Joshimath Subsidence Archives - Lokmarg

‘Joshimath Paid The Price For Our Environmental Sins’

By LokMarg 24th January 2023

Anoop Nautiyal, a social worker from Uttarakhand, says successive state govts chose to pay heed to the hydroelectric lobby but not ecologists and scientists

The tragedy of Joshimath took decades to be scripted. Since 1975, experts and environmentalists have been raising alarm over the fragile ecology but they remained neglected. These warnings are in the public domain, so successive state governments cannot wash their hands of the responsibilities.

This is the price of our own collective ‘sins’. Citizens, local contractors, and municipal authorities are as much to blame as the government. The present situation is one of fire-fighting after the flames have engulfed. We have lost a hill town forever. There is no option left than to shift the entire population to another settlement as was done in Tehri when the entire villages in the dam belt were shifted to New Tehri town.

An old saying goes: There is no greater disaster than greed. This adage fits well into the Joshimath subsidence. And it won’t stop at Joshimath. Many other towns will have the same fate in near future. Those in line with a Joshimath-like fate include Karnaprayag and Gopeshwar in Chamoli district, Ghansali in Tehri, Munshiyari and Dharchula in Pithoragarh, Bhatwari in Uttarkashi; Pauri, and Nainital in Kumaon region.

Hydroelectric projects have contributed the most in increasing the current episode. The present calamity must force us to deliberate and brainstorm on how to save other towns. The state system, by its natural responsibility, which becomes more prominent in a hilly state like Uttarakhand, has not been able to develop a solution. From the great earthquake of Garhwal in the year 1803 to the disaster of 2013 and the current disaster of February 2021 and Joshimath… this process continues to be ‘man-made’ than ‘natural’.

ALSO READ: ‘Not Just Joshimath, Entire State Sitting On A Powder Keg’

Scientific and social organizations have been continuously giving suggestions and warnings. Environment Ministry committees, CAG, High Court, and Supreme Court have intervened several times. The media has been highlighting the irregularities time and again, but the governments have always looked at it casually. A large part of society and scientists concerns remained neglected.

For example, in 1982, considering the scientific arguments of the ‘Chipko Movement’, it was decided to stop the construction of the ‘Vishnu Prayag Project’ or shortly before the construction of three hydroelectric projects in the upper reaches of Bhagirathi was stopped. But the hydropower lobby has been influencing the politics of the country. As a result, these projects never paid enough attention to the environment.

It’s high time that we woke up as a race and as a society – or in the near future, we will be left with no such place to admire and adore.

As Told To Rajat Rai

‘Not Just Joshimath, Entire Uttarakhand is Sitting on a Powder Keg’

By LokMarg 13th January 2023

Suresh Nautiyal, a veteran environmentalist based in Uttarakhand, says consecutive governments have systematically blown away the gains of Chipko Movement

They have torn apart the heart of the hills in Uttarakhand. And this has been going on for decades, under all governments, be it the Congress or BJP. Indeed, the entire state is sitting on the brink of a man-made catastrophe.

Governments have cared two hoots for the vulnerable ecology of the hill state and willfully aligned with corporations, contractors, industrial companies and the construction mafia to irretrievably damage the inherent balance of nature. Roads, big dams which displaced thousands, real estate and mindless constructions violating all norms, unknown tunnels and aggressive religious tourism has all turned the clock to its current, tragic fate.

The murder of natural streams and rivers, the massacre of trees, the non-stop destruction of the organic eco-system in the relentless race for a capitalist model of unplanned development, blindly copying big cities in the plains, has ravaged the pristine ‘Dev Bhoomi’.

Joshimath is located on a ridge cut through by streams that descend from Vishnuprayag where Dhauliganga and Alaknanda rivers converge. Serious apprehensions were expressed in 2013 that the tunnels of the Tapovan-Vishnugad Hydropower Project of the NTPC could cause huge damage.

A recent report by geologists and scientists like Dr SP Sati, Naveen Juyal and Shubhra Sharma was ignored. They said the slopes around the town were in delicate and unstable condition. Predictably, their concerns and warnings were overlooked.

***Nautiyal (inset) believes Char Dham Project is another disaster in the making***

The government-appointed Mishra Commission’s report, submitted in 1978, had clearly stated that no major construction work be carried out in Joshimath, as well as in the Niti and Mana valleys, since this region is situated on moraines.

ALSO READ: Lessons To Be Learnt From Kerala Disaster

Several authoritative reports predicted this impending catastrophe. But, they continued to build tunnels, structures and digging, to appease their masters, and to legitimize the big thermal power plant project. Now the entire town, a major landmark in the pilgrim and adventure route, is sitting on a volcanic moment of destruction, with thousands of people and homes under threat, and the authorities are pretending that they had no clue!

The 125-km Rishikesh-Karnaprayag railway line, being constructed reportedly at a whopping cost of Rs 20,000-crore, will lead to the construction of 35 bridges and 17 tunnels. The project cost will inevitably increase in the years to come. Hence, one can see the ‘real reason’ behind this project!

This has been a pattern in the entire state from Harsil to Karnaprayag, which is literally sitting on perennial landslides. So much so, pleas by civil society groups have been dumped in the garbage can. We have been pleading for so long for an alternative eco-friendly approach to development because of the special conditions in the hills, but they refuse to listen.

Several towns like Gangotri, Uttarkashi and Gopeshwar are sinking. Landsides, cloudbursts and flash floods are inevitable and have become part of the tragic lives of the condemned people of Uttarakhand.

Now, they have cut lakhs of trees for the expressway and multi-lane for the ‘Char Dham Yatra’, the pet project of the prime minister. This has effectively destroyed all the gains of the Chipko Movement and after. This will certainly have an extremely damaging impact on the fragile Himalayan eco-system.

The central and state government, therefore, should treat the situation as an emergency, and immediately stop all construction work in the state, including thermal power projects. And this must include the PM’s pet project. Indeed, we need a serious rethink. Or else, one Joshimath would follow another!

(The narrator is a member of the Uttarakhand Chintan Group founded in 2007)

As told to Amit Sengupta

SC Declines Urgent Hearing On Joshimath Subsidence

By LokMarg 10th January 2023

Everything important in the country can’t come to Supreme Court, said the top court on Tuesday as it declined an urgent hearing of the plea relating to the Joshimath sinking incident.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and PS Narasimha said there are democratically elected institutions to look into the issue, as it posted the hearing for January 16.
“Everything which is important need not come to the apex court. There are democratically elected institutions working on it,” the top court said.

The court said this after the lawyer appearing for the petitioner mentioned the matter for an urgent hearing.

Earlier on Monday, the Supreme Court asked an advocate to mention on Tuesday a plea seeking immediate intervention by the top court to assist the reparation and providing of urgent relief to people of Joshimath in Uttarakhand, who are living in fear in the wake of a landslide and subsidence.

The plea was filed by Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, a religious leader, seeking a direction to declare the current incidents of landslide, subsidence, land sinking, land burst, and cracks in the land and properties as a national disaster and direct the National Disaster Management Authority to support the residents of Joshimath at this time.

Several families were evacuated from Joshimath after cracks appeared in their houses in the wake of the subsidence.

The petition sought to provide immediate financial assistance and compensation to the people of Uttarakhand, who have lost their houses and land to subsidence.

“In the name of and/or for the cause of development the respondents have no right to push the people in the mouth of death and the religious sacred town in extinction and thereby infringe the fundamental right of the people of the Joshimath including the petitioner as well as inmates of his Monastery guaranteed under article 21, 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India,” it stated.

The entire mess of environmental, ecological, and geological disturbances occurred due to large-scale manly intervention in the form of Industrialisation, urbanization, and destruction of natural resources by the Union and State government in the State of Uttarakhand, the petition stated further.

It added, “No development is needed at the cost of human life and their ecosystem and if anything such is happening it is the duty of the State and Union government to stop the same immediately at war level.”

The petition was filed to “secure the life and personal liberty of the people of Joshimath town in the Chamoli District of Uttarakhand, wherein the life of the people is lurching large due to imminent and sudden cases of land subsidence, land sliding, the sudden eruption of water, cracking of houses and subsidence and cracking of agriculture plots resulted on account of man-made activities which given rise to recurrent natural calamities which were earlier very rare”.

“Issue direction to the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to provide insurance coverage to the residents of Joshimath and to duly compensate the affected residents for the disaster caused by land sliding, land sinking, land burst, subsidence resulting into the cracking of houses and lands,” it added.

It also sought direction from the SC to the NTPC and Border Road Organisation (BRO) to rehabilitate the affected citizens at safer and more convenient places.

“Direct Centre, National Disaster Management Authority, Uttarakhand to take effective and proactive steps to protect the spiritual and religious and cultural places of Hindus including Sikhs at Joshimath; especially the Jyotirmath and adjoining sacred shrines/temples wherein deities are being worshipped since time immemorial,” the plea read.

“Direct the respondents to immediately stop construction and building work of the Tapovan Vishnugad Hydro Electric, Project tunnel and not to begin again till the high-level committee of geologists, hydrologists and engineers constituted by this court,” it added. (ANI)