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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Games Politicians Play

Now that much water, silt and corpses have flowed down the Ganges since June 17 it's now time for our netas to let their hair down and get immersed in political muck. The main motivating factor seems to be the forthcoming 2014 general elections.

The latest I heard was the Twitter war between Congress and BJP over the handling of 'Himalayan Tsunami' - it makes even the verbal duels in Saas Bahu serials look quite dignified. The Twitter savvy among both parties were busy trading hashtag jousts.

The ball was set rolling by 'Rambo' Modi and his clever PR plants, which some of our mediamen lapped up with a willing suspension of journalistic scrutiny. This set social networking sites ablaze. The keyboards of 'internet Hindus' had little respite as they got busy waxing eloquent about the Gujarat strongman's big feat of rescuing 13,000 Gujaratis.

This bubble of hot air kept circulating for a couple of days, but later came crashing down when some started asking basic common sense questions, which the erring journalists should have asked in the first place. Initially Modi and his partymen too kept silent and basked in the glory, but when things turned sour they denied making such a claim. Thus Modi acquired an additional sobriquet - Feku.

This is not to say that the country's grand old party (with its long history of sycophancy and hero worship) was a picture of poise and sobriety. With much fanfare trucks carrying relief materials were flagged off from Delhi by party bigwigs, only to run out of fuel and get stranded at Rishikesh and Dehradun. The drivers were not provided enough money (they were handed over a mere Rs 2,000 per head) to buy fuel.

The latest I hear is that some of the relief packets provided to flood victims have photos of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on them! Thus political parties are seeing everything through the prism of 2014 elections.

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Uttarakhand: River Wild

This few seconds of video footage (courtesy YouTube) says it all about the fury that Uttarakhand had to go through (now being called the Himalayan tsunami) in the past few days.

When it was first flashed on TV screens my immediate reaction was why is the building located so close to the river, or has the swollen river eaten up the buffer zone? Going by the way building rules are violated in our country, especially in tourist and pilgrim centres, I won't be surprised if some 'enterprising' promoter had constructed this building to cash in on rising pilgrim tourism. In connivance with municipal and civic officials he may have bent a few rules in the process.

Later the promoter may have amassed a fortune by touting it as a river front guest house or apartment with 'breathtaking view' of the river and the adjoining mountains.

Many other TV footage about floods too reveal river banks of Bhagirathi and Alaknanda dotted with similar eyesore inducing concrete structures in close proximity of the rivers. All tell-tale sign of rampant unplanned and unbridled construction activity throughout the region.
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With most of the roads washed away the options before rescue workers have badly narrowed down. They can only use helicopters (and that too if the weather and terrain are favourable) to evacuate the stranded and drop food supplies. Unless the army manages to fix up some of the damaged roads, the evacuation will be slow as helicopters cannot accommodate many.

The relief process poses twin challenges. The first one is to rescue the tourists and pilgrims stranded at various places and secondly to rehabilitate the natives whose home and hearths have been destroyed.

The first one may be comparatively easy as once the marooned pilgrims are evacuated to safety and sent to their homes, the task is over. As for the second it will take a couple of years. With most structures in the area now 'neck deep' in silt, cleaning up is going to be a painstakingly long task. The massive silt deposit is a disturbing indicator of the amount and the speed with which the soil erosion is happening in the Himalayan region. Many of the structure may be barely usable and may need to be totally rebuilt. 
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Flooding caused by Himalayan rivers such as Ganga and Brahmaputra is a routine and annual occurrence and as old as hills. But all these years it used to wreak havoc in the Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar or Assam (in case of Brahmaputra). Of late the regions located on the Himalayan foothills seem to be bearing the brunt, pointing towards deterioration of ecology in the region.
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The early arrival of monsoon was the main trigger. It came two-weeks ahead of schedule and that too in top gear with a cloudburst over Kedarnath area, which caught pilgrims and district officials unawares. Many pilgrims were in the midst of their  Char Dham and Hem Kund yatras. Lack of any proper disaster response system and large scale environmental degradation only made matters worse.
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As potholes and paan stains on walls epitomise Indian cityscape and ethos so does the penchant to indulge in politics at the time of natural calamities. This is a very Indian trait and cuts across party lines. PR knives are out and no opportunity to score brownie points are spared. So its time for announcement of 'competitive' relief (or maybe one-upmanship relief), photo ops and aerial surveys (with hapless taxpayers footing the bill), all of course with an eye on forthcoming 2014 general election.
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The profiteering, hoarding trader, the venal Lala depicted in many yesteryear Hindi films (with Madan Puri or Prem Chopra playing  the part), is also very much at work. Their knack to see opportunity in every calamity has not diminished a wee bit. Stranded pilgrims alleged they had to fork out Rs 100 for a packet of biscuit and Rs 500 for a meal. There was also a report of rape of two stranded women in the area.

The latest saga of greed during calamity involves a group of 'holy men' caught with cash and ornaments worth over Rs 1 crore. They had allegedly robbed cash from ATMs in the region and removed jewellery from dead bodies. The proverbial cat was out of bag only when they refused to board the rescue helicopters without their heavy bags! 
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The only people who come out shining out of this tragedy are our men in uniform - be it the army, air force or paramilitary forces. It was heartening to see photos and TV visuals of these men herding the injured, children, old and infirm to safety. To many their round-the-clock tireless work came across as the proverbial straw for a drowning person.

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