VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
The Uttarakhand flood and
cloudburst is perhaps the severest tragedy in the country in recent decades.
Our heart goes out to the hundreds and perhaps thousands who died on a
pilgrimage with prayer on their lips and the loss and vacuum which their near
and dear ones would face for the rest of their lives.
No one will ever know the exact
number of deaths. Given the magnitude of the tragedy and the eye-witness
accounts, the death toll must be in thousands. The government figures would
restrict the numbers to the least possible, but those who escaped death by a
whisker and saw their near and dear ones being washed away by the ferocious
rivers or buried under tonnes of debris, know the magnitude of the Himalayan
Tsunami and how unforgiving the mountains and rivers have been.
Though there is hardly any
protection from nature’s fury-cloud burst, heavy torrential rains, earthquakes
or for that matter the bursting of a glacier lake, but there is definitely a
strategy to deal with such eventualities and minimise the losses. What the
tragedy highlights is the utter failure of the authorities to learn lessons
from past disasters and be ready with a system which causes least casualties
and ensures rescue at a rate much faster than what we have witnessed in the
last over one week.
Being a nature lover and having
visited Uttarakhand hills on numerous occasions either for a quite holiday, on
journalistic assignments or on a pilgrimage, I fail to understand why there is
an unrestricted movement of vehicles right upto where you can drive on the way
to Kedarnath or other religious places of the Char Dham Yatra and the Hemkunt
Sahib in the busy months of May and June. Why a mechanism can’t be set up by
the state government authorities to make a place of halt on the way to the
popular shrines and then have a token system so that there is only a regulated
flow of vehicles and human beings to the shrines.
The Uttarakhand Government can
surely devise a system similar to what has been done by the Shri Amarnath
Shrine Board where there is a process of allowing only registered pilgrims,
there is small window when the journey can be made and there is a compulsory
health check-up. In addition, you have all facilities like food, tents,
medicines, doctors and resting places at convenient locations. Pilgrims are
sent in batches to avoid over crowding and security personnel are present all
around to prevent any untoward incident like a terror attack or even to save
them from the fury of nature. In 1996,
a tragedy had struck the pilgrims leading to over 250
deaths. A Commission was appointed to know the reasons and suggest remedial
measures, lessons were learnt quickly and a mechanism evolved to prevent and
minimise nature’s wrath and this has worked over the years. The yatra starts
this year on June 28 with all the arrangements in place.
Similarly, those visiting Vaishno
Devi shrine know how regulated and efficient the system is and how tokens are
issued to the pilgrims at Katra and how you know the exact timings when you
would be allowed to visit the sanctum sanctorum.
If such a system could be devised
for these two shrines, why can’t Uttarakhand emulate the example? It has all
the more reasons to do so as four of the holiest shrines of Hinduism comprising
the Char Dham Yatra-Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri fall in the
state. In addition, the famous Sikh shrine at Hemkunt Sahib is also located in
the State. It is known as Devbhoomi for the sheer number of religious places it
has and the pilgrim traffic every year alone runs into several lakh. All the
shrines are at a high altitude in extremely difficult and inhospitable terrain.
The fragile eco system and the young Himalayan
Mountains
So you do not regulate flow of
traffic and you do not have any disaster management plan keeping in view such a
scenario. Ideally, there should be helipads all over the place at every few kms
on suitable locations and wherever the terrain permits. If one gets submerged
in water or debris falls on it, there should be another helipad close by
keeping an eye on such an eventuality. Here is a case when you start digging a
well when the fire is already on. Helipads were hastily made after the tragedy
struck. This area is sensitive from a military point of view also as the China
(Tibet) border is not far away and you do not even have multiple helipads to
ensure that the bigger Mi-17 helicopters land. There should be dozens of them.
Despite lack of efficient air
support, the armed forces and the ITBP did a commendable job in relief and
rescue operation on the ground. They always come out with flying colours when
the country faces natural calamities and other emergency. But what prevents the
Uttarakhand government for creating a dedicated force for mitigating the fury
of natural calamities which is quite common in the hills. Remember the Uttarkashi
earthquake in 19991 and the Chamoli earthquake in March 1999 which led to
massive death and destruction then. If locals are recruited in such a disaster
management organisation and they supplement the efforts of army and ITBP, the
results would be different and the rescue and relief much faster. The locals
know the terrain like the back of their hand, they know the alternative routes,
they know the peaks and the turns of the mountains, they can even read the
weather and can be extremely valuable in any disaster management operation.
It was also a time to revisit the
ecological devastation that has taken place all over the hills be it in
Uttarakhand or the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. I remember visiting the Tehri
Dam when construction was going on in 1997 along with a team of Journalists and
environmentalist and Chipko movement leader, Sunder Lal Bahuguna. He was on a
maun vrat then but explained the disasters waiting to happen by writing notes.
Bahuguna took us to the top of the hill to explain the entire system of the dam
and how this was untenable in the fragile eco system of the hills. We
understood him, but no one involved in decision making paid a heed. During my
last visit to several places in Uttarakhand three years ago, all I saw and
noticed with concern was a series of dams and hydro power projects of all hues
and size mushrooming everywhere. Rivers were being diverted through tunnels
bored in the hills, tonnes of mud was being excavated to make way for dams,
huge machines were involved in drilling work, rocks were being blasted and in
the process, they were playing with the natural system of the rivers and
mountains.
Of course the debate on
development versus environment is wider and everyone has an opinion on it. My
point is simple. Our greed to extract as much as possible from the hills has to
stop. You simply cannot recklessly build chain hydro power projects, hotels,
shops and houses on the riverbeds. Have respect for the holy rivers, the mighty
Himalayan Mountains
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