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By Devendra Gautam
As I sit to write this piece on the last Saturday of September 2024, it’s been raining cats and dogs for the last two days, triggering floods, landslides and inundation across the length and breadth of the country, killing at least 60 people, including 32 in the Kathmandu Valley, and causing infrastructural losses worth billions of rupees.
At a relatively cat-proof corner of the roof, a pigeon couple has laid an egg and is trying to hatch it. Whenever I pry into the corner to check the progress of their endeavour, the parent bird flies into the rain out of fear.
But where will the people displaced due to rain-induced disasters go?
The unpredictability of climate change-induced weather notwithstanding, thus far a significant section of humanity is relatively safe (till when? you never know) in this ill-prepared, corruption- and instability-plagued country even as stories of death, destruction and disappearances resulting from monsoon-induced disasters continue to pour in a country living on a wing and a prayer. While we the survivors can feel lucky for the time being, who knows when our luck will run out? It can run out in one of those (not so) bolt-out-of-the-blue moments like walking or driving along roads turned into rivers, it can run out even when you are fast asleep in the relative safety of your home, even as a fledgling state presiding over death, destruction and disappearances at numerous isles of poverty continues to look on from its ivory tower.
Without pondering further over a grim scenario, let’s read excerpts from reports published in several media outlets:
A motorcyclist went missing while driving along a flooded stretch of the Ring Road at Annapurna Chowk near Sanobharyang, Nagarjun municipality, on Friday. A CCTV grab shows the incident happened in a matter of seconds. While the rescuers have retrieved the bike, the status of the biker remains unknown as of September 28.
A rain-induced landslide at a spot called Naukilo shut the Narayangadh-Mugling road with chances of the landslide getting worse and damaging the artery further, per a report. According to the Road Division Office, Chitwan, the road remained ‘open’ for light vehicles, but who would want to throw their dear lives in line? Anyway, one can surmise that this is not the only incident of landslide along the Lokmarg.
In Chisapani of Panchthar district, Sapana Sherpa (24) and her daughter Dolma Sherpa (5) died in a landslide amid incessant rains on Friday.
Whereas in Panauti of Kavre, Arjun Bhandari and four members of his family went missing in a landslide that occurred at around 3.30 am on Saturday, states another report. In the nick of time, members of two other families managed to escape to safety.
Also in Kavre, Patali Tamang (50) and Nakkali Tamang (40) died when a landslide swamped their house in Timal at around 3 pm on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the reservoir of the Kulekhani hydel in Makwanpur district was overflowing as of Saturday morning, thanks to incessant rains. While the project with an installed capacity of 60 MW and annual design generation of 211 GWh is operating at full capacity, the discharge from the reservoir (Indra Sarovar) after the partial opening of two of its sluice gates has given rise to fears of downstream flooding along the Bagmati river basin.
The intensity of rains in the country and the scale of death, destruction and disappearances resulting from disasters, at a time when the monsoon is about to withdraw, is indeed shocking.
By now, yours truly is pretty sure, our political leadership and bureaucracy have already forgotten the Simaltal bus plunge. After all, that incident happened barely a month after the monsoon began and here we are, heading towards its withdrawal. Anyway, two-and-a-half months is a pretty long time in the life of a nation moving quite fast towards you don’t know where, isn’t it?
Without further ado, let yours truly try to invoke very short memories of our powers that be.
On July 12, a landslide swamped a section of the Narayangadh-Mugling road at Simaltal (Chitwan district), consigning two buses with 65 Nepali and Indian passengers into a raging Trishuli river. Media reports suggested that the construction of a track on an unstable terrain just above the stretch had triggered the landslide that sent the buses bound for Kathmandu from Birgunj and for Gaur from Kathmandu into the Trishuli.
Like in the case of the Trishuli disaster, the government of the day mobilizes security personnel for a search and rescue mission whenever a disaster occurs by even calling friends for help. Though poorly-equipped and not-so-adequately trained, security personnel throw their lives in line in search of the missing and in rescue of the survivors.
Whenever there’s an air disaster, the government goes the ‘extra (nautical) mile’ and forms inquiry commissions, which come up with bulky reports in due course of time.
But these reports gather dust in some corners along the labyrinthine corridors of power as the political leadership and the bureaucracy return to the business-as-usual mode quite soon.
As for incidents of death, disappearances and destruction happening on the road or thereabouts, the government does not even feel the need to do some fact-finding on what went wrong and who all were responsible, even if it’s just an eyewash. Government leadership or department ministers resigning for failing to save lives and properties is out of the question.
This is because lesser mortals have such endings written on their foreheads, right? As part of a Sanskrit poem goes, who can erase what’s written on your forehead?
Pretty soon, yours truly is quite sure, governments at the Centre, provinces and local levels will forget the trail of death, disappearances and destruction and continue with their development frenzy in a fragile country prone to all sorts of disasters like quakes, floods, lightning and landslides. They will raze more mountains to the ground, carve out more roads by cutting through more ravines considered unpassable even for monkeys, and dam more rivers, streams and rivulets for meeting burgeoning water and energy needs across the border, with utter disregard for social, economic and environmental costs of such undertakings on local communities and sustainability of such projects. While ‘developing’ more and more gas guzzling infrastructure projects—roads, cross-border train links and petroleum pipelines for increased import and consumption of dirty fuels—by destroying more and more farmlands and forests instead of investing in green infrastructure, our political leadership and bureaucracy will continue to show to the world on several international fora how we are becoming more and more carbon-neutral—and even carbon-negative—with each passing day.

We are getting what we deserve? If not, why would we elect a tried, tested, failed and morally bankrupt political leadership shorn of all vision to power time and time again? If not, why wouldn’t we, though still devoid of the much-cherished right to reject in a ‘democracy’,  vote this lot with our feet?
Dear readers, I leave you this week with these uncomfortable questions amid a very difficult situation resulting mainly from climate-induced disasters in a vulnerable country with a very very small GHG footprint.