Uttarakhand - Man's plight with nature and men !!

Nature’s fury has struck again in one of the very beautiful places in India, Uttarakhand. Apart from being called ‘Land of gods’, this region is the gateway to many trekking expedition in the Himalayas, which often calls out many trekking enthusiasts across India and the world. Abode to Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, Uttarakhand has always been the divine place to several thousands of devotees who make their visit once in their lifetime. All four places together also called chota char dham is ones dream and worth a chase to fulfill. Although being one of the sought after religious places in India, people always find it difficult to travel to these places. Connectivity through roads are good till Rishikesh and railways connects to Haridwar,  which is around 25kms from Rishikesh. In most cases Rishikesh is the place from where pilgrimage and trekking to different place takes off. All commutation beyond this is through roads paved off through the mountains.

During October last year, I had been on the roads to Gangotri through Uttarakashi. Believe me, it is as adventures as one can think of attempting a bungee jump or white river rafting. Although you are not driving the vehicle but most of the times you will be most awake as the driver, roads through these mountains are very narrow and steep dip on the other side of the road, seems very risky affair. Sometimes the bridges connecting the mountain seems very unstable and feels like it can’t hold the weight of the bus. Also most of the roads are single lane, and to watch any vehicle passing from the opposite side is exciting, any mistake at this point, you are just below 200 feet down. With the advent of people across India and world, Uttarakhand is turned into major tourist destination, be it for pilgrimage or Himalayan mountain trekking. One can easily make out this change, with lot of private players coming into the picture in every area. Private buses, cabs, trek organizers all into the field. Putting it aside for a while, the only intuition related to this is, people visiting Uttarakhand has been increasing, but same time I feel there is no increase in the safety, not a substantial up gradation of roads condition, maintenance of bridges. It is cognitive that these are the places where things can’t be worked out quickly but can’t we identify some areas where there is higher risk of people getting hit by natural calamity like rains and floods. I have seen tourist bungalow, cottages just across the river, we walked on the pavement which was almost destroyed by landslide, these are some of the things which the local authority might take care, if we cannot mitigate the risks why do we unnecessarily create one. I am grieved and angered by the fact that with few precautionary measures, we could have avoided the extent of deaths and damages to this beautiful valley in the recent floods. I could just express this on paper, but cannot feel the intensity of grief the local people have faced. They have lost lives, their home, their work.

Most of the TV News channels, which to me are no more any sources of proper information, felt more concerned of the tourist stranded at many places, hardly I could hear anything about the people who stay there, who have been facing nature wrath, better I could say improper management wrath, for years with no serious resolution being made. With few fake videos and gutsy news reporter showing super human skills bounced into no man’s land and started creating their news. Watching these broadcasts none of the people who have their parents, relatives, friends their own in these regions would have felt the sigh of relieve even for single second. Every moment I watch the news channel, there was a sense of anger and annoyance with these damn media autocrats looking for TRP. Instead of soothing people with right information, relief measures, they are bombarding with images which are doing no good to any individual. They are having crappy debates for which I have never seen any conclusion is the outcome, all they do is to end their one hour crap. On another note, nothing was shown against the weather forecast department, which didn't provide any warnings or signs of this calamity. With India proving itself to be the super power in the world, I believe we could have at least made use a super computer to get better weather forecasts. Be it dam constructions going around, illegal timber racket Uttarakhand people are facing it all. On a similar note, thousands of people visiting Uttarakhand are facing it.

I still linger with questions that remain unanswered, what can we do to curb the politicians greed and make them act on development, how can we fight on getting basic things done, who should respond to common man’s plea? These questions may remain unanswered, but I am looking for a ray of light from the skies of Himalaya to wither the plight of these people. Last thing I want is everyone to see Himalayan beauty and appreciate the place and the cordial people.

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Prashant.