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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | When the mountains had a meltdown in Uttarakhand -Jacob Koshy

When the mountains had a meltdown in Uttarakhand -Jacob Koshy

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published Published on Feb 20, 2021   modified Modified on Feb 20, 2021

-The Hindu

An avalanche in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand early this month claimed at least 62 lives, destroyed two hydropower projects and ravaged the region. Jacob Koshy reports on how development projects are endangering the lives of people in the young and fragile Himalayas

The Rishiganga river looks like an idyllic brook from the balcony of Gyan Singh Rana’s two-storey house. The former headman of the village of Raini, who is in his nineties, has a stunning panoramic view of cliffs, glaciers, mountains, and the two Himalayan rivers — the Rishiganga and the Dhauliganga. In all these years of gazing at this view, Rana says he has seen the river flood from glacier melt only thrice. “But I’ve never seen anything of this sort,” he says referring to the avalanche of February 7 in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand that he watched in disbelief. “It was a blast, like something exploded in the mountains around me, and unlike the sound of big rocks of ice crashing.”

Pushpa, another resident of the village, was tending to her cattle when the disaster struck. “I really thought I’d die,” she says. “There was a huge cloud of dust. For a long time, I couldn’t see anything. I was suddenly knocked off my feet by the wind. I somehow got up and untied the cattle.”

The residents of Raini number less than 300, according to the 2011 Census. They aren’t strangers to the vagaries of glaciers. Ranjit Singh Rana, the village headman and Gyan Singh Rana’s son, says villagers in the region frequently go to the forests that are part of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, home to some of the most imposing glaciers in the Himalayas. “We go there to collect herbs for cooking. From there we can see icy peaks. They break, they grow, they recede and sometimes flood. But the recent event was simply extraordinary,” he says.

The sentiment is the same among all the villagers: they are familiar with the mountains and their moods and they have seen tragedies before, but the Sunday landslide that killed 62, smashed two hydroelectric power plants, and swept away everything in its wake have them shaken and worried. After the 2013 floods in the State, this tragedy has once again put the spotlight on the model of development in the fragile region, where the environment may not be able to sustain massive projects of development, as scientists have warned time and again.

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The Hindu, 20 February, 2021, https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/when-the-mountains-had-a-meltdown-in-uttarakhand/article33883088.ece?homepage=true


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