Every time there is a muffled creak, Puran Singh, 75, a resident of Joshimath in Uttarakhand, rushes inside to check if his house has developed any more cracks. For the last 12 days, this has been his routine since fissures began developing on the walls and roof.
He counts them every time and returns satisfied that no new cracks have appeared in the house. His decade-old house which stands next to the Joshimath bus stand has been listed by the district administration in the ‘safe’ category of buildings. “We are having sleepless nights. Uncertainty looms large on our future,” he tells DH.
Jagadish Negi, another resident of Joshimath, explains that the first crack in his house developed on January 2 and since then, they have only multiplied.
“Officials have visited my house and conducted a survey. However, they have not listed my house in the ‘unsafe’ category. I have a one-year-old child at home. In such uncertain conditions, how can we live here? We feel like we are sitting on a time bomb,” says Negi.
This sinking feeling has become commonplace among the residents of Joshimath — 275 km from Haridwar — after nearly 700 houses and a few hotels developed deep cracks. Fissures have also appeared on the roads and inside a brigade headquarters of the Indian Army. The hill town has a population of around 20,000.
Even as the Uttarakhand administration emptied many houses and evacuated more than 4,000 individuals to safety, fear has compounded among residents after an Indian Space Research Organisation report was made public. The report found that there had been a land subsidence of 5.4 cm in 12 days since December 27, 2022 in Joshimath. In comparison, the region recorded subsidence of 8.9 cm in seven months between April and November 2022.
Instead of recognising its follies, the Centre issued a gag order to scientific institutions, refraining scientists from talking to the media. The order from the National Disaster Management Authority comes following a review meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who also asked other ministries not to indulge in any ‘blame game’. However, multiple published studies and reports prepared by environmentalists on the ground depict the vulnerabilities of the region and how the government was wrong in ignoring early signals.
The first alert was raised in 1976 when the M C Mishra Commission reported that Joshimath was situated on an old landslide zone and was sinking. The report recommended a ban on heavy construction around the town. Several other expert panels subsequently made similar recommendations.
And yet, successive governments at the Centre and the state went ahead with mega schemes like the Char Dham project, big hydropower plants and mountain railways, each of which involve large-scale blasting, hill-cutting, excavation and tunnelling through the rocks.
Moreover, Joshimath, Karnaprayag and other nearby towns were allowed to grow haphazardly without assessing the consequences of such unplanned growth.
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While better roads, small hydro-power plants, water supply and drainage systems are required for the local population, the government pushed for big-ticket projects.
"When the Mishra Commission report came out, Joshimath had only 200 to 300 houses. Now we have more than 4,000 buildings to cater to the needs of countless tourists and devotees as it is the gateway to Badrinath and Hemkund Sahib. Homestays and hotels have mushroomed,” says Umesh Rana, a Joshimath resident, who was 15 years old when the commission’s report was published. “We live in sensitive terrain. Nature is teaching us a lesson now and we have to suffer.”
Take the 889-km-long Char Dham project for example. To avoid environmental assessment, the project was split into 53 segments, each one less than 100 km in length.
Norms ignored
The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways ignored its own norms and the recommendations of a Supreme Court-appointed High-Powered Committee to go ahead and build 12 m-wide roads in the fragile hills. The project resulted in widespread hill cutting, forest loss, muck dumping, landslides, subsidence of slopes and disruption of water and drainage flow.
As if paving the way for SUVs to drive to Badrinath was not enough, the governments at the Centre and state pushed large hydro projects in the eco-sensitive zone. One of the biggest ones, National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) 520 MW Tapovan-Vishnugad project on the Dhauliganga river, is suspected to be the immediate trigger behind the bursting of an underground water source causing the subsidence.
Though NTPC has ruled out any such link, there is resentment against the state-owned energy major. The corporation claims that the instability at Joshimath is not linked to the power project as its 12 km long head-race tunnel is more than one km away from the outer perimeter of the town, at a depth of more than one km.
Environmentalists strongly counter the NTPC claims. “The NTPC submissions are misleading. There is no study to show the tunnel was not the cause,” says sociologist Hemant Dhyani.
Save Joshimath Agitation Committee Convenor Atul Sati says explosives have been used to dig the tunnel. “The explosions are affecting several undercurrent waterways and the groundwater table. The total landscape of Joshimath has become weak. Scientists had warned that such projects would be a threat to the entire town, but no one listened to their advice. Now we are suffering," he says.
In December 2009, NTPC’s tunnel boring machine (TBM) punctured a water-bearing strata three km inward the left bank of River Alaknanda near Shelong village. The site was more than a km below the surface, somewhere below the hill station Auli. The water discharge was 700 to 800 litres per second. The aquifer discharge was 60 to 70 million litres daily. This amount was good enough to sustain 20 to 30 lakh people. Besides such a colossal loss of natural resources, it led to water scarcity in the nearby areas.
There have been a string of other “aquifer ingress” events – incidents in which the TBM breaks into water-bearing rocks. Environmentalists suspect that such ingresses have weakened the ground below the town, which sits on landslide debris.
Series of mishaps
The February 2021 flash floods at the Tapovan-Vishnugad power plant led to the death of more than 200 individuals. Originally scheduled to be completed in 2012-13, the project is a decade behind schedule due to a series of mishaps that primarily stemmed from inadequate geological assessment.
The entire area is now undergoing yet another round of excavation and tunneling because of an ambitious mountain railway programme (Chardham Rail Connectivity project) to set up railway lines to Badrinath and Gangotri. For Badrinath, the nearest railhead would be Joshimath. Tens of large-scale earth-excavating and earth-moving machines drill hills to create one of India’s largest railway tunnels.
The Indian Railways is laying a 126-km-long railway line between Rishikesh and Karnaprayag at an estimated cost of Rs 16,200 crore. The railway lines are also being laid in Dehradun, Tehri, Pauri Garhwal and Rudraprayag. The highest number of tunnels — 17 — are being drilled between Rudraprayag and Chamoli. There would also be 35 bridges.
The new railway line is expected to reduce travel time between Dehradun and Rudraprayag by three hours. It takes six hours by road currently. The project is expected to be completed by December 2024. “The railway project is like adding petrol to the fire as tunnelings created cracks and landslides,” says Dhyani, a member of the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee.
Locals say not just in Joshimath, cracks are being developed in several villages in Tehri, Pauri Garhwal and Rudraprayag districts because of the drilling of tunnels. The Railway officials, on the other hand, claim that they are using technology to minimise the impact on the environment. “We have taken all the preventive measures. We are also ensuring that flow of water in the river is not affected,” says an official.
However, activist Sandeep Chamoli explains that once it rains, the loose soil will wash off to the river. An equal amount of debris is also being dumped next to the river.
“Come after two-three years and you will see homestays and hotels sitting on such artificial grounds. We are completely destroying the river,” he says.
While the Union ministries that approved such mega projects are silent, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami says the Joshimath crisis is not a human-made one, absolving the decision-makers who decided in favour of the projects ignoring the warnings.
“The government’s effort to shift the blame is highly unfortunate because nature reacted to such unmindful activities of human beings,” notes Dhyani.