With reference to National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) guidelines, discuss the measures to be adopted to mitigate the impact of recent incidents of cloudbursts in many places of Uttarakhand.

The hazard in Uttarakhand

• Steep slopes, fractured rock, and thin soil mean rain does not stay; it scours nalas and roads.
• Monsoon and westward disturbances can stack moisture against the Himalaya.
• River-bed construction, hotels on floodplains, and hydropower debris narrow the channel the cloudburst will use.
• Pilgrim peaks (Char Dham) put tens of thousands on the same narrow road on the same week.
• Landslides block rivers and create temporary lakes that burst — a second flood after the rain.

NDMA-linked measures to mitigate impact

• Land-use zoning: NDMA landslide and flood guidance asks States to map hazard zones and to forbid or strictly limit buildings on river beds, steep cut slopes, and old slide scars. Uttarakhand must enforce this on municipal and forest land, not only print an atlas.
• Regulation of construction and hydropower: stable cut-and-fill, no dumping of muck into rivers, and catchment treatment; the 2013 review already named unregulated roads and projects as force multipliers.
• Early warning: Doppler weather radar coverage for the hills, dense automatic rain gauges, and nowcast to district magistrates and temple boards; community watch on nala colour and noise as a last local signal.
• Glacial lake and moraine monitoring in upper catchments so a burst is not a complete surprise.
• Watershed and slope work: afforestation with local species, check dams that are maintained, and drainage of road cuts — as in NDMA landslide documents.
• Safe pilgrimage: compulsory registration, daily caps, weather-linked closure of tracks, designated shelters above known flood lines, and helipad and mule alternatives when the road goes.
• Building rules: two-storey limits where slopes fail, no hotels on the Ganga and Mandakini floodway, and relocation of the most exposed shops over a published timetable.
• Response structure: National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force pre-positioned in monsoon; Indian Air Force helicopters on notice; local police and home guards trained for traffic holds, not only for rescue photographs.
• Communication: redundant wireless because mobile towers fall; satellite phones at SDM and major temples.
• Public awareness: simple hill-language messages — leave the nala, do not stand on bridges, keep a three-day kit in the yatra season.
• Insurance, relief, and reconstruction that does not rebuild the same hotel on the same sandbank (NDMA “build back safer”).
• Inter-State and centre–State: IMD, Central Water Commission where rivers are gauged, and the State disaster authority must share one protocol; the Disaster Management Act, 2005 already names that chain.

What mitigation cannot claim

• It cannot stop a cloudburst. It can stop a town from sitting in the path, and it can give two hours’ warning and a drilled exit.