ONE of the most heart-wrenching images of the horrific landslide that occurred at Pettimudy in Idukki on 6 August this year, was that of Kuvi, a pet dog, that remained at the spot for days, refusing to eat, searching for Dhanuska, a toddler buried in the rubble. Kuvi used to play with Dhanuska and had a special bonding with the child. Pettimudy is part of Rajamala hills in Idukki district’s Western Ghat region in Kerala, where 70 people, mostly tea plantation workers with Kannan Devan Hills Plantation, lost their lives in the landslides as their residential quarters went under the rubble.

This tragedy is a grim reminder of how people inhabiting the Western Ghats region have become increasingly vulnerable to major disasters in the form of landslides, floods and droughts.

The Pettimudy landslide is not an isolated phenomenon that occurred in Western Ghats region this year. On the same night another landslide occurred at Talacauvery temple, the origin of Cauvery River at Brahmagiri hills in Kodagu district of Karnataka. Five people were killed, including the chief priest of the temple. Ten days later, on 16 August, Godavari, the second longest river in the country that originates from Western Ghats, got flooded drowning many villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Mumbai witnessed one of its worst floods with many areas in south Mumbai getting submerged under water.

The impact of climate change, cyclonic disturbances and erratic rainfall both in the coastal region and hill ranges were already visible in states like Kerala, where southwest monsoon sets in the beginning of June every year before moving to other parts of the state. The state had suffered a drought in 2016, Ockhi cyclone in 2017 and floods in 2018. Post the Kerala floods and landslides that took the lives of 433 people, the state authorities claimed that this disaster was only a once in a hundred-year phenomenon.

But in 2019, massive landslides in Malappuram, Wayanad and a dam breach in Ratnagiri revealed that the impact of climate change, aggravated by the unscrupulous exploitation of Western Ghats ecosystem, are going to hit the lives and livelihood of people inhabiting the entire belt of Western Ghats every year.

Why is Western Ghats facing the brunt of repeated disasters? The word ‘Ghats’ probably came from the Hindi word ‘ghat’, which means ‘pier’, or from the Sanskrit word ‘ghatt’, which means flight of steps leading to the river, or perhaps from its numerous Dravidian roots, from ‘gatta’ (Kannada), ‘kattu’ (Tamil) or ‘katta’ (Telugu), which mean an embankment or dam. Our forefathers used to call these mountain ranges ‘Sahyadri’, which means benevolent mountains, and it seemed so apt. The British who later began to precisely map their bountiful resources, mainly for commercial reasons, named them the Western Ghats, rather artlessly.

But none of these words could encompass the broad meaning that Sahyadri is endowed with. The Western Ghats came into existence as a gigantic fault or escarpment on the Deccan Plateau, beginning with a crack in the earth’s crust that appeared around 150 million years ago. Fissures were formed as the great plate of the Indian peninsula moved and arched upwards, generating massive heat, with huge mounds of basaltic magma bursting out of the outermost shell of the earth’s surface, the lithosphere. That was the foundation of the Western Ghats: a long ridge extending up to 1600 kilometres.

For thousands of years, these mountains were devoid of any vegetation and remained barren, but slowly, moisture appeared on this bare skeleton as the first drops of rain fell on it. The barren rocks absorbed them gladly and on their nascent skin, the first tiny forms of life originated. What happened over the last 150 million years is nothing short of an ecological miracle – as the earth cooled, streams, rivers, estuaries, plants, forests and wildlife evolved.

 

The tribals venerated the mountains as their mountain god, worshipped the obscure rocks in the forest glades, and named them Kali or Durga. Buried in their rituals is a deep-rooted intuitive faith and respect for the mountains and forests that sustained them. It is only natural that over time, civilizations blossomed along the riverbanks in the Western Ghats, where many languages, cultures and arts evolved and flourished.

Our seers, who were seekers of wisdom, undertook spiritual journeys to these mountains, from the sage Agastya, Adi Shankara and Ayyappa to later Bhakti movement poets like Tukaram and social reformers like Sree Narayana Guru. In the supreme glory and ecstasy that nature invoked in them, in the music of the birds, in the subtle whisper of forest streams, and in the solitude that mountains could provide, they found enlightenment. The numerous Hindu, Buddhist and Jain hill shrines that came up in these mountains, be it at Mookambika, Talakaveri, Trimbakeshwar, Mahabaleshwar, Ajanta-Ellora, Thirunelli or Sabarimala, to name a few, gave spiritual succour to the world-weary pilgrim in search of peace and tranquillity.

But somewhere along the way we lost the spiritual track as mountains were gouged out, rocks were dug up; sand was mined from the rivers, turning them into drains. An analysis by the Indian Space Research Institute’s National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad showed that around 33,579 square kilometres, which is an appalling 35% of the original Western Ghats, was destroyed in the ninety-three-year period between 1920 to 2013.

 

In Goa alone, as per the Shah Commission report, the illegal revenue from mining in the Western Ghats region in the five-year period, between 2006 and 2011, was estimated to be around Rs 35,000 crore, and it resulted in the destruction of thousands of hectares of forests, virtually flattening the mountains.

All the 58 rivers that originate from Western Ghats have become polluted due to mismanagement and dumping of effluents into the water bodies, with rivers like Cauvery becoming five times more polluted than Ganga. Religious institutions have become money-spinning enterprises with scant regards for the eco-fragile environment. For instance, the holy Pamba river that flows near Sabarimala temple turns into a sewage canal during every pilgrimage season due to lack of a proper solid waste disposal system in the premises of the temple. Post the Kerala floods, the Central Empowered Committee appointed by the Supreme Court found that premises of Sabarimala temple had turned into a concrete jungle due to indiscriminate commercial development around the temple, violating existing laws.

Unscientific and massive expansion of hill roads, cutting slopes of hills for resorts and multi-storeyed buildings led to landslides in many areas of Western Ghats. The massive landslide that occurred at Gap road stretch of Kochi-Dhanushkodi National Highway in Munnar on 5 August 2020 is a good example of what is happening in the name of development in this region.

 

Twenty landslides occurred in the narrow scenic hill road that passed precariously through the Ghat section connecting Kerala to Tamil Nadu in the last one year. The reason was because of unscientific expansion of the road by the National Highway Authority of India. Ignoring the ecological disturbances, the NHAI continued work here and on 5 August as rains intensified across Western Ghat’s Idukki region, a massive landslide caved the earth below the road: the rubble that tumbled down destroyed 100 acres of estates. The farmlands of ordinary people who had no stake in the development process have been destroyed because of lopsided development policy, ignoring the fragile landscape.

A similar disaster occurred in Coorg in 2018. But unlike the government of Kerala, which did not undertake any detailed soil study to understand the causative factors for landslides, post floods, the Karnataka government asked the Geological Survey of India (GSI) to probe the reasons for the landslides in Kodagu.

Their findings were in tune with what environmentalists have been saying for many years. A majority of the landslides occurred due to unscientific human intervention in the natural landscape. The GSI study on 105 landslides and instances of subsidence found that a modified slope is less prone to landslides when there are no rains, but the same slope becomes highly susceptible with water influx during heavy rains. Most of the landslides happened between 15 and 23 August 2018. During these eight days, Madikeri taluk received heavy rainfall, as high as 800-850 mm, which is almost 25% of the total average annual rainfall (approximately 3400 mm) in the last twenty years. This high rainfall acted as a trigger for the landslides and subsidence as the slope-forming material became oversaturated with water, resulting in increase of pore water pressure and decrease of internal friction.

 

Apart from the heavy rainfall, the GSI study found that modification of natural slopes is one of the major causes of slope failures. The high angle, vertical slope-cut for road construction, rapid slope modification for infrastructure development like houses, hotels and homestays, and large-scale slope modification for plantations (especially coffee) were very common. ‘These slope modifications actually decrease slope stability and, later, with high rainwater percolation, the slope becomes unstable and prone to catastrophes like the one we witnessed in Coorg. Numerous houses are constructed at different levels of the slope, modifying the natural slope in Madikeri town’, the report said.

While the trigger for landslides in many cases are because of human interventions in the natural landscape, it is a fact that the impact of climate change and erratic monsoon need to be factored while probing the underlying reasons for landslides and floods. The landslide in Idukki is a classic example. Rajamala, where a landslide occurred on 6 August this year, the district received 955 mm of rainfall in a week’s time between 1 and 7 August. This is a clear indication that the uniform rainfall pattern in the Western Ghats region has disappeared.

Similarly, a detailed study of rainfall data for 28 years in Wayanad by researchers Danish Kumar and Pavan Srinath found that the number of days receiving moderate amounts of rainfall was found to be decreasing, but the number of days receiving low or very high rainfall was on the rise. The pattern of southwest monsoon had changed with heavy intensive rainfall occurring for a short number of days in the months of August in Kerala for the last three years.

As per the data available with the India Meteorological Department, in 2018, the heaviest rainfall days in Kerala were between 13-19 August, with 397% excess rainfall during this period, and extremely heavy rainfall between 14-16 August. In 2019, the intense rainfall period was from 5-11 August with 402% excess rainfall and the extremely heavy rainfall days were from 8-10 August. This year, 4-10 August was the heavy rainfall week with 269% excess rainfall and the three extreme rainfall days were from 5-7 August.

 

This clearly shows rainfall patterns on the west coast have undergone a massive change. Further, the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment, in its first report on the impact of climate change in four regions of the country, submitted to the Government of India, has pointed out that reduced rainfall, increased atmospheric temperature and flooding due to sea level rise are climate change scenarios for the Western Ghats and Kerala in the next twenty years. Under the projected climate change scenario, it is certain that the temperature is likely to increase by two degrees Celsius by 2050. The minimum surface air temperature in the Western Ghats region may rise by two degrees Celsius to 4.5 degrees Celsius.

Though the region is facing massive ecological disturbances the state governments in the Western Ghat region have failed to come together and chart out a comprehensive plan to conserve this region. Instead, they were unanimous in opposing significant reports like Madhav Gadgil’s Western Ghats Expert Ecology Panel Report (WGEEP).

It came as a surprise that a state like Kerala which boasts of 100% literacy witnessed large scale protest especially in the hill ranges like Idukki and Wayanad against the Gadgil report. The state government succumbed to the pressures of the Church, quarry and real estate lobby who did not want the report to be implemented.

 

Barring a few elected representatives, the majority of them were against the report and even tried to whip up a collective paranoia in the minds of the people against the report. A few politicians like Congress MP from Idukki P.T. Thomas welcomed the report, but because of this unflinching support he suffered a political backlash. He came on record saying that he was not allowed to contest in 2014 Lok Sabha elections because of his principled stand which was against the diktats of the Church.

In fact both the Idukki and Wayanad dioceses were against the implementation of the Gadgil and Kasturirangan committee reports. In a pastoral letter issued in November 2013, Mar Mathew Anikkuzhikkattil, Bishop of the Idukki diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, asked farmers and people of the high ranges to join hands against the report and warned that ‘Kerala will become another Kashmir if the report were to be implemented.’ Similarly, the Bishop of Thamarassery diocese Mar Remegiose Inchananiyil said Kerala will become another ‘Jallianwala Bagh’ in case Kasturirangan committee report was to be implemented.

It was business as usual for the government of Kerala for the next five years leading upto the Kerala floods in 2018. There was a five-fold increase in the number of quarrying permits granted in the period 2011-16, along with a huge rise in the number of illegal quarrying cases. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report pointed out that the number of quarrying permits granted increased from 2401 permits in the financial year 2011-12 to 11,059 permits by 2015-16. The number of illegal cases detected by the Department of Mining and Geology increased from 3870 cases in 2011-12 to 20,821 cases by 2015-2016, exposing the level of corruption in the mining industry in Kerala. The illegal cases detected include quarrying, transportation and storage of minor minerals.

 

A Post-Disaster Needs Assessment study conducted by the United Nation put the total loss suffered by Kerala in various sectors at around Rs 31,000 crore. The state government announced a much hyped up Rebuild Kerala project, but there has been no comprehensive proposal envisaged for the protection of Western Ghats ecosystem till date. In fact, post-floods, as per the state mining department data, over three crore tonnes of granite were excavated between 2018-19, showing that there has not been any change in its policy. The state government’s order to allow quarrying in areas 50 metres from residential zones destroyed numerous homes and bio-diverse areas in the hill ranges forever.

In a decade of non-implementation of WGEEP report, several disasters occurred in Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra. In Kerala, it was found that all the landslides occurred in areas which were demarcated as ESZs (Ecologically Sensitive Zones) as per the WGEEP report. In fact, a mapping done by the Kerala Forest Research Institute showed that 50% of the quarries were operating in ESZ1 and ESZ2 in Kerala’s Western Ghats region.

 

The mining belt in north Goa, especially Bicholum taluka, is facing severe water scarcity as the ground water is polluted. The paddy fields have turned into toxic pits with slush from the mines flowing down into the fields and water bodies. Though the Supreme Court has banned mining in Goa after the Shah Commission report which exposed the illegal mining, the order may be lifted anytime in future once the open auction of mines would be allowed here. It is highly unlikely that the WGEEP report will ever get implemented as the central government is moving ahead with another calamitous draft notification called EIA 2020, which allows de facto clearances to the projects under the pretext of ‘Ease of Doing Business’.

But even as the government has turned a blind eye to these violations, there were indeed lone rangers like V.V. Vijeeta, Geeta Vazhachal, Darly and Jazeera, who fought long battles against the sand mafia and mega hydel projects that were set to destroy rivers and forests in the Western Ghats region.

Geetha Vazhachal, a tribal leader of the Kadar tribal community, played a major role in stalling the controversial 163 mw Athirappally hydel project in Kerala’s Western Ghats region. The project, if implemented, would not only have made the famous Athirappally waterfall extinct, it would have also destroyed 138 hectares of forests and submerged the Kadar tribal settlement there. The Kadars, led by Geeta, was the first tribal community in India to use the provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, to stop a mega hydel project that would have submerged the forests and their homes.

But other women activists mentioned above were not as successful as Geeta in their campaigns as corruption had seeped into the village and panchayat bodies with quarry and mining mafia silencing every official with their money power.

 

The harrowing story of V.V. Vijeeta is a classic example. Five years ago, Vijeeta, an RTI activist, took up the issue of illegal quarries in Mukunimala in the outskirts of Thiruvanathapuram even as the panchayat body turned against her. She was arrested on 24 November 2014, in a case filed by the secretary of Palichal Panchayat for allegedly damaging the panchayat office and she was placed under judicial custody after being picked up from her residence. Miffed over her series of RTI queries, the panchayat even appealed to the State Information Commission (SIC) to declare Vijeeta as a public nuisance as she had rushed 35 RTI pleas to the panchayat office in a year. Most of the applications though were about issues related to stone quarry units and misuse of panchayat funds. Though the appeal was rejected by the SIC, Vijeeta is still fighting a lone battle even as numerous quarries are still operational in Mukunimala, destroying the biodiversity of the region.

The everyday battles of Darly, a former attendant at the Government Ayurveda Hospital, Neyyattinkara, who refused to move from her home on the banks of Neyyar river even after her house was burnt down by sand-miners, and Jazeera, who sat on dharna for over three months in order to stop sand mining at the seashore of Puthiyangadi in Kannur district, are indeed inspiring stories.

 

Strangely enough, most of these eco warriors are women, showing extraordinary commitment to save natural resources appropriated by powerful lobbies. Though they have yet to find success, with authorities turning a blind eye to their causes, the fact remains that in due course of time there will be like-minded citizens and youngsters who will take up the green baton in the fight against the ecological devastation of Western Ghats.

It should also be mentioned here that even journalists who cover ecological crimes are vulnerable to attacks by the mining mafia. For instance, in 2010 both this writer and activist Sumaria Abdulali were attacked by a sand mining mafia, run by the local MLA’s son, in Raigad district in Maharashtra. As we were returning after visiting the massive illegal sand mining that was occurring in Bankot creek on the foothills of Western Ghats the goons attacked us, rammed our car with a tipper lorry, pelted stones and gheraoed our vehicle. It was a miracle that we survived and managed to tell the story. It is thus of paramount importance that media houses support journalists who venture out to report such stories, otherwise the loot of our natural resources will never come out in the public domain.

The floods and landslides that occurred in the Western Ghats taught us that no longer can we see any particular region in isolation, and we must preserve the entire ecosystem that includes the hills, midlands and coastal wetlands. Any ecological disturbance in the highlands, like quarrying in the hills, leads to alterations to midlands like monocrop cultivation, unscientific construction of roads and houses and destruction of lowlands, like reclamation of paddy fields, are all going to impact the ecology of the entire region.

The six states need to come together and chart out a plan to reconnect the many interstate wildlife corridors which have been severely fragmented, protect tributaries and water sources of many interstate rivers.

 

These are issues affecting the entire Western Ghats region, not just one state. This acquires enormous significance as the whole Western Ghats region is under severe pressure from human interference like never before. There is an urgent need to undertake sand audits in all the 58 rivers originating from Western Ghats, remove encroachments from river banks, bring in scientific reservoir and dam management systems, mark flood plains and have efficient flood forecasting warning systems in the catchment areas. The complex issues arising out of climate change, erratic monsoon and increasing man-animal conflicts should be addressed as its impacts are felt the most amongst the farming and tribal community.

The Ministry of Environment and Forest cannot turn into a rubber stamp, approving projects on the basis of fabricated Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports or without considering the biodiversity of that particular region, especially as studies have shown that zoonotic diseases like SARS and Covid-19 spread faster in areas where natural habitats have been destroyed.

The words of Chief Seattle are prophetic and hold true for the Western Ghats region, especially in the post-Covid era: ‘Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.’

 

* Viju B. is the author of Flood and Fury: Ecological Devastation in the Western Ghats. Penguin eBury Press, 2019.