All Downhill from Here

In 2001, the state tourism board had decided to make Uttarakhand “synonymous with tourism”. So from 1 crore in 2001, the number of tourists grew to 3 crore — three times the state’s population — by 2010. The result: various sarkari sops for “developing” remote destinations into a chaos of hotels and parking lots. The second plan — Uttarakhand’s Vision 2020 statement prepared on the theme of Pahad Ka Pani, Pahad Ki Jawani — was to produce at least 40,000 MW of hydel power and sell the surplus. The result: more than 300 proposed dams on its rivers.

Developing tourism and hydel infrastructure called for better access. Till 2002, the state had only two-lane roads, except for the road widened to the Tehri dam site in the 1990s. Within a decade, the state’s road length almost tripled, much of it wide enough to accommodate both heavy vehicles and the high-season rush.

This multi-pronged construction spree further unsettled the young Himalayas. The simultaneous deforestation ensured that the soil could no longer hold. Lethal landslides became routine.

In the monsoon of 2013, when things came apart and sediment-charged rivers breached their banks, the other part of the tragedy was waiting in crowded tourism infrastructure that overhung the waters. Along with the visitors, people of Uttarakhand also paid the price for the greed and shortsightedness of their political leadership that pushed the state down a suicide slope.

Journalist Hridayesh Joshi’s timely book, Rage of the River, narrates this tale in great detail. In the Introduction, the author claims that the book “is not just a riveting account of the biggest ever aerial rescue operation, but it also underlines how we have failed to recognise and avert such chronic problems”. He does reasonable justice to both claims in the book.

In most parts — six out of 10 chapters — Rage of the River is an account of the 2013 tragedy as reported by the author for a news channel. Barring a few deja vu moments — “our biggest achievement was meeting a survivor”, “aired on national television, we told the world for the first time”, “we would be the first media team to report from there” etc — Joshi’s narrative escapes the cliches and somewhat limited scope of TV reporting. The magnitude of the calamity and the suffering it caused, the degree of courage it inspired, and the scale of callousness it exposed, make this segment a page-turner.

One chapter explores the factors that possibly led to the tragedy. Another traces the history of the hill’s community resistance movements. The last chapter is a prescription for model growth: No big dams, responsible road construction, organic farming, women empowerment, diversifying tourism, waste management, ban on plastic and a green tax for visitors.

Joshi names names (barring private hydel companies), questions political indifference and administrative incompetence, laments the policymakers’ disregard for both scientific insight and public interest, and underlines the intrinsic generosity and wisdom of the hill people. However, one of the few jarring notes in the book is the author’s reluctance to dissect tourism, a mainstay of the hill economy. If roads and dams are converting the hills into deathtraps, tourism far in excess of carrying capacity is exposing too many lives to danger.

Translated from Hindi, Rage of the River records how human misadventure can exacerbate natural calamities. Those who wonder “why god killed so many of his own” must read it.