Maha Triple Whammy: Climate extremes, rampant floods, rising Arabian Sea

Mumbai, Jan 15 A piqued Mother Nature has shown her wrath at the environmental degradation perpetrated in Maharashtra on several occasions in the past, with ominous signs of more calamities slated for the future.

It was nine years ago - July 30, 2014 - when Malin village, standing on a hillock around 620 m above sea level in Pune district, overnight turned into a slushy graveyard for scores of people after torrential rain.

At least 151 villagers were buried alive at the dead of night and it was the driver of a bus plying in the neighbourhood who rubbed his eyes in sheer disbelief - the tiny village he viewed everyday on his journey had suddenly disappeared from the landscape...!

As disaster teams rushed to mount a massive rescue operation, one of the prime causes that emerged for the devastating hillslide was the enormous environmental damage wreaked in the vicinity, particularly the indiscriminate chopping of many trees.

Experts said that Malin was situated on the eastern slope of a hill running north-south with gradients ranging from 10-40 degrees and some farming activities conducted there.

"Forests can help stabilize such hill slopes by holding the soil together, enhancing infiltration, reducing run-off of water and rendering it safe… but here it did not happen," said environmentalist Stalin D., Director of the NGO Vanashakti.

The disaster was preceded by heavy rain that lashed the area for over 24 hours and without sufficient forest cover, the hill-slide buried scores in their sleep, shocking the nation the next morning with many lessons for the long-term.

"The slope was made unstable by deforestation, poor agriculture methods used for the rice and in recent years, even wheat farming, for which levelling and terracing of the slopes was done, rainwater seeped to a critical depth where the topsoil layer shifted due to gravity and the slope gave away with fatal consequences," explained Stalin.

Another recent affront were the massive unprecedented floods that submerged large areas for days in the regions of western Maharashtra like Sangli, Kolhapur and Satara, first in August 2019 and a repeat in September 2021, in the sprawling Krishna River basin, with its ramifications felt even in Karnataka.

A Maharashtra government's 10-member experts panel identified the main culprits cyclones, cloudburst and persistent downpour and pointed fingers at other topological factors like inadequate drainage from the regions, saturated subsoil and unbridled development activities on the flood plains, blocking the natural drainage channels, river damming and diversions and destruction of natural flood barriers.

"All these resulted in unseen havoc in the three districts and some surrounding areas in western Maharashtra. There have been abnormal rains like in Mumbai which caused the record Great Floods

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