Specialist’s Corner
CP Rajendran is a geoscientist and an adjunct professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, and co-author of the book: The Rumbling Earth – The Story of Indian Earthquakes
The fragile hills of Wayanad are again in the news because of another landslide that occurred on July 7, taking seven lives and destroying property after a downpour. What is intriguing is the fact that it occurred near the entrance to the under-construction tunnel at Kalladi, Meppadi panchayat – in the vicinity of Chooralmala, which was the epicentre of a disastrous massive landslide in 2024 and several others in the past. The Rs 2,000-crore tunnel project, meant to provide an 8-km-long twin-tube tunnel link between Annakampoyil, located in the neighbouring Kozhikode district, and Meppadi in Wayanad, has been controversial ever since the idea was mooted, with environmentalists flagging it as a recipe for disaster.
Despite the objections, the project was fast-tracked. In April this year, the Supreme Court cited the project’s ‘national importance’ – which has now become a unique selling point (USP) for the authorities to approve controversial infrastructural projects, while turning a blind eye to their massive environmental consequences. The role of tunnel boring in triggering the debris slide in Kalladi needs to be confirmed after conducting a geomorphological probe. The disaster seems to have originated from a mix of failures on the part of the authorities, including the failure of the company involved in boring, which failed to remove the excavation material that might have added to the volume of the debris flow.
The recurring pattern of disastrous landslides in Wayanad should have prompted a meticulous review of the tunnel project’s impact on the region's fragile ecology. The project was approved without conducting detailed geological and hydrological studies. Considering the changing climate-rainfall regime and the increasing risk of landslides in areas like Wayanad, such projects in vulnerable areas of the Western Ghats must have strict guidelines and environmental safeguards should be implemented.
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