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Greed invites nature’s wrath
With most damage happening along rivers, unregulated construction, more than the monsoon, is blamed for the scale of the disaster
By Vibha Sharma
 India’s lifeline — the southwest monsoon — arrived early, bringing with it hope of bumper crops, filled water reservoirs and relief from the searing heat in the North. What started as a pleasant shower, however, didn’t take long to turn into an incessant downpour and thereafter turning into a full-fledged disaster in the hills, particularly Uttarakhand, the likes of which people there have not seen in recent memory.No doubt the weather phenomenon this year was rather peculiar, with scientists calling the ferocity of rains in the Himalayas “unusual”. “It is a rare event to have happened in mid-June. Such events occur over western Himalayas normally during the main monsoon months of July and August,” says D.R. Sikka, former Director of the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).
Kedarnath: A view of the wrecked buildings around the Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand. It is feared many bodies may lay buried in the debris that is up to 10-foot deep. PTI
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However, environmentalists say the ‘life-giving weather phenomenon’ cannot be blamed for the mayhem in the fragile Himalyan range — known for its poor soil stability and steep slopes.
An aerial view of pilgrims’ vehicles stranded along a river owing to damaged roads. |
Manoj Misra of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan says monsoon is a natural phenomenon and cannot be held responsible for the tragedy. “It is we humans who invite such disasters upon us by converting natural events into disasters through our foolishness, greed, absence of sensible planning and sloppy execution of plans,” he says. As the extent of the damage in Uttarakhand becomes horrifyingly clear, environmentalists say illegal constructions, mining and a series of hydro projects on rivers, unbridled urbanisation not only compounded the scale of destruction but also precipitated it. Unregulated development to accommodate growing requirements of a booming tourism industry, particularly the religious variety, has been pinned as one of the main causes for the vast devastation in the region by the NGO Centre for Science and Environment. Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDARP) says vanishing forests and shrinking pasture land are responsible for frequent landslides and cloudbursts Manoj Misra wants the following questions answered: How did multi-storey buildings come up on the fragile river banks? What are the laws or regulations being followed by the state regarding construction in or along river beds? What kind of weather forecast was given to Char Dham yatris by the state and Central governments? Why was the yatra not halted (despite the IMD’s warning) and the yatris provided information, stay arrangements at safe places or the option to return? Will the state government now come out with a white paper on the arrangements they had made and yet failed to avert the tragedy?
A survivor pleads with a soldier to allow her mother to board a chopper at Badrinath. REUTERS |
Thakkar also blames the IMD for failing to effectively forecast cloudbursts and heavy rainfall. “Inadequate warning before and immediately after such events contributes to damage and death in the aftermath,” he says. Way for the future While answers to these questions will haunt the authorities in days to come, Misra says the incident should be taken as an eye-opener and the Ministry of Environment and Forests should immediately come out with the long-pending River Zone Regulation notification so that construction on flood plains and river banks could be halted. “The Char Dham yatra should be treated as a major annual event in Uttarakhand, with state machinery geared to cater to the needs of yatris and the yatra in its entirety, so that such unfortunate events do not recur. Heavy rainfall will happen, but it need not be converted into tragedies like this one,” he says. Ajit Tyagi, former IMD Director General, says state governments have to device contingency plans to cope with the variability in monsoon. “Improved long-range and medium-range weather forecasts would assist in better preparation,” he says. Tyagi says in association with monsoon depression/low pressure systems, floods do occur during monsoon season. “Therefore, floods in some parts, depending upon the time of the formation and movement of monsoon depressions, may take place but what is important is preparedness,” he says. HOW THE MONSOON MOVED EARLY, AND WHY
An elderly pilgrim is consoled by a relative after being rescued from the upper reaches. PTI |
The way the monsoon progressed this year has been extraordinary. It entered Kerala with gusto, raced to the west coast ahead of its designated arrival dates and swept across the rest of India in 15 days of that. By June 16, almost a month in advance, the seasonal rains had covered the entire Indian landmass. The last time monsoon covered the entire India a month in advance was in 1961. The devastation in Uttarakhand has blotted out the cheer monsoon otherwise brings, but the heartening part of the early rains was that it would be good for the agriculture, water and energy sectors. The southwest monsoon — at times referred to India’s de facto finance minister, considering its significance for the economy — appears to be reinventing itself, or at least significantly changing, perhaps due to climate change, as environmentalists claim, an argument government agencies do not buy. IMD’s former Director General Ajit Tyagi says year-to-year variability in terms of onset, spatial and temporal rainfall and withdrawal is a normal feature of monsoon. “Onset dates show wide variability over north-western states, as seen from past data.”
Army personnel rescue pilgrims in Hemkund Sahib area. PTI |
An IIT-Madras study has pointed a significant increase in frequency and magnitude of extreme rain events and decline in moderate events between 1951 and 2000. Significantly, despite decline in moderate events, rainfall over the past century remained stable, possibly because of contribution from increasing heavy rain events offsetting the decrease. There has been a “slight decrease” of about 5 per cent in the seasonal rainfall in the past five decades, says Sikka. Clearly, changes are happening. Environmentalists warn that extreme weather events will go up in future, and attribute long-term increase of rainfall variance to a warming trend seen in the Indian Ocean ‘sea surface temperatures’ (SSTs, as they are called) between June and September. WHY JUNE WENT BERSERK Tyagi explains that an active western disturbance over northwest India between June 14 and June 16 was one of the reasons behind “pulling the monsoon” to north, thereby triggering an early onset. Normally, monsoon travels in waves. After a system pushes a wave till about the central parts of the country, there is a lull in the activity, after which another system takes over to push it up north. But this time, a single system managed to sweep the country in one go. The monsoonal circulation travelled east to west in three-four days to cover the entire landmass by June 16. Sikka attributes this “unusual” behaviour to “tremendous instability” in the atmosphere at the time monsoon entered Indian mainland.
Army personnel rescue pilgrims in a flood-hit area in Chamoli. PTI |
The Uttarakhand rain The Uttarakhand event happened because of two circumstances. One, the monsoon low pressure area was moving from the Bay of Bengal in the north-westerly direction towards Madhya Pradesh, while a westerly disturbance was approaching the western Himalayas. The two came in juxtaposition, leading to the monsoon trough in Central India becoming active. North of the trough, strong easterly winds from the Bay moved rapidly to reach the western Himalayas, Sikka explains. Significantly, he does not believe that the mayhem in Uttarakhand was caused by a cloudburst. “A cloudburst is highly localised, say over an area of 10 km by 10 km. This event happened at a large scale — almost over an area of 500 km by 500 km. A major conversion of two systems occurred over the western Himalayan region,” he says. A BREAK IN MONSOON?
Air Force personnel unloading relief material at Guptakashi near Kedarnath. PTI |
The monsoon run so far has been spectacular, but now fears are that it may lose steam, somewhere around July, the most crucial month for kharif sowing. IMD Director-General L.S. Rathore, however, does not subscribe to a theory of relationship between break-monsoon and early coverage. He says there have been many occasions when a system moved fast between east and west ends of the country. “It moved from Kolkota to Delhi in 24 hours in 2008,” he says. This year, monsoon’s performance will be “good”, as key parameters — sea surface temperatures, El Nino and La Nina — are behaving perfectly, Rathore says, adding: “Conditions remain favourable for a normal monsoon.” SSTs play an important role in shaping atmospheric circulations and weather systems across the globe. The Indian monsoon is influenced SSTs over the Indian and Pacific oceans. El Nino develops when SST over the central Pacific region becomes warmer than normal, while La Nina happens when SSTs over the central Pacific region gets cooler. When the SST over central Pacific is normal, it is a neutral condition. MONSOON PARAMETERS Clearly, El Nino and La Nina are significant contributors to the success, or failure, of the Indian weather system. Monsoon is, in fact, an interesting combination of various global and regional parameters — the Indian dipole, typhoon activity over Western Pacific, Mascarene High, cross-equatorial flow, snow cover over Central Asia, and heating over western India and the Tibetan Plateau. As a large-scale weather system, monsoon affects nearly 18,000 km area from east to west and 6,000 km from south to north, covering the entire central Africa, almost the entire South and South-East Asia, parts of North Australia, North Indian Ocean, parts of South Indian Ocean, China Sea, and parts of West Pacific Ocean. Moisture-laden winds blow from sea to land in the lower levels and dry air moves from land to sea in the upper levels to complete the circulation. Besides India and Pakistan, it affects almost 25 countries of the region.
A view of buildings in the Govindghat area partly submerged in the flooded Alaknanda river in Chamoli district. PTI |
Island trigger One of the most interesting parameters is the Mascarene High. Monsoonal current is formed due to a high-pressure area near a small island in the Southern Hemisphere- Mascarene, about 4,000 km from the Indian mainland. Winds from this region, called the Mascarene High, flow towards the northern hemisphere along the east Somalia coast. From here, they turn eastwards towards the Indian peninsular region and the Bay of Bengal. Then they make another turn near the north-east and enter the northern plains through an east-west oriented monsoon trough, which runs along the Indo-Gangetic plains in the shape of a spiral. Another interesting feature is the “heat low” over western India. Since monsoon is a sea-breeze activity, the more the land is heated the more is the intensity of the current. This time, April and May were particularly hot. To complete the circle, the monsoonal current must return to the Mascarene High and here in comes the high-pressure cell centered over the Tibetan Plateau, called the Tibetan High. From the Tibetan High, there is an outflow in upper levels towards the Bay. It then crosses the Indian peninsula and returns to the Mascarene High. bounty for FARMS Amidst the gloom, there is reason for cheer in agriculture in the rest
of the country. P. Chengal Reddy, Secretary-General of the Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA), says early rains will help Indian agriculture achieve 5 per cent growth. “It will be especially beneficial to the 55 per cent of the rain-fed lands, which produce major quantities of pulses, oilseeds and commercial crops, of which India has been a net importer for many years. The 2013-2014 crop season will thus reduce pressure on the import bill,” he adds. Early monsoon will also be an for rice production in South India and the northern states of UP, Bihar,
Orissa, West Bengal and Assam, which are now adopting hybrid seeds. During 2013-14, the rice production will cross 95 million
tonnes, he says.
A rescued pilgrim is helped by NDRF personnel at Guptakashi near the flood-hit Kedarnath shrine. PTI |
Most of the reservoirs will be filled and the groundwater situation will also improve, providing an opportunity for recharging. A caution Amidst the cheer for farmers, there is a slightly different take too. Alok Adholeya, Director, Biotechnology and Management of Bio-resources Division of the Energy and Resources Institute, says the unusual monsoon also has the potential to severely affect the farm sector on the whole. “The way monsoon is changing its pattern — short spells with heavy rains — the planners should be worried about water conservation and its efficient use. A significant part of the annual precipitation drains into the sea. A major resource is being wasted and needs to be addressed as the highest priority. Heavy precipitation and short spells are worrisome. Rice and wheat farmers are facing major difficulties due to overall changes in climate. Farm economics is getting severely affected. We need better predictions and preparations for such unanticipated factors,” he says.
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After Kedarnath, the maximum damage took place at Rambara, another place en route the shrine. The entire infrastructure at Ram Bara was swept away as the gushing water from the higher hills of Kedarnath and other streams razed Ram Bara to ground, resulting in the death of hundreds. The dead were swept away in the swirling waters of the Mandakini river. Those who survived tried to look for safer places and climbed the hillsides and forests. The maximum number of casualties took place at Kedarnath, and en route the shrine. More than 8,000 pilgrims and locals were stranded on the trek route, as minor bridges were washed away and the routes vanished.
Uttarkashi shrines
