Himalayan disasters and tragedies are once again in the news this monsoon.
On June 30, 2025, a devastating spell of heavy rainfall triggered flash floods and massive landslides across Seraj Valley in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district.
Then, on August 5, a huge stream of water, mud and other debris burst upon and deposited itself on the village of Dharali in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district.
Finally, on August 14, a devastating cloudburst in Chashoti in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar killed several people, mostly pilgrims bound for the Machail Mata temple.
Ravi Chopra, the former director of non-profit People’s Science Institute, was also chairperson of a high-powered committee appointed by the Supreme Court in 2019 to review the Char Dham project. He resigned from the panel three years later, terming the project as ‘an assault on the Himalayas’.
Down To Earth spoke to Chopra on the disasters that have occurred in the Western Himalayas this monsoon to try and get a sense as to what really happened and what lessons can be drawn. Excerpts:
Rajat Ghai (RG): Seraj, Dharali and Chashoti—three major disasters have taken place in the Western Himalayas this monsoon. Do you see a pattern?
Ravi Chopra (RC): I do not know much about what happened in Chashoti, Kishtwar. As far as the Himachal and Uttarakhand disasters are concerned, in both cases, the region that has been affected and is being repeatedly affected is the region of the Main Central Thrust. Tectonically, it is the most sensitive zone of the Indian Himalayas. The rocks here are fractured, fissured and disjointed.
In both Dharali and Seraj, large infrastructure projects have been pushed into areas that are geologically fragile. In the process slopes have been deforested and disturbed. And this has been done in a period of climate change when it is well-known that there will be spells of tremendous rainfall or other disasters like avalanches. So, to put large projects in these areas is to ignore the sensitivity of the region. That is one point.
Second, not enough care is being taken when these projects are being designed. Take Dharali for instance. Videos show us the flood toppling buildings that are located at the base of the mountain. On the left of the images is the Bhagirathi river. Thus, a road has been built and a township has been allowed to develop around it. If you look at the slope at the right of that affected area, that is the village of Dharali. It is on the slope of the mountain. So, the traditional village of Dharali is out of harm’s way. Thus, by building roads right on the riverbed as in the case of Dharali or by the riverbed as in the case of Seraj, we are daring nature to destroy us.
These are the similarities. But what has happened in Dharali to my mind is most likely an avalanche. The top of the mountain above Dharali, possibly at a height of 5,000 metres, is a glacier and is known to be a ‘hanging glacier’.
A lot of old debris and moraines lie on the mountain slope, underneath the glacier. Fresh snow has fallen in winter and now we have got rain over there. So, what has happened is that the heat has been melting the fresh snow. There has been rain. And underneath the fresh snow is ice, underneath which are a lot of moraine or debris.
This has been a repeated occurrence that wherever there is presence of rain, wet snow, ice and moraines, that area becomes slippery and this mass begins to move downward. As it moves downward, it gathers all the debris and moraine that is already lying in the stream valley. As it descends, it keeps gaining acceleration and picks up a lot of energy. And it comes and smashes into that township that is in its way. So, what has happened in Dharali is an avalanche rather than a cloudburst.
I don’t know what exactly has happened in Seraj but I can say that in both cases, the mountains are fissured, fractured and disjointed. So, over a period of time, rocks have been dislodged and are lying in the stream valleys. All that the avalanche has done is to mobilise the mass that is lying there and come crashing down.
RG: Do you see such incidences to be more frequent in the western section of the Himalayas than the central or eastern section? Or that is not an accurate statement?
RC: It is not accurate because the eastern sector has Sikkim in it. Sikkim also has very steep, high mountain slopes and has suffered a number of disasters like the Teesta -III dam being destroyed in a glacial lake outburst flood in 2023. The more we push infrastructure projects in these areas, the more the occurrence of disasters.
Sikkim is not that heavily populated as Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Beyond that, as you go further east you do not have such high mountains. There are some peaks in Arunachal Pradesh but then again there is hardly any population. Natural processes are going on over there of which we do not keep track.
RG: Are we using the term ‘cloudburst’ too loosely? Does it encapsulate the intricacies of weather patterns and their interplay with the geological makeup of the Himalayas?
RC: ‘Cloudburst’ was used in an official report of the Central Water Commission (CWC), which was put out at 4 or 5 pm on August 5. And the media picked up on the official report.
That report was immediately debunked by the India Meteorological Department (IMD)’s office in Uttarakhand. They said it was not a cloudburst because there has not been that much rainfall.
Local people, who do not know what a cloudburst is, use a colloquial Hindi term ‘Badal phata hai’. It is a term that I have heard much before ‘cloudburst’. Unfortunately, ‘cloudburst’ is also a literal translation of ‘Badal phata hai’. However, there is a meteorological definition of ‘cloudburst’ which is that if an area receives 100 millimetres of rain an hour, it is a ‘cloudburst’.
So, the term is not just loosely used by the media. It is also loosely used by the people who should know better, i.e, the CWC.
RG: It is being reported that the incidence of cloudburst is increasing over the Western Himalayas. Would you agree?
RC: We can’t go by the way this heavy, intense, extreme rain is reported. Scientists, media and politicians are loosely using the word ‘cloudburst’. But I as a scientist would have to sit down and look at the intensity if that can be scientifically described as a cloudburst. Other than the IMD, we do not have that statistic.
RG: Where do we go from here? Is this all going to become in each monsoon, more so because the lens of the media is on such incidents and disasters?
RC: It is not the lens of the media alone. Large numbers of people and infrastructure have been moved into a sensitive region. Hence, the scale of the disaster is large.
It has been least 20-30 years since scientists have begun warning that extreme weather events are going to be more ferocious and frequent in the Himalayas, especially during the monsoons.
Scientists and various committees have been telling the government that the Himalayan zone is extremely sensitive and fragile. Large infrastructure projects should not be taken into the inner Himalayas. The government’s own ministries have recognised this and have put out notifications to this effect. But the government either does not pay attention or ignores them. It openly violates the laws and then changes the regulations to do what it wants to do.
Environmental rules have been weakened. Any kind of infrastructural intervention in the Himalayas has to be done with extreme care. Those kinds of prior geological investigations are lacking. And therefore, all these disasters take place.
The people, media and political parties must begin to demand accountability from the government, which is distorting regulations at will, ignoring constraints put by nature of what can and can’t be done. The government has pushed its projects in total violation of sense and caution and has invited these disasters.