Debunking the myth of a ‘natural’ disaster in HP

MONSOON may be good news for the rest of India, but for Himachal of late, it mostly brings in bad news. Flash floods, cloudbursts, landslides have become an ugly pattern – a déjà vu moment over and over again. To add to it, is the disturbingly deliberate apathy. A twist of sad irony is palpable on the website of the HP State Disaster Management Authority which has for long been proclaiming a pretentious advice on the home page, “If we don't learn from the tragedies of the past, we are cursed to repeat them in the future.”It further tries to drive home this message emphatically through a ticker on the same page exhibiting figures of the number of dead in various calamities in the past, beginning from the Kangra earthquake of 1905. A century and a quarter later, the dead remain an ever-increasing morbid number. It is an egregious example of Solomon’s paradox: offer wise and sane advice to others but fail to adhere to it yourself.The frequent and increasingly severe disasters in Himachal Pradesh are an outcome of multiple factors such as the state’s inherent environmental vulnerabilities, impact of global climate change, and above all, pervasive and unsustainable anthropogenic activities. However, this surely does not mean we put the onus of climate-related disasters on nature.Disasters are not natural; therefore, let us dump the phrase "natural disaster". Nature, in fact, is a victim and not a perpetrator of disaster. There may be phenomena or at times some hazards which are natural; disasters are man-made. So debunking the myth of natural disaster, we need to assume greater responsibility and empathy in our interface with nature rather than pushing development activities dictated by political populism. Unfortunately, development has become a synonym of civil construction, unregulated and ugly at that: a sure shot recipe for disaster.Some experts, without any convincing evidence, attribute mountain collapse and landslides to gravity, thus absolving mankind of all accountability. While this theory deserves outright rejection, another principle of Sir Isaac Newton surely holds true: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We tamper and play with nature 24x7, so the reaction is natural. The question is how much load can our mountains sustain? Besides the physical burden of bricks and mortar is the burden of our pride, greed, ignorance, and the burden of apathy.In this context, it is absurd when the justification is “suddenly” the floods came, “suddenly” the cloud burst, “suddenly” the landslide. “Suddenly” was for the victims who were innocently caught in the fury. If we consider the disaster to be sudden, then we are merely exposing our ignorance and indifference. Accept that we have been nourishing these calamities for decades. Nature has given us immense wealth to exploit: air, water, food, minerals etc., and this wealth is either permanent or renewable. Instead of harvesting, we have chosen to plunder it. On the one hand political popularity prevails over environmental protection, on the other our own apathy and greed.When disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed. Prevention is better than cure is what traditional wisdom has always advised us. Shunning this sound advice, we have focused our entire management strategy on post-disaster management. How much was the loss? How many deaths? How many bodies recovered and how many missing? How much relief? Statistics that bounce like a ball between the government, media and the public.The post-disaster response is pretty loud. But alas, our interventions at this stage too are confined to repair and reconstruction, in “concrete”; the very cause that aggravated the disaster. Not a whiff of effective steps for prevention of such a calamity in future. We have created this monstrous circle of disasters leading to death and destruction followed by relief and reconstruction, and then all over again.It has been cynically said that our state has three major crops: rabi, kharif and “relief”. Efforts towards prevention are hardly visible; they decidedly demand meticulous planning and execution whereas just distributing money is easier and perhaps politically popular too. Political populism, irrespective of the dispensation, has severely compromised disaster prevention and management. Promises followed by schemes for regularisation of encroachment have ensured that safety of buildings is compromised.As a system we are wary of imposing any planning regulation in the rural areas, while in the urban belts we have the plans but are shy of enforcing them.The interventions required for disaster prevention or mitigation are absurdly simple and yet we continue to ignore them. Tree plantation on the slopes, especially the soil binding species, is the most effective method to check soil erosion and prevent landslides. But we seem to prefer the huge retaining wall model. Another elementary practice every engineer knows is to avoid cutting the toe of the mountain slope while undertaking road construction. Yet this is precisely how our hills are being cut for construction of roads.Driving on the under-construction roads in the state, even a layman is aghast at the sheer vertical elevation artificially given to the hill slopes. No wonder landslides have become a round-the-year phenomenon. Keeping the drains along the roads clean and unclogged would prevent and substantially reduce damage. However, the drains have either vanished or are clogged with rubble, litter and, more seriously, plastic. Unregulated, reckless and generally illegal mining over riverbeds poses the single biggest environmental threat to us, including the safety of our rivers, their beds and the communities residing there. No one disputes it, yet it goes on rampantly under our noses, or say right under our bridges.Disasters in their aftermath generate hectic construction activity and money starts pouring in. Who benefits the most could be anyone's guess. After flood, drought? Disasters in Himachal have become a "concrete" reality. The business goes on.Tarun Shridhar is a former IAS officer and currently the Director General, Indian Chamber of Food and Agriculture.

Debunking the myth of a ‘natural’ disaster in HP

Disasters in Himachal Pradesh have become a "concrete" reality. The business goes on.

Tarun Shridhar

Unlock Premium Insights in This Article