Sujatha, in her late 60s, waded through neck-high slushy waters, negotiating rocks and boulders on the Iruvazhinji river, escaping from her home destroyed a few minutes earlier by the first landslide that struck the hill right above the Mundakkai village, an hour after midnight on the 30th July 2024. Grabbing her grandchild, she swam the inundated river towards the coffee plantation on the other side. To their utter shock, Sujatha and her family members were greeted by three tuskers standing amidst the bamboo trees. Running from the jaws of death into the mouth of another, a terrified Sujatha pleaded to the elephant that they were running from great disaster and should not be harmed. Stunned they were to see the tusker himself in tears, overwhelmed by nature’s fury. Sujatha is yet to come to terms with the fact that the tuskers guarded them through the night – a rare symphony of living beings amid the wrath of nature.

Neethu Jojo, an employee at the Wayanad Institute of Medical Sciences (WIMS), was apparently the first to inform the outside world of the first landslide that hit Mundakkai at around 1 AM. As waters flooded downhill into their Chooralmala village, Neethu sent an SOS to her colleagues at WIMS who instantly alerted the fire and rescue services. However, even as the rescue teams were trying to reach the inundated valley, which was already cut off due to intense rains, the second landslide hit Chooralmala at 4 AM, with huge boulders washing away the village, including a portion of the house where Neethu was holding out. While the rest of her family were rescued to safety, Neethu’s body was found on Saturday beneath the rubble.

The trauma and plight of Sreejith Kumar, working at a coaching institute in Thrissur (and known to some members of Team Polity), was captured by many local dailies as he stood near a compound of what was once his house, wondering what happened to his mother, his brother, and niece. The adjoining house where his aunt and family lived was also completely flattened.

Many, like Sreejith, had to wait in Chooralmala until the Indian Army built the make-shift 190-foot Bailey bridge in record time within days of the disaster. The bridge enabled the movement of rescue workers and machinery including earth movers, sonar radars, drones, and other salvaging equipment to Mundakkai, as well as survivors and relatives looking for missing family members across the bridge in Chooralmala village and up to the ravaged Mundakkai village.

Images of forlorn men, who were either working elsewhere or were expatriates, searching for their close kith and kin, including school-going children, and staring at the rubble where their dwelling once stood, were visible throughout the days after the disaster struck and wiped out three villages from the face of the earth.

For a state that was ravaged by unprecedented floods in 2018, the landslide of 30th July is supposed to be most cataclysmic in terms of the number of loss of lives and the quantum of destruction caused.  The extent of the destruction is so devastating that restoring any manner of life in Mundakkai would be impossible while parts of Chooralmala and Attamala, which borders tea and coffee plantations, may still see some rehabilitation.

Unlike the landslides in Idukki district’s Pettumudi in August 2020 or in Puthumala in 2021, which were unidimensional and localized to one hill, the latest disaster in Wayanad involved multiple high-intensity landslides in different hills on a two-kilometer radius, affected multiple villages, bifurcated a natural and dry riverbed with slushy waters and huge boulders that flowed down all the way to Attamala two kilometers downstream and carrying along bodies and debris to the Chaliyar river that flowed to Nilambur in the adjoining Malappuram district. 

Still counting the dead…

It is estimated that the worst-hit Mundakkai village had over 1300 residents whereas the other affected villages including Chooralmala and Attamala had over 2000 people each at the time of the disaster. The total death toll is, however, expected to hover around 500 notwithstanding the massive destruction wrecked across the affected zone.

The higher toll was in Mundakkai, which was fully destroyed by the first landslide in the hill above the village, the flash floods triggered by this landslide inundated the banks of the Iruvazhinji river down to Chooralmala and Attamala, prompting the people to move to higher slopes and areas they perceived as safer places. Families who failed to escape before the second landslide hit the village centre of Chooralmala were among those believed to have perished in the second hit. 

However, what perturbed the rescue teams and the state government was the inability to account for the actual number of deaths as the number of people missing was around 180 even a week after the disaster. Rescue teams, armed with sonar radars and other detection equipment, were mostly returning empty-handed after the first 6-7 days other than a few bodies they could recover on the 5th and 6th day of the disaster.

Families wiped out: While 180 people continue to be missing as per official accounts (on 7th August), this includes members of the families where no one survived, or with just a few members escaping the deluge and destruction. There were reports of some families losing between 8 or 9 to even around 25 relatives. Two-digit death numbers in some families were thus a common sight in this disaster zone. Adding to the intensity of the tragedy was the number of children being counted as dead or missing.  

The numbers in the immediate days after the disaster revealed the gravity of the tragedy:

On 1st August, the death toll was pegged at 289, which included 29 children. On that day, 240 were listed as missing. While around 134 bodies were then preserved at the APJ Abdul Kalam Community Hall, which was converted into a make-shift mortuary, only 105 could be identified by then, which was the second day after the disaster.

On 2nd August, the death toll rose to 340 along with 134 body parts with 172 bodies found on the Chaliyar River. 49 kids were reported missing by that day (though not clear whether it included previously given numbers). By 4th August (the 6th day of the tragedy), 376 was the death toll, which included 36 kids. The official number was, however, still kept at 226 as over 181 body parts were found that day and missing numbers were still pegged at 180. This situation proved to be the most complex aspect of the disaster.

The number of deaths rose to 403 by 5th August and 407 the next day, with rescuers having lesser hopes of finding any more bodies. On Friday, 9th August, four more bodies were found by the local rescue team, which continued operations even after the Army team returned.

Unaccountable body parts: As mentioned earlier, the complex and distressing aspect of this disaster has been the number of body parts, mainly limps and dismembered bodies, which were recovered not just from the rubble but also on the Chaliyar River in Nilambur. According to the government count, 181 body parts were recovered in a week’s time since the disaster, mainly around the disaster zone and from Nilambur.

Initially, the rescue teams and government agencies were in a dilemma as to how the body parts could be accounted for, including whether human parts that were individually recovered should be treated as of a single cadaver. Though the use of DNA tests for the identification of bodies was in full use, it is unknown how many body parts could be identified using this method. 

Considering the complexities involved in preserving so many cadavers and body parts, the Kerala government started cremating the bodies from 3rd August onwards after exhausting all efforts at identifying bodies and body parts with the help of relatives. While the identified bodies were cremated as per their religious traditions on land offered by generous villagers in Meppadi, the Kerala government set a unique example by cremating the unidentified bodies and body parts in Puthumala, the site of the 2021 landslide, with all-religious rites offered by Hindu, Muslim and Christian priests.

Over 44 bodies and 176 body parts were cremated in this manner which could be a unique example of secular ethos being practiced at a time of grave disaster and devastation.

A model in rescue and relief: From the Madras Sappers setting up a make-shift bridge in record time to volunteers from various cadres of various political parties, social organisations, NGOs and disaster management forces teaming up as a united front, the Wayanad disaster threw up a remarkable alliance of public participation in disaster management.

Though this is not new to Kerala, where people are collaborative in any rescue or relief effort, the instance in Wayanad was novel in many ways as it witnessed workers from various political and social groups like DYFI, SDPI and Sewa Bharati in action donning uniforms displaying their organizational identities, and yet working in harmony and synergy with the Army and governmental agencies. 

While it was evident that the substantial part of rescue and relief work were manned by these non-governmental volunteers, the government had also mobilized over 91 relief camps in the district housing over 9300 people, with around 17 camps housing 2551 people in the disaster area.  

Rehabilitation of high order: Besides an effective rescue and relief campaign, offers are flowing in from various quarters to contribute to the rehabilitation efforts with people from ordinary backgrounds to leading industrialists and film personalities (including from the Tamil and Telugu film industries) offering generous contributions to the rehabilitation efforts. While many leading industrial and business house as well as political parties (including the Congress, DYFI, AIYF, and so on) had offered to build houses for the displaced people of the disaster zone, the instances of ordinary people offering to share a part of their property or savings to provide land for their homes were all part of the humanitarian responses that stood out in the days after the Wayanad disaster.

The Kerala government, on the other hand, announced a model township to be built for the survivors and displaced people of the three affected villages, which could include schools and other facilities. While this implies that wiped-out villages like Mundakkai will not be considered for habitation, the success of this model township could provide a template for planned re-habitation of populations from areas identified as vulnerable zones in the hill districts.

However, much will depend on the timeline and urgency with which the Kerala government will be able to execute this rehabilitation project. For, government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Polity, pointed to the situation in Pettimudi, which was hit by a massive landslide in August 2020. The rehabilitation in Pettimudi was more effectively done by the Tata Group than by the state government, they mentioned.

Fragile ecology, vulnerable people

The disaster in the Wayanad hills prompted a slugfest between the Centre and the Kerala government as the Union Home Minister claimed in parliament that Kerala was warned about the landslides. The Kerala Chief Minister but rejected the MET department’s warning as too generalized by pointing out that the warning was a yellow alert whereas the affected area had close to 600 mm rain in the two days before the massive landslides hit the area.

The war of words intensified after the Union Minister for Environment blamed the mining and encroachments in the hills as the reason for the landslide without considering the fact that the affected regions were more plantations than deep forests. The Kerala CM rejected this as a ‘weird’ statement.

For his part, Kerala CM, in the pressers during the disaster relief, had pin-pointed the effects of climate change and global warming as primary causes of landslides in the hilly districts in the last few years, particularly since the massive floods of 2018, which was then described as a once-in-a-century event. "The heavy and continuous rainfall that the state has been witnessing in the last few years as a result of climate change patterns are reasons for landslide-prone areas to be affected in this manner," a senior government official in Thiruvananthapuram, who did not want to be identified, told The Polity.  

Adding to the debate were reports that the affected villages in Meppadi Grama Panchayat were among the areas identified in Wayanad district as having a high risk of landslides in a report by the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) in 2020, which, reportedly also suggested relocating people from these villages. The report, which could not be specifically located on the SDMA website, was used by BJP members in the parliament to attack the Kerala government.

However, a look at various reports by The Polity showed that most of the reports in recent years by the SDMA, have continuously flagged the risk of landslides in three Wayanad Taluks including Sulthan Bathery, Manathavadi and Vythiri, where Meppadi panchayat is located. While Wayanad has only these three Taluks being flagged for risky areas, many other districts, including Palakkad (5), Malappuram (4), Idukki (4) and Pathanamthitta (4), have more locations listed under the high-risk zones.

Nedumangad, an urbanized hilly region in the south-eastern part of the capital city, Thiruvananthapuram, being listed as highly prone to landslides in this SDMA report is also another case in example of the varied dimensions of this vulnerability. This township is a testament to the fact that such vulnerabilities need not necessarily be of an ecologically sensitive region, as in the Western Ghats environment, but could also include places that might be urbanized, hilly in character, and yet be susceptible to multiple factors like climate change or unchecked urbanization.

The impact of climate change, echoed by Kerala's Chief Minister, was highlighted earlier, for instance, in the 2019 Disaster Memorandum of the SDMA, which links landslide risks to the gravity of rainfall during the Monsoon. The Report states:

During the month of August 2019, Kerala received 123% excess rainfall than the long period average rainfall over the state. In August 2018 it was 96% excess rainfall than the long period average rainfall. Most affected districts in North and Central Kerala were Kozhikode (176%), Wayanad (110%), Malappuram (176%), Palakkad (217%), Thrissur (127%) Ernakulam (140%) which received more than 100% excess rainfall than the normal rain during the month of August. 7 out of 14 Districts from Kasargode to Thrissur received more than 1000 mm rainfall during 1st to 31 August 2019.

A total of 1038 villages were listed in this Memorandum as being affected by floods and landslides. Interestingly, the districts with the highest landslide incidents in 2019 were Idukki, Ernakulam, Malappuram and Kannur, with Wayanad experiencing the least of incidents.

The landslide that wiped out a village in Idukki’s Pettimudi in August 2020 has almost similar characteristics as the landslides in Wayanad. For one, both these regions are largely dotted by plantations and semi-forest ranges covering them, and, more importantly, have similar geological features.

The Geological Survey of India study of the Pettimudi landslide published in September 2020 begins with the following description:

The heavy and incessant rainfall triggered a devastating landslide incidence on 6th August 2020 around 22:30hrs in Pettimudi area near Munnar in Idukki District. As per official records, four housing lines of tea garden workers (layams) of Kannan Devan Hill Plantations (KDHP) sited at the foot slope area of Rajamala hill ranges, where more than 80 people lived were buried under debris.

The GSI study describes Pettimudi as a ridge area falling in the same topographical features as the Anamudi Peak (2695 meters), which is just 5 km away, and that the affected hill had a slope inclination of between 30-35 degrees and even more. The report also describes the geological character as comprising highly-weathered bedrock and slightly-weathered granite.

The study concludes with the finding that “…this event happened due to natural causes and the failed material confined within the streamlet itself except at the valley portion. The geological and morphological set-up in the source area acted as conditioning factors, whereas the abnormal hydrological conditions resulted from the excess and continuous rainfall triggered this catastrophic event. The probable flooding condition prevailed in the streamlets also added to the chaos down the slope.”

A geologist who spoke to The Polity, without wanting to be named, was of the belief that a study of the landslides in Mundakkai and Chooralmala could throw up similar findings, particularly due to the striking similarities with Pettimudi. For, these villages were also surrounded by tea estates as well as coffee plantations, which have a semi-forest character. The Mundakkai hill, which witnessed the first landslide, had more than 20-degree inclination, and more importantly, the geological feature of the region is essentially rocky with less soil and the clay elements in the fertile hills being soft and prone to landslide.

A member of the Meppadi Grama Panchayat, who did not wish to come on record, emphatically pointed out this topographical character as the key reason for the disaster which was triggered by the heavy and incessant rainfall in the region over those two days. However, The Polity interacted with a few personalities from the area who also confirmed the geological factors but also underlined the impact of migration to these areas, adding to the human costs of the devastation.

K. Ganesh, the Kerala state general secretary of the Yuva Morcha, who spoke to The Polity from ground zero, emphasized that these villages were essentially layams of plantation workers and that the proliferation of tourism spots in the area led to the migration from other parts of the district and state to this area in recent years. He also alluded to the fact that the ‘resort mafia’ in the guise of tourism has intensified in this area.

Mohanan Chandragiri, a prominent planter in the district and member of the Wayanad Chamber of Commerce, points to concerns about the increasing instances of conversion of plantation land for resorts and other tourism-related constructions, such as swimming pools, which causes load increase to the land mass below. Adding to this is the rampant tree-felling for resort construction and beautification of surrounding areas. Though existing rules do not permit conversion of plantations, the latter is divided into smaller acres as permission will be granted for up to 3 acres per resort, or a residential conversion, or even for housing plots, Chandragiri opined.  

When The Polity broached this aspect with the Meppadi panchayat member, he confirmed that panchayats normally approve such conversions in order to support the tourism sector and increase jobs in the district, as well as for revenue generation. Due to such policy support from the local self-governance bodies, numerous waterfalls like Soochipara, Oliyampara, Kanthanpara, Munderi, Adyanpara, Kozhipara, Arippara have become notable tourist spots in the area. When combined with other well-visited spots like Sentinal Point, Attamala View Point and Glass Bridge, Kandi Glass Bridge, Meppadi Zipline, Sunrise View Point, and so on, the area was destined to emerge as a sought-after tourist destination. This is beside the extensive spiraling of resorts in the area, including one which claims to the largest in be the country.

The flourishing tourism sector in the villages of Meppadi panchayat led to a commensurate expansion of home-stays in the area, which, besides complementing the resorts in the area, became a means of income for families in villages like Mundakkai and Chooralmala. Reports of multi-storey concrete buildings in these villages crashing down in landslides might have amused people in the rest of the country. Though the average Keralite, irrespective of income standards, aspires for a decent and well-furnished dwelling, the shift to concrete urbanization in these villages has been largely attributed to the growth of home-stay business, with residents seeking to harness the gains from an expectant declaration of the area as a tourist destination by the government.

Following the Idukki landslide in 2020 and its repeat in Puthumala in 2021, the role of quarries in the Western Ghats belt was constantly cited as a reason for the geological disturbances. While the Union Minister referred to mining as the reason for the Wayanad disaster, Environmentalist Madhav Gadgil also made similar references to the quarrying in the area as among the reasons.

However, members of the Wayanad Chambers of Commerce, who did not wish to be named in this report, pointed out to The Polity that quarries were much lesser in number in Wayanad compared to other districts, though quite a few have come up in recent years thanks to political support and strong influence of the quarry lobby among all political parties. Rock blasting using powerful explosives in these regions can have pervasive effects across the hills, they allege. Some of them also pointed out that the quarries in the downhill region, beyond the Thamarassery Churam (mountain pass that connects Wayanad to Kozhikode), also affect the topographical stability of the upper hills in Wayanad.

While these chamber of commerce members accept that the perennial and unchecked migration to Wayanad with the growth of the tourism sector cannot be halted or controlled, they feel that the rampant construction activities in the ecologically-fragile areas and designated forests should be immediately stopped in order to mitigate further damage and risks to the Wayanad eco-system.  

Planters like Chandragiri were, however, more forthcoming in offering constructive suggestions to augment the soil strength in landslide-prone areas, which border the plantations. While cautioning that trees that have been cut in these hills are more than a century old and held the soil and terrain tight, Chandragiri suggests the need to transition from tea to coffee plantations, the latter having a semi-forest character and ripe for supplementary crop cultivation as well. Unlike the Assam tea breed which has a strong root holding, he points out that the current breed (61/63) does not have good rooting or soil holding capability as they are stem-based with more leaves. 

Local leaders like Kalpetta MLA, T. Siddique, however, denounced the tendency to blame migration and the local populace for landslides in the hill district. The legislator, in a television debate, reminded that farmers from the plains were in earlier decades encouraged to move to the hills and do framing which enabled the rich plantation culture in these areas. Siddique’s remarks came in the context of a renewed debate in Kerala over the Madhav Gadgil and K. Kasturirangan committee reports that call for steps to depopulate and ban commercial activity in Western Ghats, extending from the Tapti River in Maharashtra to the Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, and having Goa, Karnataka and Kerala in its embrace.

Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports: Magic potion for Western Ghats?

The Wayanad disaster instantly prompted discussions about the Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel headed by Madhav Gadgil, submitted to the Government of India in August 2011, as also the Report of the High Level Committee headed by Dr. K Kasturirangan in April 2014, with recommendations on the implementation of the Gadgil Committee report. Both reports, which call for the preservation of Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs) and Ecologically Sensitive Zones (ESZs) by removing human habitation (according to degree of sensitivity), commercial use, or any form of exploitation including mining, quarrying or constructions, have been staunchly resisted by people in the hilly district of Kerala along the Western Ghats.

In the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, which coincided with the submission of the Kasturirangan Committee’s report, a High Range Sambrakshana Samiti was formed in Idukki, under the leadership of the local Christian laity, while mobilized people along the hilly region against the implementation of the Kasturirangan report. The devastation from the July landslides, however, has not prompted any rethinking of the opposition to these reports in Kerala.

At ground zero in Wayanad, The Polity heard voices both in favour of and against these panel reports.

While the recommendations of both panels need detailed analyses, which this Ground Report will not venture into, it will be worthwhile to flag a few significant aspects.  The Gadgil Committee embodies three objectives:
(a) categorization of the Western Ghats into three zones of varied ecological sensitivity, based upon careful analysis done by WGEEP,
(b) broad sectoral guidelines for each of these zones, and
(c) a broad framework for the establishment of the Western Ghats Ecology Authority.

While the entire Western Ghats was designated as an Ecologically Sensitive Area by the Panel, it divided the range into 3 Ecologically Sensitive Zones (ESZ 1, 2 and 3) of varied ecological sensitivity and the implications of such a zonation. However, the opposition arose chiefly as the Panel classified over 60 percent of the range under the highest-priority ESA-1. Only 25 percent of the area comes under the lowest-priority ESA-3, and development activities are allowed to be carried out in this area whereas the ESA-2 covers the remaining 15 percent.

Additionally, all 142 taluks in the Western Ghats were to have their boundaries in the ESAs. As per the report, no development activity, including thermal power plants or large-scale dams, nor any form of commercial exploitation including mining or even special economic zones, was to be allowed in this zone.

The Panel borrowed a benchmark from the Indian Board of Wildlife, which instructs a coverage area of 10 10-kilometer radius from the boundaries of protected areas like wildlife sanctuaries and national parks as designated ESZs. Accordingly, the Gadgil panel refers to the Kolhapur Wild Life Division’s benchmark of a 10-kilometer ESZ and a 1-kilometer declared as buffer zone, within which there can be no construction and should be maintained as free and green. Furthermore, a minimum horizontal distance of 500 meters at both ends of a slope is recommended as a buffer zone. The panel instructs that the buffer zone be extended further in “mountainous ecosystems which tend to possess certain destructive features, including various combinations of steep slopes, residual soil, high pore water pressure, thick and deeply weathered soil cover, undercutting of the base of the slope, and weak material outcropping below stronger material.”  

Though buffer zones were a major reason for consternation among the hill populations, the discussion in the Gadgil panel report seems to have clearly examined this aspect. These discussions show various members raising concerns about the people living in the buffer and ESZ and the question of their relocation. While the chairs of various expert sessions that deliberated for the Gadgil report ruled out any displacement and that only environmentally unsound activities would be barred from ecologically sensitive areas, Gadgil had clarified that “graded regulations would be put in place for the management of ecologically sensitive areas to reduce the level of conflict.”

Despite such clarifications, groups who opposed the Gadgil report had widely permeated the notion that there would be mass displacement, particularly of the farming community in Kerala, whereas the actual target of the report was of quarrying and mining activities.  

The Kasturirangan committee, for its part, had truncated the 60 percent ESA coverage of the Gadgil committee to 37 percent, which was estimated at 60,000 sq.km. While the committee upheld the need to ban activities like mining and quarrying, it commented that out of the cultural land that covers about 58 percent of the ESA is occupied by human settlements, agricultural fields and plantations and that a natural landscaping of 90 percent comes under the ESA. Nonetheless, the committee recommended in favour of excluding the inhabited areas and plantations that already exist under its own redefined ESA, which included an identified 123 villages.  

Despite such generous interpretations and leeway provided, the Kasturirangan Committee report was criticized for erroneous identification of ESAs, which was attributed to the aerial survey and remote sensing methods used for making lands instead of understanding the ground situation. In response, critics alleged that the report included many villages under ESA, which, in fact, were rubber plantations and not forest land. This was one of the reasons why even the Kasturirangan report was seen as anti-farmer in Kerala.

It was also alleged that the Environment Ministry and forest officials were calling the shots rather than leaving these classification tasks to the Grama Sabhas, which, incidentally, was one of the recommendations of the Gadgil Committee.  The Gadgil Committee, for its part, has seen it “inappropriate to depend exclusively government agencies for constitution and management of ESZs” and that final demarcation should be based on “extensive inputs from local communities and bodies, namely, Gram Panchayats, Taluka Panchayats, Zilla Parishads, and Nagarpalikas, under the overall supervision of the Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA), State level Ecology Authorities and District Ecology Committees.”

It is evident that many of the finer details of these committee reports, both of which seek a new regime of governance for ecologically sensitive regions in the country, have not been considered in the public debates, particularly among affected communities.

A senior central government official, who had settled down in Wayanad after retirement, and did not want to be identified, remarked to The Polity that both committee reports do not reflect the ground realities and fail to consider the fact that 'misuse factor’ across the Western Ghats is very marginal and negligible. Stating that no considerable erosion has hit Kerala’s hilly districts, which are dotted with British-era plantations as well as virgin forests, he opined that factors like climate change, global warming, and evaporation caused by westerly winds which cool down over hilly areas were the key reasons for geological disturbances of the last few years. “The science behind landslides is quite different – a combination of huge quantum of water, the capacity of soil to absorb, not able to bear that much weight, gravity, and so on – and not the villages in the areas,” he remarked.

However, some members of the Wayanad Chamber of Commerce, who did not wish to be named in this report, emphatically pointed out to The Polity that villages in Wayanad, including in the affected Meppadi panchayat, were identified by the Gadgil Committee and that areas identified in Mundakkai village as plantations have since been changed into residential property. Calling for a resurvey, which last happened in 1971, these members demand an end to encroachments as well as the issuance of Pattayams (deeds) in the ecologically sensitive areas.

Despite their common interest in seeing farming and tourism flourish in the district, many chamber members are of the consensual view that there should be an immediate ban on further construction in the district’s ecologically sensitive areas as tourism expansion is not seemingly in consonance with the environment.

While pointing out that some resorts in Vythiri are environment-friendly, Chandragiri, for instance, commented that without implementation of the Gadgil Report, "Wayanad the way we know will cease to exist." "JCB and earth movers need not come to this district," he remarked with an emotional tone.

Though officials from Kerala’s Forest Department, with whom The Polity got in touch, were not keen to comment on the committee's reports as well as the Wayanad landslide, one official made it a point to mention that the department has been assiduous in enhancing forest cover in the state.

Albeit expanding the area of tiger reserves was also meant to enable the rehabilitation of tribals, he stated that the recommendations of the Gadgil Committee are actively being implemented through such strategies. Even as the Gadgil Committee observed that “many steep slopes of the Western Ghats of Kerala and Karnataka were laid waste as the magnificent old stands of evergreens gave way to miserable stands of sickly Eucalyptus,” planted as part of an aggressive conservation forestation strategy, the officials point to the expansion of Teak plantations being listed as ‘plantation forests’ as the part of this strategy.

On occasion, even Section 4 of the Indian Forest Act 1927, which stipulates a Gazette notification to declare a land as a reserved forest, has not been religiously followed, the official said, in order to drive across the proactiveness of the forest expansion strategy. The Polity, however, could not independently verify these assertions.

While these debates and such proactive actions continue, the Government of India issued the Sixth Draft of the ESA notification which confirmed that the Kerala government had demarcated over 9,107 sq. km of forest area and 886.7 sq. km of non-forest area as ESA. These, incidentally, also included six villages in the Vythiri Thaluk in Wayanad, which were hit by landslides on 30 July.

On the other hand, the Government of India constituted a five-member committee under the chairmanship of Sanjay Kumar, former director general of forest, to devise the principles and framework to devise a fresh ESA architecture for the Western Ghats. The third such committee, after the ones led by Gadgil and Kasturirangan, the Sanjay Kumar-led committee is said to be working on three principles – (1) that the ESA should be acceptable to all states and stakeholders; (2) fragmentation of the habitats should be avoided to the last degree; and (3) the ESA should be deeply and organically linked to the ecosystem services from coastal fishers to micro-climate and water conservation, besides biodiversity.  

Even as the Wayanad landslides keep the hilly districts of Kerala, as well as across the Western Ghats on tenterhooks, particularly during the monsoons, all eyes will be on the Sanjay Kumar Committee to see whether a new ESA will be devised in a manner acceptable to all, and safeguard the future of India’s ecologically sensitive regions.