Drowned Hills, Shaky Ground

A string of cloudbursts and landslides has battered Himachal Pradesh, but the true disaster is man-made.

Himachal Pradesh

Each year, the monsoon descends on Himachal Pradesh with rhythmic violence. This year, the deluge has been especially brutal, with at least 75 people dead till now, more than 35 missing and over 500 roads blocked under debris and mud. Flash floods have swept away bridges, homes and livestock, with the government pegging damages at Rs. 700 crore ($84 million) and rising. As the state reels, a difficult question hangs in the mist: was this catastrophe wrought solely by nature or did human negligence and political complacency make it worse?

The Congress-led state government, under Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, has made all the right noises: promises of compensation, deployment of emergency forces and coordination with the Centre. But even as Sukhu strikes the right tone in press briefings, his administration’s handling of the state’s fragile mountain ecology has left much to be desired. In its first full year in power, the Congress dispensation had ample warning from last year’s floods which killed over 550 people, but did little to invest in disaster resilience. The result is a state once again caught scrambling with waterlogged roads, darkened towns and isolated villages.

Mandi district, the worst-hit region, has become the face of this year’s crisis. It has recorded more than a dozen deaths, with entire villages in areas like Thunag, Bagsayed, Karsog and Dharampur cut off. While party rivalries and political mudslinging simmer in the background, the people of Mandi and indeed the rest of Himachal are demanding more than political point-scoring. They desperately seek relief, demand accountability and need reconstruction.

The Sukhu government has announced a Rs. 5,000 payout per family for temporary accommodation and is overseeing relief operations with the help of the National Disaster Response Force. The central government, too, has weighed in, with Home Minister Amit Shah promising all possible assistance. But promises ring hollow when villagers are still digging out the rubble with bare hands. Across the state, over 500 electricity transformers have failed, 281 water schemes are non-functional, and a red alert for more rain remains in place. The looming shortage of water, power, and food in remote areas is now a humanitarian crisis in the making.

Himachal Pradesh has always been vulnerable to rain-induced calamities, but its increasing fragility owes more to human intervention than Himalayan topography. The hills are being choked by reckless construction as evinced by the building of multi-storey hotels on unstable slopes, highways cut into young mountains and hydroelectric projects built without adequate environmental safeguards. Forests that once absorbed rainwater have been cleared. Rivers have been narrowed or diverted. Little wonder that the monsoon, once a season of renewal, now unleashes chaos.

The state’s political class, regardless of party, has long prioritised short-term gains over long-term resilience. Hydropower remains a favourite talking point, as does road connectivity. But when asked about enforcing construction codes, undertaking geotechnical assessments, or retreating from ecologically fragile zones, governments tend to go mum. Even the lessons of the devastating 2023 monsoon have barely altered the approach: Himachal continues to treat the rains not as a structural challenge, but as an episodic inconvenience.

If there is a silver lining, it is that public awareness of ecological mismanagement is growing. There is mounting pressure on the government to overhaul its disaster preparedness, invest in early-warning systems, and impose strict regulations on slope construction. Communities are demanding not just compensation, but accountability.

This year’s devastation should be the final alarm. Himachal Pradesh, like neighbouring Uttarakhand, must adopt a policy of retreat from ecologically sensitive zones. Construction codes must be made stricter and strictly enforced by the Sukhu-led government. Above all, planning must shift from reactive relief to preventive resilience. Early warning systems, better drainage infrastructure and community-level disaster preparedness can mitigate some of the inevitable effects of climate volatility. The Himalayas will always be home to risk. But it is policy, not precipitation, that determines whether risk becomes tragedy.