Mizoram’s capital Aizawl sprawls over steep hillsides and sheer cliffs, with a narrow valley below bathed in green and occasional terraced fields. With narrow roads that fall or climb at times at 45-degree angles, it’s not a place for the faint-hearted or those with vertigo.
Cottages, high cement buildings, including apartments, massive churches, stores and upcoming structures perch on the edge of slopes, with straight falls of several hundred feet. They ramble in a disorganised, disoriented fashion, standing cheek to jowl and towering menacingly over slim roads and heavy traffic. However, at night, Aizawl is transformed into a beautiful carpet of glittering and blinking lights hemmed in by the darkness of the hills around and the valley below.
In late May, Cyclone Remal hit Bangladesh — but it also veered and lashed Mizoram and parts of Assam, with torrential rain and high winds, gusting at over 60 km per hour. The downpour triggered landslides, burying people as it swept away houses, cemeteries and blocked roads. Nearly 30 persons were reported dead in Aizawl and several were missing.
Such tragedies have occurred in Mizoram, especially in Aizawl, numerous times at times of heavy rain, underlining the fact that much of the hills of the state comprise soft earth and unstable rock formations which are vulnerable to heavy rain. Rain saturation of the earth triggers pressure, especially on slopes abetted by unscientific earth cutting.
Within a few days of the disaster, the story had vanished from India’s news headlines (though it remained in the state’s media) as the drama of the national election results unfolded.
Yet, both short- and long-term issues and anxieties remain and run deep for Mizoram’s policymakers and ordinary people. A top government official says, “Look at Aizawl’s landscape, it’s not a question of whether a disaster will happen but when.”
Similar concerns are expressed over many of the Northeastern region’s cities, including those in the plains like Guwahati, the biggest metro of the area, as well as hill towns like Kohima, Itanagar and Shillong. These have become densely populated and heavily built up with high buildings made of heavy materials like cement and brick resting on steep slopes or wetlands. In addition, most of the Northeast lies in a highly seismic area and the region has seen some of the most powerful tremors in recorded history.
Aizawl and part of northern Mizoram are located in Zone V, the highest risk area for earthquakes. It’s an ever-present nightmare for a town where many buildings are located on sharp inclines. A scenario developed by GeoHazards International (GHI) and GeoHazards Society (GHS) said that a tremor measuring 7 on the Richter Scale could flatten or heavily damage nearly 40 per cent of the town’s buildings and trigger landslides.
Aizawl faces multiple additional challenges.
One is the pressure of migration from rural areas and other towns into the capital. The Census of India estimates that one-third of the state’s population of 12.5 lakh lived in Aizawl alone or some 415,000 persons, and that Mizoram is the fifth most urbanised state in the country. The influx is not new. It began when security forces, seeking to crush an anti-India insurgency in the late 1960s, forced villagers to move to new settlements under government control. A large number settled in Aizawl, which was regarded as “safe” and was then part of the composite state of Assam. The town has continued to grow and has frequent traffic snarls but is very clean compared to other Indian metros. In addition, drivers are disciplined, one can barely hear horns in the city. Aizawl also has the highest density of two-wheel vehicles in the country, since these are much more manoeuvrable than cars.
“This kind of population pressure is not sustainable”, said another senior official, pointing out that one of Chief Minister Lalduhoma’s priorities was the setting up of a new capital in less challenging terrain, to reduce the pressure on Aizawl and make it more habitable. The question, the official said, was how to access funding for such a large project in a remote and poor state.
On the fateful day of the cyclone, the town received not less than 200 mm of rain, accompanied by high winds. A state geologist said the most critical component of building safely on slopes was ensuring adequate drainage. In Aizawl’s case, the earth was oversaturated and could not hold the water, leading to extensive landslides.
Another crucial issue relates to the load-bearing capacity of the land and whether accurate and adequate soil testing is done by professional structural engineers who certify the safety of buildings. A local geologist said that the Aizawl Municipal Council has recently put in place mandatory structural safety checks, although rules on slope modification have existed since 2014. The government underlined this in an order calling for tighter monitoring before excavation and using explosives in stone quarries.
Unscientific earth cutting and failure to ensure good drainage in the unstable hill terrain are responsible for repeated landslides. “It’s like a person cutting off his toe; he becomes unstable and cannot stand — it’s the same principle with incorrect cutting of the earth,” says a scientist.
Many earlier structures built in the 1980s and 1990s were safe as they stood on “areas that are geologically stable,” noted the geologist.
Prabhat Dey, an architect and hotelier based in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, but with long experience in and strong connections to Mizoram, underlined the pressure on land and high property prices in Aizawl, comparable to major metros in other parts of the country. He compared Aizawl’s unplanned growth to that of Shimla. The key, Dey said, was to ease the pressure on land apart from the strong implementation of safety norms: “Aspiring lifestyles, job seekers and urbanisation as we see in Aizawl and Shillong are a global phenomenon.”
The writer is an author and columnist based in the Northeast
