You recently visited the Sunkoshi landslide area. What is the situation on the ground?

This is not just any landslide. An entire mountain has collapsed. I don’t think we have dealt with a landslide this big in our development history. The immediate issue is the humanitarian side. People have to be provided relief. But beyond that, there is still a huge lake dammed up and we need to figure out how to release the water without causing more damage. Initially, we opened all the Koshi barrage gates and evacuated the people downstream. But after all this time, people have started going back to their homes, though the danger is still present. There are also the transmission lines we lost. We are losing about 70MW of power from the national grid. These things cannot even be touched on currently as most of the area is still under soil, under debris and under water. Right now, we are just dealing with the secondary area of effect.

Is there still a high risk?

Oh yes. A kind of confidence has developed that since the dam hasn’t been breached in the past week, it won’t breach at all. But the lake has to be breached in some way as there is infrastructure and property underneath the water. We cannot just say that we have a new lake now. But we lack the expertise on how exactly to do it. We did some blasting on the loose rock but it has not had much effect. We tried siphoning but that didn’t work either. Now the Army has tried to create calculated channels at various parts of the hard rock area. On the other side is soft soil. They don’t want to touch that area because it might give way very fast and cause a flood. So they are trying all kinds of experiments but the risk is still there.  

What factors might have contributed to this massive landslide?

It is a combination of factors. This area was always landslide prone. There have often been small slides and slippages. There is also the issue of land use. There were settlements and farms on the slopes, along with irrigation canals. But the immediate cause was that an entire band of rock collapsed. Geologically, there are bands of soft rock on top of resistant hard rock. This resistant band of rock itself collapsed this time around. People reported that there was muddy water coming out from the springs before the landslide. This shows that the rock was already starting to fracture. The failure seems to have happened in two stages. A band of rock 1,000 metres above the river collapsed first and smashed onto the river, creating a dam. And about half an hour later, another soft layer came down and compacted the rock, mud and debris that was already there. This created a massive splash of mud, even covering the hills on the other side. Entire forests up to 500 metres on the other side have been damaged. Shop shutters that the mud hit have been pushed about two metres in. So the mechanism of this failure has been very surprising.

Some unofficial reports and expert opinions have come out stating that ‘haphazard development’ contributed to the landslide.

I would somewhat disagree with that. It is very easy for environmentalists to say that unplanned development was the cause. But what does that mean? If you are talking about avoiding building roads or canals through hazard-prone area then that’s fine. But there are numerous hazard-prone areas, should we not develop any of these areas? No one wants to live in an area that could take your life but if nothing happens for many years, people start getting complacent. Just look at Kathmandu. Everyone understands that we are waiting for an earthquake and yet, we continue to build 20-story houses close together in narrow alleys that fire engines cannot get into. This is how human societies are. So we cannot blame these people for living in landslide-prone areas, especially when such areas are all over the region.

Second, there is no model on what planned development is. Natural disasters will keep happening. The bigger question is, how do you cope with disasters and how do you minimise the damage done? Take the example of the Koshi flood in 2008. It was not a natural flood. The Koshi breached its embankments, which were built precisely to protect settlements. The fact is that mountains are dynamic. There is always movement and the most important thing that is always happening is weathering.

So you do not subscribe to this idea that the Sunkoshi landslide was caused by haphazard development?

Let me put it this way. Of course, when you are aligning your roads and canals, you have to ensure that you are not passing through wrong spots. But invariably, given the dynamics of this region, you are going to cross some weak spots. The point is to avoid adding new problems to the area. But just saying ‘planned development’ makes no sense. I agree that at the local level, people are raising money and building roads without any thinking as to where the roads should go. We need to pinpoint where this is happening. But I do not subscribe to the idea that if we have planned development, these disasters are not going to happen. More than that, we need to build capacity to identify risks.

How would you assess the government’s immediate response to the disaster?

The government did what it could with its resources and expertise. It did very well in coordinating, bringing in the Army and providing supplies. But is that enough? People are not very happy with the government’s efforts. The state has provided relief in the form of food, utensils and shelter. But missing people haven’t been found and we don’t even know where they are. We have no record of the settlements that were on the slopes so we don’t really know how many people are missing. The first response is rescue and relief. This lasts for about two or three weeks. Then, public interest starts to fade and the media and people stop coming. But the victims are still there. And now there are new problems. Bodies start to decay; water sources are polluted; and the year’s harvest is gone. Then, after about a year or so, everybody forgets Sunkoshi. But the victims need to survive. So either they migrate or they turn to other means of sustaining themselves and their families. This is a big problem that we haven’t been able to address properly.

Currently, there is a lot of talk about developing hydropower. The concern is that some of these projects are going to be built on fragile geology. How do we ensure development while keeping risks in mind?

We need to consider the foundation we are standing on and how it behaves. Take the example of Kulekhani. When we were building the reservoir, we had planned for it to stand for 50-100 years. But the flood of 1993 brought in huge amounts of sediment and greatly reduced the lifespan. This shows that we never really understood how mountains work. We have to introduce this uncertainty into the projects we build. We also have to take into account the specificity of the valley and river systems. Take the Koshi High Dam, which has potential to help Nepal, India and Bangladesh and be used for irrigation and flood control. But Koshi is also known to carry the highest amount of sediment. It breached its embankments in 2008 because the riverbed had risen significantly due to sediment. Nepal has numerous fault lines, which are very weak areas. This needs to be taken into account. We also have to look into the future. Is the investment made justified for the next 50-100 years? So we think of these problems and try to master them, I have no problem with big projects.

How do you minimise the amount of damage done?

The monsoon rains always create a situation for a bigger event. So we need to look at these things on a micro-level since we live in the hills. We can minimize a lot of problems by managing the monsoon flow of water. We need to really study and understand the role of water. This will not only minimise the loss of life and property but it will help crop production and geological stability and in the end, help the economy.

On a final note, the landslide broke on social media. You too were very active on Twitter, providing expert opinion on the disaster. How would you assess this trend of live reporting on social media from the ground?

It was very useful in disseminating ideas and spreading awareness. Lots of people immediately learned of the disaster. The state machinery, however, does not seem to have picked up on the usefulness of this tool. There is also a level of frustration on social media where people only seem to be complaining about what is not happening. There were reports that the water level had gone down significantly but an engineer from the area tweeted that the level had not really decreased as reported. This made sense, since there was rain on the hills and the water was all coming down.