Nepal floods are grim warning for not only India but the entire subcontinent improperly called South Asia. Afghanistan to Tibet, the Himalayan region is one territory – continuous and contiguous geographical unit – that has to share happiness and more than that turmoil together.
Each Himalayan tragedy only signals the next one. Business as usual is no longer defensible. The woes have to be shared and stand together. The Indian Ocean tsunami to Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) recreates that together you live or die. The largest and most populous country that needs to lead the subcontinent, euphemistically called SAARC. If India has to progress it has to be inclusive and care for all its eight major neighbours and even have Iran and bête noire Pakistan as a close ally.
The August 26 Nepal-Tibet flash floods were caused not by a conventional GLOF, but by a massive high-altitude glacier collapse and ice-rock avalanche. A large glacier section collapsed in Tibet, temporarily damming the river. When the debris dam breached, a huge torrent of water, mud and rock swept into Nepal, killing hundreds and destroying roads, bridges and hydropower projects.
Satellite analysis suggests about two-thirds of the glacier body collapsed, with no clear evidence of a pre-existing glacial lake bursting. Climate warming, combined with the Himalayas’ steep and unstable terrain, likely contributed to the collapse.
The warning is stark: Himalayan glaciers themselves—not just glacial lakes—are becoming potential triggers of catastrophic floods. The deaths some thousands or 320 or so confirmed alone in the recent GLOF does not shake the region. None counts the cattle heads, forest animals, fauna and washout of large tracts of land from Tibet to Nepal and beyond to Bihar, Bengal and other places in a jiffy. Most of these countries do not have a disaster management system that India and Tibetan Chinese projects built over the last over past few decades decades. A calamity burdens India with the task to restore the neighbourhood. Its disaster force has to extend to the region. The Little Ice Age is at its end. Europe is simmering, rivers and lakes drying up. Himalayas are melting. Research studies note 40 percent of the Nepal glacial ice cover is gone. Human safety is at stake since the times of Noah’s ark or the Manu’s giant fish driven boat. Who can have that sagacity of selecting the species to save the life? A US-led war in the Gulf or Caspian Sea only aggravates the conditions.
The region from Hindukush Silk Route to the Eastern and northern-most Himalayas are being deforested and rat-holed with giant tunnel boring machines for dams, river diversions, bridges and series of projects for rails and roads now even in the most sensitive and fragile Badarinath-Kedarnath for “strategic” toll roads. Competitive developmental disaster has hit the mute Himalayas.
Detonations for projects in western, northern or southern Himalayas can lead to mini-tremors and other seismic activities leading to gradual devastations across the region. Is the present avalanche in Tibet connected to Tibet-Nepal Rail link or series of tunnels linked to Atal and other tunnels in Kashmir? Immediate cause may be with Tibet-Nepal rail or massive Medong and other dams being built by China.
India has constructed and is building major strategic and transportation tunnels across the Himalayan region from Jammu & Kashmir to Uttarakhand, drastically improving connectivity, defence logistics and earning massive tolls for profits. The pride of Indian railway tunnel at Karnaprayag caused severe water crisis towards northeastern parts across Karnaprayag. The sinking Joshimath is no less a disaster with road constructions all around.
Predicted in Yore
Mythology and traditions predicted Himalayan disaster in the Badarinath Valley millennia ago. The Narasimha murti at Joshimath, must before a visit to Badarinath, has legend saying the day thinning tip of the iconic idol’s finger separates from its body, the Valley would vanish. The worship would begin at Bhavishya Badari, 17 km from Joshimath.
Such tales abound in folklores. Has the time for the Himalayan disaster arrived? Competitive destruction, praised as development, seemingly etching the wiping out of the Indian subcontinent. The engine of growth may become the beginning of a deluge that may be worse than what the Bibilical or Puranical tales write about Noah or Manu. The Himalayan “wiping out” would turn the entire northern Indian plains into a massive desert.
Interestingly, it would have aggravated the situation in Europe already hit by severe heat-drought cycles.
The subcontinent is becoming the architect of a Euro-Asian disaster that may be altering the characteristics of the Arctic and Antacrctic. Massive floating icebergs may be the tip.
Would any sane regime prevail in a Donald Trumpian-construction industry billions-of-dollar fervour for rebuilding Gaza to Kashmir? It’s complex phenomenon with massive funds stuck in profits sucked from the poor.
Key with India and SAARC
Uttarakhand saw two deadly glacier-related disasters within three months in 2021. A February glacial-lake breach killed at least 61 people, left 143 missing and damaged two hydropower projects; a second glacier collapse in April killed 12. ICIMOD has identified 47 potentially dangerous glacial lakes across the Koshi, Gandaki and Karnali basins. With Himalayan glaciers reportedly melting at twice the early-2000s rate, the risks are rising, while South Asia’s glacial-flood early-warning systems and regional cooperation remain woefully limited.
J&K, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal are rapidly expanding large tunnel networks through fragile Himalayan terrain. Himalayan disasters demand basin-wide, cross-border governance. SAARC must move beyond a political forum and revive regional disaster mechanisms, real-time data sharing and joint rescue protocols. India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh should integrate satellite and ground monitoring of glaciers, landslides and glacial lakes with automated downstream warnings. Shared river-basin assessments, strict floodplain zoning and common climate-resilient construction standards should replace isolated project clearances. The Himalayas need a ridge-to-valley, transboundary strategy in which early warning, ecological protection and disaster response work as one system.
It needs review of 50 tunnelling projects in Uttarakhand and series of activities from Arunachal to Kashmir and on the Tibetan side turning the Himalayas into massive holes and craters. Each project drains massive public funds and leads closer to catastrophe. A joint SAARC action may turn the future of the Asia and the world.
India has the highest stake. It has to save the world with virulent dialogue in the neighbourhood to save the Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent, as a precursor to rescue the world.
Shivaji Sarkar