PERIL IN THE HILLS

The thought that Joshimath is crumbling under its own weight will make a variety of travellers feel as if a cherished part of the earth is giving way under their feet.

- S.M.A. KAZMI

The beautiful hill town, perched at a height of 6,000 feet in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district, is not another remote dot on the map. It's the gateway to the revered Badrinath temple, the storied Hemkund Sahib gurdwara, a precious World Heritage site in the shape of the Valley of Flowers, the snow sports resort Auli, and any number of high-altitude treks in the surrounding mountainscape. There's also strategic significance: the town hosts the brigade headquarters Indo-Tibetan of the Indian army and Border Police (ITBP), which guard the Indo-China border in this sector of the Middle Himalayas.

It has not happened suddenly, though. An alarming number of towns and villages in the Garhwal hills have been facing frequent landslides and subsidence of agricultural as well as residential buildings. Why? Put it down to arrant human folly. "The Himalayas are the youngest mountain range in the world.

It's still in the making. And geologically, Uttarakhand is situated in a highly active seismic zone. Unbridled construction activity-a rash of hydro-electric projects, the all-weather Char Dham road or the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag rail line-with rampant use of explosives for digging tunnels has exacerbated an already fragile situation," says Dr S.P. Sati, a geologist with Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, who, along with two fellow geologists, conducted a study in 2021 on the emerging crisis in Joshimath. For two years now, locals had been warning the administration about the growing incidents of land subsidence and houses developing cracks. Some 14 months ago, they even formed a Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti’. The state government constituted an expert panel to conduct geological and geotechnical investigations, but even its wise cautionary notes went in vain.