must mandatorily obtain a certain minimum amount of electricity from the hydroelectricity projects. On one hand there is the desperation for enhancing the electricity business (Cabinet approves Measures to promote Hydro Power Sector, pib.gov.in) and on the other hand there is pressure for pollution free clean energy. There is a rising international pressure for shifting from coal dependent thermal power plants to hydroelectricity projects. India has also made a commitment to fulfill a certain target in the international conference at Paris (www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/hydropower-in-india).
To open up this sector for the capitalist investments is not the agenda of the Government alone, international lending agencies like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank are also imposing various kinds of conditions for ensuring the ?ease of doing business? of the capitalists. Along with these are associated the capitalist institutions like FICCI for arranging loans for the international investing companies through green bonds.
But till now the capitalists have not expressed much interest in hydroelectric power projects. Though they have taken entry into alternative powers like solar power or wind power, their participation is very meager in small and medium sized hydroelectric power projects like the ones in Uttarakhand and some of them have already started leaving too. This is because hydroelectric power projects involve higher capital investment and high production cost and gestation-period for production is very time consuming, and further a lot of approvals regarding environment and land are required. That is why in this state till now 92.5 per cent of the hydroelectric power projects are under the ownership of the Government, while only 7.5 per cent belongs to the private capitalists.
But still with an eye on this sector, the Government, in order to ensure easy loans and various other facilities related to price setting for the capitalists, without caring at all for the environment and its security protocols, has become desperate to make this sector conducive to business at any cost. After all, the Government belongs to the capitalists.
What is the result? This so-called development has brought about very slight a change in the poverty, unemployment, backwardness scenario of the region. It was announced initially that electricity will be supplied to the locals from the less than 25 megawatts hydroelectric power plants. But now giving several excuses most of the electricity is being sent to the national or state transmission grids. A vast rural area is still deprived of electricity or having a very irregular partial power supply. Rather many people have lost their lands due to the large-scale acquisition of land for the power projects. The little houses they have are also under the wrath of disasters time and again. Most of the jobs they get at the power plants are of temporary nature. The tourism sector also involves large scale unorganised, irregular work. Effectively what the Government has done and still doing is that, they have prepared a ground for the capitalists to extract high profits at low costs in future. This is what they aimed at. This is resulting in destruction of environment, rising calamities, increasing distress of the locals, impoverished financial condition, but these are all secondary issues to them. This is what constitutes the developmental models of the Government - totally to serve the interests of the capitalists.
Now the question may arise, should the construction measures for the development of this region be stopped altogether? Should the idea to protect the people from the disasters and death and destruction be ?give us back the sylvan past, take away today's cities?? That is just not possible. It is not possible to turn the direction of evolution in human lives and nature around at will. It is simply not possible that human beings will go back thousands of years to live the same lives as their ancestors in the embrace of mother nature. The human race, since its birth, has always modified its surrounding environment and nature in its own way and developed it to suit its needs, for its convenience, to elevate its living standards. With the progress of civilisation, quite naturally human beings will bring about changes in nature, use various natural resources, will do farming, will construct roads, houses for secured living, will produce electricity. This is inevitable and normal. This is development. But if alongside this maintaining the environment and its balance is totally ignored and the only priority becomes exploiting the nature just to ensure profits, in that case nature also retaliates through natural disasters. In the current capitalist system, since development has taken this course, incidents of disasters like the one is Joshimath, is continuing to occur.
Comments:
No Comments for View