The human toll remains a mystery, but it will take years to recover from the mammoth economic cost. On 23 June, the last day of search and rescue for survivors by the army in Kedarnath, Dhirendra Kumar collapsed after a strenuous climb to the temporary helipad in Gaurikund. He panted and cried at the same time. His mother and grandmother had come to the holy town to fulfill their wishes. Kumar, a bus conductor from Kekri in Rajasthan, had saved up for several years so that the two women could go on the pilgrimage.
“I sent them here. I must find them,” he tried to convince the army personnel, who told him that only death awaited beyond the makeshift helipad at Gaurikund, 14 km below the shrine at Kedarnath. There were many like Kumar who had stationed themselves at Guptakashi, Haridwar, Rishikesh, Srinagar and capital Dehradun, just in case.
Uttarakhand is under a renewed threat of rains even as a 200-man team prepares to extract corpses of those who died in the disaster triggered by rains during 14-16 June. The most popularly accepted version of the disaster is that heavy showers for three days led to dislodging mammoth chunks of the mountain and parts of the Chorabari Glacier. These landed in the Gandhi Sarovar, causing a water spill that led to the worst flash floods seen in recent history. The Gandhi Sarovar, where some of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were strewn, spilled again on 17 June morning, sending more death and destruction that was felt right up to Delhi with the Yamuna’s rising water level ringing alarm bells.
The official death toll has reached nearly 8,000 this week based on the number of missing persons reports filed with the government, while the UN pegs it at 11,000. However, local estimates put the figure at around 15,000.
Hundreds of corpses are believed to be trapped under the debris of hotels and lodges in Kedarnath as well as those in the steep hills, where survivors were either trying to take shelter or avail an escape route. After the army finished its rescue, it deployed highly trained men from its elite and special forces into the forests to look for survivors and locate bodies. Until 2 July, 36 corpses had been cremated in Kedarnath. None of these had any identification proof, and teeth, hair and skin samples were taken from the dead bodies to facilitate DNA tests.
It is difficult terrain but the state wants to pull out the bodies or at least complete the last rites where they are stuck. On 2 July, photos from Rambada (located 7 km from Gaurikund as well as Kedarnath) were released, which showed how many people died stuck in caves and under rocks waiting to be rescued.
The identification of bodies will help friends and family members to finally grieve their dead as well as claim life insurance. Many are searching for missing friends and family members in Dehradun, Haridwar and Rishikesh. They hung around lodges and held up pictures of their loved ones. Most had collages with 10 photos on one sheet of paper because the pilgrims had travelled in groups.
The disaster’s after-effects are still being felt across the country. Though officials and politicians bicker, it is still not possible to determine either the death toll or the extent of damage to the state, be it in terms of economic collapse or infrastructural damage.
The political blame game started early about the tardy and uncoordinated rescue efforts. This was even while the army and paramilitary forces were rescuing or evacuating stranded survivors. The BJP, the principal opposition party, has blamed the ruling Congress-led UPA government for not averting the disaster and for being slow in its response. Incidentally, the Congress is also the ruling party in Uttarakhand.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has been under the scanner continuously, and suddenly the government agency has gained importance and everyone wants to know what goes on in this body.
The government has no way of finding out exactly how the whole disaster unfolded. NDMA vice-chairman Shashidhar Reddy has reportedly said that there can only be assessments and estimates but it would not be anywhere close to finding out what really took place.
Meanwhile, the NDMA’s National Executive Committee (led by the Union home ministry) has announced a pilot project for advanced flood warning systems similar to the tsunami and cyclone warning systems. But even the advanced cyclone warning system is yet to take off properly in many states because the NDMA only draws up policies and programmes according to the needs of certain regions and it is up to the respective state governments to implement these guidelines. For example, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha have cooperated in setting up an advanced cyclone warning system, but, according to an NDMA member, the governments of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are yet to respond.
But it’s not as if there was no warning. The meteorological department had warned of heavy rains. The showers began on the night of 14 June. Many people who were in the holy shrines saw the unending showers and some even decided to leave. But thousands remained there not expecting the showers to cause such a great calamity. But, as Tehelka reported last week, the information of the deluge was not provided to everyone.
Some people were moved to safety by the local police but many remained trapped in the path of the water that erupted out of the Gandhi Sarovar on the night of 16 June and the next morning.
Reckless construction of hydel projects and roads is being blamed for making the mountains weak resulting in nearly 20 km of highways being swallowed up.
Babban Pundir, a Srinagar-based contractor who worked on building several dam projects and roads in the Kedar valley, says that the companies don’t want to spend on more eco-sensitive ways for carrying out such construction work.
“One of the dams near Kedarnath on the Mandakini river required a 9-kmlong tunnel through the mountain. The company preferred dynamite as opposed to using a tunnel-boring machine (TBM). A TBM is more expensive but dynamite has a deep impact on the mountain,” says Pundir. Around five tonnes of dynamite were required for this 9-km tunnel.
Downstream, the GVK project in Srinagar did not require a lot of dynamite but faced local opposition because it required shifting the local Dhari Devi temple.
Uttarakhand faces a massive cleanup now but the economic cost will prove to be high. The state already enjoys the much-desired tag of special category status, because it has an international border and difficult terrain. The Centre has roped in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for financial assistance. It has decided to offer 90 percent assistance in repayment of loans with only 10 percent burden on the state.
Meanwhile, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has pitched in with increasing the number of man-days under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) from 100 to 150. The cost for MGNREGA work in the state was increased from around Rs 450 crore to 700 crore last year. But a substantial part of the overall aid will go towards early warning systems in a state that is prone to both floods and quakes.
“The NDMA has been used as a punching bag by everyone. We lay down policies but the states have to implement these,” says NDMA member JK Sinha. “We also have the National Disaster Response Force, which worked alongside the army and paramilitary to rescue stranded survivors and provide relief. When disaster strikes, it is in the charter of all government agencies to provide their full support. It is not the work of a single agency.”
The 2004 tsunami led to the setting up of early warning systems in the Andamans that allows a 2.5-hour warning time to the local authorities. With the jolt of the flood and its devastating aftermath, it is now up to the NDMA to build its pilot programme for early warning systems to prevent another big disaster such as the one seen in Uttarakhand.
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