Joshimath’s story dates back decades. That’s why media must dig deep

Broken News 

Published in Newslaundry on January 12, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/01/12/joshimaths-story-dates-back-decades-thats-why-media-must-dig-deep

A small town in Uttarakhand has made it to the front pages of newspapers, and as the top story in many television news shows. Joshimath, a town of a little under 17,000 people in Chamoli district, is already well-known to trekkers, those wanting to explore the Himalayas, and Hindu pilgrims. But today, its claim to fame is that it is sinking.

It is also in danger of becoming an adjective – a descriptor of what happens when we ignore concepts of sustainability as we pursue so-called “development”. 

Predictably, when the cracks in Joshimath’s buildings could no longer be ignored, the government moved on a “war footing”, as did the media. We watched videos and saw visuals of distressed residents pointing to huge cracks in their homes, read about a hotel tilting onto another, and listened to experts who said they knew this crisis was imminent.

Yet, the roots of the current crisis – of a town literally sinking – have probably not yet sunk in, either to the lay media-consuming public with an increasingly diminishing attention span, or to the people who pushed through plans to build power plants and blast the fragile mountains for roads, despite adequate warnings from experts. 

There is a message here for the media – a message it continues to ignore. Even if you report on a disaster, integrate the perspectives that explain the reasons for it. It’s not difficult to do this. And if it’s done, chances are that more people will understand why many of the projects being pursued in the ecologically fragile environment of the Himalayas spell disaster.

Of course, as always, there are exceptions. Newspapers and digital platforms have carried excellent explainers that an interested reader can plough through (see here and here). But useful as this is, it is not enough. The facts tracing this disaster to earlier policies are clear. They need to be repeated, they need to be integrated in the reporting. 

Few can explain more simply than Dehradun-based veteran environmentalist Ravi Chopra, who headed the high-powered committee looking at the environmental impact of the Char Dham project in Uttarakhand. He resigned last February because their recommendations were ignored. Read his interview in Down to Earth and his op-ed in Hindustan Times that say all that needs to be said. 

Another article in Down to Earth also reminds us that what’s happening in Joshimath today could happen in a number of other towns in Uttarakhand, including the popular tourist resort of Nainital, before too long. The reasons are the same: unsustainable development that pays no heed to the carrying capacity of the natural environment.

The new year has begun with another environment-related story on the front pages, one that gives all of us a sinking feeling. In 2021, of the 50 most polluted cities in the world, 35 were in India. The situation today is likely to be no different, perhaps even worse. Not just Delhi, but in dozens of other small and big cities in this country, residents are choking from poisonous air. You don’t need a viral infection to get lung congestion these days. You only need to breathe the air.

According to the World Health Organisation, 90 percent of the world’s population breathes air that is worse than acceptable limits. But within that, it is people in low- and middle-income countries like India that suffer the most. In any case, India has diluted WHO standards for air quality although revising them is being discussed. At present, what is considered “good” air quality here in India is actually “moderate” or even “poor” air quality according to WHO standards.

Like the Joshimath story, the reports we read do not adequately explain the current air pollution crisis in India. Even as the air quality index climbs higher in city after city, there are some reports explaining the possible reasons: vehicular pollution, construction dust, industrial pollution, etc. 

The factors contributing to air pollution, such as vehicular pollution, have been known for decades. Most readers today would not be aware that in the 1990s, one man fought determinedly for a change in the fuel used in public transport in Delhi. That was Anil Agarwal, who set up the Centre for Science and Environment. The air pollution levels in Delhi at that time were nowhere as bad as they are today. Yet, Agarwal, who suffered from chronic asthma and later succumbed to cancer, campaigned through CSE for a change in fuel used in public transport in Delhi from petrol and diesel to CNG. Several other cities implemented this in later years. The 2010 CSE report, Slow Murder: The deadly story of vehicular pollution in India, is worth revisiting even today.

But despite campaigns by CSE and other environmental groups about the polluted air in our cities, there is little to no outrage about the many projects being implemented that do nothing to address the problem. Instead, more roads are being built to accommodate a greater volume of vehicular traffic using fossil fuels, there is little to no compulsion on the building industry to implement dust alleviating strategies, and the system to keep a check on levels of pollutants emitted by industries and thermal power stations in the vicinity of cities remains impaired despite decades of debate about it.  

Every year during the winter months, we see photographs showing us what we can see when we look out of our windows. Yet those with the power to take hard decisions – such as suspending all construction activity during the worst days, or restricting vehicular movement – choose to ignore what stares them in the face and invades their nostrils as much as those of ordinary citizens. Could this be because there is no public outrage?

Unlike in Joshimath, where the buildings with cracks face demolition, and the anxious and angry owners of these structures are out on the streets protesting, India’s urban residents seem to have accepted a slow death from poisonous air with apparent equanimity. 

One reason for such a passive response can be attributed to the class factor. The people most affected by the poisonous air quality are the homeless and those who are compelled to do outdoor physical labour – basically the poorest in our cities whose voices are rarely heard. The better-off have windows they can close, with air-conditioning in their cars and homes that allows them to insulate themselves. Possibly, this is one reason why the problem of air pollution has rarely moved the powerful, nor led to drastic changes in the way we view urban development. For instance, as Shoaib Daniyal points out in this article, bus commuters who are the majority in any city rarely get their voices heard over private car owners. 

In this gloomy scenario, here’s a suggestion for the media. What if in all the 35 cities on the top of that list of polluted Indian cities, local newspapers, radio stations and TV channels ran a daily count of not just the poor air quality, but of the number of people hospitalised and dying from respiratory infections? In the last three years of the pandemic, many media outlets did this, tabulating daily the number of people afflicted, hospitalised, or dead due to Covid. Surely, such a proactive step by the media would play a significant part in building up public opinion that could then put pressure on decision-makers to act. 

That’s another item for my wish list for 2023.

In Naga villages, sustainable farming is being undermined by need to earn cash for medicine, schools

Scroll.in  June 23, 2016


(Women in Leshemi village spinning yarn from nettle: Kalpana Sharma)


When you look down from the main road, the imposing Baptist church in Leshemi village, in Nagaland's Phek district, looks like a wedding cake.

But Leshemi's claim to fame is more than an impressive church. Leshemi is located on the hill opposite Khezakeno village, a place that the Nagas believe is the original village settled by them. From it, they believe, Nagas went off in different directions. The three main Naga tribes, Angami, Chakhesang and Sema, trace their origins to this settlement.

Leshemi is a small Chakhesang village, perched on a hillside with thick forests above and terraced rice fields below. What makes it unusual is that it is virtually a "village republic", a concept Mahatma Gandhi articulated. Its 800 or so inhabitants want little from the outside world, as the women tell you.

"Do you lack anything in your village?" I asked 65-year old Solhouii, part of a group of women who had just demonstrated how they spin yarn from stalks of stinging nettles found in the forest.

She thought for a while, then laughed and said: "No."

Though they do need a few things from outside, Solhouii said that they grow their own rice, millet, vegetables and fruit. They even make salt from brine found in a natural spring. There is plenty of water. They spin their own yarn from nettles and homegrown cotton. And they weave this into shawls and wraps, following the traditional patterns of their tribe.

Unhealed wounds

Like neighbouring Khezakeno, people in Leshemi also believe that they live in one of the oldest villages in Nagaland. As proof they show you what they call their fetish stones (which, they believe, contain spirits and special powers), which were found by their elders. These stones are now being carbon dated to establish their real age.

A stone shrine of sorts has been built around one of the original fetish stones.
Two elderly men, who are hovering around the little structure, tell me that the stone "died" when the Indian army burnt Leshemi village in 1957.

That statement, said sotto voce, is a wrenching reminder of what ordinary people in Nagaland went through from late 1950s till the ceasefire in 1964, during what they call the Indo-Naga war. This was fought between the Nagas, who believed they were independent and not part of the Indian Union, and the Indian government and its army that saw them as insurgents to be forcibly brought into the Indian fold.

I asked these two men if they remember that time. Yes, they do, they told me. For an entire year, the villagers had to hide in the forests. Those who went to the higher reaches survived despite hunger. Those who went to the valley died of disease or could not tolerate the heat and humidity.

The village that stands today was rebuilt after that.

The women and men in Leshemi do not bring politics into the conversation. But you cannot escape the past, the sadness that hangs over such villages, and the memories that live on.

A monolith at the entrance of Khonoma village in Nagaland. [Credit: Kalpana Sharma]

The old and the new

Just as the smiles, the jokes and the laughter hide deeper wounds, so does the talk of self-sufficiency.

For the reality in Leshemi, as in other villages in Nagaland, is that changes in the name of modernisation and development are undercutting the self-sufficient nature of their traditional societies.

A group of women farmers (and the majority of farmers are women) explained why today, what they grow is not enough to meet their needs.

A group of Chakhesang women in Chizami village, east of Leshemi village, spoke of the dilemma they face. We need cash, said one, to pay for school fees and medical expenses.
What they grow is enough to feed the family and sometimes there is a surplus that can be sold in the market. But the earnings from this cannot cover these other expenses necessitated by the introduction of education (Nagaland's literacy rate is now 80%) and modern medicine (in the past people relied on local cures).

As a result, the women look for work in the fields of others, where they get paid Rs 300 per day. The men find work as construction workers in the road repair projects that are perennially underway (despite which the roads are in a terrible state), and under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Boards in all these villages announce improved village roads, or structures like community centres, that have been built courtesy MGNREGA.

Money power

This need for money is one factor that could, in the long run, undercut the sustainable forms of agriculture that continue to survive in many parts of Nagaland and elsewhere in the North East.

For instance, in villages like Leshemi and Chizami, no chemicals are used in the paddy fields. Villagers save seeds for the next planting. And their diet consists of locally grown rice and millet, vegetables, greens and meat, including birds and animals they hunt in their forests. But the need for money leaves them vulnerable to the incentives offered by the government's agriculture department to switch to faster growing hybrids. This also means using fertiliser and chemicals that they have never used before.

The traditional Naga form of agriculture has been organic before that term became fashionable. Their food, too, has the ideal balance that highly paid dieticians recommend to unhealthy city dwellers. But all this could change.

Besides the temptation of earning more, the future of traditional forms of agriculture also depends on the next generation. Will younger, educated Nagas go and till the land like their parents? Or will they only keep the link with their villages during festivals and occasions? This is already happening and is something that worries the women.

These women also know that not everyone wants to do the backbreaking work that is so much a part of their lives. They literally work from morning till dusk.

I asked a woman farmer from Chizami village to describe her typical day: "We wake up at 4 am, light the fire, make tea, cook, prepare children for school, eat something and then go to the field by 8 am. We take a break at 12 and then continue working till 5. On the way home, we collect fodder, then cook, then feed the livestock. We rarely get to sleep before 9 pm."

How many young women and men today will want to follow such a schedule?

Resources threatened

However, the biggest threat to the sustainable existence of such villages in Nagaland and elsewhere in the North East is the policy the Indian government has framed for this region. Essentially, it envisages ways in which the area's forests, rivers, land and minerals can be fully exploited.

Activists say local people do not fully understand the environmental and social consequences of some of the proposed projects. For instance, In Nagaland, new roads and highways are being built cutting through pristine forests. People have consented without realising that easier access to these forests could also spell the end of precious biodiversity. However, in Arunachal Pradesh local communities are asking questions and opposing the many hydroelectric projects being constructed in the state.

"It is scary,” said Akole Tsuhah, a young activist working with the North East Network, a women's rights organisation. “Our people are not prepared for this. Because of the need for cash, it is difficult to convince people about the need to safeguard our resources. Once we lose our common resources, we will lose our independence, our sovereignty."

(To read the rest of the article, click HERE) 

Also here's the link to another article on Nagaland, women and politics that was published in Scroll.in on June1, 2016 under the headline:

In politics and property ownership, there’s no space for Nagaland's women

https://scroll.in/article/808787/in-politics-and-property-ownership-theres-no-space-for-nagalands-women