Opinion Joshimath collapse: Uttarakhand is on the brink

This is not a bolt from the blue. Neither were the other disasters of the past. What has led to this situation is a series of complex developments in the history of the state. A watershed moment in this saga was the emergence of Uttarakhand as a hill state that was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, after a protracted and violent protest movement. The main premise of this severance was control and agency over future resource use. It was believed that since colonial times, the region’s resources had been exploited without the consent and approval of their custodians — the people who, despite living very tough and isolated lives, had retained their bond with nature. In fact, in pre-statehood days, Uttarakhand witnessed two path-breaking environment protection mass movements — Chipko Andolan and the Anti-Tehri Dam Agitation — that had set the ball rolling for the statehood movement.

With the attainment of a new state came the burden of people’s expectations. An extensively forested, ecologically-fragile state with little opportunity to expand agriculture or industry was going to find the going tough in performing an economic turnaround. But since the statehood movement was born out of environmentalism, the majority population, while expecting their new political representatives now drawn from within their own kinship networks, to work tirelessly for progress, still yearned for an equitable future. Fighting for severance from the big brother, they had never bargained for the destruction of their ecology. In fact, the basic principle undergirding the severance was sustainable, organic, equitable growth, in opposition to the earlier policy of blatant exploitation. Himalayan communities know too well what happens when dominance seeks to replace respect for nature.

However, things did not turn out as expected. A state that has seen 13 chief ministerial terms and two periods of President’s Rule in its 22-year existence has experienced a leadership vacuum like few others. The dearth of political talent in the state has assured complete disregard for the voice of the sane majority who still firmly oppose exploitative and unsustainable development at the cost of the environment. Today, brute electoral majorities combined with a lack of ethical leadership have assured complete dominance of another remote power centre. The state itself suffers a deep entrenchment of corporate interests and contractor lobbies. Sane voices in the state are in no position to voice their concern over “development” policies doled out from the Centre, gratefully accepting, and implementing whatever is on offer. At the Centre, too, there is little effort to hear the voices on the ground, the ones that could narrate the truth of a crumbling Himalaya. There is no realisation that what works in Gujarat or UP may not work in the mountains. Hence, the current voicelessness, and the frustration that allows a project as massive in its destructive scope as the Char Dham Mahamarg to be accepted silently without as much as a whimper of protest from the communities who once offered their bodies for trees. The onslaught of earthmoving machines and blasting in the mountains is too intimidating with roads only serving the purpose of emptying out villages. The trends were visible as early as 2011 with most mountain districts of the state showing declining populations. Today, the social fabric is so torn that people have simply abandoned home and hearth to migrate to the already overcrowded foothills of Dehradun, Haridwar, Haldwani and beyond.

Little wonder then, that the people of Uttarakhand today are left with the feeling that their struggles have gone in vain. They face the harsh reality that statehood has, in fact, hastened the processes of destruction, and that they were perhaps better off under a distant, callous regime. Successive governments continue to apply the conventional logic of aiming to achieve economic growth through the rampant exploitation of a fragile ecology. This is quite evident in the constant clamour from the state government to ensure rapid environmental clearances to set up hydroelectric projects and infrastructure.

The governments at the Centre, in the earlier days of statehood, were largely able to restrain the anti-environment belligerence of the state’s political class. However, in 2017, a double-engine development agenda was promised to the people, with the state and Centre working in tandem to ensure rapid unscientific exploitation of landscapes and unprecedented expansion of infrastructure, to open the state’s pilgrimage sites and rivers for the nation’s “needs”. Today, the state stares at the spectre of roads and expressways leading to sites that are clearly way beyond their carrying capacity. Massive expansion of roads, like the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway which the government claims will reduce the driving time between the two cities to two and a half hours, will multiply tourist arrivals to Uttarakhand manifold. Where will the additional tourists be accommodated when destinations like Mussoorie, Haridwar, Rishikesh and Nainital are already choked? Our policy-makers seem oblivious to the fact that the Char-Dham Mahamarg has transported this congestion, and all its accompanying ill effects to the very heart of the Himalayas. The way the roads crumbled under landslides on the Mahamarg in the last monsoon, clearly indicates that for a young and still rising mountain chain, where the geology varies at every hundred odd metres, no environmental impact assessments or slope stabilisation studies have been carried out before implementation. Every landslide in severely affected areas like Totaghati is sought to be controlled through trial and error.

The Rishikesh-Karnaprayag Railway is another major project that is burrowing tunnels and plonking ugly, hurriedly planned railway stations at some of the most scenic heritage sites like Maletha and is set to open up the mountains like never before. The expansion of Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport by destroying elephant corridors of Rajaji Tiger Reserve, even though possibly the world’s biggest airport at Jewar is being built just a short distance away, and a free run for helicopter tour operators is stretching to the limit nature’s tolerance in the Himalayas.

Any opposition to this triple assault through road, rail and air on the Himalayas, this massive expansion of access to nowhere, is considered an onslaught on development and our national security, threatened by our increasingly aggressive neighbour. The human aspect of this cross-border rivalry, however, is that while our neighbour sits on occupied territory that is largely depopulated, this side of the border has human settlements that need to survive to act as bulwarks against aggression. Consider the case of Joshimath, a major base on the border with China, where the military infrastructure has also begun to crumble. The crucial Joshimath-Malari border road, which connects several border posts, has already developed cracks at several places. To any reasonable mind who has been into the mountains, there can be no greater threat to national security than abandoned ghost villages along this border.

While infrastructure is one aspect of the problem, the exploitation of rivers to meet national energy needs is just the other. Giving a free run to hydro-power companies to do as they please with places and people has compounded the state’s woes. While NTPC’s antics in Joshimath may have caught the nation’s eye, the fate of places like Haat Village, also in Chamoli, is symptomatic of the impending crisis.

This 9th-century temple and the settlement around, not far from Joshimath, is suffering the brunt of muck dumping by Tehri Hydro Development Corporation, the same being extracted from the tunnel being dug under the mountain, for the Vishnugad-Pipalkoti Hydropower Project. Most residential units around the temple have been razed to the ground amid strong protests from residents, with debris dumped over them. A site of such extreme historic significance, believed to have been settled by Adi Shankaracharya, deeply revered as Chhoti or Little Kashi should have been treated with care and reverence, but has been ripped apart. Such is the clout of the public and private sector agencies, and their contractors, that anything can be sacrificed at the altar of quick commercial energy. Joshimath is only their latest victim.

One is pained to say this, but there is very little hope for Uttarakhand unless the people find their voice, and those in power remove their earplugs. We need to find sustainable alternatives for energy that look away from large hydropower projects. This is especially significant not just for Uttarakhand, but for the world at large, in light of rapid climate change. We need to realise that pilgrimage is most meritorious when undertaken with some effort and discomfort. Rather than bringing in tourism values into pilgrimage, we must do the opposite, undertake our travels into the Himalayas as slow, meditative acts of worship. Let us also pledge to go back to the vernacular methods of our ancestors, in building and drainage, and stop dumping concrete on our mountains. Easier said than done, but is there another way out of this sinking feeling? And when disaster strikes, let our leaders put their heads and bodies together to serve those in need, rather than follow their age-old adage, “Aapada hi awasar hai” (“We see an opportunity in disaster”).

The writer is Convenor, INTACH, Uttarakhand State and Founder, Been There Doon That (BTDT)