Uttarakhand comes under seismic Zone 5 unambiguously meaning that it is extremely prone to earthquakes especially substantiated facts already having witnessed after what happened in Kedarnath and surrounding areas in June 2013 and Rishiganga, Dhauliganga flash floods that killed about two hundred people apart from about one thousand houses and commercial buildings, hotels etc developing intensive cracks and entire Joshimath holy township suffering from subsidence etc. Though there may be different reasons for this subsidence and development of cracks in over 1000 houses like puncturing of aquifers by DBMs inside huge tunnel being built by the NTPC, excessive building of houses and commercial infrastructure despite warning by seismology experts not to do so and Joshimath being built on Glacial muck land on which people are residing since decades with excessive constructions done not fit for safe survival including non management of fool proof sewage system etc.
However, despite all this one fact remains that the Himalayas have become excessively crowded, excessively polluted with rampant cutting of trees and lacks n lakhs of tons of silt, luck, boulders and dust being through illegally into our pious clean Ganga river and its tributaries. In the name of so called anti environmental and unscientific development to mint excessive profits and encourage so called tourism in Uttarakhand – the Himalayas are actually being badly assaulted and raped say our learned environmentalists and earth scientists. Whole world knows that there had been scientific predictions by seismologists that Uttarakhand is due to face a more than 8-9 magnitude earthquake on Richter scale in future that may destroy entire Ukhand even Delhi to great extent, though not knowing when it will occur from now, but they confidently say that it will happen for sure.
This actually gives us enough opportunity especially to the Uttarakhand government and the centre as well to think about these dangerous signs from now onwards and find remedial measures on extensive scale.
But what worries us the more is the very fact that various planners of our state still say that Uttarakhand capital Dehradun can still go for lakhs and lakhs of constructions in the future, nothing to worry for the predicted earthquake of large magnitude.
According to a tweet by the founder member of SDC n highly awakened, well read and popular social activist Anoop Nautiyal , the Dehradun MDDA Draft Master plan says that during the next 18 years the state capital needs to build massively 4 lakh, 37 thousands, 359 more housing units out of which currently they have the stock of merely 1,25,611 houses. This catagorically means that the MDDA Draft plan of Dehradun requires 3.5 fold more units than what we have currently despite the hard fact that there lies a question whether Dehradun really have the capacity to to bear such a massive weight of infrastructures especially when Uttarakhand is prone to earthquakes and is under Zone 5 highly prone for dangerous earthquakes.
lalit chamola
A very timely and educative article. People as also govt must seriously get involved to solve these issues. It clearly implies that the govt is definitely encouraging migration from villages to towns and specially to Dehradun.