Construction Industry Is A Big Culprit
The recent tragic happenings in Joshimath have brought into sharp focus the follies of the construction industry. The mistakes of this crucial sector of the economy – wilful or otherwise – are causing widespread harm to the ecology. The Joshimath tragedy points to why it is absolutely necessary to check the ways of this sector for the sake of sustainability.
Unfortunately, Uttarakhand is not the only state where such disastrous ‘sinking of the earth’ has happened. The latest reports bring out horror stories from across the country. Apparently, Shimla and McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh, Darjeeling in West Bengal and Chamoli (again Uttarakhand) have serious issues of a similar nature.
These are all hilly areas with a fragile ecology and what is happening in these places bear some similarities by way of ignoring early warning signals. However, the curse of illegal and irresponsible construction is spread almost all over the country and, in fact, is more blatant and more damaging in our bigger cities and metropolises. Yes, one factor is common – the rapid increase in population ‒leading to huge pressures on land prices and emergence of a sort of ‘cult of unholy nexus between builders and civic administration’. Let me first look at a tier-1 town.
*Our Towns
Gurgaon – that sleepy little town south of Delhi till the 1970s, 1980s and even early 1990s – has seen explosive growth in the last 20 years. Current estimates puts its population figure at 12.5 million, which also seems to be less than the actual figure. The place was given the sobriquet of ‘Millennium City’ mostly by the builders. Despite warnings of a looming water shortage, they kept on building as if there was no tomorrow and land prices kept zooming up.
Commercial property in the city was lapped up by all the large corporates from all over the world, including perhaps 400 from the ‘Fortune 500’ list. Even though the original master plan had no provision for high-rise residential buildings – only plotted colonies with houses not more than 2-1/2 stories tall ‒ the city has probably the largest number of these in the country after Mumbai.
In the last few years, whenever there are heavy rains, Gurugram (new name for the city) gets the infamous invective of ‘Gurujam’, because the whole city gets waterlogged and everything comes to a standstill, at times for 48 hours! So, why does that happen? There’s a simple scientific answer. Every city has some natural drainage channels where no construction is supposed to come up. However, the criminal builder - municipal nexus ignores that with impunity and plans are sanctioned at every place.
To add insult to injury, all the 13 beautiful large water bodies in the city have been systematically filled up and construction – residential or commercial – has come up over these. Add to it, the informal urbanisation of rural areas, wholesale conversion of land use (CLU), encroachments on the forest zone and something called ‘gair mumkin pahar’ (uncultivable wasteland) and we have a medley of new complexes mushrooming all over.
Of course, all this happens with lots of money changing hands under the table. It is highly unlikely that this happens without the blessings of powerful politicians. The net result, traffic jams, water logging, regular power and water shortages, perennial air pollution from construction materials lying all over, road repairs going on at all times, stalled smoke-spewing vehicles at every crossing, sharply reduced green cover ‒ and just too many people in a city meant for perhaps, 20 per cent of the present numbers. Probably the situation would be pretty much the same in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Mumbai was doomed a long time ago but, happily, the municipal authorities there keep it going somehow.
*The hills
Back to the hills – currently in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. It appears that one of the biggest culprits here is one of our major Navratnas – the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). It is unthinkable that this much admired behemoth, with highly trained technical manpower, did not do a proper job of geological investigation. Also, everyone ignored early warning signs of cracks in the walls, bending trees, fissures in the ground and life went on as usual. And now, reports mention that at many places in Joshimath, the ground has sunk by as much as 70 cm, putting the lives and property of the poor residents at great risk.
Like many other Himalayan towns, Joshimath has also seen a huge construction boom with multi- storied buildings on fragile slopes in total disregard to rules and regulations and without reference to seismic surveys. Even Army and ITBP establishments have come up there. The town had hardly any concrete structures in the 1960s – even government departments functioned out of corrugated roof light buildings and their people lived in similar accommodation.
The story in Darjeeling ‒ a landslide prone terrain ‒ is pretty much similar– where heavy road and railway projects are coming up. Shimla – a town planned for 25,000 people ‒ has a population of 2.3 lakh at present and the Ridge ‒ ‘pride of the town’‒ sits on top of a million-gallon water reservoir – or Chamoli or Chamba, for that matter. All these places are waiting for disasters to happen.
All our high-profile hill stations like Shimla, Mussorie, Nainital, Manali and Ooty, were designed by the British for a small fraction of the population they have now. Also, the influx of unchecked tourists and establishments to cater to their stay and food add to the woes of these hill towns. No one, neither the civic authorities nor state governments or even the government of India for that matter, seems to have done a study about how many tourists these towns can support safely.
We should have learnt lessons from our friendly neighbour Bhutan that has assiduously followed the policy of a strictly controlled inflow of visitors. Bhutan has purposefully refused permission to a greater number of people in order to preserve its pristine beauty. It does charge a fee for entry and Bhutanese hotels are quite expensive, but restricting the number of tourist arrivals is sacrosanct for the country. Bhutan’s motto is that its tourism must be ‘ecologically sustainable’.
The need of the hour for India is to make new hill stations and not kill the existing ones that were built by the Brits a century ago for much fewer people.
