By Purna Chandra Jena
On August 26, 2026, a glacier collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border sent a debris flow tearing down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli valleys, killing more than 675 in Nepal and seven in Tibet, with close to 3,000 missing. The US Geological Survey estimated over 100 million cubic metres of ice, rock and debris displaced, erasing the Gyirong border crossing and two hydropower schemes within hours—a grim preview of what a warming Himalaya can do to any valley, India’s included.
Landslides are a recurring drain on India’s own exchequer, arriving every monsoon. This August, as landslides again cut highways in Uttarkashi and Mandi, India relied on two government ledgers that disagree. GSI’s National Landslide Susceptibility Mapping counts 87,474 active zones across 19 states and Union Territories, ranking Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand first, second and third. ISRO’s Landslide Atlas, from satellite records spanning 1998-2022, counts 80,933 landslides across 17 states and two Union Territories, ranking Mizoram first with 12,385 and Uttarakhand second with 11,219. Neither talks to the other, leaving India without one landslide count or cost figure.
GSI classifies 12.6% of India’s land—4.2 lakh square kilometres—as susceptible, concentrated in the Himalayan arc, the northeast hill states and the Western Ghats. Uttarakhand’s exposure is structural: 14,780 zones on GSI’s count, 11,219 events on ISRO’s, with Rudraprayag and Tehri Garhwal recording the highest landslide density nationally—confirmed by both agencies even where their rankings diverge.
NDMA saw this coming. Its 2019 National Landslide Risk Management Strategy—drafted by GSI, ISRO, IIT Delhi, the Wadia Institute and the World Bank—found hazard maps mostly at a 1:50,000 scale, too coarse for district planning, and GSI, the nodal agency, had “not yet undertaken any mitigation measures at site.” It urged a Special Purpose Vehicle for mitigation and a national Centre for Landslide Research. Seven years on, neither exists.
Between 1991 and 2021, India’s disaster losses totalled roughly Rs 13 lakh crore, only 8% insured—a 92% gap, per the State Bank of India. Uttarakhand’s three quantified slope failures since 2013 near Rs 27,844 crore, a fourth unassessed: Kedarnath’s Rs 22,186 crore ($3.8 billion, World Bank-ADB, 2013) remains India’s costliest Himalayan disaster; Chamoli, 2021, added Rs 4,000 crore; Joshimath’s 2023 subsidence cost Rs 1,658 crore; Dharali-Uttarkashi, August 2025, still awaits assessment. Himachal’s 2023 monsoon cost Rs 12,000 crore and 400-plus lives, with the Centre releasing barely a fifth of the Rs 9,000 crore sought; Wayanad’s 2024 landslide cost Rs 1,200 crore and 250-plus lives. Each state uses its own template, so none of these figures—nor Nepal’s, this week—reach a shared regional ledger before the next monsoon.
The building blocks exist: GSI’s Bhukosh portal holds the susceptibility layer; ISRO/NRSC’s Atlas holds the event layer; and GSI, with IMD, issues daily bulletins for Rudraprayag and Chamoli. What’s missing is a single statutory owner—logically, the NDMA—to reconcile GSI’s zones, ISRO’s events, and state loss data into a single schema.
Uttarakhand—third in GSI’s zone count, host to the Char Dham Yatra’s several million pilgrims, and site of four disasters in twelve years—needs a state data platform under its Disaster Management Authority that ingests GSI’s zones, ISRO’s Atlas and field reports, plus a Slope Resilience Fund financed by a Char Dham cess, hydropower royalties and a fixed budget line, so mitigation no longer waits for the next disaster.
It needs enforceable, geology-linked codes converting GSI’s zoning into a binding planning instrument, as NDMA’s 2019 strategy proposed: construction bans in very-high-susceptibility zones; fibre-reinforced polymer wrapping and soil-nailing, standard in Hong Kong and Switzerland; the Rudraprayag Early Warning System extended to all nine affected districts; a time-bound Post-Disaster Needs Assessment protocol; parametric insurance for public infrastructure; and a resettlement framework learned from Joshimath.
None of this is exotic—it is the ordinary machinery of risk management, applied to a hazard India’s own agencies, and now Nepal’s tragedy, have already mapped in detail. What is missing is not data but the will to make one inventory authoritative, fund mitigation ahead of the monsoon, and treat Uttarakhand’s recurring bill as a call for standing financial architecture, not a fresh emergency each time the mountains send the invoice.
(The writer is an Economic Adviser, Advisory Support Group, Chief Minister’s Office, Government of Uttarakhand. Views are personal.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.