Nationwide, there are problems with landslides and floods. People have been killed, made homeless, crops destroyed, fisheries and farms submerged and factories flooded. This annual calamity is related to Nepal’s topography and the nature of our rivers, which is why human settlement and construction have to follow nature’s laws. If we don’t, the people who ignored those laws will have to suffer.
Disasters also have a class aspect. The people affected are mostly poor. Tarai families affected by floods are mostly those who live in huts in high-risk areas. In the cities, it is the urban poor settled along the floodplains of rivers or those residing on the ground floor who are worst affected. People living in fragile and steep slopes are exposed to landslide risk. Villages and settlements downstream from the Chure are also disproportionately affected.
Lately, the activities of excavators and bulldozers have made already fragile slopes even more precarious. This has increased the risk for those living in villages near these roads. The construction spree in the cities has increased demand for construction materials, which are unsustainably mined from river beds, making them prone to more destructive floods. The destruction of the Chure is symbolic of the negative development model we have adopted. The country is threatened with desertification, and in the monsoon the floods are becoming more catastrophic in the Madhes.
We have to rescue our country from the corruption and crony capitalism that is driving this destruction.
Read also: Flood of recrimination, Editorial