Cost of Ignoring Fragility

From Uttarakhand to Himachal, recurring floods and landslides warn that only mountain-sensitive design and safety-first planning can avert the next tragedy

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The story of the Himalayan states like Himachal, Uttarakhand, and J&K is becoming sadly repetitive.

For the past few years, it has been the story of excess rainfall, glaciers melting, river levels swelling, landslides, and cloudbursts wiping out roads and villages. ‘The pitter-patter of rain on tin roofs and the lush greenery of the Himalayas appear now as things of a romanticised past. Tourist inflows have plummeted. ‘The usual proximate blame is on the rampant construction of highways, hydro projects, tall buildings, etc., and the remote blame, which the middle class loves to throw, is hurled at intangible concepts of global warming, climate change, the construction mafia, and so on. But the main issue here is — are we asking the right questions? The ones which will force us to do some self-searching and own up to things honestly. So here goes...

First of all, will we throw out our air-conditioners, which contribute to warming? Will we stop taking out our petrol-guzzling cars on the villainous highways? Will we stop using electricity from hydropower? Or will we stop using thousands of products made in factories that use this power? All these questions come up directly from the energy-guzzling life we live today — and thanks to that, it is a life as comfortable as humans have ever lived before. Of course, the honest answer to dozens of such questions is an obvious “No? All these changes look too demanding and impractical. So the bad news we have to accept is that global warming is here to stay, and we have to find a solution to survive and get along. That we can do only by adapting and using appropriate technology and engineering, which are suited to the situation humanity has created — and which is going to remain, and possibly get worse.