Twelve years ago, on 16 June 2013, a cloudburst caused devastating floods and landslides in Uttarakhand, resulting in the death of more than 6,000 people by government estimates, and up to 20,000 persons, by private estimates. Overflowing rivers destroyed most bridges and roads along the Char Dham Yatra Marg, leaving more than 3 lakh pilgrims stranded. The usual angels of mercy; the Army, Air Force and paramilitary forces, evacuated more than 110,000 people from the flood-ravaged area. In a small-scale replay of the 2013 tragedy, on 5 August 2025, a cloudburst caused the Kheer Ganga River to overflow, inundating Dharali village and surrounding areas.
Viral videos of the disaster, show men, houses, shops, and other structures being swept away in a raging torrent. With many still missing, the final toll is yet to be ascertained. Rescue efforts were gravely hampered by roads that had been washed away, or were blocked by boulders. Connectivity and electricity supply disappeared because mobile towers and electric poles had been washed away. The exact cause of the flood is still being assessed; geologists are divided on whether the flood was triggered by a cloudburst, heavy rains or a glacier lake overflow. Be that as it may, experts are almost unanimous that it was a tragedy waiting to happen.
Apparently, hotels, homes, and markets had been built in the floodplains, and historic channels of Kheer Ganga; construction in the old river bed had continued unabated, even after the 2013 floods reactivated the river’s old course. Only an RCC wall was built to confine Kheer Ganga’s flow to its new course; debris and boulders accompanying flood waters demolished the RCC wall, and washed away all structures built on the river bed, in the process burying a half a kilometre-wide stretch of land under mounds of debris and sludge, up to fifty-feet high. In a quest for development, a sea-change has come over beautiful Uttarakhand.
The unpolluted atmosphere and the gentle cool breezes are a thing of the past. Dust clouds from tunnelling work for the myriad railway tunnels and hydro-power projects, and the ubiquitously dug-up roads for road-widening projects, assail one’s senses. Scores of heavy trucks clog narrow hill roads, releasing toxic fumes in the clean mountain air. The quaintness of small hill towns of Uttarakhand is long gone; Deh radun, and Nainital resemble the more populated parts of Delhi, while other hill towns are not very different from their neighbours in Uttar Pradesh. Uttarakhand is no stranger to environmental degradation.
In the latter half of the 19th century, indiscriminate logging provided wood for expansion of roads and railways to the Himalayan foothills. Alarmed by large-scale degradation of natural forests, the British prohibited cutting of trees in Uttarakhand’s forests. After a visiting botanist apprised him of the plunder of rare species of flora from the Valley of Flowers, Lord Dalhousie issued the Indian Forest Charter 1855, reversing the earlier laissez-faire policy of forest exploitation. Independence saw a coterie of politicians and contractors embark on large-scale tree-felling in Uttarakhand that ceased only after the Chipko environmental protection movement in the 1970s.
Another blight, construction of hydropower projects in Uttarakhand, began in earnest after formulation of a national plan on 24 May 2003 to generate more electricity from non-coal sources. The plan visualised 162 big hydroelectric power projects being built in Hima chal Pradesh and Uttarakhand by 2025. Tunnelling and blasting for 70 hydro-electric projects allotted to Ut tarakhand, has fractured many aquifers and restricted river flows, upsetting the fragile ecological balance of the area, leading to the massive floods of 2013 and 2021. There would appear to be a close relation between land subsidence and tunnelling and boring activities, which drain un derground water, creating a void below the earth’s surface. Yet all official agencies have consistently denied any such cause-and-effect relationship; official reports in 1976, 2010, and Aug ust 2022 have put the blame else where ~ with the 1976 MC Mishra Report stating that Joshimath was prone to land subsidence because it was “situated on weathered, landslide mass of big unsettled boulders in the loose matrix of fence micaceous sandy and clayey material.” No one has bothered to ask why civic bodies, or the Government, had permitted construction activities in Joshimath after publication of the MC Mishra Report.
Currently, the Railways are constructing the ambitious Char Dham Railway Project, a 125-km railway line between Rishikesh and Karanprayag, with 105 km of the rail line running through tunnels, including India’s longest railway tunnel of 15.1 km. The large-scale road widening projects launched recently, new resorts and hotels built on and near riverbeds, have aggravated the environmental degradation. After subsidence was noticed in Joshimath in 2023, cracks and subsidence were reported in nearby places like Karnaprayag, Chamoli, Mussoorie and Tehri Garhwal, with maximum damage near tunnel areas of the Rishikesh-Karnprayag Rail Line, tunnel areas of All-Weather Char Dham Road, and tunnel areas of hydroelectric projects.
Public spirited citizens have moved numerous Public Interest Litigations (PILs) against the desecration of Himalayas, but with minimal results because of the persistent pro-development stance of the Government, and the Courts’ tendency to accept Government submissions at face value. After each disaster, a ban is imposed on hydro-electric projects and other environment unfriendly activities, but once things return to normal, the ban is first partially, and then fully lifted. The following developments are indicative of the rot:
* After the 2013 floods, the SC barred new hydel projects in Uttarakhand and set up an Expert Body (EB) to evaluate the role of 24 hydropower projects in the floods.
* After consideration of the EB’s report, and the Environment Ministry’s affidavit the SC kept the 24 projects on hold but lifted the blanket ban on hydropower projects.
* Another committee was set up by SC to consider six of the 24 projects, which warned against allowing these projects.
* The Ministry of Environment and Forests formed another committee to consider these six projects, which cleared five of them.
* The MoEF filed an affidavit in 2016, that the Government would allow all projects that would discharge at least 1,000 cusecs of water into the Ganga or its tributaries.
* After the Silkiyara Tunnel collapse, in 2023, the PMO ordered a permanent ban on any new hydro-electric project on the Ganga or its tributaries in Uttarakhand.
* A year later, the Uttarakhand CM petitioned the SC to allow recommencement of stalled hydropower projects in Uttarakhand. Now, after the Dharali tragedy, the Uttarakhand Government has issued an order banning all construction activities in disaster-prone hill areas, along rivers and streams.
One only hopes that this ban would hold, and not go the way of its predecessors. However, this perception is not shared by public functionaries. After land subsidence in Joshimath in 2023, the Uttarakhand Chief Minister stated: “People sitting at different places in the country are talking about Uttarakhand, which is not right because 65 to 70 per cent of the people living there are leading their lives normally… Char Dham Yatra will start in the next four months.” Similarly, after the horrendous floods of 2013, the then Uttarakhand Chief Minister categorically denied that human factors, like indiscriminate construction of hotels and houses over river beds were responsible for the tragedy.
The CM went on to say: “This is a very childish argument ~ that cloudbursts, earthquakes and tsunamis are caused by human factors. In the history of hundreds of years of Kedarnath, no such incident has taken place…My people are going to suffer because tourism is going to be affected. We have to put the infrastructure back on the rails.” Almost identical statements, a decade apart, by Chief Ministers of two different political parties, reveal the crux of the problem ~ a flawed development model, imagined and implemented for Uttarakhand.
Successive Governments have tried to stimulate economic activity through tourism and massive infrastructure projects. Such misplaced zeal for development has made the Government brush aside environmental concerns. Pliant environmental regulatory bodies have unquestioningly towed the Government line, readily granting clearance to environmentally dangerous projects. Probably, we need to discard the present model of development for Utta rakhand, and implement a model based on limited tourism, horticulture, traditional crafts, with knowledge industry hubs in Dehradun and Nainital.
(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)