Wayanad — Mudslide along a slippery moral slope

Then, there is the failure to respect the Madhav Gadgil and the K Kasturirangan reports on the need to keep off the fragile parts of the Western Ghats. The Kasturirangan report diluted the recommendations of the Gadgil report, in a bid to arrive at political consensus, at least on some basic measures.

Greed’s blowing in the wind

All three are relevant. But, this being Kerala, there is a tendency to elide, with political consensus, the basic factor behind the failure to respect expert advice on protecting fragile ecosystems: greed.

Construction and quarrying on the hillside prepare the ground for landslides, massive rains trigger the actual disaster, and the less well-off get buried under the mud, while the well-off collect their insurance cheques. Climate change aggravates the problem.

Kerala, the landslide hotspot

A 2023 paper by Saibal Ghosh, deputy director of the Geological Survey of India S-IV_GeologicalDisasters.pdf (nrsc.gov.in) offers some ready insight into landslides. Between 1997 and 2008, 4.8 million people were affected worldwide by landslides. India registered 10,900 deaths from landslides (18 percent of the global landslide casualties) between 2004 and 2016.

Out of the total global landslides triggered by rainfall, 16 percent are from India. Of these, 77 percent occurred during the monsoon. Further, the number of landslides that are triggered by human activity is climbing in India. About 28 percent landslides has a relation to construction activity.

It is estimated that 430,000 sq km is landslide-prone in India, about 12.6 percent of the Indian landmass.

Of this, Kerala’s share is 19,301 sq km, or 4.5 percent. But Kerala accounted for 61% of the 3,656 landslides that occurred in India over 2015-20. Why does Kerala have so many landslides, 116 per 1,000 vulnerable sq km, while the national average is 8 per 1,000 vulnerable sq km?

Read | From Wayanad to Kedarnath, 10 most devastating landslides in Indian history

The Western Ghats run along India’s Arabian Sea coastline, from Gujarat to Kerala. These mountains are not very tall, but are older than the Himalayas. In Kerala, the slopes are steep, rivulets, streams and rivers originating in the Ghats reaching the plains in a tearing hurry, and flowing relatively short stretches before reaching the sea or emptying themselves into Kerala’s backwaters.

Of Kerala’s 44 rivers, just three flow to the east, across Kerala’s state boundaries, to meander through Karnataka or Tamil Nadu. The rest descend west, and rush along to the Arabian Sea. It is conceivable that erratic and heavy rains accelerate the flow and erode the slopes of the hills.

Church protects its flock

But more relevant is indiscriminate settlement of the Ghats for plantations, farmland, quarries, resorts and other construction. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel headed by Madhav Gadgil had recommended, in 2011, declaring 64 percent of the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive, where construction should be barred. This was deemed anti-development by politicians and businessmen across the states along which the Ghats sprawl. The UPA government set up a panel under Planning Commission member Kasturirangan to study the Gadgil panel report. It brought down the sensitive area estimate to 37 percent. This was attacked by environmentalists, as well as by businesses and politicians.

In Kerala, the Church has been among the most vocal campaigners against curbing economic activity on the Ghats on environmental grounds. Pioneering farmers from Southern Kerala had migrated north to the jungles of Wayanad and Kannur, braving malaria and wild predators to settle the land, farm, grow assorted cash crops. These were mostly Christians, and the Church used its political clout to oppose any curtailment of its flock’s economic enterprise.

Kerala’s coalition politics is ideal for articulating such pressure. The state’s two fronts, the Communist-led Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front, are vulnerable to any erosion of support. They would much rather sacrifice the environment than lose political support of even a small section of voters.

When disaster strikes, whether natural or manmade, the poor suffer far more than the well-off. When politicians choose to keep vested interests happy and sacrifice the integrity of the fragile mountains, they endanger lives, particularly of the poor.

Wayanad today is the victim of twin betrayals: by the Church privileging material wealth over its core spiritual calling, and by the Communists, of its core constituency, the poor, to protect property built where it ought not to be. The slippery slope along which masses of unstoppable mud and sodden, uprooted earth has slid down to swallow probably 500 lives in Wayanad has essentially been that of morality.