Revision summary
Causes of landslides are geology, monsoon pore pressure, earthquakes, and human toe-cutting and deforestation. Effects include fatalities, cut highways, river damming, and sediment disasters. NDMA’s National Landslide Risk Management Strategy (2019) centres on hazard mapping, land-use regulation, early warning, structural and bio-engineering, awareness, and R&D. GSI, IMD, BRO, and States must share one inventory. Enforcement on construction and road design is the usual failure, not the absence of a document.
Model answer
Introduction
A landslide is the downslope movement of rock, debris, or earth under gravity. In India it is a Himalayan, Western Ghats, and north-eastern monsoon hazard, made worse by roads cut into weak slopes. The National Landslide Risk Management Strategy (NDMA, 2019) is the Union’s checklist: map, regulate, warn, and build capacity — not only send NDRF after the hill has moved.
Body
Causes
- Geology: fractured Himalayan thrust sheets, laterite and gneiss in the Ghats, and thick debris on steep valleys fail when strength drops.
- Rainfall and cloudbursts: pore-water pressure in the monsoon is the usual trigger; Kedarnath 2013 mixed flood, debris flow, and slope failure.
- Earthquakes: shaking adds load; 2015 Nepal and 2011 Sikkim showed co-seismic slides.
- Human: road and rail toe-cutting, unplanned hill construction, mining, deforestation, and drainage blocked by debris or poor culverts.
- Hydropower and tunnelling in fragile belts, if poorly designed, change slope water.
- Climate: more intense rain bursts raise the frequency of debris flows even on old scars.
Effects
- Immediate death and burial of settlements and pilgrims (Malin 2014, many Himachal and Uttarakhand seasons, Manipur and Mizoram slides).
- Isolation: highways such as NH-10, NH-6, and hill State roads close, which is an economic landslide after the physical one.
- Damming of rivers and outburst risk; damage to hydropower, transmission, and army logistics in border hills.
- Sediment in reservoirs and plains floods downstream.
- Livelihood loss for terrace farmers and a long reconstruction bill that poor hill panchayats cannot pay.
National Landslide Risk Management Strategy — important components
- Hazard zonation and mapping at usable scales, with inventory of past slides and a national database.
- Land-use and mountain-zone regulation: restrict building on red zones; enforce town-and-country rules in hill stations.
- Early warning from rainfall thresholds, slope instruments, and community watch, linked to IMD and State SDMAs.
- Loss reduction: safe alignment of roads, retaining structures, drainage, and bio-engineering rather than only blasting a new cut.
- Awareness, capacity, and preparedness: local masons, panchayats, and tourist-route protocols; pre-positioned NDRF/SDRF.
- Research, monitoring, and institutional coordination among NDMA, GSI, NRSC, BRO, NHAI, and State DGMs.
- Recovery that does not rebuild on the same scar without a geotechnical veto.
Practice gap
- Maps exist; enforcement on hotels and highway contractors is the missing component more often than a new slogan.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD G[Weak slope rain quake] --> L[Landslide] H[Road cutting building] --> L L --> E[Death isolation river damming] S[NDMA 2019 strategy] --> M[Map regulate warn] S --> R[Safe roads capacity]
Conclusion
Landslides join weak rock, water, quakes, and human cuts. Their effects are death, isolation, and river trouble. NDMA’s 2019 strategy is mapping, land-use control, warning, engineered roads, awareness, and research. It works only if the next hill road obeys the map.
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Next question on this syllabus topic (2020 · Q2). View answer →
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Are landslides only a Himalayan problem?
The Himalaya and north-east dominate deaths. The Western Ghats, Konkan, and parts of the north-east hill States are also landslide provinces.
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Can early warning stop a slide?
It cannot freeze a slope. It can empty a school or close a road before the debris arrives.
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