Lessons learnt from Tupul disaster

Villagers of Kushatoli never expected that they have to cremate the bodies of four of their own the same day! While Gopal Phukon’s body reached his native village Kushatoli, in Lahorighat in the Morigaon district of Assam along with the bodies of three others on Sunday, Gopal’s neigbour Debojit Phukan is still to be traced. A total of 23 people, mostly youths from Lahorighat, one of the most underdeveloped areas in the state, were engaged as construction workers at the railway construction site at Makhuam, about 75 km west of Imphal, capital of Manipur.

“Search is on for a railway engineer and eleven other construction workers from Assam,” said Assam Minister Pijush Hazarika, overseeing rescue operations at the site. Death toll in the massive landslide that occurred on June 29 reached 34 that included 13 personnel from Territorial Army. Rescue operations for the missing 38 persons have been slowed by fresh landslides at the site on Saturday. New cracks have been reported at the site due to incessant rainfall. The massive landslide intervened with local topography and in the flow of the Ijei river.

“Many factors including climate and geological condition can lead to landslides. The rain-induced deep-seated landslides have occurred in the region during intense and prolonged rainfall. Crush zone of a large-scale thrust fault's weak layer also forms a barrier to groundwater flow, leading to rapid increase in pore-pressure during heavy rainfall and triggering catastrophic slope failure,” said Professor Bhagawat Pran Duarah, who teaches geology in the Gauhati University.

The incident occurred near the Tupul Railway Station--part of a 111-kilometres railway project under construction for several years now in Manipur’s Noney district. The project that also included the World’s tallest railway bridge over the Iring river, between Jiribam and capital city Imphal, was envisaged to provide greater connectivity between Manipur with the rest of India. However, these developmental activities are often impacted by natural hazards, including landslides. Often caused by disturbances in the natural stability of a slope, landslides are common in this region due to its geography. Weakness and low permeability of the crush zones influence the slope stability.

“Before setting out for any project in the geologically vulnerable regions like the north eastern states, proper geological and geomorphological investigation needed to be undertaken,” said Prof Duarah.

The NDA government launched several projects key to improving connectivity in Northeast India. Among these projects, has been the the 19km bridge, said to be India’s longest, that will connect Dhubri in Assam to Phulbari in Meghalaya. Prime Minister Modi said that the "double-engine" government at the Centre and in Assam has reduced the geographical and cultural gap in the entire region.

India’s north eastern region shares much of its border with China, Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh. “The launch of these key projects in the strategically important Northeast, has been

met with many complications, including disasters of a massive scale like this”, said Jayanta Kumar Das, a conservation activist from Assam.

The Northeast is also a geo-dynamically potent area known for its biological diversity with high level of endemism in the Eastern Himalayan region. The unique ecosystems of the region bore the onslaught of development projects. The ‘border area’ defined in EIA 2020 Draft as “area falling within 100 kilometres aerial distance from the Line of Actual Control,” has become a bigger threat now that looms large on the region’s forests and critical wildlife habitats with large scale endemism and famed biodiversity.

The writer is a journalist and environmental activist based in Guwahati.