Few lessons learnt from Uttarakhand incident
The tragedy of the massive mudslide in Pune district that has so far claimed more than 50 lives, with many more feared dead, is exacerbated by the fact that it was seemingly caused as much by human neglect as due to natural factors. Environmental experts believe that mindless construction on the hill slopes had loosened the top soil, which came gushing down after two days of torrential rains. Malin, the village that has almost disappeared from the map after the mudslide, was at the foot of the hill. Now buried under 20 feet of slush, it was reportedly one of several hamlets that had been designated as ‘ecologically sensitive' in November 2013 by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The tag was recommended by an expert panel, led by ecologist Madhav Gadgil, which was studying the Western Ghats. It came with a strict prohibition on ‘developmental' activities. Yet, the warning, first issued in 2011, was ignored, and construction work continued unfettered, without any consideration for the ecological fragility of the region. Mr Gadgil had pointed at the windmill project that has been coming up in the area as one of the major problems. Though technically a green energy project, it resulted in massive deforestation along the hill slopes — according to Government figures, 28,000 trees were cut down to make way for the wind farm, although activists put the figure at 3,00,000, trees. Also, hill roads leading up to the wind farm were shoddily constructed. Another problematic project was the Government's Padkai scheme. Part of the larger national rural employment guarantee scheme, it has been converting hill slopes into cultivable plots for the tribals. Though noble in intention, the project was being terribly executed by short-sighted Government officials who couldn't be bothered about the dangerous consequences of tweaking with the natural architecture of an already fragile region. A non-Government organisation has pointed out that the area was not properly surveyed and the plots badly chosen. After the land had been flattened by uprooting trees, neither had stones bunds been built to contain soil erosion nor had nullahs been cut into the slope to allow for drainage, as Mr Gadgil said.
The tragedy in Pune revives memories of the disaster in Uttarakhand last year. The difference in scale notwithstanding, while both catastrophes were triggered by adversarial weather conditions, they took on deadly proportions due to indiscriminate human activity. The stories from both places are eerily similar — unchecked construction and ‘development’ work, large-scale deforestation, and violation of rules in the green book. Much of all this is driven by an insatiable appetite for profit and a criminal disregard for human life and safety, and some of it by official apathy and incompetence. less than a year after the Uttarakhand incident, the tragedy in Pune shows no lessons have been learnt.