Relief and ebullience marked the rescue of 41 miners trapped 260 metres inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand, after 17-long days, on Tuesday night, Nov 28, 2023.
All the workers involved in the rescue operation merit credit for their relentless effort. Primarily, the spirit of the survivors, who persevered inside the crashed tunnel, deserves commendation.
For the government and the industry, there is a lesson here that they should not take chances with the lives of poor workers.
The Silkyara tunnel is part of the Narendra Modi government's Char Dham project connecting key Hindu pilgrim sites through two-lane paved roads in the Himalayan state. When completed, it would shorten the pilgrimage route to Yamunotri by 20 kms. It will also enable all-weather connectivity to the major Hindu pilgrimage sites.
The construction of the tunnel is being undertaken by Navayuga Engineering Company Limited.
Unfortunately, the Silkyara tunnel crash has come barely three months after 20 workers and engineers were killed on the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway in Maharashtra's Thane district, points out The Wire. The news outlet quoting the Indian Express recalled that an FIR was registered against the sub-contractors of Navayuga, the agencies "hired to construct the package 16 of Samruddhi Expressway."
The BBC quoting Bernard Gruppe, a German-Austrian engineering consultancy hired by the Indian company building the tunnel, had said in August that since "the start of tunnel driving, the geological conditions have proved to be more challenging than predicted in the tender document". It is not clear why an "escape passage" approved for the tunnel in 2018 had not been built until the time when the tunnel collapsed.
To grasp the magnitude of the crisis, it's important to understand its location - the Himalayas, BBC noted.
The Himalayas are the world's youngest mountain range, home to the highest peaks, formed some 45 million years ago as a result of the collision and folding of two continental plates. The upward climb of the Himalayas comes with seismic activity - in other words, it's an earthquake-prone region.
Geologists say many of the rocks in the northern Himalayas where Uttarakhand is located are sedimentary rocks - phyllite, shale, limestone, quartzite - which form when loose sediments of the Earth's surface become compressed and bond together, the BBC added.
The online news website Mooknayak, quoting experts, pointed out that the Himalayan range has always been ecologically unstable, prompting concerns about the construction methods and the apparent scrutiny it underwent.
Mooknayak recalled that during a seminar on sustainable development and climate change held in Uttarakhand on 28th October 2023, SK Patnaik, a member of the Uttarakhand Pollution Control Board, expressed concerns about the "unchecked development" occurring in the hills. Highlighting the existence of Extended Producer Responsibility regulations, Patnaik emphasized that despite their presence, they were not being adhered to. He stressed the need for sacrificing comfort and material possessions in favor of sustainability, advocating for a necessary shift in lifestyle.
In short, the Silkyara tunnel crash offers a lesson, that tunnel-visioned development puts lives of poor people and the environment in peril.