Written by: Dr Neelatphal Chanda, Aparna Vats
As influencers chanced upon the “July Dump” trend, which is followed at the end of each month to post collages featuring the highlights of that month, the Kerala government was instead grappling with a devastating landslide that first struck at 2 a.m. on the 30th. Before residents could comprehend the burying of their villages, another landslide followed at 4:10 a.m. As of noon, August 1st, the death toll had crossed 200, and rescue operations were underway by the Army, Defense Security Corps (DSC), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Indian Coast Guard (ICG), Forest and Fire and Rescue Service, and volunteers. The state is home to the Chaliyar River, which emerges from an altitude of 2 km and flows downstream, but the volume and force of 572 mm of rainfall within 48 hours led to debris being deposited downstream.
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Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took a break from sparring with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, over advance warnings and other measures to visit the site. The state government has opened two helplines: 9656938689 and 8086010833. ?145 crores has been disbursed for Kerala under the State Disaster Response Fund (SFRF), and the Centre has announced ex gratia payment of ?2 lakh for the next of kin of the deceased and ?50,000 as compensation for the injured. The Southern Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) at Chennai has taken suo motu cognizance of the matter.
As the state awaits a declaration of a “national disaster” by the Centre to access enhanced funds, neighboring states are sharing the fate with landslides hitting Karnataka and Tamil Nadu due to torrential rains. While news media covers parliamentary debates and replays rescue footage, few discuss the cause of this disaster. Unfortunately, this disaster was foreseeable, preventable, or at least manageable as a “zero casualty disaster.”
Two legal Latin maxims, “vis major” and “force majeure,” are often incorrectly used interchangeably. While the latter refers to an “act of God,” the former is an unforeseeable circumstance, the cause of which is not necessarily natural. Ecologist and Chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, Madhav Gadgil, attributes this to a “man-made tragedy.” Amid climate change, the panel had given guidelines that divided the region into three levels according to its ecological sensitivity. The report’s recommendation to decline engineering projects in Kerala’s ecologically sensitive zones was rejected by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoE). The earmarked “highly sensitive” area has now been struck. Another recommendation to curb quarrying at least 100 meters away from human settlement was reduced to 50 meters.
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This region has some of the oldest rock formations and was a British plantation land that has been extensively exploited due to “development.” Artificial lakes, resorts, and the possible shockwaves produced by the now-defunct quarries have been cited as causes of these landslides. The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) under the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created a national-level database named “Landslide Atlas of India” in 2023 based on vulnerability to landslides based upon socioeconomic parameters. Wayanad has been ranked thirteenth among 147 districts in 17 states and 2 Union Territories.
The other affected regions are ranked within the top ten, and the reason for this is the soil cover of the crop. The extent of soil fragmentation of Wayanad District’s forestland was noted by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on human-wildlife conflict in Kerala, compiled in 2022 and presented in the Assembly on July 11. As per this, the forestland has reduced from 1811.35 sq. km to 863.86 sq. km between 1950-2021.
A study published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on Wayanad in 2022 reported that 62% of green cover disappeared between 1950 and 2018, while plantation rose by 1800%. The Union Ministry of Earth Sciences reported that between 2015 and 2022, Kerala recorded the largest number of landslides in the country, with 2239 occurrences out of 3782. Wayanad suffered a landslide at Puthumala, recently, in 2021. Moreover, Conservation International ranked the Western Ghats 7th in the “8 Hotspots of Biodiversity” list. Shockingly, sixteen hours before the disaster, the Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology had alerted the possibility of landslides in Mundakkai and surrounding regions. In 2020, Hume Centre’s warning led to the successful relocation to Mundakkai.
On the one hand, accountability is absent, as are rapid action plans and the ability to listen to rational arguments by experts and learn from past experiences; on the other, there is a loud presence of unfulfilled promises, illogical argumentation, and unplanned projects. The devastation has been aggravated by the unavailability of data on the inhabitants of the impacted areas, such as tea estates and tourist destinations where migrant laborers and their families reside and tourists visit. A unit of the National Landslide Forecasting Centre (NWFC) driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) installed just ten days ago in Mundakkai failed to issue alerts.
Undeniably, there is a need for holistic risk assessment, advanced and functional warning systems, multi-stakeholder consideration, and acceptance of the phenomena of climate change. Prioritizing ecology over the economy is required because we missed the chance to find a balance long ago.
It is with hope that governments change their approach as fast as influencers changed their trend to “All Eyes on Wayanad” awareness and aid posts. This will not happen until those who elect them to power recognize their responsibility of reminding and asserting that they have real power by questioning policy decisions and demanding justifications.
Dr. Neelatphal Chanda teaches Media Studies at Christ University, Bangalore. Aparna Vats is a Media Studies student at the same university.