The low road

Uttarakhand's ecological balance must be protected

The controversy over widening roads in the fragile Himalayan region of Uttarakhand, popularly known as the Char Dham, has reached untenable proportions. The plan started as a religious tourism project but has somehow morphed into a national security imperative. Neither argument is justified when weighed against the destructive impact of this massive infrastructure project on one of the world’s most ecologically endangered regions. The original Rs 12,000-crore project to offer pilgrims seamless four-lane connectivity to four key shrines in the upper Himalayas, for which the prime minister laid the foundation stone in 2016, was ill-conceived in the first place and reflected a poor understanding of the ecological dangers involved. Ironically, it was dedicated to those pilgrims and tourists who died or were injured in devastating flash floods and subsequent landslides in June 2013.

It appears to have not occurred to anyone that those natural disasters were caused by reckless deforestation, road building and construction — of dams and tourism infrastructure. The current controversy stems from a 2018 legal challenge that yielded two sets of recommendations from a Supreme Court-mandated high powered committee. Last year, the apex court ruled in favour of the minority report that recommended a maximum carriageway width of 5.5 metres against a majority opinion of 7.5 metres, which would have required a huge amount of ecological destabilisation in the form of deforestation, blasting, tunnelling and debris. The narrower width is, in fact, a highways and roads ministry guideline. The second was endorsed by a majority that comprised mostly bureaucrats.
 

This month, the Ministry of Defence weighed in with an appeal before the Supreme Court to permit the 7.5 metre standard. This, despite the fact that the dangers of doing so were underlined twice this year, first with the destruction of the Tapovan Hydro-Electric Power Dam, leaving 46 people dead and the mass rescue operations in October with another 27 dead from floods and landslides. The Supreme Court has reserved its judgment. The national security angle is transparently disingenuous when presented in terms of the need to bolster defence along the northern borders against Chinese incursions. For one, the four-lane highways that have been built in the upper reaches of the Himalayas already eat up large parts of the Border Roads Organisation’s annual budget in clearing frequent landslides, suggesting that the government cannot rely on the area for unhindered movements of troops and heavy material such as the BrahMos in any case. Both can just as well be airlifted. Uttarakhand’s ecological decline has been the direct result of its increasing reliance on revenues from religious tourism after it split from Uttar Pradesh to become a separate state. But for a country that has just committed itself to demanding climate change targets at the COP26 meet in Glasgow, this latest appeal is a depressing reflection of bad faith.