Tunnel provision: Development mustn't run ahead of the risks it may run

livemint.com:

It’s a relief that the 40 workers trapped in the 4.5km-long highway tunnel being burrowed in Uttarakhand that saw a section of it collapse are reported to be safe even as efforts to rescue them are underway. Food and oxygen are being supplied via tubes through the 60-metre-stretch of debris that isolates them. A 3-foot-wide steel pipe is also being extended with the aid of hydraulic jacks to extract them.

While such missions always bear some uncertainty, that the workers survived Sunday’s cave-in has kept hopes up. Authorities have established walky-talky contact with the workers and their escape seems a matter of time. Once that happens, though, this mishap can be expected to fade away from public attention, just as others have in the past, without us evidently having learnt any lessons.

The frequency with which accidents related to development work are taking place in India is worrying. Just weeks earlier, diversion tunnels at a hydroelectric project on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border were blocked by a landslide, threatening a river-flow crisis. Last month, parts of the Chungthang Dam got washed away by flash floods in the Teesta river.

Earlier this year, crevices that appeared in roads and concrete structures in Joshimath, attributed by critics to heavy public-project work in the hilly terrain around it, put the entire town in danger. The list goes on, but there is little evidence that much has changed in our approach. The latest mishap took place between Brahmakhal and Yamunotri in the Uttarkashi region, where the government’s Char Dham Yatra plan involves linking four of the state’s high-altitude pilgrimage centres with better roads.