Management Perspectives

The Wayanad death toll continues to rise. Army authorities, engaged in the massive rescue operation involving nearly 1,600 personnel, including those from the Police, Navy, and NDRF, did not expect to find many more survivors. Continuing rains, in any case, did not permit the operations to be faster. There could be a loss of, perhaps, 600 to 800 innocent lives due to the unfortunate landslides.

Property loss, bereaved families, and livelihoods cannot be calculated. Satellite images, from the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of ISRO had estimated that a mind-boggling 86,000 square meters of land slipped and the debris travelled several kilometers along the river, devastating many settlements on the way. Why did this happen and could it have been avoided? Wayanad district, part of the Western Ghats, received 140 mm of rain in about 24 hours—five times its normal precipitation— during this period.

The beautiful hill station, at an altitude of a little over 5,000 feet, attracts a lot of visitors and, like all our hill towns, has witnessed ongoing construction over the decades to provide for the influx. The February 2023 Landslide Atlas of India released by ISRO, documents around 80,000 landslides across 17 States and two UTs in the Himalayas and Western Ghats, from 1998 to 2022. Wayanad was listed in the atlas as ‘vulnerable’. An earlier landslide had also occurred around the same location.

The Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) of about 60,000 square km, in the Western Ghats had been under study by a high-powered panel and their 2011 report did not receive enough attention due to the usual center-state differences. Some action could’ve been taken to ring-fence the vulnerable areas where no mining, quarrying, thermal projects, and red category industries and buildings above a certain size should not have been permitted. Union home minister asserted that a warning was given to the state about the current landslides but the Kerala CM refuted this.

The oldest mountain range in the country is the Aravalis, followed by the Western Ghats, and finally, the youngest, Himalayas. So, Western Ghats are only a little less fragile than the Himalayas and need special care. Records show that the ESA in the Ghats just cannot support unfettered construction and inflow of tourists. The problem is for all hill stations in India which are under threat of devastation because they are all receiving several hundred times the footfalls than they were designed for. It won’t be wrong to say that after independence, we have not developed a single new hill station! Our hill towns such as Srinagar, Shimla, Mussoorie, Mahabaleshwar, Darjeeling, Nainital, Kodaikanal, Munnar, Lansdowne, etc. just cannot go on supporting the hordes that go there all year long. Civic infrastructure in all these places is woefully inadequate. In a recent article, noted environmentalist Amitav Ghosh even talked about the threat to Goa—arguably the fastest-growing city-state in the country.

He cites the 2011 study, led by the great ecologist Madhav Gadgil who had warned that unless the house building, road construction, and settlement activities are halted or at the very least slowed down drastically and the number of visitors to the ESAs is strictly controlled we should expect many more disasters all over the Western Ghats! There could either be highly priced entry tickets or a system of lotteries to visit the hills.

A press report about this 2011 study had a shocking headline- “We should start weeping for Goa, just as we wept for Wayanad … India’s climate disasters are man-made.” He speaks the truth. I am sure many were rattled to read this recent story but, I am also sure that most of us would forget the dire warning very soon! With an improved forecasting system, we may be able to mitigate the losses from natural disasters but the fact remains that we need to do something to avoid such happenings. Let there be no repeat of the Wayanad tragedy.