HIMALAYAN CATASTROPHE

FOCUS URBAN PLANNING

- Dhurjati Mukherjee

The Himalayan states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir have been ravaged by floods and landslides this year. It’s a known fact the Himalayas are not only ecologically fragile, but urbanistically vulnerable.

Sadly, planners have ignored the terrain, hydrology and the culture of the mountains. The result is there for all to see -- towns expanding without direction, concrete spreading across springs and water heads and infrastructure built as if the land beneath was inert.

The tragedy in UttaraKhand’s Dharali, a popular stopover on way to Gangotri, is still fresh in our minds. At same time, many major centres, including Shimla and Nainital, sit on waterheads. With rapid concentration, rainfall that once soaked into the soil now rushes unchecked over hard surfaces, intensifying floods and landslides. In one of the worst disasters to hit the Doon valley in recent times, around 15 people died in rain-related incidents while a similar number were missing as torrential downpour across Dehradun district was reported earlier last week. It is estimated that over a thousand people have died in such calamities in Uttarakhand in a decade while there has been extensive loss of property.

Despite known environmental risks to the fragile Himalayan terrain, the government has been pushing for construction of all-weather roads or the widening of the existing ones. A major example is that of the Char Dham project in Uttarakhand. Costing Rs 12,595 crore, it aims to upgrade or develop 835 km of national highways linking Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri. Of this, over 600 km have already been completed. Experts believe it’s the most dangerous of various projects and should not have been planned or given green signal.