Years of Living Dangerously

Why God's Own Country is facing multiple calamities

There were two catastrophes in Kerala on 7th August: Air India Express flight IX1344 crashed on landing at Kozhikode Airport (image courtesy Times of India), and a major landslide brought down an entire hillside in the picturesque tea town of Munnar, burying the dwellings of plantation laborers (image courtesy Manorama Online).

There is a thread that connects the two incidents: poor governance.

The aircraft fell off the cliff at the end of the runway, slid down 50 feet, hit a retaining wall, and broke in two, killing the pilots and at least 16 others. It is not clear why the Kozhikode airport is built on top of a hill which was partly levelled (as is nearby Mangalore airport). It is not as though Kozhikode were like Nepal, where they have built the Norgay-Hillary airport on a similar sliced-off hilltop.

"The Kozhikode is a tabletop airport with deep gorges at both ends of the runway. The tabletop runway of the Kozhikode airport is said to be one of the riskiest runways for landings in India." — India Today

There is plenty of land around Kozhikode that’s pretty level and flat, and it would have been sensible to acquire some such area to build the airport. Quite possibly, there were other motives in building this airport here in 1988. One likely reason is real estate speculation: perhaps clever insiders had induced the authorities to choose an area where they already owned plenty of land.

"... all the flights that land on Runway 10 in the tailwind conditions in rain, are endangering the lives of all on board.” — Letter from Captain Ranganathan to the Civil Aviation Secretary in 2011.

Furthermore, once this airport was built, mostly to cater to Malabar migrant traffic to West Asia, there were efforts to acquire more land to extend the runway. But these efforts came to naught because of stiff resistance and objections from local landowners. It is possible that better terms would have convinced the reluctant landowners to sell out, though Kerala is litigious, and many projects have been thwarted for lack of land.

Especially when it rains heavily (as it has been for a week in Kerala) and at night, there should be a protocol that no aircraft should attempt the dangerous landing. It is not clear yet as to whether Air Traffic Control did or should have diverted the flight to Kannur or Cochin, which are only 120 km and 150 km away respectively.

It is rumored that the plane’s landing gear did not open properly, and even if it did, it is possible that the aircraft would have hydroplaned on the rainwater on the tarmac and fallen off the cliff anyway.

The protocols and procedures in place were simply inadequate to deal with this emergency.

The case of Munnar’s landslide is similar. 49 people have died, and 20 are missing, mostly poor Tamil plantation laborers, so their plight will be ignored by the glitterati, and swept under the rug. Most of the blame should be apportioned to the deliberate flouting of environmental regulations and kowtowing to vested interests.

This has been going on for decades, as the pristine Western Ghats, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, have been encroached, and ecologically sensitive hillsides have been denuded of forest, often replaced by deceptively green ‘deserts’ consisting of monocrop plantations.

All those years of living dangerously are now coming back to haunt the State with a vengeance. Some years ago, the Madhav Gadgil Committee made sensible recommendations against clear-cutting natural forests, large-scale settlement and massive granite quarrying that weaken the mountains. It aimed to preserve large areas of the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive zones.

The Gadgil report was opposed tooth and nail by lowland settlers, sharecroppers and builders of posh resorts, and by the Church because the settlers and encroachers of public/forest land were mostly Christians, as shown in illegal ‘cross-planting’ there.

The Gadgil report was shelved, and a new watered-down report was created by the Kasturirangan Commitee. This too was insufficient to placate the Church. One padre created a stir by suggesting that there would be another ‘Jallianwala Bagh’ in the Western Ghats if the report were implemented.

“Those who make hue and cry about the word Jallianwala Bagh should try to understand what it is. It symbolises the struggle of the people of India to win independence. The British who ruled us shot at the Indians there and many lost their lives… Similarly, the government is trying to encroach upon the freedom of the poor people who live in the foothills of the Western Ghats.” — Bishop Mar Remegiose Inchananiyil, rediff.com

The Kerala Government caved in, and created yet another report, the Oommen Committee report, which in effect said that all the existing encroachments could stay as they were.

This is an appalling abdication of governance.

The result of all this hubris is that the forests are vanishing at an ever-increasing pace (courtesy Livemint.com).

And then came nemesis. In 2018, there were floods, the worst in a century since “the flood of ‘99”, referring to the cataclysmic floods in 1924 CE (the year 1099 in the Malayalam Era). This photo, courtesy The Atlantic, shows the submerged Alappuzha area. 483 people died, and a million people were evacuated or rendered homeless.

“India’s southern state of Kerala is suffering its worst monsoon flooding in a century, with more than one million people displaced, and more than 400 reported deaths in the past two weeks. Aid agencies and government groups have set up more than 4,000 relief camps, while rescue personnel are making their way to submerged villages in helicopters and boats, bringing supplies, and evacuating those they can find. Weeks of heavy rainfall have caused dams to open their floodgates, triggered landslides in the mountains, and swamped the coastal regions of Kerala. Only in recent days have floodwaters begun to recede, allowing more access for aid workers and rescuers.” — The Atlantic

Madhav Gadgil, the environmentalist, was not amazed.

“Yes, there is an intense rainfall event which has caused this. But I am quite convinced that the last several years’ developments in the state have materially compromised its ability to deal with events like this and greatly increased the magnitude of the suffering that we are seeing today. Had proper steps been taken, the scale of the disaster would have been nowhere near what it is today” — Dr. Madhav Gadgil. Indian Express, 20 August 2018.

“What happened in Pettimudi is similar to the massive landslides that wiped away entire villages in Kavalappara and Puthumala in 2019. I am afraid this was a disaster waiting to happen. Our panel had designated Pettimudi as a region of highest ecological sensitivity (Eco-Sensitive Zone 1)… Any disturbance to natural vegetation renders a locality with high rainfall and steep slopes susceptible to landslides. Such disturbances include construction of buildings and roads, quarrying or mining, replacement of natural vegetation by plantations or levelling of the land using heavy machinery — Dr. Madhav Gadgil, New Indian Express, 11 August 2020

In 2019, again, there were massive floods and an entire mountainside collapsed, killing many. Now in 2020, once more floods are taking their toll.

The State has to recognize that the ecologically sensitive and fragile Western Ghats need to be protected.

There is no substitute for good governance.

1000 words, 8 August 2020

updated 11 August 2020 with latest number of casualties in Munnar, and a new quote from Madhav Gadgil, both courtesy New Indian Express.