First 2 weeks of fieldwork

In this post I will cover my first two weeks of fieldwork. I haven’t had – and I won’t have – time to properly process interview data while I’m here. As such, the next few blogs will be some spontaneous reflections on themes which are emerging as I go on.

In this post, I will go in a rough chronological order but choose to talk about themes rather than specific interviews, both in the interests of brevity and also some issues around confidentiality. For now, I have also chosen to leave out specific place names – though I will be more specific in more official research outputs. The purpose of this blog is not a landslide inventory or a scientific database, but rather to highlight the wider context and contestations involved in landslides at different stages of their evolution. There are, however, some aspects/themes that I may hold back on discussing at length, as I need to really think carefully about how I present and frame some of the more sensitive issues. At the end of the post I draw the main themes of the post together and also discuss the enjoyable and challenging aspects of this type of research.

Friday 01/11 – Monday 4/11:

Friday was my first full day back in Kalimpong after visiting Kolkata. I spent much of the day in Café Kalimpong, meeting up with Lochan, who would now be my research assistant for the next couple of months. We had a long meeting in the afternoon where we discussed my research, the main themes I’m looking into, our schedules for the coming months, and generally devising a strategy for the coming weeks.

Methodology/strategy:

With the plan roughly sketched out and Lochan’s roles roughly outlined, we agreed to start work on Tuesday, as he was busy on Monday. The plan for the next 3.5 weeks – after which I was taking 2 weeks off because my girlfriend is visiting – was speaking to people who have experienced or witnessed landslide events, or who have been affected by them in some way. We would use the sources I had found over the past few months to identify areas round the district that were affected by landslides. Lochan would then use his contacts in these areas to see if they knew anyone affected, or at least where the landslides were specifically. Failing a contact, we would either approach the areas through institutions like schools and churches, or simply ask people on arrival. Generally, the approach could be classed as snowballing. We are deliberately avoiding approaching people through government agencies and/or political parties, so people didn’t feel coerced into participant and so the messages we receive aren’t politically biased in some way. Our approach doesn’t remove the risk of a political bias, but it certainly reduces it. Thus far, the interviews could be split into two rough parts. The first relating to what these people think caused the landslide, who responded, and what has been done about it since – and everything in between. The second part relates more generally to the changes they have seen in their local environment over the years, and also how they imagine it will be in the future. The last point is of particular interest, as it helps to map out the possible futures people foresee for their locality and the area more generally, as well as the contestations between these different imaginations. This also helps to paint a picture of how people feel that risk – relating to landslides, earthquakes and other phenomena – is managed, or not managed. The interviews are semi-structured, where the conversation is allowed to flow but key questions and themes are discussed in each. So far, the process has been complemented by people showing us round their home and surrounding area to help paint a picture of past events and/or future risks. This gives a bit more substance to the interviews. In some cases, Lochan and I have also walked around various areas ourselves to get a feel for some of landscape and see some of the main features people may refer to in interviews, take photos, and generally improve our understanding.

A relaxed weekend followed where I can’t recollect any extraordinary events happening!

Monday 04/11/19

I had a free day on Monday as Lochan was busy. As usual, I went to the café and met a friend there, managing to get some reading done too. That afternoon, around 3pm, my friend and I noticed a menacing cloud creeping over Deolo hill, which dominates the view of Kalimpong from the café’s open seating area.

The storm creeping over Deolo Hill – Kalimpong Town is seen to the left

A few minutes later, there was a flash of lightening and an almost instant loud thunderclap. A few minutes later, the torrential rain of the storm had swept over the café. We were sat right at the outside edge of the seating area and were soon forced to move further inwards – along with most of the café customers. 90 mins+ of this extremely heavy rain followed; a few unlucky souls dived into the café out of the rain, soaked to the skin. The road outside became a river, with inches of water hurtling down towards the town, carrying branches, solid waste and pebbles with it – seen in this video. The power also went down, something which happened all around this locality. The next day, we heard that Kalimpong had received 31mm of rainfall over 2 hours or so and was in fact the only place in the whole of West Bengal where it rained.

The aftermath of the storm, taken after the rain stopped on my walk home

There was no forecast for this rain, it had arrived after 3-4 and a half days of sunshine, and really came out of nowhere. Un-forecasted rainfall is common in the The Hills. Events such as this serve as a reminder that early-warning about heavy rainfall and associated landslides is not a panacea for disaster risk reduction here, or anywhere for that matter. This event also highlighted the interconnected nature of risk in Kalimpong. The flooding was undoubtedly made worse by two other factors associated with urbanity. The first was solid waste blocking drains which was evident by the amount of water flowing down the roads. This also has a more long lasting effect. Water which is blocked is diverted onto the roads, where it subsequently erodes the tarmac/concrete and creates potholed/rough roads, and/or can erode the banks on the sides of roads, which can lead to small landslides all along the roadside.

Second, and perhaps more influential, is Kalimpong’s increasingly concretised landscape. This increases run-off into drains and ultimately onto roads and into places where the water can cause damage. Both of these factors have already had impacts on homes and businesses. An example is provided in this video from this year’s monsoon season. Here, a house was built on top of a drain. Over time, plastic waste was carried through the drain and became blocked underneath the house – meaning it could not be unblocked. During a heavy shower, the water became diverted out of the drain and ended up flowing through someone’s house onto the parallel street below. The home/business happened to sell gas canisters, which are seen flying down the stairs, carried by the water. I believe that ultimately, people had to destroy a wall of the house in order to unblock the drain. These kinds of small but complex and interconnected events are now common in an urbanising Kalimpong, and show that early warnings and ‘preparedness’ alone are not enough. Without stronger enforcement of planning laws and improved waste management, at both the individual and state level, these events will continue to take place.

The rain eventually stuttered to a halt, and I was able to safely take the short walk home.

First week of interviews:

For the first week or two, Lochan and I decided to stick to areas that are close to or in the municipal area of Kalimpong. What I soon realised, though, was that this did not mean that we would be looking into urban areas only. Here, the transition between small city and remote rural village can sometimes feel instantaneous. Many areas of Kalimpong are not accessible by road. To reach some villages that are less than 2km from the centre of town can take well over an hour. One common theme which has emerged so far, though, is that this is beginning to change. Both the central and state governments have made road connectivity a key policy to sell to voters, promising ‘jeepable roads’ to link up the most remote villages with main roads – though this is not without problems, which I will discuss later. These programmes have been in existence for almost 20 years, for example the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) (Prime Minister’s Rural Roads Scheme), which was commissioned in the year 2000. However, this is not to suggest that all of these villages have roads, or at least usable ones.

A typical ‘jeepable road’ linking up to a concrete road – also the 90m of road mentioned a little further on in the post…

Where roads haven’t been constructed due to either a lack of political will or because a road simply isn’t feasible – usually due to the gradient –  villages have other options. For example, they will often make use of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) programme – otherwise known as ‘100-days work’ – to acquire funding to build concrete steps between their houses and main roads, or between houses. The act guarantees rural households with 100 days of paid employment per year, with the funds usually used to allow locals to build small infrastructures in their locality. These funds are generally allocated through the panchayat structure. Lochan and I have now traversed so many of these steps that we have renamed MGNREGA as the ‘stairway grant’ – you can tell they are funded by the programme as there is almost always some kind of sign signalling that this is the case.

A typical MGNERGA/S sign

In other cases, there are other ‘main roads’ being built, often as bypasses or alternative routes, presumably with a view to relieving the strain on the narrow roads which cut through Kalimpong and connect much of the district to the plain areas. There is another motive for these roads too. As I have touched on previously, Kalimpong is a heavily militarised area, not in the sense that the population need to be subdued, more because of its proximity to the Chinese border. Many of the roads to the border points in Sikkim, such as Nathu-la, cut through Kalimpong – there are also a number of bases in the district. Huge army trucks are a common sight, and many of the roads are being constructed with a view to providing these trucks with alternative routes to the heavily manned border. Whilst these are often positive developments for the region, they don’t come without risks. One journalist told me that ‘if China are building more and bigger roads to the border, so is India – and vice versa’.

Big roads, big landslides:

Our first visit was to an area where such a new main road was being built, though it is as yet unfinished, apparently due to a legal dispute. The road was built with a view to relieving some of the traffic moving through the town, so as to provide an alternative route for the military and traders to reach the rest of the district without getting caught up in the congested town. In the monsoon of 2015, a landslide occurred below a newly constructed section of the road. The landslide killed 4 members of one family. 2015 was the last time anyone died due to a landslide in Kalimpong, with a few fatalities being recorded during that monsoon. Using various sources, we would try and visit many of the landslide areas from that year. On arrival at the place of the landslide described above, we asked some locals chatting at a shop where the landslide was, which turned out to be right where we were speaking to them. Lochan asked them about their recollection of the landslide. They said that a smaller landslide further up the hill had blocked a drain and caused the water to divert down some nearby stairs. The water then flowed over the road and onto the land which eventually gave way. They suggested that the defence wall at the side of the road hadn’t been built well and allowed the water to absorb into the slope below. We were told by everyone we spoke to that there were never any landslides in this area before the road was built.

The road mentioned above is seen in the top right. The area below is the top of the area where landslide occurred in 2015. The affected household was at the bottom of the considerable slope

A few of these people had been the first to respond to the landslide, and recounted the moments and days following. One of the victims was never found. They suggested we could speak to a relative of the family who lived just below where the landslide reached. We would not end up doing a recorded interview with them but we did have a long conversation where I took notes. It would turn out that they also lost a lot of land because of the landslide. However, like many people we have spoken to thus far, they have not received any compensation for the loss of land, both an economic asset and a source of food for many here. My friend Praful, who runs a local NGO who do work on landslides, has often talked about this as a blackspot within the landslide response policy. Compensation can be sought for property damage, death and injury, but appears to not cover land-loss. Having now spent a few weeks doing this research, it is certainly a recurring theme, and one I’m sure that I’ll write about more over the coming weeks.

The following week, we would come across another of these large-scale road constructions which was currently unfinished – though I think this one is still actually in the process of being built. The road had already caused a number of small landslides along the road. A local journalist had covered this road construction and described how one group of houses had been put at risk from the road potentially unsettling a large boulder above their house. We can’t recall seeing this, but the report was from last year so it may have been addressed since then. We do know that at the time of writing, the boulder was still there, and the monsoon was on-going. One of the worst affected areas is where the road cuts across a jhora in the hillside. Many metres below, an old footbridge can be seen. The road now cuts into the hillside and has evidently caused a number of landslides in this small gorge. It is difficult to see how these can be prevented without a huge amount of investment – which is seldom provided. This area is photographed below.

The area described above. The road can be seen to cut across the gorge.

The above picture was taken from the road seen in the top right of the picture. The other end of the curve of the road is seen in the top left where someone is standing. Before the road construction, a footpath lead over the bridge seen in the centre of the picture, someway down the small gorge. The corner section of the road is essentially an on-going landslip.

This area is not as heavily populated as other areas of Kalimpong, but there are a number of small villages and homesteads dotted along the road. Again, there are trade-offs between a boost to connectivity and the risk created through road construction. The boost in connectivity would be particularly useful for schoolchildren, one of which we spoke to on our walk, who have to walk a long distance along this road to and from the carpeted road where they can be picked up and driven to school. The journalist mentions how these children take two sets of clothes to school during the monsoon season, as they usually get very wet. Conversely, there is also an issue of exposure of the children to falling boulders and landslides during the rainy season. It is possible to have the connectivity without the risk, though this requires road construction which is completed quickly, properly funded, constructed with a view to preventing landslides and ultimately done professionally. Unfortunately, it can be said that almost none of these things are happening. I have chosen to wait to present these reasons why until I complete my fieldwork and am able to present them in my thesis and other publications. This is because my study is on-going and it is important that I reflect on how to frame these issues carefully when I have as much information as possible. For now, it can simply be said that it is difficult to separate the creation of landslide risk due to road construction from political processes; processes which relate to the local area, the state, the country and the legacy of colonialism.

Small roads and access issues:

For the next two days, we visited another rural area which was very close to the municipal area of Kalimpong. There are main two landslide-related issues for this area. The first relates to access. The village is most easily accessed via a footpath from the main road. This footpath bridges four jhoras (rivulets). The water flow through these jhoras is becoming stronger due to both the rapid urbanisation of the town at the top of the hill, as well as a general change in rainfall patterns. Everyone we have spoken to so far has said that the monsoon rains are falling in more intense, short downpours these days, as opposed to the lighter and longer lasting rains of earlier years. This could be linked to climate change related to anthropogenic processes across the globe, though there needs to be more research on this specific linkage. Because of the type of rock/soil, these strong currents erode the jhoras with ease during the monsoon season. This has resulted not only in wider jhoras, but also more jhoras, with whole new channels being carved out by the torrents of water – one of these new channels has only been around a few years. During the 4-5 month monsoon season, these jhoras often become impassable, with weak bamboo bridges often being washed away.

During the monsoon, the water in this jhora will often be higher than the bridge. This is one of 3 bamboo bridges – and is probably the best!

Even the very recent (a year or two) concrete bridges are showing signs that they will give away sooner rather than later. We are told that people have lost their lives crossing these jhoras in the past.

Concrete bridges don’t necessarily fare much better. This bridge is only a couple of years old and significant damage can be seen to the right.

The alternative route to the town, up the hillside and away from transport, is much longer and probably not much easier during the monsoon season. The result is that children often miss school, taxi drivers can’t do their work, people requiring medical attention are made more vulnerable, people are unable to buy necessities; and ultimately, people’s lives become much more difficult.

The second landslide related issue is that this particular area is a ‘sinking zone’. Essentially, the whole part of this hillslope is slowly slipping down into the Teesta river below. One man we interviewed pointed to a house on the other side of the main jhora cutting down the hillside and said ‘when I was a kid, around 30 years ago, we were level with that house’. We were now stood 20-30m lower than that house. The residents are aware of this sinking issue, and that there is a risk that in an extreme rainfall event or an earthquake, there could be significant slope failure – though this is very uncertain. Further, many landowners here have seen their land become infertile due to the changing geological structure of the land and soil beneath. Some springs have also moved/dried up, affecting people’s water supplies.

As such, many have moved away from this location. Some were able to secure funds to acquire land and build elsewhere. Most moved away to a temporary settlement in an area owned by the forest department, technically illegally. The life here was not much better, without basic facilities, right by the roadside, and generally not as spacious/nice looking as this area, which boasts stunning views and plenty of space. Further, this is an ancestral home for many here and the impacts on livelihoods are more of a ‘slow-burn’, meaning that day-to-day life — for most of the year — can carry on mostly as normal. As a result, many have since decided to move back to their original home and live with the risk of a major landslide. This doesn’t seem to play on the minds of the people here too much. One said that he’s not worried as he’s been here 30 years and there’s no indication of any huge problems. The main reason why people moved, and the problem they remain most concerned about, is not the distant risk of a major disaster, but the problem outlined above – accessibility.

The people here have been complaining to the authorities about their predicament for many years. Their demands are properly constructed footbridges and/or an alternative road to link up the village to another nearby road on the alternative routes. All that they have received so far is a couple of substandard bridge constructions and 90 metres of road (pictured above) to one group of houses, where 1km+ is really required. The people here feel that the government doesn’t really care about them enough for them to invest in these infrastructures. The area is not economically productive and there is no real political incentive for this level of investment. Within this vacuum of assertive action from the authorities – either state or Gorkhaland Territrorial Administration – the community has taken matters into their own hands. A year or so ago, they noticed that a JCB was clearing the 90m of road commissioned by the government. They quickly did a whip round, and paid the JCB to excavate a few hundred metres or so down the hillside. This road is now what people here would say is ‘jeepable’. This road connected maybe 60% of the village(s) to a concrete road at the top of the hill.

The type of road you’re left with after such a bulldozer excavation

The remaining 40%, further down the hill, then saw a similar opportunity. They clubbed together and then excavated what you might describe as the ‘outline of a road’. Lochan and I walked this stretch and agreed that you might just about get a monster truck up it!

The last stretch of ‘the road’

Based upon what I have noticed thus far, and according has been raised by other researchers, road construction is a major factors in creating landslide risk in The Himalayas. This is especially the case when the road construction is unplanned and carried out by non-professionals on limited budgets. Already on this road, after 2 months of existence and next to one of our interviewee’s homes, a small landslide has occurred and blocked ‘the road’. It is also worth noting that this road construction is taking place on a sinking hillslope. In the interview with the person whose house was next to the landslide, we had an interesting discussion. This young person was hoping to open a homestay here, where he would serve the locally grown vegetables and provide an ‘authentic’ experience for visitors. He also complains about the accessibility issues and the lack of government attention they receive, but also didn’t want to leave his home. In the absence of an elected panchayat representative, which he suggested could go a long way to addressing the accessibility issues, he said that (paraphrasing): ‘if we (the local community) can show that this place is an economic asset to the local government (by creating a tourism economy), maybe they’ll listen to us and give us some money for a proper road and/or build some proper bridges’. 

Here, it can be seen that small risks are being created by unplanned, under-funded and unprofessional infrastructure development, which has materialised in the absence of elected/accountable local government and in reaction to a government which is motivated primarily be revenue generation as opposed to sustainability and risk reduction. It is difficult to blame the people here for sacrificing the creation of what is a fairly small amount of landslide risk in favour of enhancing their own livelihoods. What is questionable, is whether it is right that their right to the receipt of support from the government should be based on profitability, especially when they pay taxes and land revenues to those who would provide that support.

Urban landslides:

As we were spending much of the first 2 weeks in and around the municipal area of Kalimpong, we also covered a couple of landslides which could be considered to be firmly within the urban area of Kalimpong town. According to the 2011 census, the population of this town is 49,000. However, this number was calculated nearly 10 years ago and probably missed a significant number of undocumented residents. Lochan and I both agreed that by now, the number is probably pushing 100,000 – much of this down to immigration. Either way, the urban area of Kalimpong is heavily concretised, clogged up with traffic and absolutely jam-packed full of people. Many people are moving into the town from the rural village or ‘bustee’ areas and building houses wherever they can squeeze in. We had information about a landslide that occurred in 2015 in the town area. Sadly, a young couple were killed by the landslide. On arriving, we ended up chatting to a local resident who pointed out where the landslide occurred and where the affected household used to be – it was just next to his house. We ended up interviewing him. It turned out that he and his family had moved into this area at the same time as the couple who lost their lives. They were not aware of any landslide risk when they moved. During another interview with another lady living below the landslide, who was only affected in a small way, we heard that there had been previous landslides in the area in 1968 and 2009. Having lived there for a long time, the family was able to provide some more context. They said that the main problem was related to poor drainage and concretisation further up the hill, which channelized the water and diverted it onto the land which eventually gave way during a period of heavy rainfall in 2015. This was also exacerbated by plastic waste. Another possible cause is that the land itself may have been dumped there many decades ago, following the excavation of land for the construction of a monastery. As a result, the land itself is possibly sitting on top of a more solid bedrock. After the interview, we went and looked at the area above the landslide zone, which was heavily built upon. Cracks in the concrete were also visible.

The landslide area is seen covered in the shrubbery. Prior to the 2015 landslide, this drain was not here. These cracks have developed over the past couple of years and indicate that the land may not be totally stable. Some of the residents below expect a landslide at some point in future.

Gives some perspective on the crack

The residents below fear there may be another landslide here in future, suggesting that 2/3 of the area has already gone in 2009 and 2015 – they worry the 3^rd area may also give way. The 2^nd house we spoke to described that the response from the local authorities has been almost non-existent for them, but that the family of the deceased was compensated. A common theme emerging is that unless landslides cause casualties and/or destroy properties completely, the support provided and attention given to the long-term concerns of people who feel at risk is negligible. One reason for this could be that the policies and frameworks in place to deal with problems relating to landslide impacts are limited. Support is available for reconstruction and compensation for casualties, but not much more, other than the provision of tarpaulins. On tarpaulins, one man told us that in recent years, one has had to complete an application form to receive tarpaulins, and that the process can take a day to complete if one has to travel to the block office. He was a day labourer and relied on a daily wage. After a few small landslides, he realised it was cheaper for him to just buy a tarpaulin than to miss a day’s work to get one for free. Returning to the limited policy frameworks, even the reconstruction payments take a long time to process as the application has to pass through the district administration, the GTA structure and an office in Kolkata before it is processed – this can take 6 months. For small damages, sometimes the applications aren’t accepted and/or the amount is negligible. The lady in the urban landslide area told us that in 2009, they received 2000 INR compensation for a whole room of their house being destroyed by a landslide – about £20. She suspected there was corruption involved. Further, it seems that if the landslide area is not under the ownership of the affected person, it also becomes difficult for people to raise concerns and facilitate preventative work on the area that would affect them in the event of a landslide. These people have long asked for a preventive wall to be built and/or proper drainage to be installed. The former has never materialised and the latter has only been partially completed – though it took the 2015 landslide to kick the concerned authorities into action. Preventive work is seldom undertaken here, if it is said that preventive work post-landslide doesn’t count! It is interesting to note, however, that there are certainly political incentives for the local authorities to undertake mitigation work post-landslide – i.e. votes and the perception that the given party will help you. It is an open question as to whether (real) prevention work could be incentivised in the same way – why not? It is another question as to whether this is the right way of doing things!

Drawing the themes together:

I have only covered a few issues here but have chosen to explain the complexities and contestations involved with the creation of landslide risk, efforts taken to reduce landslide risk as well as the issues involved with responding to the materialisation of landslide risk. In my next blog I will cover some other issues, as I have actually completed another 2 weeks of fieldwork in the time it has taken me to write this post about the first 2 weeks! I will now summarise some the main things to take away from this post:

• In almost all cases so far, it is difficult to argue that the components involved in the materialisation of the landslide were solely related to the physical environment – i.e. without any components relating to anthropogenic processes. There is a large degree of variation, but to assume that landslides are purely natural events from the outset will lead to an incomplete framing of the issue
• Each landslide event has been unique in some way. Of course there are common themes which emerge in relation to why landslides happen, such as: poor/inadequate drainage which may or may not have been impeded by plastic/solid waste; poor road construction, existing instability (often traced back to the major rainfall/landslide event of 1968), earthquake tremors; short and heavy rainfall episodes; irresponsible rice paddy irrigation, and increased run-off due to road construction. However, the combination of these components is usually unique and often in ways which are important to understand if efforts to prevent the materialisation of landslide risk is to be avoided. As a result, deterministic framings of disaster risk are unhelpful
• The implication of the above is that the people living in the area have the best understanding of why landslides occur in their area. This is also a result of the size and diversity of the district of Kalimpong, which is difficult to govern from a distance. The current assemblage of institutions means that in most cases, these local voices remain unheard in policy creation and planning. This in itself a factor in risk creation and materialisation.
• The main incentives for the development of physical infrastructure in Kalimpong are revenue creation, geopolitical strategy. It is difficult to separate this development from the creation of landslide risk here.

Final thoughts on the ups and downs of the past few weeks:

The most enjoyable part of the fieldwork has been the people we have met and spoken to. Everyone has been incredibly hospitable, kind, helpful and understanding; despite the hardships so many of them are facing – some of which can be really quite upsetting. This type of research can be difficult as feels extractive and at the point of interview it is difficult to feel like you can really do anything in return. I feel confident in the approach, though, as all the local experts I speak to have encouraged me to take this approach so that those affected can tell their side of the story – the side which is often left out in official narratives. The impacts of landslides are not only felt in the immediate aftermath, but for years and years after the event. These long-term struggles do not receive as much attention as the dramatic immediate impacts, but they are no less severe and certainly deserve more attention, and most importantly action. Understanding and discussing these challenging circumstances has served to really motivate me to make sure that in the long run, my research can help those here in Kalimpong who are already involved in the struggle to highlight and resolve these issues.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the second most enjoyable aspect of the past few weeks, the scenery:

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  Tarey Bhir Sikkim

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  A sunset one day

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  Just a nice view!

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  Teesta valley at dusk

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  A cloudy Kanchenjunga

P.S. My next post will be a little delayed as I am taking some time off 😊.

Fieldwork 2.0 – The first week back (19.09.2019 – 27.09.19)

I’m back in Kalimpong. Since my last post I’ve had an enjoyable but busy 2 months back in the UK, catching up with friends and family, spending time with my girlfriend, attending conferences, and reflecting on my first round of fieldwork. In this post I will go through my first week back in India, where I traveled from Kolkata to Kalimpong once again.

Thursday (19/09/19):

I seemed to be busy right up until my final day in the UK, which involved a slightly rushed journey to Heathrow for a 9:30am flight to Kolkata, via Abu Dhabi. Even my transfer at Abu Dhabi was rushed. I find this concept of passing through security for a connecting flight absolutely infuriating. You pass through security at the first airport and get caught out because you forgot about the bottle of orange juice in your bag from McDonalds the other night, fair enough. What can I have picked up in duty free that will be more harmful on my second flight than on the first? What am I going to attack the attendants with a massive Toblerone, or make some kind of explosive device by mixing up whatever I can find in duty free, perhaps stuffed inside a teddy bear wearing a union jack?

I had a 1 hour and 15-minute connection at Abu Dhabi – more than 30 mins of that was spent waiting to pass through a security check that the staff clearly found as pointless as I did. By the time I got through and put my shoes and belt back on, I had to all but jog to my connecting gate, almost slipping on a wet floor before I caught the last shuttle bus to the plane!

——- Rant over ———-

Friday:

I landed in Kolkata at 3:30am local time, 11pm UK time. After passing through customs and collecting my bag – which I’m always relieved to see — I waited outside for my lift. I was staying with my friend and colleague Shreyasi’s parents in Kolkata until Saturday night, when I would mirror the journey I took on my last visit – taking the train from Kolkata to Siliguri, before being driven to Kalimpong. Shreyasi’s (Shree) Dad came and picked me up from the airport early on Friday morning, and then took me to their house in Barasat, a city north of Kolkata which has been absorbed into the wider Kolkata urban area as the city has expanded. When we arrived, I was warmly welcomed with a cup of tea before I excused myself for the purposes of napping – it had been a very long day and I hadn’t managed to sleep on the plane.

I only took 3-4 hours sleep and woke up about 10:30 for some breakfast — boiled eggs, bananas and some toast — prepared by Shree’s mum. After some more tea Shree’s Dad took me out to the main commercial area of the area they lived in so I could get some cash out from the ATM. It was hot in Kolkata, around 33-34°C, but the monsoon was almost over, so the humidity had fallen away, though only slightly! It was hot enough for me to be pretty sweaty after what was probably a 10 minute walk each way. When I got back, I washed off the heat and the journey with a cool shower, before going back to sleep for a few more hours. Then, it was time for lunch. I was served rice, dhal, gourd, fried potato and a fish curry. Eaten with my hands of course, it was great!

In the afternoon we basically had what could be described as a siesta. Much like many Southern European countries, a lot of people here tend to avoid the heat of the mid-afternoon and stay indoors, waiting until the cooler evenings before venturing outside. At around 7pm, when it was already dark, we went back out to the commercial area around Barasat junction, the main train station for the town/city. First stop, 2 freshly fried samosas in a small restaurant by the constantly busy train station – the open shop front gave me some time to take in the scene. It was loud, with motorbikes whizzing by, horns beeping, bells ringing and people shouting. There are some temporary stages on the roadside. I was told they are for worshipping some Hindu gods/goddesses. There are idols at the front of the stage, loud (really loud), bass-heavy Bollywood style music is blasted out and people dance on or in front of the stage. It definitely contributes to the atmosphere!

We then we walked down to one of the main markets in Barasat. Walking down the street is a bit of an obstacle course, with no one keen on giving way until the last second before a collision. There is no cycle zone, pavement and road, it is just a free-for-all – but it works! The market was a bustling, colourful and loud experience. I didn’t buy anything but there’s not much that you couldn’t buy there. I remembered I needed some sunglasses, so we went to a shop where I could buy some. We then walked back through the market and back home, where I had some roti and veg before heading to bed. Thursday and Friday kind of blurred into one, so I was glad to get a nice long sleep.

Colourful market in Barasat

Saturday:

Shree and I had decided that I should try and get as much experience of some more ‘authentic’ Indian life during my short stay in Kolkata. I was to be up for about 8:30am on Saturday morning, so Shree’s dad could take me to the fish and veg markets, which were just a little further past where we visited the night before. It was hot again! We walked past some old and now decrepit buildings which were built by the British and formerly served as the courts and a prison – Barasat was a separate settlement to Kolkata in those days. Outside of the old prison building, the market started. Most people just have their stalls set out on the roadside, selling every type of fruit and veg you could imagine. After a while we came to the fish market, set just to the side of the market road under a metal cover. This was… an interesting experience. The first thing you notice is the smell, a very strong smell of fish as you enter the sticky-warm covered market. All around you on tarpaulins on the floor, with narrow paths between the three or 4 rows of ‘stalls’. There is a wide variety of fish. Bengali food cuisine contains a lot of fish, both fresh and salt-water. There were big silver scaled sort of ‘traditional looking’ fish, little finned ones, flat fish, squid/octopus, prawns, eels and other crustaceans. I was told much of the fish in this market came from ponds around the outskirts of Kolkata, as well as the Bay of Bengal and the Hooghly/Ganges river. A typical stall will have 2 people on it, one exchanging money and negotiating, and one manning a rather sinister looking hooked blade. For the bigger fish, they will have a big pot of water where the fish are kept alive — apparently ours was caught 4 days earlier. As the fish sell, they are taken out of the pot and put on onto the ‘display tray’, where they’ll still wriggle around before being chosen and subsequently passed to the blade operator – where they’re sliced up, gutted and diced. The guts kind of just sit around on the tarpaulin. Its all pretty rough and ready, and not something for the overly squeamish to witness. It is a part of the food process that we are very removed from in the UK. I’m not sure how I felt about the whole experience. I did feel a bit sorry for the fish, and I wasn’t so sure about the general conditions for selling food. But again, it must work. A picture of the stall we bought a fish from is below, it cost 400 INR, or £4-5.

Fish market in Barasat – all a bit gory!

The heat was quite intense, even in the morning. After walking home, picking some bananas up on the way, I enjoyed a cool shower when I got back, before having a breakfast of noodles — different! I felt exhausted afterwards and was struggling to keep my eyes open, so I took a nap until about 14:30, when I was served lunch – what a life! We had similar food to yesterday, including the fish we had brought a few hours earlier in a spicy curry sauce. An afternoon and evening of relaxing followed, before my 23:15 train.

We took the ‘local train’ from Barasat to Sealdah, one of the main rail hubs of Kolkata. The train itself would take around 50 minutes. Because I had my 25kg backpack and smaller backpack with me, we took a pedal rickshaw to the station instead of walking – another mode of transport ticked off! Despite taking the rickshaw, once we had climbed over the bridge to the far platform in the 28-degree evening heat, I was very sweaty. I wasn’t sure if all the stares were because white tourists don’t usually take the local train, or because I was dripping with sweat – maybe it was both! We had to wait a little while for the train, so the platform was starting to fill up. I had been warned that getting on the train can be a little… pushy. It was! I decided to try put my small bag on my back and carry my heavy one, which didn’t work out so well – though I’m not sure any configuration would have worked given the circumstances! I am struggling to think of a metaphor, but I guess if you just imagine 30+ people trying to get through a 2-metre wide door in what felt like about 10 seconds, then it was like that. I ended up on the train somehow, more from being pushed and pulled than from my own effort! Shree’s dad took my smaller bag somewhere in the melee. After the dust settled, I managed to climb through the crowd to an aisle, before stumbling onto a seat with my big bag. There were no announcements to mind the gap, and there were no doors, so you didn’t have to mind them closing! After only a couple of stops, the train started to empty, so that by the time we reached the terminus at Sealdah, we were the only ones left in the carriage. I was only a short walk to my platform, where Shree’s Dad left me to wait for the train. I was very grateful to them for their hospitality and to him for taking me all the way to the station. I promised I’d come back!

The empty local train carriage

The train arrived into the platform quite early. I found my seat  easily enough and after having my ticket checked – and the conductor mentioning Ben Stokes when I said where I was from – I made up my bed and settled down to sleep though the 10-hour journey.

Sunday – NJP to Kolkata, NH-10 condition and overwhelming arrival

I slept on and off throughout the journey, waking up for the last time 20 minutes before my 9:20am arrival. After spending the evening in an air-conditioned carriage, the heat of the morning hit me like a brick wall when I jumped off the carriage! I lugged my bag for the last time over the bridge to the car park where I found my friend and driver Onkar, who would drive me to Cloud 9 in Kalimpong, just like last time. The NH-10; which runs between Siliguri and Kalimpong/Gangtok, and which I have mentioned plenty of times before, was in a terrible state. The day I had left last time, granted, it wasn’t actually passable because of a huge landslide – but at least most of the road surface was in-tact and the ride mostly smooth. This wasn’t the case this time, I can’t remember a 200 metre stretch where we weren’t dodging or passing over a pothole, or where the tarmac had effectively washed away. We were near the end of the monsoon — ‘because the festivals are coming’, said Onkar —and it showed. The landslide at Seti Jhora which had blocked the road last time had evidently increased in size but had been stabilised with a protection wall and looked to be quite secure. When I pointed it out to Onkar, who drove me the other way last time, he said ‘yes, it is stable, but there is another that is causing troubles’ – in fact, there were numerous landslides all along the road. The day before, the NH-10 had been closed due to the landslide Onkar mentioned, which was only 5-10 minutes before the Kalimpong turn off at 29th Mile. It was quite a big landslide on a u-bend in the hillside, and had evidently caused a lot of damage. There was still a lot of water running down it and onto the road. It was barely passable and there was a big queue, but before long, we had passed it and were on the winding road up to Kalimpong. When my ears popped, I began to appreciate the cooler air.

I imagine that the politics and governance processes surrounding road construction will emerge as important in my research. The links between road construction and landslides in The Himalayas have not gone unnoticed by landslide experts and journalists alike.

Trying to clear the road the day after a landslide event on the NH-10 at 29th Mile, Kalimpong

Water flowing down the road after the landslide site

It felt quite surreal when I walked into Cloud 9 and was welcomed back by Binod, the owner, and Muna, the chef, cleaner and mother-figure of the hotel! I couldn’t quite believe I was back. I had time to refresh and relax in my old room with a tea, before a lunch of aloo paratha and dhal. I then went back to my room. The journey, the change in conditions, the task ahead and the realisation that I wouldn’t be home for another 4 months all hit me at once, and I had a bit of a meltdown. When I left, I was looking forward to getting home – now I was back. I called home and spoke to my girlfriend, which seemed to help. A delicious vegetable biryani plus watching both the first England game of the rugby world cup and Liverpool v Chelsea also helped to cheer me up. But I think that ultimately, I was just exhausted and overwhelmed, and I needed to sleep.

Monday:

I felt much better after a long sleep in the cooler air. I was woken up to order my breakfast, so I went downstairs 5 mins later. Binod informed me that he’d bought some baked beans, just for me! I had an omelette, some toast, beans and a grilled tomato – a good start to the week. To get the ball rolling I rang my friend and key contact Praful, so that we could catch up – I was to head up for about 3pm. After I finished unpacking, I decided to check in at my second home; Café Kalimpong. In true Kalimpong style, though, there was no power. Luckily, you can make tea without electricity. I ended up chatting with an American guy in the café. He seemed to have spent a lot of time in South Asia, primarily because he is involved with trying to promote ‘extreme’ or alternative sports, such as Jiu-Jitsu and Skateboarding – pretty niche! He was here for a few days escaping the heat of the plains whilst waiting for a permit to visit Bhutan. We exchanged numbers and agreed to have a beer at some point. Then I headed up to Praful’s after buying an umbrella in town, a vital accessory for anyone spending time in The Hills.

It was nice to back in Kalimpong’s bustling town centre

Praful introduced me to his niece who is helping him out with Save the Hills (STH) during what was turning out be a busy period. She had just finished her degree in Computer Science and was taking a year out before pursuing further studies, helping Praful to run STH in the meantime. Praful explained that he would be very busy this time around, and couldn’t accompany as much as last time. This was ok as I have built up a network from his help the last time and would be able to pick up from where I left off without his introduction. Nonetheless, I was invited to a meeting at his place the following day, where a group of civil society representatives I have met before would meet to discuss an important upcoming event.

On my way home I got a text from the guy I had met earlier saying that he was heading to Cloud 9 for a beer! I was barely through the door before I had a glass of Tuborg premium in hand! We ended up eating paratha and dhal and drinking beer until around 10pm. We discussed a lot, the highlight being a potential solution for preventing landslides on the roadside which involved building a skate park in a u-bend on a hilly road! The half pipe concrete shape is apparently a good support to hilly roads, and the introduction of skateboarding as a hobby could provide some opportunities for young people to pursue a new passion and maybe new opportunities. Wishful thinking maybe, but after a few beers it seemed like sliced bread. I was taken back to my 3^rd year lecture on the geographies of skateboarding and alternative uses of public and private spaces. Perhaps it is time to introduce a new literature on the nexus of skateboard geographies and Disaster Risk Reduction! Before he took a taxi back to his homestay, we suggested we might make it to the bar in town before he left, but it would turn out that his visa would arrive sooner than expected, so by Wednesday he was away to Bhutan. It was a good night, and an interesting conversation anyway!

Tuesday:

Praful’s house is about a 50-minute walk from Cloud 9, with a fairly considerable climb for the 2^nd half. It was almost inevitable then, after a few beers and sleeping in, that I would do the honourable thing and take a taxi instead. The meeting was interesting and threw up some potential new avenues for my research. I was also able to renew conversations with some of the people there and discuss the possibility of doing some interviews with some of them. The spaces where civil society operate in The Hills is interesting and complex, having to navigate a complicated cultural and political landscape (Joshi et al., 2019). These meetings are useful for me and I hope to cover the processes involved in my research.

After around 2 hours, Praful declared the meeting over and, in what appears to be a tradition after such meetings, cracked open some lunchtime beers. After pulau rice and muttar paneer, I was given a ride halfway home. As I left, I was glued to Twitter as the Supreme Court decision on whether Boris Johnson et al. lied to The Queen, was imminent. It was certainly a unique experience, finding out, whilst in the back of a car on a side street in Kalimpong, that the UK’s PM had acted unlawfully. For the rest of the day, I watched the reaction to the historic decision and tried to get my head round what was happening. I’m not sure whether being here and observing the unraveling of the UK government; who seem intent on burning down as many democratic institutions as possible in the process, is better or worse than experiencing it whilst in the UK. One interesting point is that no one I have spoken to in India thinks that: Brexit is a good idea, Boris Johnson is PM material, or that the UK is in a good situation politically. Most people ask me what on earth is going on, why/how is this weird Trump lookalike in charge, and what do I think of this Corbyn guy, because he seems to have some good ideas.

The day ended well with momos for dinner and a nice call home.

Wednesday – chill, no power. Met some people for dinner.

It had actually been a busy first few days back in Kalimpong, and I hadn’t really had a full day without packing, travelling, or meeting someone since sometime 2 weeks earlier! I decided that today was going to be a chill-day. After breakfast I watched Uruguay beat Fiji in the Rugby World Cup, a historic result. The RWC is showing everyday sometime between late morning and early evening here in India, so I’m able to watch a lot of the games that I might have missed in the UK. Shortly after the match finished, the power went down in Cloud 9. This was fine, as I planned to go to Café Kalimpong – which, it turned out, also had no power! So, I went back to Cloud 9, because at least the Wi-Fi was on an inverted power supply and was working there. I didn’t do too much other than update my fieldwork diary and read an interesting paper on the history of community responses to landslides in what is now the Czech Republic (Raška, 2019). Some locals were having dinner in the restaurant when I ate, so I spoke to them. One was the head of the local college and one was involved with some work with Praful. We spoke briefly about why I was here before they, like many others, asked me what was going on with Brexit! To continue the theme, after dinner I watched the coverage of the ‘resumption’ of Parliament; which was thoroughly depressing. Boris Johnson is doing his utmost to unsettle many of the established principles of democracy; which he was happy enough to promote during the referendum campaign, in order to force The Opposition into placing a vote of no confidence in him, so that he can try his best to manipulate the timetable in such a way that he can deliver a no-deal Brexit. It is odd and unprecedented to witness a PM beg The Opposition to allow him to have a general election, and it is equally odd to see The Opposition deny them that opportunity. However, they must make Johnson go back to Brussels to request an extension, so that his main election line of ‘get Brexit done’ can be exposed for the ridiculous lie that it is, and further so that he is humiliated to the extent that his election chances are hampered by his reputation as the PM and leader of a party who asked for Brexit and failed to deliver it. Perhaps then, we can put him in jail for his ‘technology lessons’ – but that might be a little too much to ask. In the meantime, their slash and burn tactics must be seen as what it is – a desperate attempt to have an election and spin the story to suggest that the EU failed to negotiate a deal and/or they were unable to get a deal because of ‘The Surrender Act’. This is all assuming that The Opposition are able to agree on a temporary Government of National Unity, or potentially, Johnson is dismissed for failing to comply with said ‘Surrender Act’/Benn Bill. No matter your political persuasion, it is the law! We’ll just have to hope that their poisonous rhetoric doesn’t get anyone killed in the meantime.

Thursday – Café Kalimpong, contacts, Rugby, Bhutanese food.

On Thursday I woke up feeling more refreshed after a relaxed Wednesday. I decided that today was the day to get the ball rolling with my research, so I fired off lots of Whatsapp messages to my various contacts, receiving warm welcome back messages throughout the day – I would be able to pick up the old lines and pursue interviews soon. I did this from the comfort of Café Kalimpong, which had managed to restore its power. I was keen to get all of this done so that I could get back to Cloud 9 for 16:15 to watch England beat the USA in the Rugby World Cup. It was Bhutanese style food for dinner and more horrified viewing of the House of Commons to follow.

Friday:

My main plan for Friday was to meet a student who I met on my last visit for lunch. She was about to head to The Netherlands to pursue an MSc in water management, so we caught up before she left and discussed future plans. Ultimately she wants to research water management in Kalimpong, so our research may converge in future. In the morning I had fried eggs and toast for breakfast, made some more calls, and then went to town to visit an ATM and grab a cup of tea at The Art Café. I was taking this week pretty easy, playing myself in, and enjoying some of the nicer parts of fieldwork.

Black Darjeeling Tea Brewing @ The Art Cafe, Kalimpong

Bhutanese food is a bit different. Most of the dishes come in a kind of cheesy sauce, often made from Yak’s milk, which is almost always full of chilli! The food often contains a lot of meat such as pork and chicken – oh and the rice is pink. Many people will know I’m not a huge fan of cheese, but in recent years I’ve started to eat it a bit more, and the cheese used here isn’t too pungent – either way the chilli tends to overwhelm the cheesiness anyway! Sanjana, my friend, ordered some red rice, cheesy potatoes, cheesy mushrooms and a kind of cheesy scrambled egg – meat options were also available! All of that was pretty good, though I’m not sure its my favourite cuisine which is available in the area – unfortunately I forgot to take any photos. One thing I am not a fan of is the tea. We ordered some Bhutanese tea, which looked like a fairly standard tea with milk. In reality, however, it contained salt and maybe butter. This wasn’t my first run in with the concept of salty tea. Apparently, my hotel owner also takes salt in his black tea. One day when we both asked for black tea, Muna mixed our cups up and gave me the salty one. I thought it was a wind-up at first, but apparently, it’s not uncommon here, and is often taken by people who can’t take sugar in their tea because of diabetes! To further add to my confusion, the idea with the Bhutanese tea was that you poured savoury puffed rice into the cup and then spooned them out, a bit like cereal. I tried it, and it was a firm ‘nope’ from my end, unfortunately! I’ll stick with boiled the red rice and plain tea; I think.

The restaurant was above a sweet shop, so I was pointed to some of the nicer sweets by Sanjana and bought some for later, before we went our separate ways. I had a coffee at Café Kalimpong before heading home for the evening. I felt as though I had a cold all day and couldn’t stop sneezing, so I decided just to rest up. It started to rain on Friday night, which set the precedent for what would be a very wet weekend!

But I’ll cover that in my next post.

The clouds roll in for a wet weekend in Kalimpong

References:

Joshi, D. et al. (2019) ‘Watered down? Civil society organizations and hydropower development in the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, Eastern Himalaya: A comparative study’, Climate Policy. Taylor & Francis, 19(sup1), pp. S63–S77. doi: 10.1080/14693062.2018.1557035.

Raška, P. (2019) ‘Contextualizing community-based landslide risk reduction: an evolutionary perspective’, Landslides. Springer, 16(9), pp. 1747–1762.

The Final Two Weeks – The Rain Arrives!

This blog post is very delayed. I simply didn’t have time to write it during my last week or so in India. Since returning to the UK, I have attended and presented at this 3-day conference in Newcastle, spent the weekend there, travelled to my home in The Lake District and returned to London, where I’m uploading this from. I will cover my last 2 weeks in India. Because this is a long time to cover in one post, I will change format slightly, choosing to group days together rather than working through topics on a day by day basis.

I spent the last 2 weeks of my trip in Kalimpong, trying to draw my experiences, discussions and ideas together before returning to the UK. The main theme running through the blog will be the arrival of the monsoon. I’ll describe the arrival of the monsoon in Kalimpong, the impact it has on The Hills, and also some links to some of the wider monsoon-related concerns across the rest of India. 

Monday (01/07) & Tuesday (02/07):

I was feeling much better after coming down with something in Gangtok and recovering over the weekend. The first two days of July were ahead, the sun was still shining, and I had an important meeting to attend. On average, it would be expected that the monsoon would have arrived by now — the lack of rain was starting to become a concern for the people of Kalimpong. It was fitting, then, that there was to be stakeholder engagement meeting for a project which is looking to tackle this issue of water scarcity. The meeting was scheduled for Tuesday. I had made a connection with the project during my first week in Kalimpong and had since met with one of the project managers in Gangtok – there was scope for cooperation. Praful, my main contact, was also involved and as a result I was invited to attend the ‘pre-meeting meeting’. Conveniently, the meeting was to be held in a hotel 30 seconds walk from mine, where two of the project members were also staying.

As I mentioned above, the project defines itself as working on ‘springshed management’ (Sharma et al., 2019) . The term ‘springshed’ is used to shift the water management focus from ‘watersheds’ to ‘springsheds’, an approach more suited to addressing water scarcity in mountainous regions – the water supply in such regions tends to be supplied by springs and thus groundwater aquifers, as opposed to lakes and reservoirs (Tambe et al., 2012).

So why is this project necessary? Why, in a green and lush region which: receives 2000-4000mm of rain annually; suffers frequently from flash floods and rainfall triggered landslides; and has a relatively low population density, is there water scarcity? Of course, there are some physical complexities to contend with; the rainwater is falling on steep slopes which rush the water into fast flowing rivers; most of the rain falls across 4 months of the year, and there is some evidence to suggest that climate change is unsettling established rainfall patterns. However, that is only a small part of the story. The correct answer, in fact, applies not only to The Hills, but also the rest of India. Whether its reservoir depletion in Chennai; extreme flooding in Mumbai; shoddy borehole management across North Western India; or aquifer depletion in The Hills, the answer is not that there’s too much or not enough water — the answer is that poor water governance is endemic in this diverse country. I’m certainly not the first to arrive at this conclusion, blogs and opinion pieces have been popping up all over the place during this period of transition between dry season and monsoon, where these issues come sharply into focus – I’ll let you google those! The issues facing water governance in The Hills largely reflect the same issues facing disaster risk governance, in fact you could say they basically the same. I have covered these in previous blogs, and other perspectives are widely available. I came across this article the other day – ‘Decoding the Darjeeling Dilemma: Why There is Rain But No Water’. This article covers a lot of ground and also has a pleasing title for someone who has spent a year reading about ‘assemblage theory’. Coding, in Delandan assemblage theory, refers to certain expressive components of assemblages which ‘code’ their behaviour and guide assemblages towards one of many virtual outcomes. Examples include language, policy, religious values and unwritten rules of communities. Anyway, enough of these Deleuzo-Guattarian abstractions, lets return to the politics of hydrology!

Just about everything in India is politicised, including water provision and/or disaster management. To give an example of the latter, the former dominant and now resurgent party of the Gorkhaland movement, the ‘Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) recently established a ‘Disaster Management Committee’ (DMC) to support the existing District Disaster Management Department and the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) disaster management department; currently under the administration of the Gorkha Janmutki Morcha, the party which has dominated the Gorkhaland movement since 2007 but whose governing faction is now seen as a puppet of the West Bengal government. We should also not forget the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), a wing of the Indian military which is deployed during major crises. Confused yet? I have deliberately muddied the waters here a little, but the point is that this multiplicity of departments and parties are all apparently working towards the same goal, but don’t appear willing to do so ‘under the same umbrella’, if you’ll pardon the monsoon pun. Why? Well, partly because the political conflict of the region has created a governance landscape which is more of a conflict mitigation measure than a solution-oriented system of government. Another factor is that short-term disaster response can come in handy for parties which require support from the ballot box. This of course is a contested and personal opinion, but it is amazing what a landslide protection wall, an earthquake resistant building or a river diversion scheme can do for a party’s reputation, especially in an area where the capacity for development is otherwise limited. A number of research projects have looked into this phenomena the world over (Pelling and Dill, 2010; Kelman, 2011; Siddiqi, 2013, 2014), and often look into the study of what political incentives drive disaster risk reduction (Williams, 2010; Jones, Oven and Wisner, 2016)). Is the same true for water?

Well yes, kind of. Like disaster management, different parties are involved in providing and managing water for the people of The Hills. However, I think the issue with water is more of a kind of ‘by-product’ of a political struggle which has strangled the socioeconomic development of the region. This has not only held infrastructure development back but also created a kind of water governance vacuum which has since been filled with a variety of individuals and groups manipulating the water supply to their own political and economic ends. One manifestation of this is the provision of water by Jeeps carrying water tanks, a service provided by what a local person described as ‘basically a mafia’ who extract groundwater or draw water from natural springs. It is not only organised groups, however, who operate ‘in the gaps’. A small number of individuals will also tamper with the over-ground water pipes, diverting the flow or simply unscrewing the valve and filling up jerry cans — you see this happening all over the place!

I think it is also important to note that it is not only the fault of the authorities. Actions from individuals outside of government exacerbate the issues too. For instance, lots of households could take steps to improve their own household’s water management. The main option available here is rainwater harvesting, which is widely practiced but certainly not universal. Both Individuals and the authorities are complicit in the concretisation of the landscape, reducing the ability of soils to absorb rainwater and thus recharge the aquifers which supply the springs.

The outcomes of such state ‘vacuums’ are not inevitable, as much critical literature has shown – particularly in reaction to Hardin’s reductionist and now largely discredited and disproven (Ostrom et al., 2002) theory of the ‘tragedy of the commons’. Nonetheless, in Kalimpong, the lack of capacity, accountability, education and information; created by the under resourced and fragmented system of governance, are certainly the main problems facing sustainable water management there. This is where springshed management project is looking to help – hoping that a improvements in information and education might help to address the issue of accountability.

The Monday planning meeting was fairly short, with most of the time spent arranging the room and getting the projector in the right position! There was a debrief on who would be attending and who the most important people to ‘engage’ would be — the proposed site of intervention requires permissions and cooperation from a variety of stakeholders, from private land-owners, the military, the GTA, and the district authorities. After only a couple of hours, the small group disbanded and I returned to my hotel before heading to my second home, Café Kalimpong. I would also head out for my usual walk around the hill-top, giving me views both East and West from Kalimpong’s ridge-top location. My hotel faces East, away from The High Himalayas of Nepal and Sikkim, and towards the slightly lower hills between Kalimpong, Bhutan and The Plains.

Looking West from the Durpin side of the ridge which Kalimpong sits on — On a clearer day, you would see rolling mountains rising towards the High Himalayas

Tuesday meeting:

It was a relatively early start on Saturday. The schedule was for a 9:30 arrival for a 10 am start. I showed up just after 9 to meet the team. I would mostly just be observing for the day, but arrived a little early to get a quick chat with everyone before it began. The public meeting was held in the top floor conference room of a fairly large and quite upmarket ‘colonial style’ hotel, just next to mine. Before the meeting began, welcome tea/coffee was provided in the restaurant area. I managed to get a little bit of networking done before everyone moved upstairs. There were around 40-50 people at the meeting, spanning government officials, journalists, private land owners and school teachers. Praful acted as the MC for the event and gave a good introductory talk which outlined the problem and the purpose of the meeting. Before the NGO leaders spoke, it was time for introductions. I thought this meant the speakers and perhaps the more ‘important’ stakeholders. In fact, it meant everyone in the room! The roaming mic was passed around and everyone gave their name/affiliation in turn; myself included, an unexpected but useful opportunity to reach out. The front row was reserved for the senior government representatives and a senior representative from one of the NGOs. After the introductions, they were wrapped in a kind of garland/scarf in a customary show of respect, I think!

Presentations from the two NGOs followed, covering the science behind the project and providing specific information on the sites. I had seen much of this at the previous meeting — which was more specifically targeted at the ‘community level’ — but it was good to refresh my memory. After some more tea, a representative from the Government of Sikkim — where similar springshed management projects have been successfully rolled out across the state — gave a talk. The representative had, in the past, presented the work at a UN conference as an example of good practice on water governance. Of particular interest to me was a reference she made to her experience of working with government officials in Darjeeling. She said that in the past, she met with several Block Development Officers from Darjeeling District who were interested in rolling out similar projects in their respective blocks. Unfortunately, she went on, these BDMOs are usually transferred after a few of years, taking their newly acquired knowledge of springshed management with them. As a result, she said, they now prefer to work with NGOs in Darjeeling and Kalimpong ‘because they are more likely to stick around’! What emerges here then is an apparent mismatch in capacities. Unlike BDOs and government officials, NGOs — specifically their staff — are not likely to be either voted out of office or removed from their post following political upheaval. As such, they are able to both ‘think long-term’ and also deliver projects which might have very long time-frames. However, they do not have the power, mandate or capacity to deliver these projects at a block or district wide scale. The latter, of course, would normally fall under the purview of the government — but the turnover of staff means that, in practice, their abilities to deliver such projects are limited. These capacities are also limited by the absence of a functioning panchayat system in The Hills of West Bengal; unlike Sikkim, where their panchayat system is generally regarded as very effective.

The issue of long-term planning would crop up again following this presentation, in the stakeholder dialogue meeting. The army representative — present because part of the proposed site fell into military-controlled land — indicated his admiration for the project, but said he would have to speak to his superiors, because ‘The Army has strict plans which have a time frame of 20-30 years, so we’ll have to check that this doesn’t undermine any future plans we have for this land’. Obviously, these plans are subject to change as the military is, by default, constantly responding to forces beyond their control. Nonetheless, unlike their counterparts in other government offices, they are given the time, space and power to create and deliver long term plans without too much interference from the voting population. I am by no means advocating for the removal of universal suffrage — despite the individuals it has delivered to the world in the past 2 years(!) — but it does seem that the short-term nature of the politics the current system gives rise to, there is certainly scope for governance reform! Similar responses were given by the other ‘important’ stakeholders — or the ones with the power to say no! All were generally very welcoming and positive about the project, but almost all said they would have to receive clearance from their superiors — something Praful had previously said was inevitable.

The senior representative of the large NGO facilitated the more open ‘stakeholder dialogue’. Once the front row had had their say, the less influential stakeholders were given the opportunity to speak and ask questions. Several interesting points were raised in this session. One particularly interesting remark was made by a representative of an international NGO external to this project but who work in Darjeeling and Sikkim. He referred to the presentation given by the official from the Government of Sikkim, and pointed out that they also found it ‘much easier to work in Sikkim’ than West Bengal, where ‘things are much more tricky!’. Most of the ‘less influential’ stakeholders were very cooperative and willing to get on board. Of course, those furthest from power are often the ones with the most to lose from environmental degradation and water scarcity. The main theme put forward by the NGO rep in the ‘wrap-up’ was the need to ‘shift our objectives’ in order to facilitate a more sustainable development pathway — a point I whole heartedly agree with! In fact, right at the end of the dialogue, the facilitator put me on the spot and asked me to weigh in with my own opinion — panic! I could hardly say no, so decided to quickly outline why I was interested in this project in the context of my research, before coming out with the usual plateaus about ‘how we need more cooperation across government and society on risk reduction and sustainability challenges’ in Kalimpong and all over the world etc. I also thanked everyone there for making me feel welcome. After the closing formalities, it was time for lunch. A nice selection of food was available on the buffet ­— so nice that I went back for seconds! The lunch gave me another networking opportunity, where I was able to shake some hands and even organise a meeting for later in the week.

It was already 3pm, so I didn’t do much else other than go for another evening walk over the ridgetop!

Wednesday – Friday, meetings.

Wednesday is market day in Kalimpong. Given I was in my penultimate week, I decided I should go and see the market — known as ‘Haat Bazaar’ — in full swing. I needed to buy a couple of things in town anyway. Before that, I had a meeting arranged in the morning. The meeting went well, and was conveniently held in a place which was on the way to town/the market from my hotel.

Kalimpong grew as a trading centre during the period of British rule, becoming a vital node in the global Tibetan fur/wool trade network. Before the technological advances and geopolitical posturing which dried up the cross-border trade, haat bazaar was the beating heat of Kalimpong, and would have probably had a much more interesting selection of goods available! There are still the photogenic spice and fruit stalls, curious little Buddhist icons and artworks, crowds pushing past each other down the narrow aisles, the smell of street food, and the buzz of negotiations and exchange; but the furs, the wool, the foreign traders and the wealth have been replaced by cheap imported knock-off branded clothing, plastic utensils and generally poorer merchants.

I spent the afternoon arranging some more meetings and watching England vs New Zealand in the final group stage round of the world cup. It was another hot and humid day in Kalimpong, so I was glad to get in and cool down. Praful had invited me up for dinner in the evening. It is quite a steep walk from my hotel, so by the time I reach there I’m usually a sweaty mess — this time was no different! It is always a nice evening spent there, with nice food and interesting conversation. I was given a lift home by his son.

On Thursday I had 2 quite long and interesting meetings. On Friday I had a bit of a nothing day, taking some time to speak with family and get on with some admin tasks — I managed a walk too.

Saturday – RAIN.

I woke up on Saturday with a clear objective in mind — buying gifts. I decided my first stop would be café Kalimpong. The café is very much focussed on promoting local products and the district in general. It has a shop in the same building, run by the same group but under the name of the ‘Kalimpong local project’. I needed to get cash still, but earmarked what I wanted to buy and decided I’d have a quick cup of tea before venturing to town to get cash and other gifts. Just after I finished my tea, however, the heavens opened. Up until that point, any rain which came had lasted no longer than 1 hour and was usually followed by a long dry spell. Such was my faith in the lack of rain, I hadn’t even packed my umbrella. Little did I know, that this particular shower had essentially been the curtain raiser for the arrival of the monsoon-proper in The Hills. The rain didn’t look like stopping, so I ordered another drink and settled in to working on a presentation for a conference I would attend 2 days after arriving back in the UK. I got a bit carried away with the work and a couple of hours flew by. It had finally stopped raining at some point during that time, so before the afternoon was out, I decided I’d go and get some shopping done at least. Almost as soon as I got to the till to pay my bill, the heavens opened again! So back to work it was for another hour or so — no shopping would be done today! After nearly 2 hours, the rain was still falling heavily and I was starting to get a bit of cabin fever. I waited and waited but eventually I decided that I was just going to have to get wet. It is quite remarkable how little time it takes to be totally soaked by these monsoon rains — we’re talking 30 seconds max and you’re completely drenched. It was a long and wet 5-10 minute walk up to my hotel. Of course, 15 minutes after I returned, the rain stopped!

After drying off and apparently undeterred by the arrival of the monsoon, I decided that I should really get out of the hotel on my final Saturday night in Kalimpong. Thus far I hadn’t really explored many of the bars in the town, partly because I’d been told that the successive agitations had left the town’s nightlife on the floor. Nonetheless, I had heard of one place, Roxberry Pub, which was supposed to be half decent and which served veggie food. It was about 15 mins walk downhill from my hotel. It was overcast but feeling quite dry when I left between 7 and 8pm. The bar was a little tucked away from one of the main streets in Kalimpong, but I was pointed in the right direction by someone standing outside. It was quite big inside, looking like a standard Western bar/club. There was a semi-outdoor seating area upstairs, but this was packed out. I ended up sitting down in the main bar area, which was really quite warm and muggy. I ordered a bottle of Budweiser, which was ice cold and sweating in the muggy heat — it tasted great. The music was a predictable mix of Justin Bieber and Western monotone electronic hip-hop — not my taste but familiar at least. I ordered malai kofte and rice and had a few more beers. At around 9, I asked the waiter if I could get a taxi around this time. His face didn’t fill me with confidence but he said he’d ring some numbers — no luck. Unknown to me, tucked away in a muggy and windowless bar, the rain outside was absolutely torrential. I waited in vain at the door for about 15 minutes, but the rain just wasn’t going to stop. Armed with a small umbrella and with my backpack on my front, I headed out into the rain (again). The umbrella kept my head dry, but that was about all. The water was streaming down the roads, high enough to flow over the top of my shoes when I crossed — it was a squelchy walk back up the steep hill to my hotel. My room was now full of drenched clothes, the prospect of drying them anytime soon was looking slim!

Final week:

Saturday’s rain, which actually started on Friday night, sparked the beginning of what would be an exceptionally wet week right across India’s North East — particularly in The Hills. As the rain continued over the weekend, the landslide reports began to come in. I’m in a group chat which is concerned with various hazards and environmental issues in The Hills, made up of local and international academics, NGO workers, government officials, journalists, concerned citizens and everyone in between. It is perhaps one of the fastest ways to understand when and where landslides are happening in the region. It is also useful to understand if roads have been closed etc — something which happens often. The chat is also used to circulate weather forecasts and warnings, though it’s unclear whether these warnings are really acted upon! A few reports came in on Monday morning. Sadly, a couple had lost their lives due to a landslide at 1:30am on Monday morning. The slide occurred in Darjeeling district and was one of many which happened over the weekend and early part of the week. Save the Hills have covered this period of heavy rainfall and the landslides triggered by it.

After a weekend of heavy rain, many were hoping for a drier period. These hopes would never materialise, as the rain continued to fall. Much of the rain fell overnight, the rain pounding on the metal roof certainly helped with sleep! It often fell during the day too, sometimes for hours on end. I had a few meetings arranged, which were luckily unaffected by the weather. However, much of my week was spent keeping dry in the hotel and/or Café Kalimpong. I had hopes to head out into some of the rural areas of Kalimpong District with Praful, but these plans fell away with the roads. Before the week was out, some areas had already surpassed the monthly average for rainfall in July. In some areas, the monthly average was reached in only 6 days. This chart from Save the Hills gives some more details on this.

Rainfall data 06/07/19-16/07/19 collected and presented by Save the Hills – http://savethehills.blogspot.com/2019/07/extreme-event-in-darjeelling-himalayas.html

The rain continued through the early part of the week. I was beginning to worry about my journey home, which would involve travelling down the notorious NH-10, which I have discussed before. There had been a few minor landslides early in the week, and then on Thursday, this happened…

Photo sent to me of Seti Jhora on the morning of 11th of July. Someone has provided footage here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14QpW7h6Gjg

A huge landslide had completely covered the NH-10 at Seti Jhora, only around 10km from Sevoke, the place where the road moved away from the trouble caused by the Teesta. The road would remain closed for the day, but could be cleared by the weekend — if it stopped raining…

The rain continued, of course. All over The Hills, roads were shut down, holidays were cancelled, plans were shelved and properties were damaged. The rain and disruption made the national media, with the earlier fatal landslide and a fatal car-crash on the NH-10 a few days after providing fuel for dramatic media coverage. These rains and events have been part of a period of extensive damage and loss across the entire region, summed up here by the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Given my research focus, this was all quite interesting for me. It seems difficult to really draw any conclusions about how people perceived such events in The Hills. Certainly, they’ve seen it all before. The rains and landslides always cause a bit of a stir, but people all over the world always talk about the weather! I did sense that there was a sense of helplessness or inability to really do anything about the landslides. I think the people are more than aware that the government and public authorities could and should do more — but no one actually expects them to do it. Even some of the people in government don’t expect the government to do anything about it! There is also a sense that even with 100% commitment and all the money in the world, there would still be landslides here — which is probably true. I think there is genuine concern about the impacts of this continued degradation, which one official described as the result of anthropogenic and natural processes, at a ratio of 50:50. I have heard a few people mention that many of the non-native businesses are beginning to up sticks and move away from Kalimpong, sick and tired of both the lack of water and unreliable roads. There is a concern that the current political set-up is only equipped to stand by and watch the economy and socio-economic development of the hills slip away — in a metaphorical and literal sense.

Does this indicate that there is a hunger for change? Certainly, but there doesn’t seem to be much actual momentum or organisation to achieve this, perhaps other than the usual suspects who are vying to continue to nearly achieve Gorkhaland… There is certainly an argument to be made around the merits of decentralisation in relation to environmental governance and disaster risk management. Can this argument be made in a way that the more emotive demand for ‘Gorkhaland’ is addressed but not the central message? Not for a long time is my immediate feeling, but there is a sense that time is running out.

One thing is clear. Understanding these complex and competing imaginations of what people want to see happen in The Hills is vital for anyone trying to understand why landslides continue to happen here. That is what I will try to understand when I come back in September.  

Saturday:

I had spent Friday nervously willing the rain to stop, aware that without the NH-10 opening, the usual 2-hour journey to the train station in Siliguri was looking more like a 5/6-hour journey. Luckily, my train wasn’t until 8pm, so time was on my side. It rained overnight on Friday and I woke up to drizzle on Saturday morning. In order for my driver to get back to Kalimpong, we were scheduled for a 10am departure — pushed back from 1pm due to the continued rain. I would be joined by some relatives of Praful’s who needed to get to Siliguri too. The road remained shut, but we had a trustworthy local driver and the WhatsApp chat on our side. We set off with a few alternative options in mind. Praful’s relative and the driver decided that we would try and get past the landslide, which was apparently being cleared. If that didn’t work, there was an alternative road we could take which essentially climbed off the NH-10 to the top of the valley and then plunged back down on the other side of the landslide. We passed a few minor landslides on the way to the big one, before coming to the long line of traffic which preceded the landslide by 1-2kms — see video here.

A ‘smaller’ landslide we drove past on the NH-10

My own picture of Seti Johroa landslide at around 11:30am on 13/07/19

Seeing as we were there, we three passengers decided to walk along to assess the damage. It was very hot and humid down in the Teesta valley — some of the people had been waiting for 5 hours. The road had been just about passable until about 7:30am, but the authorities were now clearing away the rubble, so the way was shut for now. We decided, based on the amount of rubble remaining and the time it would take for the hundreds of vehicles each side of the landslide to clear, that it would be just as quick to take the detour than it would be to wait. It might be a bit cooler and more scenic too!

The road we took was exceptionally steep and narrow. A lot of people had the same idea as us, so the traffic going both ways was really far too much for these roads to handle. The journey was long, arduous and at times a little nerve-racking!

The alternative road – a long and steep descent is seen to the left

The most congested area was a village where a funeral wake was taking place, meaning that the narrow raods of the village were swelled with relatives of the deceased, who appeared to be very popular. It was interesting to note that the landslide we were avoiding was around 1000m below where we were driving — the run-off water responsible was seen rushing over our road (video here). After nearly 3 hours, we arrived at back at the NH-10, and the traffic jam caused by the landslide was only just beginning to clear. I was going to try and find the route we took, but the road doesn’t appear to be on google maps! The road was still congested, as the search and investigation into the fatal car crash around the coronation bridge on the NH-10 was still underway, blocking part of the road. The rest of the journey was relatively smooth, and almost 6 hours after leaving Kalimpong, I arrived at my destination.

I had arranged to meet a PhD student I had been put in touch with a colleague here in the UK. I had met her briefly on my previous visit to Siliguri as she was studying in the geography department at North Bengal University. She kindly invited me to her family home where I was given some lovely food. I had a few hours to kill, so she and a friend showed me around Siliguri. There isn’t really much to say about Siliguri, it’s a very busy city which is rapidly growing. There is no discernible city centre, I have been told it has changed about 3 times since the British constructed the railway to Darjeeling and kickstarted the urbanisation of the town.

A side street in Siliguri

It was dry there when I arrived, but it didn’t take long for the rain to start. We were forced to dive into a tea shop and then a momo house! After a while we returned home and then they took me to the bustling New Jalpaiguri station. We arrived quite early, so waited a while before her Dad helped me through the crowds to my platform and saw me off on the train. I was quite exhausted after the journey. As a result, the combination of the sound of heavy rain on the metal roof and the gentle rocking of the train on the tracks had me asleep in my cosy bottom bunk in no time — there wasn’t much socialising or free food on my return journey!

I woke up with 40 mins or so to go until I reached Sealdah, Kolkata, shortly before 9am. I took an uber to my hotel and then had some breakfast, I would have to wait a little time before my room was ready. For the rest of the day, I had only one real plan — the cricket! I spent some time refreshing myself after what was essentially 24 hours of travelling. It was hot in Kolkata, comfortably 35C by lunchtime with humidity at about 90%. I did want to see a bit of the city, and had an urge to see the Hooghly River — a part of the Ganges system. Prinsep Ghat was recommended to me as somewhere to visit which would take me to the riverside. Prinsep Ghat is a kind of memorial to an influential British colonialist. The ‘ghat’ itself is a big white pavilion type building, and is quite uninspiring in many ways. The garden it sits within is more attractive, and sits at the end of a pleasant riverside promenade. I got a few nice pictures and built up a good sweat during a 15 minute walk down the river front!

Prinsep Ghat and a bridge over the Hooglhy River behind

The Hooghly River, Kolkata (Ganges)

Without further ado, I ordered an Uber and headed swiftly towards a nice chilled pint of draught lager — my first draught pint in 7 weeks! I chose to go to the ‘Irish House’, which is located within a very posh shopping mall. It wasn’t like other Irish Bars I’ve visited, more like TGI Fridays but with an Irish theme! I watched the first innings there and then took an auto-rickshaw to a place called ‘The Monkey Bar’ where I would watch the 2^nd innings. I would go on to make an error of judgement, summed up in this twitter thread!

An early start on Monday morning with a bit of a sore head followed. My journey from here onwards was pretty smooth, save a very long wait to check my bags in at Kolkata airport. I would touch down by 18:30 UK time. My journey wasn’t really over until I arrived in Newcastle on Tuesday evening, for a 3-day conference Wednesday-Friday at Northumbria University, my old institution! It was nice to be back in the UK and back in what is probably my favourite city. I was tired by the time I reached Newcastle on Tuesday, having been in 5 cities for no longer than 24 hours since Saturday morning!

I’m not planning on writing another post before I return to the field in September, but you never know!

Thanks for everyone who has been reading so far, its been nice to know people are finding my posts interesting, if nothing else!

References:

Jones, S., Oven, K. J. and Wisner, B. (2016) ‘A comparison of the governance landscape of earthquake risk reduction in Nepal and the Indian State of Bihar’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Elsevier, 15, pp. 29–42. doi: 10.1016/J.IJDRR.2015.10.011.

Kelman, I. (2011) Disaster diplomacy: how disasters affect peace and conflict. Routledge.

Ostrom, E. E. et al. (2002) The drama of the commons. National Academy Press.

Pelling, M. and Dill, K. (2010) ‘Disaster politics: tipping points for change in the adaptation of sociopolitical regimes’, Progress in human geography, 34(1), pp. 21–37.

Sharma, G. et al. (2019) ‘Water management systems of two towns in the Eastern Himalaya: case studies of Singtam in Sikkim and Kalimpong in West Bengal states of India’, Water Policy. doi: 10.2166/wp.2019.229.

Siddiqi, A. (2013) ‘The Emerging Social Contract: State-Citizen Interaction after the Floods of 2010 and 2011 in Southern Sindh, Pakistan’, IDS Bulletin. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111), 44(3), pp. 94–102. doi: 10.1111/1759-5436.12036.

Siddiqi, A. (2014) ‘Climatic Disasters and Radical Politics in Southern Pakistan: The Non-linear Connection’, Geopolitics. Routledge, 19(4), pp. 885–910. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2014.920328.

Tambe, S. et al. (2012) ‘Reviving dying springs: climate change adaptation experiments from the Sikkim Himalaya’, Mountain Research and Development. BioOne, 32(1), pp. 62–73.

A trip to Darjeeling & lots of momos

In this post, I mostly cover last week’s trip to Darjeeling. I will go off on some governance-related tangents throughout. Momos appear throughout…

Monday:

The stomach upset really knocked my energy levels over the weekend. By Monday I was feeling a bit better, but took it easy in the morning. I was travelling to Darjeeling the next day so decided I needed to do a few things in town. I needed to print something off, so I went to the market I had discovered the previous week. The market contains a number of small window-stores and a few bigger shops. It is quite a cramped space, with a trench-like bottom floor containing a few of the smaller stores and repair shops. I found a printing shop and got what I needed done. I then got some cash out for my forthcoming trip. The ATMs here are a bit different to the UK, usually inside a small room or bank off the street. The room is usually air-conditioned and there is usually a guard on the door, operating a one-in, one-out policy. A secure and cool experience indeed! After that I headed to ‘Café Coffee Day’ (CCD), India’s answer to Starbucks or Costa. CCD branches looks just like any Western chain café, offering similar types of milky coffee with syrups, as well as coolers, iced coffee and paninis. They are heavily air conditioned, I actually felt a bit cold when I was sat in there! I ordered a cappuccino and sat down to try and work on last week’s blog. I ended up having to write quite a few emails, and before I knew it I had run out of my free Wi-Fi allowance — a bit mean on CCD’s side I think. I still needed to send some emails, so I headed up to Café Kalimpong — any excuse!

Kalimpong had been covered in cloud for 2 days straight, giving the town a mysterious sort of feel — it didn’t do much for the views though!

Foggy Kalimpong

Tuesday:

Darjeeling is about a 2.5-3 hour drive from Kalimpong. The route involves descending down to bottom of the Teesta valley before climbing up the opposite hill and continuing to climb along hillsides which are heavily forested or serving as tea gardens. It is the same route I took to Lamahatta, described in my last post. The late onset of the monsoon and the on-going heatwave affecting much of North and Central India, there were still a lot of tourists in The Hills. This meant that the traffic around Darjeeling could be quite bad. The huge influx of tourists into the Hill Stations has been exceptionally high this year, bringing concerns about the ecological impact this might have. With temperatures set to continue to rise, the complexity of the problems facing The Hills continues to grow. A recent study has shown that the rate of glacier-melt in The Himalayas has advanced considerably in recent decades — most experts suggest this is due to climate change — putting further stress on the already under-pressure water supplies for the region. If India is set to face more extremely hot summers and late monsoons, then the rapidly expanding population of the populous Northern and Central States — which is also increasingly wealthy — will continue to flock to The Hills to escape the heat. They will come up the narrow roads in inefficient, greenhouse-gas emitting Jeeps and stay in hotels which have to offer a constant water supply to remain competitive. They will demand food and other supplies which will be brought to The Hills in trucks and consumed by the tourists. The waste will be burned, thrown into the jhoras or flushed down the western style toilets. One engineer who worked in the district authority said to me ‘where does all the waste-water from the hotels go? Nobody knows!’. Underground perhaps? Into the soil? If no one knows, or no one wants to know, then the answer to the question is probably not going to be one which waste management experts would look upon with admiration. The tourist population is likely to use far more water than the resident, water which is increasingly scarce. New approaches and ideas on how to manage these interconnected and complex issues are required urgently — the costs of ignoring the problem could be irreconcilable.  

I had a meeting arranged at 10:30am. The purpose of my visit was to introduce myself to some key contacts, have some informal meetings where I would not record the conversation but make some notes, and explore the directions that I should take my research based on discussions with local experts and practitioners. People – particularly those working in government — tend to more open to informal discussions as opposed to recorded interviews. The idea is that the latter comes later, once rapport is built!

Considering the potential traffic, I was advised to give myself 3 hours to get there. We arrived early, so I waited in the car at the destination and waited for Amit, my guide for the trip who has been working with Praful on ‘Save the Hills’. He had arranged all the meetings for me, with people working across disaster management in Darjeeling — both government and non-government. My first meeting went well, I was able to gain a key contact back in Kalimpong through it. Amit and I then walked up to ‘Revolver’, my Beatles-themed hotel. I was staying in Brian… The other rooms were called John, Paul, George and Ringo; mine was named after their first manager, Brian Epstein.

I freshened up and then we headed back out into the unseasonably warm day. The next stop was a meeting with the head of an NGO which is based in Darjeeling but also works extensively in Kalimpong district. This was another fruitful meeting that could open some useful doors for my research.

We had a bit of time to kill before the next meeting, so I asked Amit to take us to a good lunch-spot. We mazed through the central souk-like market and went into a restaurant which should really have only had one storey. In reality there were two storeys, with the seating area of the restaurant impossibly squeezed on top of the kitchen. It was packed, but we managed to squeeze into a table for two. Since arriving here, I’ve taken to the popular Nepali dish ‘momos’, steamed dumplings which come in beef, pork, chicken or veg varieties. They usually come with a very hot chilli dipping sauce, in this case there was just a big pot of this on each table. We ordered a plate of 8 each, and then one more to share!

Momos in Darjeeling

After lunch we went to our next meeting at the District Disaster Management Office — another useful meeting where I got some useful information and a couple of policy documents.

We still had some of the late afternoon left, so I asked Amit to show me the town centre and some of the sights. We walked up to the ‘chowrasta’ which is at the top of the hill which Darjeeling sits upon. The chowrasta basically serves as the ‘town square’ and can also serve as a venue for music performances or political rallies. Last summer, the big screen at the end of the square showed the Football World Cup matches.

The Chowrasta in Darjeeling – undergoing maintenance!

Looking the other way on the Chowrasta – Towards the town

From here we walked around ‘The Mall’ which is a circuit around the rest of the hilltop, old British-style hotels are dotted all along the walk. One of the oldest is ‘The Windamere Hotel’ (spelling theirs not mine!). I live in Windermere in the UK, and I have since reflected on the naming of the hotel. The town of Windermere grew up around the railway station which was constructed around 1847, the town itself taking the name from the lake. The construction of the railway was partly informed by the elites/owners of the mills/factories which were driving the industrial revolution in the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire, who were looking to escape the crowds and pollution of the mill-towns and pursue leisure activities in the Lake District — a region which became understood as scenic and beautiful during the picturesque movement. Centuries earlier, it was understood to be an uninhabitable and ghastly place. Darjeeling was created as a British settlement for a combination of reasons — one of the main factors was its climate. Having spent time in Kolkata a few weeks ago, I could appreciate why The British decided to create Darjeeling as the ‘summer capital’ of British India. Apart from the 2000m+ altitude, it did feel like a cool day in early summer in the UK when I was walking around. The British colonialists were also escaping the heat and business which they were directly responsible for creating. In order to make their journey easier, the Darjeeling Himilayan Railway was created — completed in 1881. In both cases, the elite beneficiaries of colonialism and capitalism built railways to escape the ‘unseemly’ by-products of their own exploits. In both cases, the railways have outlasted the contexts that brought them about and have become vital components of the tourism industry in the respective regions. The two contexts are of course extremely different — with the DHR serving not only as an escape route but also a vital piece of The Empire’s resource-extraction machine. Nonetheless, there are interesting similarities. I’m unsure on the specific history of the hotel, but it seems clear that the name was meant to evoke a sense of ‘being at home’!

The Windamere Hotel, Darjeeling

Before heading back to Revolver, we stopped for some tea — it would be rude not too! When I got back to the hotel, I suddenly felt very tired. My stomach still wasn’t back to normal, and by the morning I realised I’d come down with a cold — maybe the change in temperature and altitude hadn’t helped. I had the local Nepali Thali (plate) option for dinner — nice and simple! Wifi in my room meant that I could make a video call home in the evening, a nice change…

Local Thali @ Revolver

Wednesday:

I wasn’t getting picked up until about 10 am, so I had a lie and a relaxed breakfast — scrambled eggs and beans on toast. The plan for the day was to head about an hour out of Darjeeling to a town which served as the administrative centre of one of the ‘blocks’ of Darjeeling district. The ‘blocks’ are the level of government which sits between the district and the village level ‘panchayat’ structure. In Darjeeling there are 9 blocks, in Kalimpong there are three. These blocks are very important to the functioning of the government in India, especially when you consider that, for example, travelling from Darjeeling to ‘Mirik’, another Block ‘capital’, is a 3-4 hour drive — assuming the road is one piece! Each block has a ‘Block Development Office’ located in the ‘capital’ of the block. A number of departments sit within the BDO, spanning social welfare and engineering. I was here to see the ‘block disaster management officer’ (BDMO). He described himself as a ‘one-man army’, looking after disaster management for roughly tens of thousands of people! We discussed the position of the BDMO in relation to the departments sitting ‘below’ and ‘above’ him, the responsibilities of the BDMO, and some of the challenges he faces. One interesting theme which has emerged through many of my discussions so far relates to the panchayat system in The Hills and how it differs from most of India.

I discussed the panchayat system briefly in my 2^nd blog post. The short story is that a combination of the unique governance structure that the GTA gives the region and the socio-economic development costs associated with the agitations, means that the panchayat system no longer functions in the region. The lack of money and will-power to hold elections has meant that there hasn’t been panchayat elections in the DGHC/GTA area since the year 2000. The normal structure of the panchayat system consists of the ‘three-tier system’. In the DGHC/GTA area (inc. Kalimpong), there is only a 2-tier system, with the 3rd being replaced by the DGHC and the subsequently the GTA. This is illustrated below:

The usual three-tier panchayat system – functioning across most of India

The unique and non-functioning Panchayat system in the GTA areas

The BDMO explained that the panchayat still exists in an administrative sense, recording basic information and also acting as an information-relay point. As such, in a response sense, the BDMO’s line of communication from the community still exists and is supplemented by the BDMO working with the civil police, who also have a good presence at the grass-roots level. However, the lack of elections is a problem with regards to development at the grassroots level, and thus the creation of landslide risk. Based on my conversations thus far; without elections, the threadbare panchayat system has neither the capacity or the authority to adequately, amongst other things:

• Enforce building regulations
• Conduct risk assessments and surveys before constructing:
  • Roads
  • Drains
  • Landslide mitigation projects
  • Buildings
• Hold people who create risk for others to account
• To mainstream disaster risk reduction into local development planning

The solution to this, as always, is a political one. Such a ‘political solution’ has been promised by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — translated to the Indian People’s Party. Of course, political solutions are seldom easily delivered.

The BJP are the ruling party in India, and the MP for the Darjeeling constituency is a BJP member. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP took a large chunk out of the Trinamool Congress’ (TMC) majority in West Bengal (WB) — leaving the ruling party in WB’s hold on power in the state significantly weakened, but crucially still in-tact. This has meant that the TMC has since done everything it can to limit the growing power of the BJP in The Hills. For example, since a number of TMC councillors on the Darjeeling municipality-board — the ‘town council’ — absconded from the TMC and joined the BJP; taking the majority of the council across the floor with them. The TMC has since responded by dissolving the council and appointing an ‘administrator’ who is loyal to the TMC — all summarised here. Most people I speak to suggest that these measures can only work temporarily; and that the days of the TMC ruling WB are numbered, with the BJP set to advance further in the state-level Members of Legislative Assembly (MLA) elections next year. The ‘political solution’ is rumoured to be kind of ‘direct rule’ over the area which many have wanted to name Gorkhaland for many decades now. This would essentially remove ‘the state level’ from the governance system — meaning the district would be directly accountable to the central government. Many of the people here are sympathetic to such an outcome, with even some of the lower-level officials expressing their frustration with the WB state and the perceived lack of attention they give to the people of The Hills — the common framing sees the WB government as ‘the problem’.  A common theme which comes through in such complaints is that the WB government tries to govern The Hills as if they were ‘The Plains’. This relates to many aspects of policy, but what I have heard thus far is how it affects disaster (risk) management here. Landslides are not really an issue in the rest of WB, which is really quite flat. As a result — I’m told — the attention given to drafting adequate policy for landslide response and management is insufficient. This inadequacy funnels down from Kolkata and through the various levels of government, right down to the block level. I need to find out more about this before I can draw any real conclusions from these initial conversations, but some of the key issues seem to be:

• Landslides are a unique hazard in that post-disaster, the affected people’s land is no longer there — different to flooding, which affects much of flat WB. Both funding and land set aside for relocation is apparently lacking as a result of inadequate planning
• Rainfall is very localised in The Hills, and often heavy. Such localised and heavy rainfall can lead to landslides occurring in remote locations away from administrative centres. There is a lack of forecasting technology which can give short-term early warnings about such rainfall events. Such technology is available but is not provided by government. Cheaper technology which gives more generalised forecasts is sufficient for much of the state.
• Due to a lack of concern for landslide affected areas at a state level, the amount they are willing to spend on research, development and capacity building is limited

Many people will often mention neighbouring Sikkim and their approach to disaster management with a flash of green in their eyes. Sikkim is a mountain state. As a result, their policies are always created with mountains in mind and as such they are much more geared up to prevent and respond to landslides — apparently. It could just be the case the grass is greener, but there does seem to be some reason to suggest that these observations have a degree of truth behind them. I suppose I will find out! My main reflection so far is that decentralisation seems to make a lot of sense in The Hills. Unfortunately, so far, that decentralisation has been ineffectively delivered by the state government and used a tool for personal political and financial gain by those who demanded decentralisation and subsequently trusted with its successful roll out — decentralisation is now a poisoned chalice in The Hills.

I’ve not even touched on the fact that the BJP are far from ‘the good guys’ or ‘the saviours’, which you might think given the way I’ve described them so far. In reality, they have risen to power by playing to the Hindu majority in India, at the expense of India’s ‘minorities’: namely the Muslim community — which at 12% of 950 million is hardly a small minority. Buddhists and Christians tend not to fare much better, a worry for this region which is home to large amounts of 3 of these alternative religions. The promotion of Hindu nationalism and right-wing economic policies has done little to help such groups, with dissent against the mainstream narrative becoming increasingly dangerous (Ganguly, 2017; Jaffrelot, 2017; Varshney, 2017). Direct rule from a BJP government might not be the land of milk and honey which I fear many here have in their minds.

The BDMO provided us with a lunch of momos — of course — and soup. I was then introduced to just about every department in the BDO building, before Amit and I returned to Darjeeling. It was only late afternoon, so Amit took me to a rooftop café called ‘Kev’s’. My still-dodgy stomach prevented me from doing much more exploring, so I spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching cricket in my hotel room.

Thursday:

Originally. I was supposed to travel to another block development office to meet the BDMO there. It turned out the BDMO needed to be in Darjeeling anyway, and there wasn’t going to be many people at the office. The plan was changed and the BDMO came to Revolver at around 10am instead. The meeting was interesting for my research and gave me some ideas. Many of the same themes described above came through. After the meeting and a photo, Amit and I waited for an hour or so until my final meeting of the trip.

The meeting was with the head of another NGO and was conducted over a lunch of masala dosa — a South Indian dish which is essentially a massive pancake stuffed with spicy potatoes! We had met before at the Waste Management Event in Kalimpong, and I was interested to hear more about his work. The NGO has been running for a long time and he has a vast experience of the politics and environment nexus of the region. The discussion was useful for me and will help inform my research going forward. I was picked up directly after the meeting and driven back to Kalimpong. It was another warm and mostly dry day. The onset of the monsoon is extremely delayed this year — Amit and the NGO leader both said that this sunshine was unheard of 10 years ago at this time of the year. The clearer skies provided nice views for the journey, complimented by the unique combination of Nirvana and classic power ballads which made up my driver’s playlist!

A picture taken on my journey home – The outskirts of Darjeeling are seen on the hill to the left

Friday:

On Friday I spent much of my time in Café Kalimpong writing my previous blog post. I also shifted my thinking towards next week’s trip to Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and got in touch with contacts I had been given there.

In the afternoon I took a walk along a circular route which I am trying to walk every few days. In the evening I had my 2^nd supervision meeting of the trip. I still don’t have Wi-Fi in my hotel and the meeting was scheduled later than Café Kalimpong — my go-to Wi-Fi source — would be open. Praful said I could go to the hotel behind mine and use the Wi-Fi there — the owner was the brother of the owner of my hotel apparently! The Wi-Fi appeared strong but was actually pretty dreadful, meaning the meeting was only on audio and quite disjointed! It was useful nonetheless and always nice to talk things over and think out loud for a while.

Saturday:

Praful invited me for lunch and to spend the afternoon at his place. We had rice, dhal, veggies, some momos and a very small beer! He showed me some more powerpoints and information and we discussed a number of things. I took the opportunity to add the photos to and publish my last blog post. I then wandered back to my hotel on the opposite hill.

Sunday:

I spent most of Sunday breaking the back of this post in Cafe Kalimpong — fuelled by Momos!

Momos @ Cafe Kalimpong whilst writing this blog

References:

Ganguly, S. (2017). India’s Democracy at 70: The Troublesome Security State. Journal of Democracy, 28(3), 117–126. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/664172

Jaffrelot, C. (2017). India’s Democracy at 70: Toward a Hindu State? Journal of Democracy, 28(3), 52–63. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/664166

Varshney, A. (2017). India’s Democracy at 70: Growth, Inequality, and Nationalism. Journal of Democracy, 28(3), 41–51. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/664165

A walk to a monastery, a trip to Siliguri and some field visits

This post is a little late, as I spent much of the week I describe writing a blog for Save the Hills. I also got hit by some dodgy food which knocked my productivity! Here I describe the week before last and my various trips. This includes some information on the geopolitics of the region and some major landslides outside of Kalimpong district. I’m hoping to publish a post about the past week by early next week…

Saturday (08.06):

I was invited by Praful to a community level meeting for a development project which is looking to address a problem facing the region which I’ve not really touched on yet, water scarcity. The project is being run by some fairly large regional NGOs, and the meeting was in a village called Chibo, a very landslide prone area which I had visited 3 days earlier (see STH blog). The project has its overarching goal the replenishment of Kalimpong’s drying groundwater aquifers and is taking inspiration from a successful roll out in neighbouring Sikkim. It involves using small-scale infrastructure which works with natural processes to capture rainwater and allow it to percolate into the ground, thus replenishing the depleted aquifers. One of the main reasons for this is the urbanisation — specifically the concretisation — of Kalimpong. This concrete doesn’t allow percolation and increases the amount of run off running down the hillside in jhoras – small natural rivulets. As discussed in my previous post, this increases landslide risk. This is one of the many instances where it has become clear to me that the issue of landslides is intrinsically linked to the other environmental and political issues facing the district. In the long-dry season, Kalimpong has a water scarcity issue. In the monsoon season, it has a problem with excess water triggering landslides. Both issues relate to the growth of Kalimpong’s urban centre and its complex political make-up. One of the key places where these problems appear to be manifest is in Kalimpong’s jhoras. These are where the above project will focus its efforts, they are key in the landslide risk-creation process, and they are the place where much of Kalimpong’s unmanaged solid waste ends up before it is washed down to the larger rivers in the valley below. Because of this, I was very interested to hear about this project. The meeting consisted of Praful and two representatives of the NGOs giving talks on the issue of aquifer recharge, and why the project was necessary. They spoke in Nepali, but the powerpoint slides were in English, so I was able to pick out the key points. After the meeting, I was invited to a dinner at someone’s relative’s house nearby. Here the NGO reps discussed the next steps for the project, and the problems they might face with regards to implementation. Many of the issues related to governance. After they discussed this, I was asked to introduce my research. It seemed there were a number of cross-overs for our projects, and we decided to keep in touch. This was exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to get out of this initial trip, so I was pleased to reflect on this and relax for the rest of the day.

Sunday:

After what had been a very busy 2 weeks, I was glad to not have too many plans for Sunday. After a lie-in I decided to take the walk up past my hotel to a monastery at the top of the hill we were on, it was called ‘Zang Dhok Palri Phodang’. The climb was quite steep for 10-15 minutes or so, but then levelled off as I reached the main ridge, the hill is known as ‘Durpin Dara’ (Durpin Hill)’. There is a village on the ridge with some small roadside shops and cafes. I really got a sense that I was in a Himalayan village here, more so than the rest of the town somehow. I think this was because all you could see beyond the houses was clouds and higher, distant mountains. As I reached the other side of the village, a large golf course opened up to my left-hand side – the British footprint is never far away. The course was well kept and provided some of the best views from a golf course that I have ever seen — on par with Windermere Golf Club! I had to laugh at the sign saying ‘teeing off with a refreshing cuppa’ – the British legacy… As you continue along the road which runs alongside the golf course, you reach the Kalimpong Military Station ‘Dewan Dar’.

Dewar Dar

The Golf Course

I was aware there was some kind of military camp here but I was not aware of the scale. Once I passed into the military area, the infrastructure seemed to markedly improve. The road was smooth, the verges well kept and there were no water pipes lining the side of the road. As you walk along the ridge-top road, the golf course stretches out to your left and a number of British-named tourist lodges are seen on the right. One of the most famous tourist attractions of Kalimpong is ‘Morgan House’, an old colonial bungalow which now serves as a posh hotel for tourists. I wanted to have a peek so I went up to the gate which said ‘access to residents only’. The guard said hello, I said I was just looking. He then opened the gate and allowed me to look round the grounds, despite the sign. It was quite a misty day up on the ridge-top, giving the weathered, grey bungalow and its overgrown garden quite an eerie atmosphere. I felt a little as though I shouldn’t be there, somehow it felt strange to be walking around this place as a British visitor. As I walked out, the guard seemed to be explaining to an Indian family that they couldn’t go in if they weren’t residents — a strange 10 minutes.

Morgan House

I carried on down the road in search of the monastery, passing an extremely plush bungalow which appeared to belong to one of the high-ranking officers. A few minutes later I arrived at the quietest and best well-designed roundabout I had seen since I arrived in India! As the road I was walking on met the roundabout, I noticed a sign which read ‘foreign nationals please kindly notify the military/police’ — I was beginning to wonder whether I’d gone the wrong way. There seems to be mix of ‘police’, ‘military’ and ‘military police’ here. One of these officials appeared to be keeping an eye on the roundabout, or something like that… I asked him where I could find the monastery and he pointed towards the 2^nd or 3^rd exit of the roundabout. I tried the 3^rd then quickly turned around when I saw the ‘RESTRICTED ACCESS’ sign! I took the 2^nd exit and asked an officer in a different uniform where the monastery was — he said it was down the road and then a sharp right. I then spotted that there were a number of tourist jeeps — ubiquitous here — driving past, so I guessed I was going the right way. On the way up, the military buildings are accompanied by the usual roadside shops selling crisp packets, noodles and sometimes momos if you’re lucky. Before you reach the monastery, there is another military camp to pass through. This one appeared to be related to the Gurkha regiment. In fact, these barracks essentially encircle the grounds of the temple and monastery. I finally reached the temple at the top of the hill, along with a lot more Indian tourists in their jeep taxis. I climbed up to the top of the temple to get what I’m sure is a lovely view on a clear day! It was refreshing nonetheless and through some gaps in the cloud you could get quite a good view of Kalimpong from above. The temple is part of the monastery, the living quarters of which are visible around the temple.

Zang Dhok Palri Phodang ‘ Temple

• 

  Kalimpong in the distance, behind the military comms tower

I found this whole area quite strange, and it is perhaps worth elaborating a bit on the reason why this base is here.

Kalimpong became a geopolitically useful settlement for the British as they looked to expand their influence East towards Assam and Burma/Myanmar. Since independence and the often violent crystallisation of the nation states in the region, Kalimpong and the Darjeeling Hills have remained geopolitically important.

Kalimpong borders Sikkim to the North and Bhutan to the East. Nepal borders neighbouring Darjeeling district a little further West. Beyond Bhutan and Sikkim lies China. Bhutan, geopolitically speaking, is essentially a surrogate state of India having ‘chosen’ the side of India. Nepal is certainly more tied to India than it is to China — it is a majority Hindu state and its citizens enjoy the freedom to live and work in India, and vice-versa. This does mean that the relationship is easy by any means, with Nepal aware that it can keep a reasonable relationship with China in order to keep India on its toes and sympathetic of Nepalese demands and trade agreements

China borders neighbouring Sikkim to the North and the border is heavily manned on both sides. The relationship between India and China could be described as ‘frosty’ at best, with both countries vying for the position of top-dog in Asia, and perhaps even the world. The military base which surrounds the monastery serves as an important stop-over and supply depot for military convoys travelling up to the border. Most people here, however, would say that the country to the North of Sikkim is not China, but Tibet. The country of Tibet lives on in the minds of those living in this area. Kalimpong particularly is intrinsically linked to Tibetan culture — for example the monastery I described above houses many rare scriptures that were brought into India after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959. Rising to prominence as one of the capitals of the trade in Tibetan furs, Kalimpong is often described as being an offshoot of the historic ‘silk road’. Tibetans would trek for weeks over the mountains with Yak furs and other goods — before roads were constructed — to Kalimpong where they would be sold on to traders who would then distribute the furs throughout India and the world. This trade fell victim to both the Sino-Indian war of the 1960s and the gradual construction of mountain roads between Tibet and other parts of the country, degrading the importance of Kalimpong as the main node in the trade network. The geopolitics of this area is but a small component of the wider power struggle between India and China.

This temple and its surroundings are a manifestation of the different processes which have shaped Kalimpong and this region today throughout history. It is a place of spiritual significance for a religion which is characterised by pacific teachings, surrounded by the hallmarks of man’s obsession with power and geopolitical expansion. I suppose it is an interesting tourist attraction too.

I had some Tibetan style food for lunch at Cafe Kalimpong, ‘Ting Momo’ and Aloo dum. Very carby but very nice!

Ting Momo and Aloo Dum @ Cafe Kalimpong

Monday and Tuesday:

Monday and Tuesday were quiet days for me. On Monday I arranged my forthcoming trip to Siliguri, and on Tuesday I had an important meeting for my research going forward.

Wednesday:

I woke up early on Wednesday morning for a 7am departure for Siliguri, the place where I had got off the train 2 weeks earlier. The main reason for my trip was to visit North Bengal University (NBU) — the main university and educational institution of the region — in order to meet some academics there who Praful though it would be useful for me to speak to. My main contact was Dr Nima Lama, whose house I would be dropped off at. It was much hotter in Siliguri, but the house was cool and airy. I was warmly welcomed and given a nice breakfast. Dr Lama was actually head of geography at Siliguri College, but all colleges here are under the umbrella of NBU, and her sister is a staff member there — the geography network in this region is small but close apparently. NBU is a campus university located just outside the centre of Siliguri — much like many campus universities in the UK. At the geography department, we met her sister and some other members of staff who I briefly discussed my research with. There was also a conference which might be useful for me to attend happening there in November. After these meetings we visited the NBU museum, which houses a number of old religious idols and scriptures, amongst other interesting exhibits. The friendly curator gave us a detailed tour. After a lot of photographs, we headed back to Nima’s house where I was given more delicious food! I was then driven to my hotel, a trip which should have taken about 30 minutes. We ended up stuck in a big traffic jam for a couple of hours. It turned out the reason was that on a bridge over a railway ahead, the road had partially collapsed, leaving a large hole in the road. We drove past on the other side of the bridge and saw some workers apparently filling in the hole with tarmac — a little unconvincing. It was around 36 degrees outside and our car had no a/c, so a cold shower and a lie down in an a/c’d room was in order when I arrived at the hotel. I wasn’t hungry that evening so I skipped dinner and wrote up my previous blog instead.

Thursday:

The plan for Thursday — after my first journey in an auto-rickshaw — was to drive along ‘The Hill Cart Road’ to see two of the major landslides which have affected the region in recent years. The road was built during the period of British rule to connect Darjeeling to the plains. All the way up, it is accompanied by the famous ‘Darjeeling Himalaya Railway’ (DHR). We were lucky enough to see the DHR passing by on our journey, video available here.

The Hill Cart Road (NH-55) used to be the major road connecting Siliguri with Darjeeling. It has been replaced by other routes recently, partly because it is frequently damaged by landslides — also affecting the DHR. It doesn’t take long to climb up to a height above Siliguri where the air is cooler and the views of the plains open up. Our first major stop — major because we stopped a lot to look at some particular views and landslides frequently — was Tindharia. This was both the site of a major landslide and a workshop for the DHR. With us on the trip was Arpan, one of Nima’s masters students. He was doing research on the DHR for his geography dissertation, and would do some data collection on the visit. The Tindharia landslide was triggered in 2011 after heavy rainfall, and in 2012 the landslide damaged part of the DHR workshop — covered here. It is certainly an interesting case study for the growing interest on the intersection between heritage, disaster risk reduction and climate change.

TIndharia landslide 13/06/19

• 

  Tindharia landslide (zoomed) showing DHR workshop

I was fortunate to be allowed to look round the workshop, as permission needs to be granted. It was interesting to see some of the old engineering works — many of the workers would joke that they were very grateful to ‘my forefathers’ for constructing the railway and teaching them the ways to maintain it. I always feel a little uncomfortable when discussing the Empire, especially when the discussion is largely positive — I always feel like saying ‘yes, but…’. However, I think it is important to recognise that despite the racism and violence of empire — which we should remember, acknowledge and condemn — there are aspects which are still appreciated by the people here, in The Hills especially. Since 1999, the DHR has been a UNESCO world heritage site and is owned and funded by the Government of India.

Inside the DHR workshop

The team from Thursday at the workshop

Map of workshop showing area damaged by landslide pictured above

After visiting the workshop and lots of photos with people, we continued up the road to Paglajhora, the site of one of the biggest landslides in the region. The landslide was initiated in 1950 and has continued to cause disruption to the road and railway since. The management of the landslide has been insufficient throughout, and there are questions about whether the slumping here can ever be truly contained. A free to access academic paper on the landslide from Prof. Sarkar (2011) of NBU is available here. Above the landslide there is a village which looks particularly vulnerable, and further up the hill lies the large town of Kurseong, which also suffers frequently from landslides.

Looking back at the position which below photo of Paglajhora landslide was taken

Paglajhora landslide (13/06/19)

On the way back we saw some monkeys carrying their babies, which was a nice way to end an interesting field visit. Unfortunately, my dinner of muttar paneer and roti at the hotel turned out to be my first ‘run-in’ with the upset stomach which so many people had promised I would get during my time in India!

Friday:

I had a pretty rough night and didn’t get much sleep. The worst seemed to be over by the time I checked out at 8am. I still felt pretty rotten, but decided that it was time to take the advice given to me during a rainy field visit to Scotland in my first year at Northumbria — yes, it was time to ‘geography the f&*! up’. I took the requisite tablets, skipped breakfast and headed out into the heat of the morning.

The plan for the day was to head back towards Kalimpong along the NH-10, described in my first post, to see some big landslides on the roadside. From here we would drive along a road to Darjeeling to visit a place called ‘Lamahatta’. Arpan and another student from his cohort would accompany us to do a study on an eco-tourism site there. Praful also joined us.

We saw a number of landslides on the drive up the NH-55, which frequently disrupt the road and still throw boulders down onto the road frequently. We also got a good look at the dam on the Teesta, which has flooded much of the nearby forest and has also been linked to an increase in small landslides which have affected the roads. The dams on the Teesta are controversial in that they: displace communities, increase flood risk downstream, increase landslide risk around the river channel and damage the biodiversity of the river. On the other hand, they provide a clean and reliable energy source for the region and a profit for the West Bengal state who are able to export the energy produced to neighbouring states.

Landslide on the NH10

Teesta Low Dam Hydro Electric Project Stage III

We met Praful and Onkar, the driver who had taken me from NJP to Kalimpong 2 weeks earlier, near a popular viewing point. From here, it is possible to see Kalimpong district to the right of the Teesta, the state of Sikkim to the left of the Teesta and above the tributary — the latter separating Sikkim from Darjeeling.

The Teesta acting as a boundary

It was just under an hour’s drive from here up to Lamahatta. Lamahatta was but a small roadside-hamlet, until the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, passed through on a visit to the region in 2012. She stepped out of her car and took photos of the scenery, before apparently instructing her aides to promote and accommodate more tourists site in the vicinity. Since then, it has developed a sort ‘ecotourism park’ on the roadside and a number of restaurants and home-stays have popped up, increasing the size of the village. The backdrop to the village is a large pine forest, and apparently there are trekking routes to a lake above. In clearer seasons, Mt Kanchenjunga can be seen in the distance. The park itself has a no litter policy, but the streets around are as littered as anywhere else in the region. This along with the backlog of jeeps and associated fumes on their way to Darjeeling doesn’t do much to convince me about the ‘eco’ in the tourism here, but maybe I’m just being sceptical! The two MA students were doing a survey for their research, so Praful, Nima and I just sat in one of the little huts and chatted. We then went to a nearby restaurant, but I abstained on account of my stomach which was still not 100%. A black tea would do.

Lamahatta

Praful, Onkar and I headed back to Kalimpong where I was glad to have a lie down to watch the cricket world cup on my TV, a common occurrence these days!

Saturday:

On Saturday I had a relaxed morning and finalised my draft of the STH blog. Praful had invited me for dinner and to stay over so we could finalise the blog and publish it the next day. I headed up there and we did some editing over some beers. I had a nice dinner and then slept well.

Sunday:

On Sunday morning we finished off the editing and published the blog. I then headed back and spent the afternoon watching India v Pakistan. My mind was turning towards my trip to Darjeeling next week, which I will cover in my next post.