Context

• The town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand is witnessing an unprecedented crisis. Wide Cracks have appeared on the roads and on several residential and commercial buildings in the town.
• Authorities have declared Joshimath as a landslide and subsidence-hit zone.

Himalayan Region

• The Himalayas have recorded calamities like earthquakes, avalanches, cloud-bursts, landslide lake outburst floods (breaching of lakes formed by obstructions due to landslides), and glacial lake outburst floods (sudden release of a significant amount of water retained in a glacial lake).
• It is susceptible to landslides and earthquakes as it is formed due to the collision of Indian and Eurasian plates, and the northward movement of the former puts continuous stress on the rocks, rendering them weak and prone to natural calamities.

Why is Joshimath sinking?

• Joshimath is a town situated in the Chamoli District of Uttarakhand. It is located in the Middle Himalayas at an altitude of 1875 m.
• Joshimath is a religious and tourist place and is situated near the holy shrine of Badrinath (one of the Char Dhams in Uttarakhand).
• In 2021, cracks were reported for the first time in Joshimath owing to frequent landslides and flooding in Chamoli, Uttarakhand.
• Reports revealed that several pockets of Joshimath are sinking due to both natural and anthropogenic factors. It was found that structural defects and damages throughout the city were caused due to the removal or displacement of subsurface materials.

Reasons for Land subsidence in Joshimath

• Land subsidence is the “sinking of the ground because of underground material movement”.
• Joshimath city has been built on an ancient landslide material, which doesn’t have a high load-bearing capacity making the area extremely vulnerable to land subsidence.
• The town falls in high-risk seismic Zone-V and is traversed by running streams with a high gradient from Vishnuprayag, a confluence of the Dhauliganga and the Alaknanda rivers.
• Unplanned urbanization has led to the blocking of the natural flow of water, which eventually results in frequent landslides.
• It might have been triggered by the reactivation of a geographic fault, defined as a fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock (where the Indian Plate has pushed under the Eurasian Plate) along the Himalayas.
• Studies in the last two decades suggest that poor civic planning, mainly in terms of drainage and household waste disposal, could have played a role in increasing Joshimath’s vulnerability to subsidence.

Intermediary climate zones

• Intermediary climatic zones in the Indian Himalayan Region are areas intermediate between glaciated and non-glaciated terrain. These are regions that receive both snowfalls as well as rainfall.
• They serve as potential sites for tourism activities, development of river valley projects, etc.
• While the entire Himalayan region is fragile due to active erosional and weathering processes, the intermediary zones may be regarded as the most fragile and unstable belt on account of the interplay of glacial and fluvial (dominated by rivers and streams) processes.
• Further, most of the disastrous catastrophes, including the Kedarnath floods of 2013, the Chamoli flash floods of 2021, and the recent Joshimath crisis have occurred in such intermediary climatic zones.

Major recommendations by Mishra Committee 1976 

• The land subsidence in Joshimath is an old issue and was first reported in 1976, after which the government appointed a committee under M C Mishra to examine the reasons for the instability. 
• The Mishra committee recommended to stop open drain water to avoid seepage, closing of soaking pits and construction of concrete sewage lines for sewerage.
• It recommended that when repairing roads or building structures,  the boulders should not be removed by digging or blasting the hillsides as this would remove toe support, increasing the likelihood of landslides.
• The committee recommended that cement blocks should be positioned in areas of the river bank that are susceptible to erosion in order to stop the bank from eroding.

Way Forward

• The Joshimath Crisis is a reflection of the harmful impacts of uncontrolled development in geologically unstable and ecologically sensitive regions.
• It is necessary to cover strategies for strengthening resilience in the most vulnerable places, including stronger early warning systems and higher-quality buildings.
• The multiple crises in the region necessitate a relook at the present development model.
• An implementation plan that considers the carrying capacity of the terrain is the need of the hour, as is a proper land zonation and land utilisation strategy.