The Fragile Himalayas: Climate, Hindutva Developmentalism, and the Collapsing Ecology of the Third Pole

AKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡

Ecotopians of Alternity⤡

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28444.76164

License: CC0

Posted on 2nd November, 2025 (GMT 06:00 hrs)

ABSTRACT

The Himalayas—often called the “Third Pole”—are collapsing under the dual weight of climate change and a reckless developmental paradigm driven by Hindutva nationalism. This article examines how the BJP’s infrastructural expansion, exemplified by the Char Dham project and many other recent instances, embodies an extractive model that desecrates the sacred mountain ecology in the name of “spiritual connectivity” and national pride. By exposing the contradictions between ecological fragility and politico-economic hubris, it argues that the Himalayan crisis is not a natural disaster but a moral and civilizational collapse—where faith has been mechanized, rivers commodified, and glaciers sacrificed for profit and propaganda. Drawing on ecological ethics, political ecology, and environmental sociology, the piece calls for an epistemic and ethical reorientation—from GDP-centrism to earth-centric governance that recognizes the Himalayas as living systems rather than geological resources. Ultimately, saving the Himalayas demands confronting not only climate change but also the ideological machinery that normalizes ecocide under the rhetoric of development.

1. Introduction

The Himalayas—stretching across India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, and China—constitute the world’s youngest and most fragile, eco-sensitive1 mountain ecosystem. As the planet’s “Third Pole,” the region holds more ice and freshwater than anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic, feeding ten major rivers and sustaining 1.9 billion people across Asia. The fate of these mountains will determine the fate of Asia’s climate, agriculture, and civilization itself.

Yet this lifeline is under immense ecological stress. Rising temperatures, reckless infrastructure expansion, deforestation, and the politics of extractive development have rendered the Himalayas one of the most ecologically endangered and politically neglected zones on Earth.

Recent reports by ICIMOD (2023) and IPCC AR6 (2022) estimate that one-third of Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2100, even if the Paris Agreement targets are met. Beyond climate change, the crisis is profoundly anthropogenic—rooted in “developmental nationalism”, particularly under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which prioritizes mega-infrastructure projects in ecologically sensitive regions to assert territorial, religious, and political power, all for securing market fundamentalism.

2. Glacial Meltdown and the Water Crisis

The Himalayas host about 54,000 glaciers feeding the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra river systems. The region has lost 40% of its ice volume since the 1970s (ICIMOD, 2023), with melting accelerating due to global warming, air pollution, and black carbon deposition from industrial and vehicular sources.

• Gangotri Glacier (Uttarakhand):
  The source of the Ganga has receded by more than 3 km since 1780, losing nearly 20 meters annually. The Ganga basin supports over 500 million people; reduced glacial flow is drastically affecting irrigation and drinking water.
• Teesta Basin (Sikkim, 2023 Disaster):
  The South Lhonak glacial lake outburst destroyed the Teesta III hydropower dam—India’s largest in the Eastern Himalayas—killing dozens and washing away towns. This tragedy exemplifies the convergence of glacial instability and dam proliferation in climate-vulnerable regions.
• Indus River Basin:
  Glaciers in Ladakh and the Karakoram are thinning despite the so-called “Karakoram anomaly.” Studies indicate that over 80% of glaciers may disappear by 2100 if emissions continue unabated, threatening water availability for Pakistan’s agrarian economy.
• Spring and Aquifer Depletion:
  Across Himachal, Uttarakhand, and Sikkim, 60–70% of traditional water springs (naulas, dharas, and jhings) have either dried or become seasonal. Communities now rely on water tankers, deep borewells, or migration, marking a socio-ecological collapse.

Recent Example – Changing Rainfall Patterns and Flash Floods (Uttarakhand, 2025):
The monsoon in Uttarakhand is now marked by erratic bursts—prolonged dry spells followed by intense cloudbursts. The August 2025 Dharali mudslide in Uttarkashi killed at least four and left over fifty missing after torrential rains, reflecting new hydrometeorological extremes. Experts note this pattern amplifies both flooding and landslide risks.

Beyond the visible loss of ice and water, the Himalayan cryosphere conceals a more insidious threat: the thawing of high-altitude permafrost. As temperatures rise across Ladakh, Zanskar, and the higher reaches of Himachal and Uttarakhand, once-frozen soils are beginning to release long-dormant microorganisms, organic matter, and methane. Scientists warn that permafrost degradation could reawaken ancient bacteria and viruses—some unknown to modern medicine—posing unpredictable biosecurity challenges. The Himalayas, like the Arctic, may thus become a new frontier of microbial emergence, where the collapse of frozen ecologies intersects with the vulnerabilities of human settlements. What melts is not just ice but the biological archive of millennia, carrying both evolutionary memory and potential contagion.

3. Land Fragility and Developmental Collapse

Joshimath: The Town That Sank (2023)

Joshimath, a key pilgrimage and military gateway to the Indo-Tibetan border, exemplifies the collision between geology and politico-economic hubris. The January 2023 land subsidence caused massive cracks in over 800 houses, displacing hundreds of families.
Experts from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology and IIT Roorkee confirmed that the town is built on old landslide debris, making it inherently unstable. Yet construction for the Tapovan–Vishnugad hydropower project (NTPC) and road widening under the Char Dham Highway exacerbated the sinking. Despite warnings, work continued under the “national security” and “religious infrastructure” narratives promoted by the BJP government.

Char Dham Project: Development or Devastation?

Launched in 2016 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Char Dham Pariyojana aims to connect the four major Hindu pilgrimage sites—Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri—through an 889-km network of “all-weather” highways. Officially framed as a project for spiritual connectivity and disaster resilience, it has also been strategically justified as vital for facilitating the swift movement of troops and military logistics to the Indo-China border regions of Uttarakhand.
In effect, the project operates at the intersection of religious developmentalism and militarized nationalism, where the rhetoric of “faith” and “security” converge to normalize large-scale ecological disruption.

The project has involved massive hill-cutting (up to 24 meters wide in certain stretches), the deforestation of over 56,000 trees, and the indiscriminate dumping of debris into fragile river valleys, violating multiple environmental safeguards. The Supreme Court-appointed High-Powered Committee (HPC), chaired by environmentalist Ravi Chopra, repeatedly warned that the project breached environmental norms and significantly heightened landslide risk. Despite these findings, the central government pressured the HPC to dilute its recommendations and, in 2020, amended the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) norms to retrospectively legalize the project’s irregularities.

Today, the Char Dham Highway has turned into a corridor of ecological trauma, with recurring landslides in Rudraprayag, Chamoli, and Uttarkashi, frequent road cave-ins, and debris flows choking river systems.
Critics argue that the BJP’s narrative of national rejuvenation through religious and infrastructural grandeur masks a deeper political economy—one tied to military-industrial expansion, real estate speculation, and crony contracting in the Himalayas. What is presented as the “modernization of pilgrimage” is, in reality, the weaponization of development, where sacred geography becomes a front for both military securitization and capitalist extraction.

Hydropower and Tunnelling

The Himalayan arc hosts more than 650 mega-dams, many in seismic zones IV and V. Projects like Subansiri Lower (Arunachal), Pala Maneri (Uttarakhand), and Teesta V (Sikkim) represent a “green energy” facade that conceals ecological devastation.
Blasting and tunnelling destabilize slopes, alter aquifers, and cause permanent subsurface drying—as seen in Chamoli, where villages above tunnel routes have lost water sources entirely.

Recent Uttarakhand Example – Expanding Landslides (2024–2025):
ISRO’s Landslide Atlas notes that 72% of Uttarakhand’s area (39,000 km²) is landslide-prone, with over 11,000 mapped landslides between 1988 and 2022. What’s alarming is that landslides are now a year-round phenomenon, not confined to the monsoon. The Dharali 2025 disaster and slope failures near Pithoragarh, Rudraprayag, and Bageshwar demonstrate how extreme rainfall, deforestation, and infrastructure overload are converging.
In Bageshwar, abandoned soapstone mining pits have become waterlogged hazards, collapsing farmland and contaminating springs, a legacy of extractive development ignored by local administration.

4. Forests, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Collapse

Deforestation and Forest Fires

Himalayan forests, vital for water regulation and carbon sequestration, are being replaced by commercial plantations and tourism infrastructure.
Between 2018 and 2024, Uttarakhand recorded over 7,500 forest fire incidents, burning nearly 10,000 hectares. Rising temperatures and reduced winter precipitation have made forests highly combustible.

Biodiversity Threats

The Himalayas are home to 10,000+ plant species and 300+ mammal species, many endemic. Yet the spread of roads, hydropower, and tourism has fragmented habitats.

• The Snow Leopard (Ladakh, Himachal) faces habitat loss due to human encroachment.
• The Red Panda (Sikkim, Arunachal) is threatened by deforestation and monoculture plantations.
• The Western Tragopan and Himalayan Musk Deer are declining due to logging and tourism disturbance.

Apple Belt Shift

Warming temperatures have pushed the apple cultivation zone in Himachal and Kashmir upwards by 300–500 meters, while lower altitudes now face pest outbreaks and crop failures. This shift disturbs local ecosystems and traditional cropping patterns.

5. Socio-Cultural and Livelihood Impacts

Water Insecurity and Migration

Villages in Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal and Chamoli districts have seen over 1,200 habitations abandoned in two decades due to water scarcity and soil instability. Women and elderly residents bear the brunt of this exodus, walking long distances for water or relocating to plains.

Tourism and Waste

Mass pilgrimage and adventure tourism, especially post-COVID, have overwhelmed fragile ecosystems.
In Leh and Manali, groundwater levels are dropping sharply due to hotel expansion. The Kedarnath redevelopment—hailed as a “spiritual renaissance” by the BJP—has replaced natural drainage systems with concrete embankments, further increasing flood risk.

Recent Case – Tourism and Ecological Stress (Le Monde, 2025):
A 2025 Le Monde investigation describes Uttarakhand’s “Land of the Gods” as an environmental debacle: uncontrolled religious tourism, highway dust, and hotel construction choking pilgrimage towns. Over four crore pilgrims visited the Char Dham circuit in 2024, generating unprecedented waste and straining mountain aquifers.

Cultural Erosion

The “Hindu tourism” model displaces local ecological ethics rooted in sacred geography. Indigenous practices like van panchayats (community forest management) and sacred groves (dev van) are eroding under centralized religious-corporate control engineered by the BJP.

6. Governance and Policy Failures

The Himalayan crisis is not only environmental but deeply political.

• Centralization and Corporate Capture:
  Decision-making has shifted away from local bodies to centralized ministries and corporate contractors. The EIA 2020 amendment weakened public consultation and exempted linear projects like highways and pipelines from prior clearance.
• Militarization and Border Politics:
  Infrastructure expansion in border zones (e.g., Arunachal, Ladakh) is justified in the name of national security, sidelining environmental regulations.
  Roads, airstrips, and hydropower projects serve dual civilian-military purposes, prioritizing strategic control over ecological balance.
• Disaster Myopia:
  Responses remain relief-centric, not preventive. Funds under the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) prioritize compensation, not watershed restoration.
  For instance, post-Chamoli glacier burst (2021), little was done to restrict hydropower tunnelling or regulate tourism in high-risk zones.

7. Towards an Ecological Reimagination

Decentralized Water Governance

Reviving community-based and traditional water systems is essential for restoring the Himalayan hydrological balance and securing local water sovereignty. Across the mountain belt, springs, naulas, dharas, and small irrigation channels once formed a decentralized, self-regulating network sustained by collective stewardship and ecological wisdom. Today, these lifelines are rapidly disappearing—displaced by deep borewells, tanker supplies, and centralized water grids that alienate local communities from their own water commons.

In Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, traditional kul systems—small, gravity-fed irrigation channels—diverted glacier melt and spring water to terraced farms through earthen or stone conduits. Managed cooperatively by village councils, these kuls ensured equitable distribution while minimizing water loss through infiltration and natural recharge. In Sikkim and Nagaland, zabo systems harmonized forestry, agriculture, and livestock management: rainwater collected from forested hilltops filtered through tanks and terraces, recharging aquifers while irrigating lower fields. In the arid highlands of Ladakh–Zanskar, amuna channels directed glacial melt to storage tanks (zings), providing critical water during the dry pre-monsoon months.

Each of these systems embodied the principles of circular hydrology—where water was not extracted but recirculated within ecological limits. In Kumaon and Garhwal, women-led management of naulas (stone-lined springs) exemplified hydro-commons: institutions grounded in collective care, ritual observance, and seasonal maintenance. These participatory frameworks stand in stark contrast to today’s technocratic interventions that prioritize engineering over ecology and privatized control over community rights.

A renewed decentralized water governance model for the Himalayas must therefore integrate such traditional systems with contemporary hydro-ecological mapping and climate adaptation planning. This includes:

1. Watershed restoration and spring rejuvenation through afforestation of recharge zones, contour trenching, and soil-moisture conservation.
2. Legal recognition of community water rights, empowering van panchayats and gram sabhas to manage springs and aquifers within a commons-based framework.
3. Integration of indigenous hydro-knowledge into district and state water plans, ensuring traditional water bodies are mapped, monitored, and revived through participatory governance.
4. Gender-inclusive management, acknowledging the central role of women in water collection, ecological decision-making, and intergenerational knowledge transmission.

Such an approach would not merely conserve water; it would rebuild hydrological democracy—transferring authority from state bureaucracies to local communities and reaffirming the ethic that water is a shared, living entity, not an extractive commodity.
In essence, kul, zabo, and amuna are not relics of the past but templates for a post-carbon, climate-resilient future in the Himalayas—rooted in reciprocity, equity, and ecological regeneration.

Ban on Mega Projects in Fragile Zones

A moratorium must be imposed on hydropower, highway, and mining projects situated above 2,000 meters, where geological instability and ecological sensitivity are at their peak. The cumulative impacts of tunnelling, blasting, and road-widening in seismic zones threaten both biodiversity and human settlements. Development in such regions should be guided by carrying capacity assessments and ecological vulnerability indices, not political or commercial imperatives.

Mega-dams, often celebrated as symbols of progress, are in fact ecological time bombs. Their reservoirs submerge forests, displace mountain communities, and alter the delicate hydrological cycles that sustain the Himalayan rivers. Sediment trapping behind dams deprives downstream ecosystems and farmlands of nutrients, while the accumulation of silt reduces the lifespan and safety of the structures themselves. In seismically active regions, massive reservoirs exert additional pressure on fault lines, heightening the risk of earthquakes—a phenomenon known as reservoir-induced seismicity. Moreover, the abrupt release of stored water, whether due to mismanagement or glacial lake outbursts, can trigger catastrophic floods, as witnessed in the 2021 Chamoli disaster. The touted “green” credentials of hydropower obscure its true cost: the drowning of carbon sinks, the loss of endemic species, and the disruption of riverine continuity vital for both ecological and cultural life. In mountain ecologies, the most sustainable energy is restraint itself—allowing rivers to flow as living systems rather than imprisoning them behind concrete walls.

Rewilding and Forest Regeneration

Rewilding degraded landscapes through native vegetation regeneration and the creation of wildlife corridors is vital for restoring ecological continuity across fragmented habitats. Protecting altitudinal gradients—from riverine forests to alpine meadows—supports species migration and climate adaptation. Community-driven reforestation programs, modelled on van panchayats, can ensure ecological restoration aligns with local livelihoods and cultural values.

Eco-Centric Policy Metrics

The Himalayan development paradigm must transcend GDP-based evaluation and adopt genuinely eco-centric frameworks that recognize the intrinsic value of natural systems. While approaches such as the Gross Ecological Product (GEP) seek to quantify the ecological services provided by forests, glaciers, and rivers, they risk reproducing the very logic of green capitalism if they translate life-supporting processes into monetary terms. By commodifying ecosystem functions—carbon sequestration, water purification, soil fertility—such frameworks can inadvertently transform living systems into tradable assets within financial markets. This economization of ecology does not challenge extractivism; it merely rebrands it.

To avoid this reductionist drift, ecological governance must move beyond the valuation of “natural capital” toward an ethos of biocentric reciprocity—recognizing forests, glaciers, and rivers as living entities endowed with legal and moral personhood, not as service providers. India’s judicial recognition of the Ganga and Yamuna as legal persons marks an ethical shift in this direction, embedding ecological integrity rather than market equivalence at the heart of governance. The task, therefore, is not to price nature but to protect its self-renewing capacities through community custodianship, commons-based water and forest management, and the revival of indigenous stewardship systems that view life as relational, sacred, and incommensurable with capital.

Regional Cooperation

The Himalayan ecosystem transcends national boundaries; its crises cannot be addressed in isolation. A Himalayan Ecological Treaty among India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China is imperative for coordinated cryosphere monitoring, glacial-lake outburst prevention, and transboundary flood management. Such cooperation should prioritize ecological diplomacy over territorial competition, treating the Himalayas as a shared bioregion rather than a militarized frontier.

Cultural–Ecological Renewal

Finally, the survival of the Himalayas depends on a cultural renewal of ecological consciousness. Indigenous cosmologies that regard rivers, mountains, and forests as sentient beings must be reintegrated into policy and education. Mountain communities should be recognized not as passive victims of climate change but as custodians of living knowledge systems.
Reclaiming these traditions is not a retreat into the past—it is a reassertion of the ecological imagination, without which no technological or political intervention can secure the Himalayas’ future.

8. Conclusion

The Himalayan crisis is not a distant natural calamity—it is the mirror of our developmental contradictions and political hubris. Under the BJP’s banner of Vikas (development) and Dharmic nationalism, ecological destruction has been repackaged as spiritual progress. Projects like the Char Dham Pariyojana, marketed as ‘spiritual connectivity,’ are less about devotion and more about domination—turning pilgrimage into a performance of power, where faith is asphalted into military corridors.. The government’s rhetoric of “all-weather roads for divine access” conceals its true agenda: facilitating troop movement and corporate extraction under the guise of sacred development.

Joshimath’s fissures, Kedarnath’s concretized floodplains, and the vanishing Gangotri glacier are not isolated events—they are symptoms of a deeper collapse of ethics, governance, and ecological imagination. The same state that invokes Bharat Mata as sacred mother sanctions her dismemberment through deforestation, dynamite, and displacement. Environmental regulations have been diluted, scientific warnings dismissed, and dissent criminalized—all in service of a spectacle of development that mistakes violence for vitality.

To save the Himalayas is not merely to stabilize soil or rebuild slopes—it is to reclaim moral and ecological sanity from the ideological machinery that equates destruction with devotion. It demands a reawakening of humility, an end to extractive nationalism, and a return to reverence for the mountain as a living being, not a construction site. Without such a paradigm shift, the Himalayas will continue to sink—first geologically, then morally.

The Himalayas are not collapsing alone—they are taking with them the moral architecture of a civilization that forgot how to kneel before nature.

References

Aggarwal, A., & Narain, V. (2022). Environmental governance in India: Challenges and opportunities in the Anthropocene. Oxford University Press.

Bandyopadhyay, J. (2017). Water, ecosystems and society: A confluence of disciplines. Springer.

Bisht, H. (2023, January 15). Joshimath subsidence: A warning from the mountains. Down To Earth. https://www.downtoearth.org.in

Chopra, R. (2021). Report of the High-Powered Committee on the Char Dham Project. Supreme Court of India.

Ghosh, A. (2016). The great derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable. Penguin Books.

Government of India. (2020). Environmental Impact Assessment Notification (Amendment), 2020. Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).

Hindustan Times. (2023, October 6). Teesta dam collapse highlights Himalayan fragility. https://www.hindustantimes.com

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2022). Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC. Cambridge University Press.

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). (2023). Hindu Kush Himalaya assessment: Climate change, sustainability and people. Kathmandu: ICIMOD.

Kumar, R., & Rawat, P. S. (2021). Deforestation and its impact on biodiversity in the Indian Himalayas. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 193(7), 456–469. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-021-09221-8

Livemint. (2023, February 12). How India’s spiritual highways are deepening ecological risks in the Himalayas. https://www.livemint.com

Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. Universe Books.

Ministry of Jal Shakti. (2021). Spring rejuvenation and water security in the Indian Himalayan Region: A policy framework. Government of India.

Negi, G. C. S., & Joshi, V. (2020). Springs of life: Traditional water systems in the Himalaya. Mountain Research and Development, 40(3), R5–R15. https://doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-19-00079.1

Norberg-Hodge, H. (1991). Ancient futures: Lessons from Ladakh. Sierra Club Books.

Pandey, R., & Kumar, P. (2022). Hydropower development and disaster vulnerability in the Indian Himalaya. Environmental Science & Policy, 136, 251–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.05.016

Press Trust of India. (2024, April 22). Forest fires surge in Uttarakhand amid rising temperatures. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com

Sharma, S., & Nüsser, M. (2023). The geopolitics of glaciers: Climate change, development and security in the Himalayas. Political Geography, 104, 102756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102756

Singh, C. (2020). Climate change adaptation in the Indian Himalayan Region: Policy gaps and governance challenges. Environmental Policy and Governance, 30(2), 63–77. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1883

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). (2022). Hydropower in fragile mountains: Sustainability assessment of Himalayan projects. New Delhi: TERI Press.

United Nations Environment Programme. (2022). Global mountain outlook 2022: Adapting to climate change in mountain regions. Nairobi: UNEP.

Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology. (2023). Report on land subsidence and slope instability in Joshimath region, Uttarakhand. Dehradun: WIHG.

ENDNOTE

1. When we say “the Himalayas are eco-sensitive,” it means that the region’s ecological balance is extremely delicate—small human or climatic disturbances can trigger disproportionately large and often irreversible impacts on both environment and settlements. Even a 1°C rise in temperature can accelerate glacial melt, destabilize slopes bound by permafrost, and alter snowfall and rainfall patterns, leading to flash floods, landslides, and water scarcity downstream. Such minute thermal shifts ripple through the entire system—changing river flows, disrupting agriculture, shrinking habitats, and threatening the very communities that depend on these mountains for survival. ↩︎