Opinion From the Opinions Editor: Viksit Bharat cannot be built on broken ecosystems. Uttarakhand flash floods, waterlogged Delhi are warnings

Yet, in the past two decades, with climate change making its presence felt, the rains have also confronted most parts of the country, and their policymakers, irrespective of political ideology, with a sobering reality. Administrative machineries — whether the BJP-ruled governments in Delhi, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam, or Congress regimes in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, or Kerala’s Left Front government — are at sea when it rains too much.

Last week began with flash floods washing away an entire village in Uttarakhand. It ended with Rakhi festivities being soured in Delhi because lives were lost to a wall collapse, and waterlogging and traffic jams made commuting an arduous task in several parts of the city.

One side of the story pertains to a relatively low-hanging fruit — designing cities and planning urban amenities in ways that can absorb excess water. Walls will not crumble, or bridges will not collapse – like in Vadodara, last month – and sewers won’t overflow if municipalities and other authorities invest in their upkeep.

Factoring in idiosyncrasies of low-lying areas and sensitivity to natural drainage systems – streams, nullahs, mangroves, wetlands — can alleviate much of the water-logging problems. Making municipalities accountable, improving their finances and empowering them with more autonomy are all a part of the solution.

However, the elusive ecological in planning speaks of a larger and even more grave shortcoming – one that is almost inextricable with India’s development story, cutting across economic regimes.

Development and environment have been seen as binaries, when the economy was state-run as well as in the post-liberalisation period. Most often, ecological well-being has had to be sacrificed for economic well-being, the assumption often being that rivers, marshes, mountains, forests are doomed as collateral in the country’s endeavour to improve the living standards of people and lift a large section of them out of poverty. That’s why even the most well-drafted laws and regulatory provisions remain mostly on paper, and recommendations of government-appointed committees, like the two on the Western Ghat, scarcely receive meaningful follow-ups.

In recent times, courts have ruled that the right to clean air and ecological well-being is an essential part of the Right to Life. The highest court of the land has even questioned the framing of the environment and development in a zero-sum game. But even directives and strictures of the judiciary go largely unheeded.

The renewable energy thrust is an important, but only a small, part of the solution. Extreme weather events, melting glaciers and rising seas and oceans are forcing policymakers to answer questions they thought they could ignore.

How to build houses without impairing an area’s topography or encroaching upon water bodies? How to increase incomes in hill states without cutting away mountains? How to factor in the quirks of the rivers, streams and lakes in the Himalaya and at the same time fulfil the aspirations of people in the hill states and other ecologically fragile areas. How to shift to cropping patterns that do not involve guzzling up copious amounts of water? How to design transport systems that do not increase the particulate matter burden of the atmosphere?

The answers are not always easy, and there are hardly any templates to work with. Also, to be fair, attuning economies with the demands of ecology is as much a problem for forest fire-plagued America, heat-affected Europe and Australia as it is for the rain-affected Indian cities, towns, and increasingly even rural areas.

The variations in landscapes and ecosystems, as well as the diversities of socioeconomic conditions in the country, mean that a large part of the solution may well have to be local.

This is a knowledge-related imperative, which, in a world challenged by global warming, has as much significance as syncing skill sets with the demands of the new cybertech, AI, and robotics-driven world.

Most Indian universities have ecology departments. Several architecture, engineering and business schools also have courses on sustainability.

Yet, the consistently increasing challenges — whether calamitous ones such as the Wayanad landslide last year, the toll taken by flash floods year after year, or the disruptions caused by waterlogging in cities — show that ecology rarely goes beyond academia or niche circles. The political class has rarely taken ownership of the crisis. Sustainability does, at times, find mention in the government’s push for a Viksit Bharat.

However, much needs to be done to find a place for the ways of the rivers, streams, mountains, forests and air in its vision for a developed nation. With flash floods sweeping away villages and rains drowning cities, making the ecology a part of the economic question should become a part of the government’s moral imperative – and that of the political class at large.

Till next time

Kaushik Das Gupta