Editorial:
Riffling through back issues of newspapers can be an interesting exercise, which, apart from from bringing back memories like photo-album do, also serve as a reminder to unlearned lessons. Today, 04 August, for example, is a good day to remind those who make the final call on “developmental” projects, that listening to experts is always a better option. On this day in the year 2004, a landslide brought down tonnes of debris from the VIP road and dumped it at the gates of the State’s only public school, Tashi Namgyal Academy, ringing home a reminder of not only the fragility of Gangtok’s soil, but also the continued refusal of concerned authorities to heed reason. The diversion road which triggered the landslide was thumbed down by geological experts back in 1998 when it was first mooted.
Yet, in 2004, hill cutting was initiated to bulldoze a way through. Apart from the hill, the earth movers also shifted the water supply lines and the early hours of 04 August 2004, the pipes gushed forth and triggered a landslide that could have delivered horrific results if it had struck during school hours. The site does not look anything like a landslide-hit zone anymore and the road is stable, perhaps because it suffers only very light loads. But the point being made here is that Sikkim has a disturbing track record of not listening to experts. An attempt to correct this anomaly was taken in the year 2008 when the State Government announced a policy decision to have all road-projects whetted by the Mines & Geology Department before commissioning. Welcome as the move was, the three years since have revealed that this advise was rarely sought or respected. Unfortunately, in these intervening years, a slew of rural road projects were bankrolled under the PMGSY scheme, almost every one of which has given the intended beneficiaries with cause for complaint. Ditto for the grand environment management plans that hydel developers need to staple together for public hearings. Even in these cases, the expert advice [although many would have issues with the expertise invested] on how to mitigate damage, remain largely unheeded.
Another positive initiative which does not appear to be heading anywhere is the Commission of Experts set up to study Sikkim’s glaciers. With Sikkim having invested heavily on its hydel potential, the storehouse from which the hydro-energy flows needs to be studied in greater detail. This study is also necessary in light of the global warming scenario facing the world. Given the significance of the exercise, one would have expected the Commission to be more forthcoming with its findings and recommendations, but very little has been volunteered in the public domain. The information sharing is so tardy that even some floods in north Sikkim streams some years ago, suspected to be Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, were either never studied as such or the findings never put out in the public domain. It does not help matters that Sikkim’s glaciers sit in restricted areas, a ‘national-security’ enforced travel constraint which has distanced even the Sikkimese from their own natural resources. One could understand if these areas were made out-of-bounds for environmental reasons, at least that would have allowed experts free access, but the present restrictions are only priming the State for a shock in the near future. For example, Humla in remote north-western Nepal reported a GLOF on 30 June. Because people, locals as well as the more intrepid tourists and serious researchers, can travel there, this is now the first recorded GLOF, with detailed photographs and even a video footage of the flood hitting Halji, a village of 400 inhabitants. This documentation is not just news or for voyeuristic pleasure, but an important evidence of the fury of sweating glaciers. It is an important argument to address climate change more seriously. No such luck in Sikkim where suspected incidents of GLOF remain unverified. One had hoped that the Commission of Experts would have explained global warming in a more localised context for Sikkim. That is not happening.
Riffling through back issues of newspapers can be an interesting exercise, which, apart from from bringing back memories like photo-album do, also serve as a reminder to unlearned lessons. Today, 04 August, for example, is a good day to remind those who make the final call on “developmental” projects, that listening to experts is always a better option. On this day in the year 2004, a landslide brought down tonnes of debris from the VIP road and dumped it at the gates of the State’s only public school, Tashi Namgyal Academy, ringing home a reminder of not only the fragility of Gangtok’s soil, but also the continued refusal of concerned authorities to heed reason. The diversion road which triggered the landslide was thumbed down by geological experts back in 1998 when it was first mooted.
Yet, in 2004, hill cutting was initiated to bulldoze a way through. Apart from the hill, the earth movers also shifted the water supply lines and the early hours of 04 August 2004, the pipes gushed forth and triggered a landslide that could have delivered horrific results if it had struck during school hours. The site does not look anything like a landslide-hit zone anymore and the road is stable, perhaps because it suffers only very light loads. But the point being made here is that Sikkim has a disturbing track record of not listening to experts. An attempt to correct this anomaly was taken in the year 2008 when the State Government announced a policy decision to have all road-projects whetted by the Mines & Geology Department before commissioning. Welcome as the move was, the three years since have revealed that this advise was rarely sought or respected. Unfortunately, in these intervening years, a slew of rural road projects were bankrolled under the PMGSY scheme, almost every one of which has given the intended beneficiaries with cause for complaint. Ditto for the grand environment management plans that hydel developers need to staple together for public hearings. Even in these cases, the expert advice [although many would have issues with the expertise invested] on how to mitigate damage, remain largely unheeded.
Another positive initiative which does not appear to be heading anywhere is the Commission of Experts set up to study Sikkim’s glaciers. With Sikkim having invested heavily on its hydel potential, the storehouse from which the hydro-energy flows needs to be studied in greater detail. This study is also necessary in light of the global warming scenario facing the world. Given the significance of the exercise, one would have expected the Commission to be more forthcoming with its findings and recommendations, but very little has been volunteered in the public domain. The information sharing is so tardy that even some floods in north Sikkim streams some years ago, suspected to be Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, were either never studied as such or the findings never put out in the public domain. It does not help matters that Sikkim’s glaciers sit in restricted areas, a ‘national-security’ enforced travel constraint which has distanced even the Sikkimese from their own natural resources. One could understand if these areas were made out-of-bounds for environmental reasons, at least that would have allowed experts free access, but the present restrictions are only priming the State for a shock in the near future. For example, Humla in remote north-western Nepal reported a GLOF on 30 June. Because people, locals as well as the more intrepid tourists and serious researchers, can travel there, this is now the first recorded GLOF, with detailed photographs and even a video footage of the flood hitting Halji, a village of 400 inhabitants. This documentation is not just news or for voyeuristic pleasure, but an important evidence of the fury of sweating glaciers. It is an important argument to address climate change more seriously. No such luck in Sikkim where suspected incidents of GLOF remain unverified. One had hoped that the Commission of Experts would have explained global warming in a more localised context for Sikkim. That is not happening.
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