Dr ON Bhargava: ‘Citizens need to be aware too, all blame cannot be put on HP govt’

We have to take some personal responsibility too. Why depend on government alone to enforce some rules? In the USA there is San Andreas fault in California and earthquakes keep happening there. The houses there are of very light material. Here in Himachal we want everything to be of concrete, We want big houses

In earlier times, houses were wooden or semi wooden and they were light and flexible. Now they are all made of concrete. Concrete is heavy and brittle and with a small movement it will break. In 1975 when an earthquake hit Kinnaur I went there for investigation. I found that all the houses which followed the traditional method of construction with wood and sun-dried bricks suffered negligible damage while the government building made of concrete tumbled down. The design of constructing houses has to vary as per terrain. We cannot impose the construction style of the plains in the mountains. Multi-storey buildings are also unsafe during earthquakes because when the oscillation takes place due to ground waves the tall buildings will sway more and get more damaged.

What has been the essential problem in house construction in Shimla?

If you keep cutting slopes too steep, then for how long will you prevent a landslide from taking place? Secondly, these houses in Himachal are not on solid foundation and there is a lot of material deep underneath. When it rains the water seeps into the ground below these houses. The water takes some soil with it when it flows under the surface. Later when the water dries there is uneven settling of the soil. It is this uneven settling of the soil which results in cracks in the houses. The entire thing become unstable because there is no proper drainage system was the water.

How do you see the heavy damage to highways across the state?

It is a multi-dimensional problem. Vagaries of weather is certainly an issue. When it rains the weak zones start falling apart. As far as landslides along the road are concerned they take place because the equilibrium is disturbed. This equilibrium can be disturbed in two ways, either by rains or by human activity like road widening. The entire mountain is not solid. There is loose soil and also weak parts. These will vary from place to place and these conditions need to be studied when you are constructing roads. When you widen a road at a particular place it is not necessary that the instability will happen just above that point. The entire slope will be disturbed. Now you have constructed a wall to stop the landslides. First of all these walls have no foundation and they are just standing on the road. The force will is trying to gain equilibrium keeps on working and then a time comes when this force overcomes the resistance which is put up by these weak walls resulting in landslide.

What is the solution to this?

We can now only wait and watch as it will take decades to stabilise. Landslides are generated from the crown and once it starts it will keep coming. I have been working in Himachal on these issues since 1961. There were mostly mule-tracks in the state which were widened to small roads. These were further widened into bigger roads in many stages. It took eight to ten years to make one good road in the state by ensuring slope stability.

Are tunnels a solution to this vexed problem?

Tunnels also have their own problems. When you dig tunnels you extract lot of material from the mountain and then proceed to dump it nearby. We do recommend that where there is no alternative available you should construct tunnels. But it should not be a rule. Because the large quantity if material which is dug up and dumped in rivers will cause more problems. The dams on these rivers downstream will face aggravated problem of siltation which in turn will reduce the life of the dam. The debris of the road construction is already being dumped into the valleys. This raises the level of the river beds causing flooding. Also, these big rocks and stones which plunge into the river also act as cutting tools when the river is in spate causing much more damage downstream to buildings. This is a vicious circle. When you raise objections you get the reply that this road is being constructed for defence purposes. What use is such a road to defence when it is closed all the time?

What effect has all this construction activity had on geology of the region?

The Himachal government once used to have a rule that no construction could take place 500 metres of either side of the road. That rule has bene flouted. I don’t know who allowed it to be flouted. Now the geology which could be witnessed on the roads has gone missing. Here we could see our geological history dating from 1500 million years back to 10 million years in one section. We used to take new geologists there to show them the entire history in one go. Now that is all gone. We are emotionally involved in this so we feel very bad. It was a classic section from Kalka to Shimla. Way back in 1964 we have an international geological conference we showed this very section. Now in 2020 when we wanted to show the same section we found that there were walls put up on the newly widened road hiding all the geology.