Human folly exposes India to nature’s fury Seema Sengupta IS something seriously wrong with our climate? Why else will we witness the fury of nature intermittently in the form of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and other nature related disasters gobbling up properties, consuming precious lives and leaving behind constellation of survivors trying to piece together their shattered lives? Hundreds of tourists, local inhabitants and pilgrims perished in one such calamity, one of the worst to have struck the picturesque Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in north India, bordering Tibet, last month. Many believe that this colossal tragedy was just waiting to happen sometime soon. The reason — sheer human callousness to be precise, apathy of administration and its nexus with mining and forest mafia. The rise and fall of human society has always been historically linked to the forces of nature and yet mankind has not been charitable to mother earth as they do not even spare the most sensitive of ecological zones for satiating the hunger of greed. Even as nature continued to issue warning signals in the delicate Himalayan zone, successive governments not only flouted protocols that were firmly in place for protecting such fragile ecosystem but blatantly lobbied for de-notification of building restriction norms. Needless to say, millions of bucks have reached the coffers of political parties of all hue and some corrupt bureaucrats. Ever since the 1991 devastating earthquake, that killed 2,000 people and left many more homeless, this region is enduring severe climatic fluctuations. Abnormal rise in temperature, recurrent landslides, frequent cloudbursts and flash floods occurring in several districts of the state were clear indications of something unprecedented and lethal waiting to happen. Unfortunately, no government, be it of the Congress or Bharatiya Janata Party, did anything worthwhile to rein in the powerful land and forest mafia till date. Neither did they prioritize eco-sensitivity over unbridled constructions, mostly illegal, coming up along the banks of pristine rivers like Bhagirathi, Alakananda and Mandakini — all head-streams of river Ganges and revered by Hindus from the earliest times in anthropomorphic forms. The horrifying images of concrete structures standing at the bank of local rivers getting washed away in flash floods after collapsing like pack of cards bear testimony to the rampant corruption that India is in grip of. When it comes to the issue of putting in place an adequate management plan for preserving the fragile Himalayan ecosystem and a well-defined action plan for disaster mitigation, the politicians are nowhere to be seen. At a time when even the national auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, has indicted the state government of Uttarakhand for failing to set up critical infrastructure for disaster response, bureaucrats sitting in the national capital are implementing policies that abate environmental hazards. Under their very nose, the entire Himalayan belt has seen unrestrained expansion of hydroelectric and mining projects, construction of high-rises as well as roads to boost tourism, including religious tourism since this entire region have held a profound significance for the followers of Hinduism. True, the enormity of the catastrophe covering 38,000 square miles can unnerve even the most trained and equipped organization dealing with disaster management. But is it good enough reason to absolve the administration of criminal negligence as they turned a blind eye to projects being implemented ham-handedly in ecologically sensitive belt that resulted in so many losses of innocent lives especially when a similar tragedy struck the same area in 2010? Can this nation expect anything better from the collective political leadership who shows no inhibition in milking human tragedy for political gain? Will it finally dawn on them that a lot of groundwork has to be done if we are to escape the wrath of nature in the days ahead that will be no less turbulent? As India pushes for trillions of dollars of infrastructure projects in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode within the next few months, the United Nations has issued a warning about the danger of adopting this now favorite PPP model for enhancing public infrastructure. Such partnerships generally underplay disaster risks and do not promote improved disaster risk assessment cum management, cautioned a UN report. It highlights the fact that Uttarakhand, situated in high seismic risk zone, is yet to witness the worst of the catastrophes that can befall the state and the recent calamities are just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, a lot needs to be done to curb further cataclysm in the flood-prone upper reaches of the Himalayan mountainous region. Apart from preventing haphazard tree felling and indiscriminate use of explosives like dynamites in the name of development, a comprehensive advance warning system for alerting residents and tourists across the Himalayan region must be evolved that also encompasses mapping, capacity building and creating database. Government agencies dealing with geology, satellite imagery and meteorology must work in tandem to avoid or absorb collateral damage brought about by natural hazards. India in any case has a pathetic history of forecasting imminent disaster. Indian Space Research Organization, Central Water Commission, the Meteorological Department and National Disaster Management Authority were caught napping when disaster struck in the Himalayas and this raises serious questions about what actually transpired in the midweek of June. How is it that all the nodal agencies simultaneously failed to make any forecast that could have saved hundreds of precious lives? What caused the explosion in the upper reaches of the hills? Was it really a massive cloudburst or a sophisticated nuclear surveillance device — more powerful than the one that the Central Intelligence Agency planted atop Nanda Devi Mountain in the 1960s — somehow exploded causing tectonic upheaval? After all, the worst affected Gangotri-Badrinath-Kedarnath watersheds are part of the Nanda Devi basin that provides a strategic overlook to the Tibetan plateau.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 05:21:49 +0000
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