Kheer Ganga disaster: Why nature struck back
Kheer Ganga
rivulet in Uttarkashi turning into a raging, swollen torrent of mud, boulders, timber and debris sent chills down the spines of all those who watched and rewatched in morbid fascination. It bore down on the mountain village of Dharali with devastating force, careening around a bend with devastating speed and force, demolishing all the buildings on one side, but leaving the other side practically unscathed.
Experts are still divided about what precipitated this deadly mudslide; initial reports of a cloudburst triggering it were soon disproved by weather charts showing only nominal rainfall. The sudden breaching of a glacial lake or a chunk of snow and soil breaking off a glacier are now thought to be more probable. And, of course, the environmental activists are pointing to 6,500 trees being cut to widen a road in this ecologically and strategically sensitive border area.
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Now it has also emerged that the buildings demolished by the surging river of mud had been built on the floodplain of the rivulet. The word floodplain itself is self-explanatory and should have been reason enough for everyone including the authorities to desist from regarding it as viable real estate but who says villagers are less greedy than their urban counterparts? Every city, beginning with India's capital New Delhi, has encroachments on floodplains, so why not a village?
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The environmental advocacy groups tend to focus their ire and opposition on infrastructure development-roads, hydel projects, ports, etc-but have a softer approach to the average Indians perennially on the lookout to clear patches of available land to build a house, hotel, office block, mall or factory. That hardly makes for ecological stability, but governments are usually blamed, not people. It is time to admit that people also share part of the blame for such calamities.
Improved accessibility for Indian border areas is a matter of national security that over-rides normal concerns. That is not to say that there should be untrammelled powers to slash and build in pristine and fragile wildernesses; such infrastructure plans must be mindful of the dangers of cutting mountainsides for wider roads to the China border. But arguments that such roads should not be built at all because of the Himalayas' fragility raises suspicions about motives.
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Hydroelectric projects on mercurial mountain rivers are, admittedly, an evil necessity as India needs 'clean' energy, flood prevention and water for irrigation. Dams and run-of-the-river power plants are seen as solutions even though there are risks of greater devastation in case of catastrophic events like mudslides. These are also a focus of environmental activists, with good reason, although they do not offer any viable alternatives for the three purposes of such projects.
An equally serious ecological danger, with much less extenuating circumstances, is the explosion of tourism facilities in the Himalayan region right from the northwest to the northeast. Every hamlet with a gurgling brook and snowy vistas has piled on hotels and homestays. Lakhs of tourists in search of cheap getaways to enjoy mountainscapes makes it worthwhile for villagers to wilfully ignore age-old wisdom about their vulnerable habitats and recklessly build and earn.
Any moves to restrict encroachments by locals, especially in the name of tourism, invite a backlash. Monetising all available resources, from floodplains to unspoilt vistas is regarded almost as a fundamental right. While officials and politicians are often justifiably blamed for collusion to encroach and 'develop', avaricious "ordinary" people should not be exonerated either. The deadly anger of the Kheer Ganga was aimed at all parties concerned in Dharali; so should ours.
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