Voices from a sinking town

Godambri Devi (58) has been living with her family in Joshimath, a holy mountainous town in India’s Uttarakhand state, for the last four decades. She had moved to this picturesque town in her teens, raised a family and settled there. It took her family many years of toil to finally complete a two-story house in 2019; a house that became home to ten of her family members. 

But their comfort of a permanent shelter was short-lived.  

Devi's house is among the 700 buildings that have developed gaping cracks due to large-scale land subsidence across the town, and authorities have recently started demolishing buildings because of safety concerns.

"In these wintery nights, where would I go with my six-month-old grandson?" Devi asked through tears. 

Her house, like many others in the neighbourhood, had been developing hairline cracks over the last few months, but earlier this month, on the night of 2 January, a loud noise was heard throughout the entire area. "My daughter-in-law woke me up and told me there is an earthquake," Devi told FairPlanet. "But actually the ground beneath the town had sunk. We could see wide cracks in our house."

Since then, the 58-year-old and her family have been living in a municipality provided makeshift shelter.

Many other families in the town are facing the same circumstances, as thousands of people are currently residing in schools, hotels and makeshift camps. The government reportedly put helicopters on standby in case of an emergency.  

"Whatever we earned we invested there," 66-year old Hemlata Rawat, another resident living in a makeshift accommodation, told FairPlanet. "We have suffered a huge loss. Our home had 15 to 16 rooms and it was a two-story building. But now everything is lost."

"Many families haven't picked up the belongings," added Rawat, whose house has suffered extensive damage and is slated for demolition. "They fear getting back to their houses as they may collapse anytime. They are now living in camps with none of their belongings or valuables with them."

"I had never thought that this would happen to me at this age," Rawat lamented. "I had hoped that my children would study and my grandchildren would grow. But I have been left to see this."

The ‘Sinking’ Town

Home to close to 25,000 people, Joshimath is located about 6,200 feet above sea level and is a destination of many prominent Hindu religious pilgrimages.

The area has been prone to natural disasters due its location in an ecologically-fragile zone. The region has close to 900 glaciers, many of which are melting, and as the area is mostly covered with loose sedimentary soil, it leads to landslides through out the year.

It is also situated in the highest-risk area of India’s seismic zone. 

The town attracts thousands of religious devotees, mountaineers and hikers throughout the year, and it appears that unchecked tourism has contributed to the disaster. 

Residents of the area say that the proliferation of large-scale construction, which includes houses, hotels and eateries, has played a major role in the ongoing land subsidence.

"For many years there have been large scale illegal constructions going on here," Darban Nethwal, a 50-year old government employee who lost his home due to subsidence, told FairPlanet. "Whoever wants to build a house can build it. People are making hotels and restaurants with no official permits."

"There is no proper sewage lining in the town, either," he added.

Furthermore, many government-led hydroelectric power projects have been built around the town recently, for which there has been large-scale tunneling and construction. A newly constructed four-lane highway to improve access to the region has also exacerbated the ecological crisis, as there has been regular blasting of mountains and thousands of trees have been cut. 

Satellite images released by the Indian Space Research Organization’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) indicated that Joshimath witnessed a vertical sinking of 5.4 centimetres in just 12 days between 27 December, 2022 to 8 January, 2023. 

"The region subsided around 5 cm within a span of a few days and the areal extent of subsidence has also increased," the NRSC report said.

But after the ISRO report was released, the government had issued a gag order prohibiting prominent government institutes and scientific research centres from interacting with the media or sharing data on land subsidence at Joshimath, claiming it was "creating confusion not only among affected residents but also among citizens of the country."

Ultimately, NRSC had to pull down its report.

The government’s response to the disaster unfolding in the Himalayan town reflects its mounting intolerance towards any criticism directed at it, and it has been accused of invoking sedition and hate speech laws to silence dissenting voices.

"Authorities prosecute activists, journalists, peaceful protesters, and other critics on fabricated counterterrorism and sedition charges," Human Rights Watch noted in a report released last year.

"The problem with this dispensation is that it can’t take a word against it," Hasan Akram, a journalist based in New Delhi, told FairPlanet. "That’s not how democracies work. How can you ban your own official institutions from releasing reports?" 

An Impending Disaster in the Himalayas 

Indian experts paint a grim picture of what may still unfold.

Vimlendu Jha, a prominent Delhi-based environmentalist, believes that due to the government’s callous policies the crisis is going to affect the entire Himalayan region.

"The unfortunate part is that it's not just about one city or one town or one hamlet called Joshimath which is sinking, the crisis actually is going be for the entire Himalayas, because of the kind of development practices that have been followed in the ecological fragile zones," Jha told FairPlanet.

He blames the infrastructure projects sanctioned by the government in the Himalayan range for this crisis.

"From Ladakh to Arunachal, it's the same story," Jha said. "Imagine that more than 300 large dams, hydroelectric dams and power plants have been or are proposed to be built in the region, which basically means that every 10-15 km, we actually have a big concrete monolith coming up. This is over and above several other road infrastructure projects."

Jha reckons that the ongoing construction projects in the region extend far beyond the carrying capacity of the Himalayas. "All this so-called development is happening not keeping in mind the fragile nature of the Himalayan soil, its river bodies and its aquifers," he said.

"The entire region is actually sitting on a mine."

Image by Danish Pandit.