India may need to take a hard decision on Himalayan pilgrimage spots

These hills have also become the site of a grimmer spectacle: Flash floods and landslides, as unchecked development in rapidly-thawing mountain valleys turns ever-intensifying rainstorms into avalanches of mud, rock and water. In the Indian state of Uttarakhand, at least four people died and dozens more were feared trapped or lost after one such cloudburst last week swept away much of the village of Dharali.

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There’s an inevitability about the location. The Char Dham Yatra is considered sacred because it takes pilgrims to shrines associated with the many tributaries of the Ganga river, which rises in Gangotri, just upstream from the latest disaster. Those waters in turn are fed by steep-sided river valleys, and ultimately by glaciers that have reportedly shrunk by about 40% since pre-industrial times.

In 2013, flash floods killed more than 6,000 people after a glacier above the pilgrimage town of Kedarnath gave way. In 2021, another flood near Badrinath, another town on the Char Dham circuit, left more than 200 dead. Not too far away, slow-moving subsidence in Joshimath, a gateway to Badrinath, has left about a fifth of buildings uninhabitable since ground fissures started opening in 2023.  

With less than 1% of India’s population, the state of Uttarakhand consistently uses up about 10% of the country’s budget for natural disaster relief.

A warming climate that causes glaciers to melt faster and clouds to carry more water provides ample explanation for this rising toll. 

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But, as with wildfires in California and hurricanes in Florida, unconstrained development plays a role as well, putting more and more humans and buildings in the path of the floodwaters.

The pilgrimage only exists in its current form thanks to concrete and asphalt. The isolated mountain shrines were little visited until the 1962 War between China and India, after which New Delhi started building more roads to improve military access to a disputed border just 30km or so from this week’s disaster site.

Visitor numbers have since soared as growing incomes and better transport links have improved access. 

That has been turbocharged by what may be interpreted as state patronage of the Char Dham pilgrimage and how frequently its sites catch the public eye.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has visited the mountain shrines multiple times. India has a budget of $9.8 billion for road and railway projects linking the four pilgrimage spots.

What concrete and asphalt led development could do to the fragile mountain landscape has been a matter of concern. Building roads, railways, hotels, restaurants and shops to serve the booming tourist trade results in deforestation and the dumping of excavated earth into river valleys. That accelerates the path of rainfall from the clouds into the narrow channels that carry it away downstream, increasing the risk of damaging floods.

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Environmental degradation is an old story. Uttarakhand lost about 0.8% of its forest cover in the decade through 2023. Cutting roadways into slopes without extensive engineering to stabilize the soil also leaves them vulnerable to landslides. Nearly a quarter of the state is at high to very high risk of natural disasters, according to a study in June by academics at Shiv Nadar University in Uttar Pradesh.

There are ways to limit this damage, but they are not the paths the government seems to be pursuing. The highway is being built in the interest of military plans, on a tight budget, so that mountainous zones can be reached by Indian forces. But if corners are cut, it would increase the chances of floods and landslides. Illegal construction work, which is rife as tourist rupees pour in, can be prevented by satellite monitoring—so long as officials aren’t getting kickbacks to turn a blind eye. 

Most of all, though, India needs to limit visitor numbers, as authorities in other countries have done at other environmentally fragile sites such as Machu Picchu and Mount Fuji. Pushing back against religious tourism is a move that some observers argue the Indian government may not be inclined to make. Given the need to secure the lives of religious devotees, however, the government may have to start turning back some pilgrims.  ©Bloomberg

The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy.