Joshimath Sinking

 

The term ‘land subsidence’ was hitherto known mainly to geology students and geologists, but thanks to the environmental disaster at Joshimath in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand state, it now has a wider currency. 

While the country had barely ushered in the New Year, panic gripped the residents of Joshimath after cracks began to appear in many roads, houses, commercial establishments and temples. Some structures are even tilting, thereby endangering the nearby buildings. All this means that Joshimath, which has a population of around 20,000, is slowly sinking due to land subsidence.

The Uttarakhand authorities have recently declared Joshimath as a landslide and subsidence-hit zone. Many families are now being moved to safer areas after their houses developed cracks and became unsafe. 

The US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has defined subsidence as the “sinking of the ground because of underground material movement”. The reasons can be man-made such as mining or large-scale extraction of water or natural causes like earthquakes and soil erosion.

Joshimath is considered sacred for Hindus as it is the winter seat of Badrinath. Every winter the idol of Lord Vishnu from Badrinath temple is moved to the Joshimath Vasudeva temple after Badrinath becomes snowbound. The town is also a gateway to Hemkund Sahib, a pilgrim centre for the Sikhs. Joshimath also has a significant army presence and has been a transit spot for trekkers bound for the Himalayas. 

Located at a height of 1,875 metres above sea level on the Himalayan foothills, Joshimath is part of an ecologically sensitive zone. However, the increasing influx of tourists for pilgrimage and trekking trips to the Himalayas has led to the proliferation of hotels, and lodges, and an increase in road construction activity. 

Environmentalists have been raising alarm about the strain the region was facing due to increased construction and road-building activity, often with total disregard for the ecology of the region. But commercial gains through tourism and overall prosperity in the region have made the policymakers and the local residents overlook them.

This has been the case with most Indian tourists and pilgrim centres. The way Madhav Gadgil’s report on the Western Ghats has been ignored by various state governments in the peninsular region, irrespective of party affiliations, is a case in point.

However, Joshimath’s ecology is proving to be far more fragile and things have reached a tipping point. Experts point out that Joshimath town rests on a deposit of sand and stone, and not rock. Hence it doesn’t have a high load-bearing capacity to hold the foundations of the buildings. In fact, way back in 1976, the MC Mishra Committee had warned against heavy construction activity in Joshimath. 

But unmindful of these warnings, a number of hydel power plants have been sanctioned around the town. In 2021, the Tapovan-Vishnugad project on the Dhauliganga river witnessed flash floods caused by a glacial burst killing over 200 people. 

The town has also been witnessing heavy road construction activity and rail tunnelling as part of the Char Dham project, which will link Rishikesh with four pilgrim destinations - Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunothri and Gangothri.

In short, Joshimath has become an infrastructure-stressed zone and it is too early to pinpoint what exactly has triggered the current ecological crisis. There are also reports of cracks in houses in Karnaprayag, located nearly 82 kilometres away from Joshimath, and Srinagar Garhwal located 140 kilometres away. This shows that the current malaise is far more widespread than earlier thought and is unfolding.

Uttarakhand state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, as it was felt that Lucknow was mismanaging the resources of its northern hill districts. Interestingly, the movement for statehood was an offshoot of two earlier environment protection mass movements — Chipko Andolan and the Anti-Tehri Dam Agitation. However, after the formation of Uttarakhand the corporate-contractor lobby has gained an upper hand over environmentalists, and they have little regard for ecology.

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