The devastation in Dima Hasao and its aftermath

the story So Far: The calamity hit Dima Hasao in central Assam’s hilly district in mid-May after incessant heavy rains. The 170 km long railway line connecting Lumding in Hojai district of Brahmaputra valley and Badarpur in Karimganj district of Barak valley has been badly affected. Assessments by the Assam government and the railways ministry said the district suffered losses of more than ₹1,000 crore, but ecologists say the damage could be irreversibly high.

How much rain has it rained in Assam?

Assam is accustomed to floods, sometimes even four times a year, resulting in landslides and erosion. But this year’s pre-monsoon rains have been particularly severe over Dima Hasao, one of the state’s three hill districts. The landslide claimed four lives and damaged roads. The biggest impact of this has been on the main railway line, which broke at 58 places and the tracks were hanged at many places. New Haflong station, catering to the district headquarters Haflong, had to bear the brunt of nature’s woes when a passenger train, whose passengers were evacuated on time, almost got buried in the mud. Disruption in train services, unlikely to be restored soon, has left parts of the flood-hit Barak Valley, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura cut off.

Why is the Railways in focus after the disaster?

Dima Hasao extends into Barel, a tertiary mountain range between the Brahmaputra and Barak river basins. The district is on the Dauki fault (earthquake-prone geological fracture between two blocks of rocks), which extends across Bangladesh and parts of the north-east. British engineers are said to have taken into account the fragility of the hills to build the railway line in 16 years until 1899. The end result was a 221 km long engineering marvel over several bridges and through 37 tunnels, laid along safe sections of hills. , A project to convert the meter gauge track to broad gauge was started in 1996 but due to geotechnical constraints and extremist groups, the work was completed only by March 2015. The broad-gauge track was realigned to straighter, but the 2009–10 audit report revealed that the project was undertaken without proper planning and visualization of soil level behavior.

Citing an engineering and geology expert, the report cited the example of disaster-prone Tunnel 10, which was on the actual track, estimated to be 8 meters below the bed of a nearby stream. Retired railway officials admitted that faulty experiments and the “greed” of some not only made the track vulnerable to the forces of nature but also increased the cost of the project from ₹1,677 crore to ₹5,500 crore. The Commissioner of Railway Safety found in July 2015 that the track was unsafe for commuters after nine derailments and four months after the track was opened for goods trains, 14 sections of the track were submerged.

Is it only railway’s fault?

There is a general consensus that other factors contributed to Dima Hasao’s condition today. Roads in the district, especially the four-lane Saurashtra-Silchar (largest city in Barak Valley) East-West Corridor, have been replaced or deviated from the older ones that were planned around rivers. was created and faced a wide range of conditions. Locals said construction of main roads in the last 20 years has often been swept away by floods or blocked by landslides. In a letter to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, former MLA of the district, Samarjit Haflongbar, wrote that shifting of cultivation to the small circle of jhum or hill slopes and unregulated mining has aggravated the “man-made disaster”. “…the massive stone extraction of the river, illegal mining of coal and smuggling of forest wood… has led to the disaster. These activities have increased the flow of water apart from weakening both banks of Jatinga, Mahur, Langting and other rivers as well as other rivers and tributaries,” he wrote attributing the head of the Autonomous District Council.

How important are the rails and highways through Dima Hasao?

Meghalaya On the one hand, Dima Hasao is the geographical link of a vast region of Barak Valley in southern Assam, parts of Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. The region has an alternative, less disaster-prone highway through Meghalaya that further links the country and thus may not be affected by any damage to the four-lane highway through Dima Hasao, once it is completed. It is done. But the Lumding-Badarpur railway line has been the lifeline for the region since goods trains started operating in March 2015.

In addition, the track is important to India’s Look East policy, with the last railway station near the Feni River serving as the India-Bangladesh border, Chittagong in Bangladesh via Tripura’s border points at Akhaura and Sabroom. The shipping of goods from the port is envisaged. The Dima Hasao Line also links the ambitious 111-km Jiribam-Imphal railway project in Manipur, which is being built on similar, landslide-prone terrain. There are plans to extend the Jiribam-Imphal line, which will have India’s highest railway bridge and longest railway tunnel, to Myanmar and beyond. Such plans seem far-fetched with Tripura and Mizoram indicating that they cannot always rely on rail connectivity through Dima Hasao. Both the states have approached the Ministry of External Affairs to bring fuel and essential goods through Bangladesh, preferably on a long-term basis.