Long road home

Uttarakhand is increasingly declaring its villages disasterprone. While many are fighting relocation, those who shift face conflicts with host villages over resources like water and grazing land. Is relocation the right way to mitigate disasters that are striking the Himalayan state with increasing ferocity?

- TRILOCHAN BHATT DEHRADUN

ON JULY 18, when the district administration of Chamoli moved the statue of Gaura Devi from Raini village to a safer place in the town of Joshimath, located 25 km downhill, it had in reality removed the symbol of a historic event that helped protect the sensitive ecology of upper Himalaya until recently. The legendary Gaura Devi in 1974 led the Chipko movement launched by the women of Raini and other villages across the Garhwal Himalayas to protect its forests from loggers and its steep mountain slopes from getting washed away by rains. Today we are fighting again but to leave Raini and be relocated to a safer place, says sarpanch Bhawan Rana.

Located at an altitude of about 3,000 m, just below the Nanda Devi glaciers, Raini is nestled on both sides of a deep gorge traversed by the Rishiganga river. In 2000, the year when Uttarakhand became a separate state, the government allowed a 13-MW run-of-the-river hydroelectric project to be built on the Rishiganga, right below Raini. By 2005, construction works on the dam and deforestation in the area were in full swing. Soon, houses developed cracks as the builders started blowing up the mountain just below the village. We have been demanding relocation since then. But no one paid heed until things got worse, Rana claims.