Context:

Amid landslides in hill states, a 2019 strategy document- National Landslide Risk Management Strategy by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) highlighted issues of inadequate urban planning, absence of comprehensive land use policy.

About Landslides:

• Landslides are natural disasters that occur mainly in mountainous terrains where there are conducive conditions of soil, rock, geology, and slope.
• Causes: 
  • Natural causes that trigger landslides include heavy rainfall, earthquakes, snow melting, and undercutting of slopes due to flooding.
  • Anthropogenic activities such as excavation, cutting of hills and trees, excessive infrastructure development, and overgrazing by cattle can also cause landslides.
• Factors:
  • Lithology, geological structures like faults, hill slopes, drainage, geomorphology, land use and land cover, soil texture and depth, and weathering of rocks.
• In India, rainfall-induced landslide events are more common.

Key Highlights of NDMA’s 2019 Report:

• Non-Compliance: Most of the construction plans  do not follow standard norms. 
• Challenges in Planning, Design, and Infrastructure of Hill Towns: The document highlighted problems related to planning and design of buildings, inadequate infrastructure, in hill towns. 
• Copy from Delhi Master Plan: Existing building regulations enforced in Indian hill towns are mostly inspired from Delhi Master Plan(s), which are not appropriate to the context of hill towns, as the geo-environmental and socio-developmental context of Delhi is varied to a greater extent from that of hill towns.
• Absence of National Schemes for Landslide Risk Mitigation: On mitigation of landslides, the 2019 report underlined that no Union ministry had any scheme for landslide risk management in the country.
• Lack of Funds: Due to resource crunch, particularly Hilly States, are unable to take up mitigation, rehabilitation and reconstruction measures.
• Lax Governance: The State Municipal Acts in all the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) and Western Ghats (WG) states are more focused on other issues than landslide problems.

Recommendations of Report:

• No construction should be ordinarily undertaken in areas having slopes above 30 degrees or areas which fall in landslide hazard zones or areas falling on the spring lines and first order streams.
• The report also emphasized the necessity of load bearing tests, hazard zonation and slope and land-use maps to guide urban planners for clearing constructions.
• It also flagged paucity of basic data (e.g., rainfall) in mountainous areas, especially in the Northeast.

News Source: The Indian Express