For the past many years, cloud bursts have been emerging as a significant and reoccurring disaster in Himalayan region. The highly localized, intensive rainfall spell, consequent flash floods and landslides have been taking a heavy toll on human and infrastructure apart from impacting the landscape. SANDRP has been documenting such incidents particularly in North West Himalayan states of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. This first part of 2022 tracks the ‘cloud burst’ incidents reported in Uttarakhand before and during SW monsoon 2022. SANDRP’s previous compilation and analysis on the issue for Uttarakhand can be seen here 2018[i], 2019[ii], 2020[iii], May 2021[iv] and 2021[v].
Continue reading “Uttarakhand Cloud Burst 2022: Road Debris, Drainage Encroachment Magnify Destruction“Author: SANDRP
DRP 24X22: Stay on Shimla Draft Development Plan 2041 A Right Step by NGT
(Feature Image:- Locals gather near the debris of the building which collapsed at Kachi Ghati in Shimla. Credit Amit Kanwar/ The Tribune Oct. 2021)
In a welcome development, National Green Tribunal (NGT) has put Shimla Draft Development Plan (SDDP) 2041 on hold finding it ill-conceived and in directly violation of its earlier order of regulating haphazard construction activity in the state capital. This is a major set back of present government which had been hoodwinking the judiciary to provide relief to unauthorized structures with Shimla Planning Area in view of upcoming state assembly election.
To push the SDDP, the government went on to challenge NGT’s judicial power and even approached Supreme Court and chose to ignore the principle of sustainable development. The NGT order is a validation of the crusade launched by environmentalists and social organizations to save the Queen of Hills from further concretization and degradation.
The government has failed to get any relief from NGT, High Court and Supreme Court on the issue. Its time, the government wake up to the gravity of concerns and fragility of the hill station which has also been struggling to meet potable water demand and performing poorly on solid and liquid waste treatment front.
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DRP 17×22: SSP Fails To Provide Promised Water, Rehabilitation: Former Gujarat CM from BJP
(Feature Image: An aerial view of Narmada river downstream Sardar Sarovar Project in Oct. 2018. Source: CMO Gujarat twitter handle)
With Gujarat state assembly election round the corner, Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) the party ruling the state and Centre has been evoking the Sardar Sarovar Project as a big achievement in the face of contrasting ground realities as suggested by no less than former Gujarat Chief Minister of BJP Shri Suresh Mehta. The project has failed to provide promised irrigation water to farmers of Kutch and Saurashtra in whose name the dam was pushed as the canal system remains not fully built. The people of Kutch, in whose name Gujarat got 9 Million Acre Feet of water, disproportionate to its catchment area at SSP, were incidentally last to get the water and not first as it should have been. Kutch canals remains largely unfinished and command area largely unirrigated. Who stopped this area to get the water over a decade after the water started flowing from the dam is a question, Gujarat rulers refuse to answer.
Similarly, thousands of project affected people continue to struggle for rehabilitation and compensation despite court orders. The Gujarat rulers have gone silent over unending and unfolding ecological and hydrological impacts of the dam on Narmada river system downstream from the dam including delta area. Thousands of villagers living in miserable conditions submerged in backwater of the dam but have not been officially recognized as project affected people. At this moment, the timely, just rehabilitation and compensation of these villages and project affected families should be top priority of concerned governments including the Central government.
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Book Review of Water Conflicts and Resistance in South Asia
Guest Article by Ruchi Shree
BOOK: Venkatesh Dutta (ed.) (2022), Water Conflicts and Resistance: Issues and Challenges in South Asia, Routledge, New Delhi. [Key words: Politics of Water, South Asia, Transboundary disputes, Water conflicts, Resistance, Waterscapes]
The recent arrival of this edited volume on changing nature of water conflicts in South Asia is a significant addition to the increasing literature on politics of water. I can recall two more texts namely Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have Shaped South Asia’s History (Allen Lane, 2018) by Sunil Amruth and Water Issues in Himalayan South Asia: Internal Challenges, Disputes and Transboundary Tensions (Springer, 2020) an edited volume by Amit Ranjan. In the last two decades, politics of water has emerged as an interdisciplinary area of study and the framework of this book also suggests the same. The contributors range from water experts, govt. professionals to civil society activists and they capture the nuances of water conflicts at local, regional and transboundary scales.
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DRP 10×22: All Pervasiveness of Climate Change and Anthropocene Impacts
(Feature Image:- Odisha: 10 stranded in flash flood after sudden release of water from Gohira dam. Source: TNIE )
A large number of reports in this week’s news bulletin from SANDRP are tied by a common threat. The report in NYT about how the South Asian Monsoon is becoming more intense. How the droughts like the one in western US are becoming more likely.
In Bengal people killed in October rains while they were doing visarjan of Durga idols and in Odisha people stuck by sudden release of water from a dam. In these cases of W Bengal and Odisha, strangely, there was no warning and no one is even asking why. In both cases it is the destruction of the river in the that led to create the crisis, but again no questions are being asked.
The report of death by avalanches, the more frequent landslides in monsoons are also in the same league. The SW Monsoon is officially over as per India Meteorological Department, but even as we write, the extreme floods in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are breaching the Highest Flood Levels in several rivers.
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India’s Rivers Breaching High Flood Levels in SW Monsoon 2022
(Feature Image: Hydrograph of River Godavari in extreme flood situation at Kaleswaram level forecast station in Bhupalpally district, Telangana on July 15, 2022. Source: CWC)
Highest Flood Level (HFL) breach incidents are important indicator of flood cycle and could also help in understanding the changing rainfall pattern. Though, with 925 mm rainfall[i], the south west monsoon season 2022 falls in normal category, its distribution both temporally and spatially has seen huge variations. This is also reflected by at least 57 HFL breach incidents in 8 river basin across the country during the SW Monsoon months of July-Sept 2022.
For past four years, SANDRP has been tracking the HFL breach incidents during pre-monsoon and monsoon months. The analysis of such HFL breaches in 2018[ii], 2019[iii] and 2020[iv], May-Sept 2021[v], Oct.-Nov 2021[vi] can be seen on our website. The pre-monsoon months of May and June 2022[vii] have also seen 5 HFL breach incidents. This report tracks the other HFL breach incidents taking place between July and September months.
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Tirthan’s Way
Abhay Kanvinde’s photo story of Tirthan, as the free-flowing river makes its way out of the Great Himalayan National Park, then flows close to villages, touching the people and finally when it gets dammed as it comes out of the valley that is its home.
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Legally enforceable Humane Rehabilitation, not compensation needed: Madikheda Dam in Madhya Pradesh
Guest Article by Bageshwer Singh and Pooja Chand
Dam construction on any river is often preceded by displacement of locals and followed by submergence of villages, turning them into ghost villages. All the major river water projects involve large scale displacement of locals, and most of these displacements lead to creation of vulnerable groups. The stories of displacement and forced evictions can be traced back to construction of dams like Sardar Sarovar Dam on river Narmada, or Tehri Dam on Bhagirathi or Hirakud Dam on Mahanadi. Almost always, these displacements are rife with little insight into the village specific consequences of dam construction, villagers are left with no option but to give up on their ancestral lands to move out to alien colonies with no land to their name. Arundhati Roy, in her essay, ‘The greater common good’, while arriving at the figure of number of people displaced in the developmental projects in the last fifty years writes, “Fifty million people. I feel like someone who’s just stumbled on a mass grave.”
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DRP 031022: Great Victory of People: MP govt scraps all contracts related to Maheshwar Dam
(Feature image: A protest by Narmada Bachao Andolan in Nov. 2006. Source: @Sripadmanthan)
On Sept 27, 2022, the Madhya Pradesh Government cancelled all contracts related to the Maheshwar Dam Project on Narmada. This massive dam on Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh upstream of Sardar Sarovar Project and downstream of the Omkareshwar Project was to be a multi-purpose project with a 400 MW hydropower component and water supply component among others. It was opposed by the people’s movement lead by Narmada Bachao Andolan for over two decades now. The project being implemented by the private textile company S Kumars showed no will or intention of taking care of the social or environment impacts of the project. Madhya Pradesh government so far was trying to push ahead with the project by hook or by crook, but finally had the sense to realise that this is going to be a massively costly affair at estimated Rs 42000 crores and the state and the people of state are only going to suffer costs and adverse impacts. The cancellation of all the contracts for the project signals a major victory of the people’s movement.
While congratulating the state government for cancelling the contracts, we would also suggest that the government needs to quickly decide about decommissioning of the dam, so that it does not pose safety risk to the people upstream and downstream and also perpetuates unnecessary adverse social and environment impacts. Earlier the dam is decommissioned, quicker will be the relief from these impacts. Moreover, the MP government should also not let the private company go scot free and all attempts should be made to recover the money spent and also penalise them for breach of the contracts. The private company should also be made to pay for the decommissioning costs.
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High Rainfall days in India’s districts in Sept 2022
An analysis of the daily district wise rainfall data from India Meteorological Department (IMD) for the month of September 2022, the last month of India’s South West Monsoon 2021 shows that there were 417 (489 in Sept 2021[i]) instances when district rainfall of a day was above 50 mm. Such high rainfall instances included 365 (374 in Sept 2021) instances when rainfall was 50-100 mm, 47 (84 in Sept 2021) instances when it was 100-150 mm, 3 (20 in Sept 2021) times it was 150-200 mm and twice (eleven in Sept 2021) times above 200 mm.
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