The mountains are not angry — they are tired of being ignored!

The news I am seeing from the place I call home, Himachal Pradesh, is so sad and painful. But I knew somewhere that it was inevitable and going to happen sooner or later. Earlier, these kinds of floods and rains used to happen once in 30 years, but now it seems like an every-year ritual. I got involved in the flood response from day zero in 2023, and when I saw the wrath of nature, I thought this would be the wake-up call for everybody. Government, people, scientists — everybody would wake up and do something serious about it. But just after a few days, all things were back to normal, apart from the people who lost everything in those floods.

I found a report about the floods that happened in 1995 in Kullu, and the exact same spots were affected in 2023 which were affected in ’95. And now the same spots are hit again in 2025.

So it’s not that our governments are not aware of which areas are vulnerable and where we should not build anything. But still…

There is entire landslide mapping and zonation already done. You can know which slope is risky and which slope is not.

A few years back in the Netherlands, I was talking about landslides in a conference, and a professor from the US pulled out the landslide vulnerability data of Himachal Pradesh and showed it to me in the middle of the workshop. He asked me: when you know these slopes are landslide-prone, then why are you developing infrastructure there?

What could I answer there? I said in my heart that yes, we know. Our government knows that, our expert scientists know that. But we are waiting for some wake-up call… and that wake-up call is ringing again and again, even when we try to snooze it.

Ideally, scientists say that we should not build on slopes more than 30 degrees — after that it’s unsafe. Himachal government allows 45 degrees. Let’s consider that okay… but still, you can find infrastructure developing at 60–70 degrees quite commonly. You can even find some at straight 90 degrees.

Whose fault is this? Nature? Naah...

Our media can show that it’s the revenge of nature… but it’s not. It’s the result of our ambitions and arrogance. In disaster management, we talk a lot about this: there is no such thing as natural disasters. Nature has its own rules. If you abide by those rules, you are safe. So whatever happens as a disaster when you don’t abide by the laws of nature… that is a human-induced disaster.

But why do we keep saying natural disasters?

Because it’s easy to blame God and nature rather than take accountability for ourselves… asking questions to our politicians, asking questions to the companies who are building infrastructure in the name of development and making money out of it. Politicians want disasters to happen more in this country. Why? Because then it’s an easy flow of money in the name of disaster response, with minimum audit and accountability — so more corruption.

In the name of luxury tourism we are building hotels and homestays in between the rivers. They are selling it as luxury: that you can hear the sound of the river when you sleep, you can touch the fresh and sacred water of the river first thing in the morning.

We do have knowledge. We do have enough science. We do have enough expertise. We do have enough money. We do have enough resources that we can build all that infrastructure in a sustainable and safe manner. But still, we don’t.

We don’t have the will. We don’t have the guts to hold our politicians and governments accountable. We don’t have the courage to come on the roads and say to the companies: this is not a natural disaster, this is done by you — and now you have to pay.

Every day I think that I should be there in Himachal, working on the ground like I used to.

But I can’t be proud of that. As a disaster manager, if I am working in the same place for relief and response again and again, then it’s my failure as a professional.

I feel lost. I feel hopeless. And I know it’s going to be much worse in the coming time. I just hope we wake up soon, that we don’t push that snooze button again.