Focus on Drainage to Save Gangtok

Editorial:
The perils imposed on the Lower Arithang tract of Gangtok are similar to what the residents of buildings hugging the upper boundary of the college campus in the capital are suffering – a combined assault of frail slopes pushed to failure by unplanned urbanisation.
The monsoon is here, serving out its calling card of landslides with professional diligence. The people are already reading of disrupted road communication and imperilled houses in day-old dailies, and soon their pockets will start to pinch when they shop for grocery after the abused highways have given up and delayed supplies. Vegetable prices shoot up with even the slightest hint of a road block [it hasn’t happened thus far, but is only a couple of week away]; water supply goes all awry with the onset of monsoons; phones go dead and the roads turn to streams which only the brave and the desperate wade through. This happens every year.
While people might not really “suffer,” the inconvenience remains an irritant. Every once in a while a tragedy of the scale of Gangtok in 1997 and Gyalshing in 1999 [and again this year] hits and everyone is shaken although the recent tragedy at Gyalshing does not appear to have moved too many people. Knee-jerk notifications are issued, orders passed and forgotten with the receding monsoons. Agreed, the Sikkim Himalaya is a young, unstable chain, but surely, close to a century-long experience with landslides should have made its people experts at containing them. Sadly, Sikkim still continues with business at the mercy of landslides, sinks and slips. A State, which should have by now been the home of landslide experts continues to depend on “experts” from outside wanting to experiment their theoretical solutions on this land. And no one has succeeded so far. The slide at 9th Mile troubled Sikkim in the ‘70s, stabilised on its own in the eighties and is sinking again. No solutions even for this 100 metre stretch and one expects engineering breakthroughs to permanently arrest the scourge of slides? Maybe one reason why a solution has evaded Sikkim isbecause everyone has been looking at science when the answer is more likely social. Improved civic sense among the residents should immediately make the urban areas safer. An improved respect for the environment should leave enough trees on the hillsides to hold back the slides and a more enhanced commitment to long-term development should see the road network keep pace with the load on it.
Returning to the Lower Arithang and College Valley reference earlier, these sections sit on the lower end of the concrete cover. What this means is that the surface run-off from the concrete jungle above flows to them without getting a chance to sink into the earth. Because drainage was never paid attention to when the hillsides above were plastered with constructions, the run-off speeds un-channelled into drains and gushes into the slopes wild and unrestrained. The volume of water [surface run-off] that these, still-not-constructed-on sections receive is amplified many-times over because it did not get a chance to spread and sink more evenly above and more so because it just flowed free and was not carried by the jhoras. When they slice the slope away, it should not surprise anyone. But that is perhaps a redundant comment, because given the general disinterest among the people on what these areas are suffering, it appears that no one really cares enough to be surprised. But what everyone is overlooking is that when a slope fails, it takes on a dynamic all its own and the cracks and instability it can trigger can reach far higher than most people expect. The authorities are planning retaining walls and a series of step wall for Lower Arithang and College Valley. These are necessary, but if the drainage system is not corrected, will become more lakhs [even crores] wasted on incomplete measures.