THE NEW DANGER ZONES

The unprecedented destruction caused by landslides in Uttarakhand this year puts a huge question mark on the Rs 12,000 crore Char Dham project. Can India find a way out, protect its infrastructure while also minimising the impact on the mountains?

- AVISHEK G. DASTIDAR

It turned out to be a 0 dark Diwali for 40 workers at an under-construction tunnel on the Gangotri-Yamunotri national highway in Uttarakhand. At 5.30 am on November 12, when the rest of India was waking up to celebrate the festival of lights, a 100-metre portion of the proposed 4.5 km Silkyara-Barkot tunnel collapsed suddenly. Following a landslide, the roof caved in and tonnes of loose earth and fallen debris sealed the tunnel's mouth, locking the workers in.

As we go to press, the men remain trapped, with teams from the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL) and the Uttarakhand government racing against time to rescue them. "The rescue teams have had to be careful, because reaching the site with such heavy machinery and deploying it on the loose soil is precarious. It can't be done in haste or else the machines will collapse," Dr Ranjit Sinha, secretary, Uttarakhand Disaster Management, told INDIA TODAY.

Ironically, the Rs 853 crore tunnel connecting Dharasu to Yamunotri, part of the contentious Char Dham highway development project, is being built to protect road users from such landslides. 'Once built, this tunnel will...provide all-weather connectivity and reduce 25.6 km snow-affected length...to 4.5 km, resulting in reduction of travel time to five minutes instead of the 50 taken at present,' a statement from the Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) said a day after the accident, even as rescue operations were on.