Maxar satellite symbol of the assignment of the Tapovan Vishnugad hydroelectric power plant under structure along the Dhauliganga River, 2018 Image: Maxar Technologies / Document Reuters.
The flash floods in Rishi Ganga and Dhauliganga on 7 February 2021 in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, occurred at a time unknown to the floods, requiring a deeper perception of the hydrogeological characteristics of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau to perceive the crisis of 7 February. Itself.
There is very little factual data on the tragedy. Even geoscientists are still at the source of such a giant volume of water, where the glacier comes from, and how the accumulation of transitority in Dhauliganga Gorge has escaped surveillance.
Some scientists have recently conducted an aerial study, which is probably to further clarify the actual processes that led to this event.
Dave Petley, a geologist at the University of Sheffield, attempted to reconstruct the imaginable procedure that led to the occasion on the American Geophysical Union blog:
1. In recent months, a wonderful failure has developed in the highest mountains.
2. On the morning of February 7, the block collapsed into a massive landslide
3. The landslide resulted in stagnant ice and glacial debris
4) They followed the valley to the west and hit populated spaces there
Down in investigation
The occasion is a terrible reminder of the limited investments in studies and research on the fragile Himalayan ecosystem. The world knows that those mountains, which continue to grow from 1 to 10 cm according to the year (approximately the speed at which our nails grow), are looking for a balance. After the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plaque 40 to 50 million years ago, the bark bent upwards to create the Himalayas, and there is still abundant tension underneath.
The mountains release this tension from time to time creating faults and fractures, but power continues to accumulate. This is one of the reasons why there are uninterrupted swarms of micro-earthquakes in the region, and why the small number of attempts to systematically analyze The Himalayan neothetonics is regrettable.
Unlike the Tibetan plateau, which is much more stable, the Indian Himalayas are crossed by wide and deep faults and fractures, both longitudinal and latitudinal. The few organizations that examine them are funded for long periods of time, which restricts the long term. explores opportunities that allow scholars to better perceive the region.
Read also: Why Delhi has so many earthquakes, what it means for future earthquakes
Nor is there an extensive network of permanent knowledge collection systems and the small amount of knowledge that exists is intermittent. The effects of climate facets replace, such as albedo-temperature snow comments initiated through a latent and sensitive heat movement from a warmer environment over The Hindu Kush Himalaya/Tibetan Plateau region to the underlying snow surface – remain under-understood. There are only a few studies that focus on the facets of immediate neothetonic and ecological replacements. These brief geological regimes are unpredictable in terms of rheological housing and, therefore, the extent of downstream damage.
(According to the Oxford Dictionary, rheology is “the branch of physics that deals with deformation and matter. “)
Intelligent science aside, damage in itself, as classically identified, is not one of those herbal reasons that have not yet been studied, but is due to our poor management and planning. or in the fact that all colonies of assignment paintings are commonly found in vulnerable sites. The trauma of the underlying people is appalling and reflects the way we abuse our staff.
It is also that there is no data on the families whose members are missing and on the staff who have been forced to leave. Officials do not appear to have searched for any files and the agencies involved and the media have not attempted to draw up a list. .
India has bellicosely falsified the third pole and truth of the fragile Himalayas, and exacerbates a massive threat. There is a 10-year map (below) showing populations threatened by sismicity. Events of the kind that were triggered in February. 7 would multiply through many if there was a massive earthquake in the area and we would not be prepared for it, as we have been for a tragedy, even a smaller one.
Bad projects, poor implementation
The country’s political economy has a history of complex projects that allow for rapid profits, but ensure that investments have sustainable yields. The strength and excitement of the “ribbon cutting” and the rental cut that accompanies it have led to a very low quality of structure of our roads, bridges and, more recently, tunnels and dams that accompany hydroelectric projects. It seems that we blow up more (rocks) than any war, but even the amount and number of explosions carried out in the Himalayas is unknown.
Given the huge surplus of energy, assets blocked in the electricity sector justify a white paper on the sector, and the perpetrators of these economic and ecological destructions will have to be repaired. Take the case of Kinnaur, where Jaypee Industries left with more than a billion dollars in profits to manage its electricity allocation, while the villagers suffered the consequences later. Similarly, our huge excess cement and metal capacity has led to crazy infrastructure allocations in the country.
Our accumulated wisdom is still very poor and promotional environmental testing conducted through assignment proponents has played no useful role in environmental control of dams or roads in the Himalayas. Repeated efforts across communities, i. e. those affected, have produced little improvement. in fact, the quality of the new assignments turns out to be worse.
Hurry to compete or deceive China?
Lately, a silly comparison with the infrastructure being built across the border in China has been used to accelerate the structure of infrastructure types, but which have no price or convenience for geological situations on earth and people’s desires. The government’s concentration on an imaginary $5 trillion economy, the fetishism of the wrong types of projects, on a larger scale and in greater numbers, will not only kill the economy, but will absolutely jeopardize the future.
Projects in the Himalayan rivers, from Arunachal Pradesh to Kashmir, pursued in the call of progression, make them a forward-looking site for long-term damage. The Indian Himalayas want an absolutely different trajectory of progression, as the existing trajectory has only encouraged other local people to move away from the Himalayas and systematically eroded the ecosystem.
India turns out that its neighbors will respect any “first-use principles” and will not expand any infrastructure in Himalayan river systems, even though even the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank, of which it is a member, has submitted to finance these questionable projects regardless of governance issues.
While the Indian government needs to pull out of business, it turns out that it is doing business with this progression model, where corporate profits and Dalal Street sentiments take precedence and bring negative effects on the people. At least through the Prime Minister’s Office, it obviously indicates the massively misguided investments we face.
Making and circumventing laws
The progression and circumvention of legislation is a matter of red tape. If the judicial idea that undertaking several projects in the Himalayas would be disastrous, how has science been set aside and projects continue to work without due diligence?For example, the Rishi Ganga Electric Project, which was destroyed and killed several staff members and others near the village of Reni, was established through a gold refining and marketing company. All contracts awarded through PSU are doubtful.
The great dilution of legislation in the call of “ease of doing business”, or the expansion of roads in the Himalayas to boost the presence of already overcrowded “religious tourists” through illogical segmentation to avoid scrutiny, serious social considerations and crisis relief are a spectacle, all of which becomes too obvious. How many laws have been compromised?
The damage caused at the third pole is too extensive and significant to be buried, including a massive avalanche of offensive movements opposed to practical voices, calling them anti-development, adding “new IED”. Since the structure of the Rohtang tunnel, raids have been on their way into the Chenab and Parvati valleys, suggesting a wonderful danger.
It’s time for Uttarakhand’s harsh state to pay attention to healthy voices and forged science. The geology, tectonics and ecosystems of the Himalayan Hindu Kush require additional study, which existing geopolitics does not allow and that the political economy does not want.
But the truth is there for everyone to see.
R. Sreedhar is an Earth scientist and has worked in the northwestern Himalayas for more than 3 decades.
Vasudevan Mukunth, editor: mukunth@thewire. in
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