Unpreparedness Invites Surprises

Editorial:
“It took everyone completely by surprise”. Speak to survivors of the disastrous 23 June landslide at Khewadara near Gyalshing, and this is a common refrain. Even a visit to the site reveals no presence of the usual suspects – there is no new road being cut, no hydel project blasting the hill’s stability out of shape, at least not yet, and no new constructions toppling the alignment of the slope. So on surface, the nightmare appears to have visited out of the blue.

But wait, that cannot be the case because West Sikkim and areas around Gyalshing have been on a slow crumble for at least a decade now. Surely, if anyone was even half serious about disaster mitigation, they would have studied the episodic collapse of hill-sides over the past years. This was obviously not done. The last rash of such high casualty figures due to landslides in and around Gyalshing was in end-August 2000. Lashed by strong rains for a week, the West district headquarter town and its surrounding areas were hit by a series of landslides. 11 people had died and more than 300 had to be accommodated in relief centres because their houses were too perilously perched. It would not be incorrect to suggest that it in Y2K that the hill finally gave up and the area has not had an incident or road-disruption free monsoon since then. At that time, most of the damage was suffered by Gyalshing town itself and the cause had been identified as the degradation of Rabdentse forest cover. The State might have a Green Mission underway, but these are mostly limited to neighbourhood parks and school and office premises. Nothing is really being done to either understand or rejuvenate the quality of Sikkim’s forests. This, despite the fact that wildlife is increasingly blundering into human habitations in search of food. Urban growth does not deplete forests only in spaces where concrete replaces the green cover. Forests at much further distances are also felled to feed the urban demand for wood.
In Gyalshing’s case, no one can contest the fact that the lessons of 2000 were ignored. No effort has been made towards urban planning and in the eleven years that have passed since, the hill has come under even more stress. Constructions have imperilled slopes above them and buildings have toppled over there. The absence of drainage is a complaint which the people have grown tired of raising. The stress on the hill has multiplied substantially in the past years. Khewadara is quite a distance away from Gyalshing, which would make its unpreparedness for natural calamities even worse. And that is the point one needs to take back from the episode – surprises will be sprung in an environment of unpreparedness.