Raigad devastation: No lessons learnt from past flood disasters

Tribune News Service

Vibha Sharma

Chandigarh, July 22

Amid the rain-triggered devastation at Irshalwadi village in Raigad’s Khalapur taluka, the Opposition on Thursday questioned the Maharashtra Government in the state Assembly over a report by a Commission headed by noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil on the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats.

Though the Commission submitted the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel to the Ministry of Environment and Forests in August 2011, the recommendations have remained unimplemented.

Lauded by environmentalists, the report did not find favour with politicians/planners. 

The bottom line is that despite multiple efforts, like the setting up of the Gadgil and Kasturirangan Commissions, the climate and manmade devastation in eco-sensitive Western Ghats is continuing.   

Opposition corners Govt 

Participating in the discussion on the topic, state Congress chief Nana Patole asked the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP Government what had happened to the Madhav Gadgil Committee report commissioned during the tenure of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to prevent Raigarh-type of incidents.

In response, Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis told the House that the task of mapping of villages and the identification of the core zone and buffer zone was completed in Maharashtra when he was the Chief Minister. “Our report was given to the Centre. Two other states are yet to send their comments. Only after this comes can the overall plan be prepared”, Fadnavis was quoted as saying

He also told the Assembly that Irshalwadi village was not on the list of landslide-prone villages and had no history of landslides.

“Crores of rupees are spent on it but it is not implemented. We should learn some lessons from incidents like Irshalwadi. Unfortunately, that it is not happening”, Patole was quoted as saying.

No lessons learnt from past 

According to the reports, as many as 83 persons are yet to be traced in the tribal village located on a hill slope in the coastal district, around 80 km from Mumbai. 

Search and rescue teams today recovered three more bodies from the debris at the landslide-affected village, taking the death toll in the tragedy to 25.

The village is overlooked by Irshalgad fort and is a popular trekking destination.

In August 2019, heavy rain caused devastating floods, landslides and mudslides in Kerala and Karnataka, which were also attributed to climate change and manmade activities in the region.  

Significant rain    

The IMD says isolated extremely heavy rain will occur over Konkan and Goa, Ghat areas of Madhya Maharashtra and Gujarat on Saturday. Light/moderate fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall is also very likely over the region for the next two days followed by a decrease thereafter.

Isolated heavy to very heavy rain will also occur over Mumbai during next 24 hours.

Western Ghats

The Western Ghats is also known as the Sahyadri mountain range. This 1,600 km mountain range runs parallel to the western coast transversing Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The region has more than 30 per cent of all species of plant, fish, reptile, amphibian, bird and mammal found in the country and is recognised by UNESCO as an important biodiversity hotspots.

Apart from biodiversity, the Western Ghats also houses lakhs of people. Experts say manmade activities, along with rain and features of the soil, have increased the incidence of landslides.

In May 2023, the Supreme Court directed the Environment Ministry to file a counter-affidavit to a petition filed by a minor, M Kaviya, seeking judicial intervention to protect the Western Ghats from destruction. “Month by month, the Western Ghats is being chipped away… Please intervene,” senior advocate Raj Panjwani and advocate Shibani Ghosh, for Kaviya was quoted as telling a Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud.

Recently, Gadgil also said that the biodiversity in the Western Ghats can be accomplished only if planners move away from “the current approach of conservation by exclusion and development by exclusion and adopt a pro-people approach of conservation by inclusion and development by inclusion.”

Gadgil versus Kasturirangan

Experts say conservation efforts should be carefully balanced with developmental activities. 

There were worries among Western Ghats states, especially Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, that harsh environmental regulations may hamper development.

Basically, Gadgil panel classified the extensive region of 64% of the Western Ghats spanning over six states into ecologically sensitive zones—ESZ -1, ESZ-2 and ESZ-3.

ESZ-1 was given high priority in which almost all developmental activities like mining and thermal power plants were suggested to be stopped.  

The panel suggested decommissioning projects that had completed their shelf life. In fact, it recommended “an indefinite moratorium” on new environmental clearances for mining in ESZ-1 and ESZ-2 and phasing out mining in ESZ-1 by 2016

The major criticism faced by the Gadgil committee report was that it talked more about the environment without paying attention to the ground realities.

Later, the Kasturirangan committee, headed by former ISRO chairman Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, was constituted to examine the report and balance the two concerns—development and environment protection. 

The report was submitted to the Environment Ministry in 2013. However, it was also met with criticism from politicians and members of local communities. Environmentalists called it a “watered-down” version, given that only 37% of the Western Ghats region was recommended to be classified as an ESA.

The threat to the region by developmental activities like hydropower projects remained because they could be set up in the remaining 63% and degrade the landscape, they felt.

Meanwhile, in February 2017, the Centre also issued a draft notification accepting some recommendations of the Kasturirangan report and asked the six Western Ghat states to oversee their implementation.

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