A Himalaya Under Torrential Threat
Aftermath of the damage caused by cloudbursts and landslides on the Mussoorie-Dehradun highway. Photo: Karan Madhok
In the ecologically-sensitive Himalayan regions, the regularity of natural disasters and the scale of damage have increased rapidly in recent years. The two most-significant factors behind this phenomenon have been overdevelopment and climate change.
Tragedy struck the touristy Maldevta-Sahastradhara region of Dehradun in the early hours of September 16, when a cloudburst caused torrential overnight rains leading to flash floods and mayhem in the region. Shops, hotels, resorts, and homes situated in the market area bore the brunt of the gushing waters, with many of them either being swept away or badly damaged. There were reports of roads and bridges being washed away, including the one in Maldevta with the rivers across the region having become raging torrents. Tragically 13 people lost their lives, buried under debris, or swept away by the gushing waters. Another 17 went missing.
Among the damage caused, the famous Tapkeashwar Shiva temple got submerged, a sight that seemed inconceivable to imagine for those familiar with Dehradun. The Dehradun-Mussoorie highway had to be closed because of extensive landslides with many tourists stranded on the hill station, several of whom had to trek down to Dehradun. A part of a bridge on the Dehradun-Haridwar highway caved in due to heavy rain and another bridge collapsed on the Dehradun-Paonta Sahib highway, causing major traffic disruptions. As per a report in the Times of India a week later, the total death toll in the recent rains stood at 32, while the losses were in the vicinity of ₹211 crores.
These are initial estimates and losses may go up. People have lost family members and many no longer have homes to live in. Others have suffered losses of business and farmland causing them immense financial distress. A night of incessant rains has upended the lives of so many.
More tragically, this was perhaps an avoidable disaster.
Hair-raising images from across the Indian Himalayan regions have become a depressingly common annual feature for many years. From the catastrophic Kedarnath flood in 2013 to the devastating Kashmir flood the following year, we have seen what cataclysmic destruction cloudbursts and the sudden and dramatic swelling of rivers can cause in these ecologically fragile regions. Cars, people, animals, and entire households have tumbled like a pack of cards into ruthlessly swirling muddy waters, from rivers swollen to many times their normal size. Bridges have been swept away, large tracts of forest land have been destroyed, power lines and roads have been washed away like toothpicks, and whole villages have been buried under metres of debris. The North Indian regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand have borne the brunt of the fury that nature has decided to unleash in the most beautiful parts of the country—as if they were punished for some cardinal sin.
In Indian folklore, Manu, the survivor of the great flood that occurred in ancient times, found safety from the raging waters everywhere on the higher grounds of Manali in Himachal Pradesh, a town named after him. Ironically, the same region is now getting ravaged by the swirling waters of the Beas River every year.
Why is this happening now with such unfailing regularity? Natural disasters have occurred regularly in the ecologically-sensitive Himalayan regions, but the regularity of these occurrences and the scale and extent of damage caused by them are a new phenomenon. The two most-significant factors behind the rising disastrous conditions are overdevelopment and climate change.
From one perspective, the government has indeed done a great job with building roads and bridges in some of the most difficult terrains in the world, and in the process, making life easier for people living in remote villages and hamlets across the Himalaya, the mountain passes, valleys, and hill tops. They have also helped bolster the defence of the nation by helping troop movement in the sensitive Himalayan border regions. At the same time, tourism related development in the shape of hotels, resorts, guest houses, homestays, ropeways, zip-lines, camping sites, and trekking trails has provided hard to come by employment for hundreds of thousands of people living in these parts.
But ‘development’ is a different game in the hills. Nobody is making the case that all development be stopped in the Himalayan region, just as nobody would suggest that any manner of development be stopped in the plains only because they tend to witness floods during the monsoon season. However, it is important to realise that the topography in these regions is both diverse and unique. It needs to be carefully accounted for when planning any development projects. There have always been cloudbursts as well as the bursting of glacial lakes in the upper reaches of the Himalaya, but the destruction caused by them was never on the current scale.
During these natural disasters, humongous quantities of water rushes down the slopes into the valleys below, scooping up debris in the form of mud, silt, vegetation, rocks, and boulders along the way, and destroying everything in its wake. If there is any form of development in the path of such ferocious movement of water in the shape of resorts, hotels, roads, bridges, and even towns and villages, it is toast.
It is now well understood that exacerbated impact of climate change is a real phenomenon, which is having a distinctly visible impact on our daily lives. Global warming can and does cause rainfall to be more unpredictable and intense, particularly in the mountainous regions, which can lead to a much-enhanced incidence of occurrences like cloudbursts and the sudden spilling over of glacial lakes.
To ignore the increased vulnerabilities faced by the Himalayan region and go ahead with haphazard, harebrained schemes of so-called development, is to invite disaster upon disaster on the people. From hoteliers and other tourism industry stakeholders, to newly-constructed settlements in ecologically sensitive zones, to travellers and visitors caught unawares by a natural calamity beyond their wildest dreams, the consequences of greed-driven development carried out without any rudimentary risk analysis are often tragic.
The North Indian regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand have borne the brunt of the fury that nature has decided to unleash in the most beautiful parts of the country—as if they were punished for some cardinal sin.
They are also prohibitively expensive. There have been massive losses suffered by developers and builders—who invested in their fancy projects in the hills—and the expenses incurred by the government in rebuilding infrastructure and providing relief run into hundreds of millions of rupees every year.
And one can’t put a price on the psychological distress faced by the residents living in these regions, who continue to fear for their very existence every monsoon. Unfortunately, this distress is likely not going anywhere, as excessive flooding could be an annual phenomenon, brought about by changing weather patterns and haphazardly planned development projects. There is an urgent need to learn how to live safely in ecologically fragile and sensitive areas which are prone to sudden flooding.
There must not be unbridled construction of homes, markets, resorts, hotels, and homestays near rivers and river beds to cater to the needs of tourists, including sightseers, adventure seekers, and pilgrims. People who have traditionally lived in these parts built their houses on hill sides and mountain slopes, with proven stability, and have generally escaped damage whenever major flash floods have occurred in the past. Such practices need to be reinstated to help avoid the kind of havoc that was witnessed with the recent flash floods in Dharali and Mal Devta in the Gharwal region.
Furthermore, developing an effective early warning system can be a lifesaver, as it would allow communities to receive timely intimation of a flash flood headed their way. This could be a community-based initiative that involves the people living in the region to become the eyes and ears of a system that watches out for signs of an impending flood. A data-centric approach to forecast the impact of such disasters leveraging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence can help plan contingency measures in the event of future events of flooding. The authorities need to consider deploying technology in the shape of satellite imagery, Doppler radars (with their ‘nowcasting’ abilities) and other ground-based sensors, as well as drones, to help track local conditions, providing local communities with much needed advance notice about impending inclement weather conditions. Some progress has been made along these lines in the recent past, but the efforts need to intensify to ensure that one is better prepared the next time there is a major cloudburst or a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) to minimize future loss of life and property.
Recurring catastrophic floods in the Himalayan regions of India cannot be allowed to become the new normal. While the floods themselves may become more frequent, we cannot allow their impact to be so devastating. By a combination of better development and building practices in the fragile Himalayan region and better tracking, monitoring, and prediction of extreme weather phenomena like flash floods and GLOFs, we can ensure that the communities living in our Himalayan regions—as well as the people who come as visitors—do not ever get caught in a cataclysmic nightmare again. All of this must be carried out on a priority basis, with the authorities and the local communities getting into mission mode like everyone did during the pandemic. The everlasting lure of the Himalayas will remain everlasting only if we will it to be so.
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Vipin Labroo is a content creator, author and PR consultant. A member of the Nonfiction Authors Association, he has years of corporate experience working with an eclectic range of clients, writing press releases, articles, blogs, white papers, research reports, website content, eBooks and so on across segments like technology, business & marketing, internet marketing, healthcare, fashion, real estate, travel and so on. You can find him on Twitter: @labroovipin and Instagram: @vipin_labroo.
