Editorial:Reconnect With the Land

It will not be too off the mark to suggest that the spate of hailstorms which visited parts of East and North Sikkim over the past month was unprecedented in recent memory. Thunder-squalls and the attendant hail are not rare at this time of the year, but the consistency and ferocity with which the weather has pounded parts of Sikkim, especially areas along the Teesta valley, is unusual [to put it mildly]. While extreme weather phenomenon can be expected in these days of Climate Change, a worrying flag that the latest round of extreme weather condition raises is not in the amount of precipitation, but the general lack of concern it has evoked. The latest round of thunder-squalls, wherever hail has joined the rain has destroyed the orange crop [which was flowering], levelled standing fields of maize, pulverised the large cardamom plantations [which were also flowering] and will also ensure that the supply of local vegetable produce will be constricted in markets here. Unfortunately, around Gangtok, where all decisions are made, the talk around the evening showers is limited to what it means for the water supply status. The concern which one would expect from an economy which is still essentially rural for a majority of the people is missing. This is a looming sign of the increasing disconnect between the people and nature in Sikkim. The urban areas ceased being dependent on the land some decades ago, and even in rural areas, this organic relationship is fraying. This gap renders Sikkim extremely unprepared for the challenges which Climate Change will mount of people in the not very distant future. It is important for this communication to be resumed, not only to ensure that Sikkim respects its natural endowments better, but also to prepare it better for natural disasters which are always a present danger in these hills. A frank appraisal of how much the younger generation knows about the land and how much the elder generation cares will not hand out a very good report card. While these can be explained to the changing lifestyles, they cannot be excused, because in this disconnect seeds not only the abuse of natural resources, but also unpreparedness for disasters which are natural for hills like the ones found in Sikkim. There is already enough evidence of these, and now, perhaps it is time to step back and return traditional knowledge base to the place of prominence in planning it should always have enjoyed.
This urgency is brought home by what has visited the Seti Gandaki valley in Nepal which was hit by a flashflood on Saturday causing extensive damage. Pokahara, the tourist town at the end of this flashflood was itself settled over a flashflood debri of a cataclysmic flood on the Seti Gandaki some 800 years ago [Teesta, experts suggest, flooded so massively about 300 years ago that it changed its course beyond what is now the Coronation Bridge]. The terrain there lends itself well to natural damming due to landslides and these eventually break into massive flashfloods. Flash-floods were always a worry, but the scale of the Nepal incident should ensure that these occupy the same priority positioning as Glacial Lake Outburst Floods do in the Himalayan region. Given the intensity of pre-monsoon showers, it can be safely speculated the monsoon rains will be falling on already saturated slopes, which, one may add, are already weakened by the earthquake. When these slopes fail in the higher reaches, where the rivers are still streams which slides can dam, unless these are spotted in time, they will catch infrastructure and people downstream by surprise when they break. Unfortunately, as new laws and ever-popular issues like security, push even residents away from their natural evirons and force people away from living with the land to living off doles, the intimacy which people have enjoyed for generations with nature is distanced. In such a scenario, weather phenomenons like the present round of thunderstorms which would have warned people enough about which crops not to expect this season and how to prepare better for the months ahead are lost to complaints about snapped water supply lines. While on water supply lines, Gangtokians should also start preparing for a future when the clutch of lakes which provide the headwaters for the Ratey Chu which keeps Gangtok supplied stop getting recharged fast enough due to changing climate patterns and uninformed landuse habits of the armed forces stationed there. A lot of money is being spent on helping Himalayan states like Sikkim ‘prepare’ for climate change; some of these funds could be judiciously spent on reintroducing the students to the land here and reviving traditional landuse practices which have been edged out by central laws and rules...