After the twin disasters of 2023, Joshimath and Chungthang, I am truly sorry to write about the recent debacle at Tharali, the highest village in the Gangotri valley of Uttarakhand.
For me, this is the worst of many such interconnected episodes, as the crisis of ill-planned development in the Himalayas has finally come home: to the picturesque Harsil valley, where I have spent a lot of time, and to which I remain deeply attached.
Whether what happened on August 5, 2025, in the Harsil valley was a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) event or a cloudburst is irrelevant; these suppositions take away from our responsibility for the kind of development we are undertaking in the Himalayas by way of dams, roads, and tourism projects. Steve Alter writes, ‘by always pointing a finger at climate change, we distance ourselves from the more immediate and avoidable factors that make these crises so horrendous and painfully familiar.’
The debacle at Tharali showed unplanned tourism-related constructions on an alluvial fan of the Kheer Gad, which has flooded for the third time this century. For this very stream, in 2023, geologist Dr. Navin Juyal had forecasted the destruction of the town resulting from accelerated glacial melt.
I can only imagine what would have happened if the proposed dams on the Jalandri Gad and the Kakod Gad had been built: these dams would surely have been destroyed and the Bhagirathi rendered even more flood-prone by the deposition of more muck. Given that the now-superfluous thousand crore adits of the Loharinag dam have likely been destroyed, had the dam at Pala also been built, a mega disaster would have followed.
These dam projects were not scientifically reviewed and rejected, as they should have been. If they had, the proposal for the doubling of the road from Uttarkashi to Gangotri would have been called off or modified. Forget the 6,000 deodar trees to be felled, anyone with common sense can foresee what would happen if the old road, hewed through an igneous rock face between Gangnani and Dabrani, and past perennially-sliding new Bhatwari (old Bhatwari having previously been destroyed by landslides), is doubled.
The mountain itself would collapse, and not just the sturdy bridge over the Limchi Gad, which has now gone. Instead, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), executing the road doubling project, went ahead without an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or Environmental Clearance (EC).
Such proliferating developments threaten the lives and security of the people of the 7 upper villages of ancient Taknaur. Why should these not be valued as highly as that of the politically-charged road project to push even more Char Dham ‘pilgrims’ to Gangtori, now even in the winter season when the Devi retires lower down at Mukhba?
Can India commit to not developing dams in para-glacial areas, at very high altitudes, or in fragile zones?
We learn that in the Indian Himalayas, some 10,000 glaciers are receding at a rate of 100 to 200 feet per decade. The runoff often forms glacial lakes, which can then burst their banks dramatically, leading to downstream destruction.
This is what happened in the disaster at Tapovan in February 2021, itself a repeat of events in 2011 and 2013. Instead of listening to the complaints of the villagers of Reni, or the restraints imposed by the Supreme Court (SC), under the duress of development, we went ahead with dams and roads in such close proximity to the glaciers as to result in the loss of life, the dumping of millions of tonnes of overburden into the holy Alaknanda, magnifying the eventual flood, and obliterating the project economics. Now we learn that a fifth of the houses in Joshimath are uninhabitable.
This is the true cost of ignoring environmental considerations and using performative, cut-and-paste EIAs. Surely the appraisal process, which permitted dams that have been repeatedly wiped out on the Rishiganga (2021), Vishnugad (2021, 2023), Mandakini (2013), and Assi Ganga (2011), has to change?
The crowning debacle has to be Teesta III, for the faulty and motivated under-design of the spillway, for lack of basic communication protocols, for failed GLOF monitoring, and a legion short cuts. A hundred lives, 14 bridges, and over 10,000 crore of investment written off, the whole downstream landscape ravaged, but not a soul found responsible.
Some 70-odd hydro projects (amounting to 9GW) are still envisaged for the Gangetic basin alone (2/3 not yet built), which would affect nearly 80 per cent of the flow of the river. In light of the damage yet to come, can India commit to not developing dams and infrastructure projects in para-glacial areas, at very high altitudes, or in fragile zones? To have more authentic environmental assessments, appraisals, management, monitoring, compliance plans, and public hearings, instead of doing away with them, making them propaganda documents, or reducing them to a pro forma farce?
Building roads without geological surveys, embankments or water channels.
Everywhere in the Himalayas, we are building roads without geological surveys, embankments (pushtas), or water channels. This is appropriately called ‘cutting,’ and so it is, the cutting of the roots of mountains, the blocking of springs, and the puncturing of unsurveyed aquifers, by turbocharged JCBs working without the guidance of geological surveys. What this has done in Garhwal is to cause a landslide every 10 kilometres, to expose 811 landslide zones across the Char Dham 900km program alone.
Some of this road-building activity is said to be necessary for roads to the border. But elsewhere, it is for the Char Dham project, which attracted the flak of the Supreme Court for wilfully flouting environmental guidelines.
The court has since reduced the width of the roads to be constructed, but permitted the Gangotri and Badrinath roads to proceed, given defence considerations. There was no security need for Yamnotri or Kedarnath, but they were merrily added, indifferent to the muck to be thrown into the holy rivers.
Unfortunately, the SC ignored the recommendations of the Ravi Chopra Committee it had set up, leading to Dr. Chopra’s resignation. Also ignored were the series of recommendations of the Bhagirathi Eco-sensitive Zone (ESZ), established in 2012. Can we list the learnings from the collapse of the Silkyara tunnel in 2023 (part of the Char Dham project, excused from EIA and EC), where clearly the geological survey was inadequate, the design was faulty, and aquifer mapping was not properly done? Can we do an audit to examine the ongoing and future road and dam tunnels (75 in number) with these learnings?
Even for roads that have to be expanded, can roads be made smarter rather than wider, with widening in select areas to permit overtaking rather than blanket doubling? Can road widening on slopes steeper than 30 degrees be avoided?
Unbridled tourism and its impact on high mountain ecology
When I think of unbridled tourism and its impact on high mountain ecology, I can do no better than to quote my late father writing in the ’60s, ‘enough people over a thousand years have made these glorious pilgrimages, for that is what they are meant to be, on their feet, with no concern for worldly life or the comfort of highways or choppers.
They were sure of the God who lived in the snowy mountains, though often uncertain if their next arduous march would not be too much for their frail bodies and unused, plains hearts singing ‘Jai Badri Vishal.’
Now we have multiple daily flights by chopper to the Dhams (temporarily suspended after a series of crashes, given the utter lack of safety protocols). Is this truly human or spiritual progress? In the age of fast food, we are offered fast flights and fast salvation.
Never mind the ecological cost: road construction in the Kedarnath wildlife sanctuary, overnight accommodation (hitherto discouraged) at holy Kedarnath, and all the pollution in the sacred Mandakini stream and on a once pristine Himalayan bugyal (grassland), home to Saussurea obvallata, the legendary Brahma Kamal. Oh, what have we done!
And what are we going to do next? I am alarmed to read we are even now planning a 22km tunnel for Amarnath, a train to Karanprayag, and Asia’s longest ropeway to Auli. Is this a way to erase the experience of the Himalayas? What is left of the pilgrimage once you take away the Himalayas?
Can we learn from the multiple and repeated disasters?
Sonam Wangchuk in Ladakh undertook an extraordinary fast in winter to remind us to live simply, to help prevent glaciers from melting, and to be mindful of local sentiment. Can we heed his timely warning? Can we learn from the experience of limiting numbers at also fragile Machu Picchu and Mount Fuji?
Can we learn from the multiple and repeated disasters in our fragile Himalayas to assess carrying capacity limits for roads, tourism projects, and hill stations, to appraise future development projects critically and with consideration for environmental concerns?
Can we learn from Aldo Leopold, who wrote, ‘Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind?’