The IMA way

The trek to Gangotri was undertaken to study the environmental state of the Bhagirathi river valley:

Ruchi Pradhan Datta

The most hotly debated issue throughout the world today is the state and scale of environmental degradation and measures to arrest if not reverse its apocalyptic effects. Forums are formed; conventions held; measures discussed and remedies announced, with precious little being accomplished on the ground. The reason probably is that the decision makers are far removed from the actual location of the effected areas and thus probably the severity of the damage cannot be truly fathomed.

Thus driven by an urge to experience things first hand and then take them up with the concerned authorities, an officer and two Gentlemen Cadets (GCs) of the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun, under the leadership of 70-year-old Col (Retd) K.S. Dhami, a Para Trooper and a member of United Services Institution of India (USI) recently trekked to Gaumukh, the source of the Ganga. The basic aim of this 'adventure-cum-study' environment initiative of the USI was to observe and fix the position of the snout and note the environmental state of the Bhagirathi river valley.

Describing their experiences on the five-day journey from Uttarkashi via Chirbasa and Bhojbasa to Gaumukh, the officers and GCs Vikas Sehoran and Brijesh Beniwal observed alarming deforestation along the route, especially the stretch between Gangotri and Gaumukh which at one time was covered by pristine forests of deodar, bluepine, Oaks and Bhojpatra. They were also left aghast by the extensive negative impact of 'storage dams and the run-of-the river hydel projects in forests.

"Trees are the only redeeming factor that can save the environment by acting as a huge sponge that can keep the rivers flowing even when there is no rain. To see them so brutally hacked in the name of development was really heart wrenching," remarks Capt Neeraj.

"Contrary to controversial views about the melting state of Himalayan glaciers, especially the Gangotri glacier, we saw large chunks of ice shearing and crumbling," states the team. Yet another pertinent observation that was made by the team was that in contrast to the original single source of water for the Bhagirathi (as the Ganga is known from its source to Devprayag), alternate feeding points have now sprung up, a clear indicator of the increase in melting rate of the glacier.

Col Dhami says, "I visited the snout of the glacier and noted the state of the ablation zone during the same time ten years ago, October 2000, to be precise and have no doubt now that the glacier is receding over 50 meters a year and shrinking fast. Unfortunately, other than the satellite images of the snout, no effort was made in the past to fix the snout position on the ground. Had this been done, we would have known the exact melting rate of the Gangotri Glacier. Also, these controversies could have been avoided if a ground check had been done and taken into account the 'International Geophysical Year 1956-57' programme during which a number of Himalayan glaciers were studied and their snout position fixed. Surprisingly, this information is not available with any government department!"

Capt Neeraj further adds, "We have taken the longitude and latitude reading of the snout; but to get the exact receding rate some old record is required. We are working on this."

While Col Dhami is a self-driven concerned individual, IMA involved its GCs in the expedition as a learning and sanitizing exercise for the cadets as well as to inculcate a sense of belonging towards Nature. Col Dhami is of the optimistic view that if corrective steps are adopted and executed on a war footing, "we can hope to delay the complete disappearance of the glacier, which is the womb of North India's lifeline." It is probably a telepathic coincidence that while the team is carrying out the practical groundwork, a theoretical solution, too, is on its way, with the Central Government declaring the 130 km stretch of the Ganga from Gaumukh to Uttarkashi as an Eco-Sensitive Zone. Also the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), under the Chairmanship of PM Dr. Manmohan Singh has ratified a decision to abandon three hydel power projects in Uttarakhand, so as to safeguard the fragile river ecology.