Roads and Rills: Development without Devastation

Tunnel Building

Travelling recently to Kargil, it was traumatic to see the state to which the verdant slopes and valleys of Sonmarg and Baltal have been reduced. Huge sections of the hill sides have been gouged out to widen the Leh highway, the valleys are covered with ugly stone crushing machinery and piles of rubble.

It is the same on the other side of Zojila. The beautiful meadow at Minamarg is covered with a mass of rubble excavated from the tunnel, and with the crushed stone aggregate required for the tunnel. This rubble called muck in the parlance, is truly mucking up both sides of the tunnel being built.

This is a major problem all over the Himalya but particularly so in Jammu and Kashmir. Particularly because of the geology in Jammu, and because of the gentle beauty of the Kashmir terrain. Any brown barren hillside may not look markedly less ugly in contrast after its sides have been gouged out. In J&K, however, the effect is devastating.

There is of course a price to be paid for ‘development’ but it need not necessarily be so damaging as in the case of roads in the hills. Mountain roads were first built by the British when they created their hill stations. Travelling on those roads it is rare to see a scarred hill side. The slopes are uniformly green driving to Mussoorie, Dalhousie or Darjeeling.

Travelling in the Alps in Europe it is hard to find a land slide that has not been protected by appropriate gully bunding or retaining wall. Even in the US where they build six lane highways through the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, the journey is unmarred by slide or scar.

Travelling through Malaysia some decades ago I was astonished to see roads cut through hill terrain that had terraced slopes on both sides to prevent erosion. So, why do not Indian road engineers and contractors take care of the problem as they do abroad, or as the British did when building their hill stations?

It could be, as far as the National Highways are concerned, that the planners, being from the plains, have not conceived of the problems constructing roads in mountainous terrain entail, and therefore do not provide for slope damage in their design, or budget for in the tender process. This is not a valid argument, however, because roads designed and constructed by engineers and contractors of J&K suffer from the environmental problems of constructing roads in the hills.

The road to Kishtwar from Batote never solved the problem of land erosion caused by the rills that excavation creates. The Mughal Road led to cutting off the magnificent promontory called Kokerseena on the Poonch side of Pir ki Gali. This was near the infamous site of Hastivanj where Mihirakula the Hun enjoyed the agonized cries of elephants falling down the precipice.

More than a thousand feet of steeply descending slopes that were fully clothed in a dense forest of spruce, pine and larch are now a dappled mess of brown and yellow slide zones. Could this not have been avoided? And if it could not, why were ameliorative measures not taken?

In this environmentally conscious era, one imagines that road designers are as sensitive as the rest of us to the devastating consequences of their professional activities. How then is it that they never seem to emulate their fellow professionals in the West, or even Malaysia?

It could be that lower cost proposals have an easier chance of gaining administrative acceptance, which leads road builders to exclude slope restoration in their project plans. However, it is equally probable that slope  restoration and protections works are contracted for but not executed with the money being pocketed. It is possible that they just don’t care.

Whatever the reason it is high time the problem was addressed. Projects should not be approved unless restoration and protection works are fully funded, and contractors' bills should not be finally paid till they are seen and certified to have executed these works.

In the meanwhile, it should be ensured that, for ongoing works, supplemental funds are provided for restoration and protection of hill slopes. Provision is now routinely made for tree planting to replace trees cut down. A similar provision needs to be made for slopes cut off, rills created, greenery destroyed. Engineers are forced to provide retaining walls to create roads; they should also be compelled to build retaining walls for the slopes they cut off and the slides that creates.

Piecemeal planning must be deplored, but in this case there is no helping it. Tunnels are now being planned under Pir ki Gali and Sinthan Pass. Should this not have been done from the very beginning before doing the damage. The road section between Ramban and Banihal is an epic case of this sort of road planning. Some of the tunnels now being planned should have been taken up at the very beginning instead of devastating the mountainsides.

But to get back to Sonmarg – one does not know if the NHAI has any plans to restore the battered beauty of the glens and dales of Sonmarg and Minamarg. If not Environmental groups in Srinagar and elsewhere should take it up with the Union Ministry of Road Transport and with the concerned departments in the Government of J&K.

It is not just a question of restoring slopes here or building retaining walls along the Leh highway, upwards of Gund and all the way to Minamarg. The sites of the stone crushers must be re-greened once the project is completed. All of the stone aggregate remaining must be removed to enable the grass to grow back on the meadows where trucks are parked to collect aggregate.

And then there is the muck. Muck dumping sites have been built, but these are all along the road, and on the banks of the Sindh nullah. This muck must be removed from and used for landfill elsewhere. At the very least it should be covered up with earth and planted over with whatever plant will grow there – grass, shrubs or trees.

I imagine the problem of muck removal is huge. The tunnel is over fourteen kilometres long. A solution to the connectivity issue to Ladakh must not be allowed to become a problem for Sonmarg and Minamarg.

The author is a retired IAS officer