A massive landslide on Tuesday morning near Ankola in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district has buried at least 12 people, of which six are confirmed dead. The slide deposited a heavy gasoline tanker and its crew into the adjoining Gangavalli River and swallowed a part of NH-66, a coastal thoroughfare used for industry and tourism. This was only the latest such event in a series across the country.
Earlier this month, the Char Dham pilgrimage was stopped when incessant rainfall triggered large landslides in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Not long before, access to seven Arunachal districts was cut off by landslides and rockfalls.
The tragedies are a wake-up call for road engineers across India. They are known to compromise on conducting appropriate tests before taking up road projects in hilly areas. Experts have cautioned against engineers conducting only soil tests, but not soil chemistry studies, before such projects. This leaves them blind to the impact of the angles at which hills are cut into to make way for, expand or maintain roads.
Soil in hilly regions contains large subsurface rocks that tend to put pressure on lower-layered soil; during heavy rains, when water presses the rocks outwards on the slopes, landslides occur. The more vertical the cuts, the higher the chance of slides. It’s more so when deforestation loosens the soil, providing a ready recipe for disasters.
According to the Geological Survey, 4,20,000 sq km across India, or about 12.6 per cent of the total area across 15 states and four Union territories, are prone to landslides. At least 3,710 people have perished and hundreds of villages destroyed in landslides between 2010 and 2021.
When such events cause death and destruction, there is a tendency to blame nature, not the persisting human follies and official apathy. They are a huge threat not just to lives and habitations, but also to ecosystems. Intensive urbanisation and infrastructure development in hilly areas; deforestation loosening the subsurface soil; shifting cultivation involving burning forests; and mining activities that remove vegetation and gravel are the main causes.
All these directly involve human activity. Serious contemplation is needed on balancing infrastructure requirements and safeguarding ecosystems, as well as protecting regional biodiversity. Ensuring growth today at the cost of destroying the ecosystems our future generations need would be suicidal. It’s time to act now, rather than repent later.