Disaster in Uttarakhand: Man made reasons ?

Monsoon and heavy rains brings floods, landslide and blocked roads like disasters in Uttarakhand nearly every year. A lot of man and material is lossed during the monsoon and human life is disturbed.

Few years back, rains drops in hills of uttarakhand were considered enhancement of natural beauty which not only rejuvenates the forest life but also gives relief from scorching heat. People used to visit the scenic places during summer and admire the beauty of untouched places of hills and landscapes, valleys etc.

Slowly slowly, a new era of tourism began, promoted by social media influencers and with the raise in lifestyle, now these hills became easily accessible to most of the people, who only think that money can get you any sort of happiness and prosperity, therefore it doesn’t matter whether required or not everyone is busy planning trips to these shrines and places which were not easily accessible earlier. Now we can see news coming from increased number of tourists and pilgrims in these places. To make situation worse, the government has also increased development activities like widening of roads and making tunnels in hilly areas so that more and more tourist can visit conveniently. “The valleys of the Yamuna, the Ganga and the Alaknanda witness heavy traffic of tourists. For this, the government has to construct new roads and widen the existing ones,” says Maharaj Pandit, professor with the Department of Environmental Sciences in Delhi University. He says that a study should be conducted to assess the carrying capacity of the Himalaya and development should be planned accordingly.

Now here is the dark side of story. Are these developments sustainable and in collaboration with the nature’s synchronisation. Definitely not, because most of the development projects are focussed near famous places where people visit and stay. As the numbers of visitor increase, it demands more and more facilities and management which is later on compromised, resulting in disturbance of ecological balance. Nature’s beauty is slowly converted into man made structures which has been tagged as development.

Researchers have found that increase in widening roads and tunneling is one of the major reasons of landslides in hilly areas during rains. Experts had flagged several issues related to the construction of the tunnel in the Himalayas citing fragile rock, water seepage, landslide-prone Himalayan rock system, lack of geological studies and failure to design an escape tunnel. Environment engineer and Ganga crusader, G D Agarwal, says that construction along the Ganga has certainly cost a lot more if one includes the cost of damage to environment. People have completely destroyed the ecology of the mountains. “We see more landslides nowadays because of unplanned development in the hills,” he says.

Deforestation is another main reason for land slide and floods, because due to lack of trees the binding power of land reduces and it slides down alongwith water.This region had the most tree cover loss at 11.0 kha compared to an average of 1.59 kha. From 2001 to 2023, Uttarakhand lost 20.7 kha of relative tree cover, equivalent to a 100% decrease since 2000 and 0.89% of the global total.

To conclude, we have to think and act for such rising disasters, which are happening in Uttarakhand every monsoon season. To maintain the natural beauty of mountains, it is our duty to contribute towards the activities which are required to safeguard the mother nature and mountains. Sustainable development is the key and strict permission to only required construction and demolition work to be approved.

Jai hind.