Uttarakhand: When commerce trumps common sense, disaster follows

Uttarakhand’s cup of woe is overflowing. Incessant landslides and frequent cloudbursts have brought normal life to a halt. The last two months have seen the state reeling from one disaster to another.

The most recent occurred on 5 August. Flash floods in the Kheer Ganga river swept away the once picturesque village of Dharali, located on the route to Gangotri. The nearby village of Harsil was also affected and the army base camp was hit by mudslides. Several army personnel including a JCO are missing.

Four deaths were reported from Dharali, with over a hundred missing at the time of writing. While initial reports attributed the Dharali–Harsil flash floods to a cloudburst, experts studying satellite data suggest that a glacial collapse or glacial lake burst upstream may have unleashed this torrent.

The reason for this revised assessment is that the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded minimal rainfall in the affected area around Dharali and a mere 6.5 mm in Harsil. Too small a volume to cause floods of such intensity, says Rohit Thapliyal, senior scientist at the IMD. The cause most likely is a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) like the one that triggered the Kedarnath disaster of 2013.

Uttarakhand has 1,268 glacial lakes of different sizes which pose a significant threat to downstream settlements. Thirteen of these fall in the high-risk category, as repeatedly emphasised by the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun.

Man-made disasters

Leading geologist Dr Y.P. Sundriyal asks why so many hotels, homestays and commercial establishments—over 45—were allowed to be built on the banks of the Kheer Ganga.

“Construction on river flood plains and catchment areas has been prohibited by law and yet, all across Uttarakhand, these illegal constructions are overlooked—be it in Kedarnath, Joshimath or other hill towns where commercial interests dominate and little attention is paid to environmental norms,” said Sundriyal.

Traditionally, villages and cities were built at a certain height and distance from the river banks. That is no longer the case. People have forgotten that a river will sooner or later reclaim its catchment area— as happened with the Mandakini and Saraswati rivers in 2013. Sundriyal also highlighted that while rainfall may have reduced in these mountainous zones, the CO2 footprint has increased, leading to more climate-induced disasters. Dr Jitendra from the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority fumes over the failure to implement basic rules and regulations. Damage control after a tragedy cannot substitute for basic preventive steps being strictly enforced and monitored by district authorities.

Experts have urged that the higher reaches of the Himalayas— from Gaumukh to Uttarkashi—be declared an eco-sensitive zone. Local politicians keep harping on the mantra of ‘development’ without understanding the vulnerability of these young mountains. The crisis hasn’t snowballed overnight—it is the direct fallout of unregulated construction in these vulnerable stretches.

A Supreme Court bench on 5 August slammed the Himachal Pradesh government, observing that ‘revenue cannot be earned at the cost of environment and ecology. If things proceed [this] way… the day is not far when the entire state may vanish in thin air.’ Why doesn’t it do the same for all the Himalayan states, especially Uttarakhand, which has been sinking under the weight of ‘development’ over the last two decades?

Women pull a punch at the panchayat elections

Uttarakhand has a history of voting for independent candidates in their panchayat elections. The result of the recent three-tier elections bear this out— Independents won 145 seats, BJPbacked candidates 121 and the Congress-backed candidates 92. The BJP was expecting to sweep the polls. This did not happen.

In fact, if you total the Independents and the Congress-backed Independents, this is a strongly anti-BJP vote. One of the key issues in these elections—particularly in the hill regions—was the demand for the swift implementation of the land law, which prohibits the sale of agricultural land to outsiders. Many villagers believe that the law, enacted by chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami’s government, hasn’t been properly enforced.

“The public, especially in rural Uttarakhand, are completely disillusioned with their overcentralised, pro-corporate governance model,” says Dehradunbased women’s activist Chitra Gupta, who was particularly chuffed by the large number of young women who contested as Independents. One striking example is 21-yearold Priyanka Negi, who was elected pradhan of Sarkot village in Chamoli district, near the state’s summer capital, Gairsain.

Negi graduated against great odds and went on to defeat another woman candidate, Priyanka Devi. Sakshi Devi, 22, returned to her native village of Kui in the Pabau block of Pauri district after getting a B.Tech degree from a college in Dehradun. Raveena, 24, contested as a zila panchayat candidate from Kotgaon Jakhol ward in Uttarkashi district—and won.

Right through her campaign, she emphasised her determination to improve education and health facilities in her ward. A jubilant Congress party claims the tide is turning against the BJP. The results are being seen as a validation of their fight against the all-pervasive ‘mafia raj’, symbolised by the mining and builder lobbies that dominate the state.

Congress state chief spokesperson Garima Mahara Dasouni said, “The state’s natural resources have been handed over to private parties who are hand-in-glove with ruling politicians. We are determined to break this nexus and I am confident that the results of the 2027 assembly elections will prove us right.”

The results were also a sharp rebuke to BJP leaders who fielded family members—and lost. Among them are Karan Jeena, son of BJP MLA Mahesh Jeena; the daughter-in-law of BJP MLA Ram Singh Kaira from Bhimtal; Neetu Devi, wife of three-time BJP MLA Dileep Rawat; and Rajni Bhandari, from Chamoli district, whose husband Rajendra Singh Bhandari was a former BJP minister.

Will ropeways save the hills?

The state government has decided to solve traffic congestion by putting up ropeways. One such ambitious project is presently under execution from Purkul village in Dehradun to the bus stand in Mussoorie. The project has been awarded to the French company Poma SAS and FIL Industries Ltd under a public– private partnership (PPP) model, at an estimated cost of over Rs 350 crore.

A 10-storey parking facility in Purkul, capable of accommodating 2,000 vehicles, is also part of the project. The residents of Purkul are up in arms against it. Writer Madhu Gurung notes that Purkul is one of the last pristine areas in Dehradun, a preferred location for old-age homes.

“All that has now been thrown out of the window with massive construction… Can you imagine the pollution and noise once thousands of cars are parked here on a daily basis?” she asks. And that’s just one project. The Uttarakhand government has announced plans to construct 65 such ropeways across the state, including major projects connecting Sonprayag–Kedarnath and Govindghat–Hemkund Sahib.

This comes after a major policy shift in 2020. The MoEF declared that ropeway projects would no longer require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or forest clearance—a decision that revealed the government’s total lack of concern for the ecological fragility and seismic vulnerability of the region.

A telling case is the Joshimath– Auli ropeway. Spanning 4.15 km and built at a cost of Rs 450 crore, it has not been used since 7 January 2023, ever since cracks developed around its launching pad at Joshimath. These cracks have only deepened since, underscoring the risks associated with such infrastructure in geologically unstable zones.

Most of the hill stations, including Mussoorie and Nainital, face the same problem of land subsidence. How then is the state government certain that the new ropeways will not end up falling into disuse?