TURA:
Barely ten days have passed since torrential rain and flash floods devastated Siju and Rongara region causing extensive landslides and taking a toll on human lives, that another hill has caved in once again in the Siju region of South Garo Hills.
An entire portion of a hill laden with areca nut (betel nut) plantation gave way and came down on Monday afternoon in Siju’s Songmong village, close to the Rongdong waterfall.
A family living atop the hill narrowly escaped with inches of land remaining when the landslide occurred.
Authorities have decided to evacuate the entire household to a safer area as more earth continued to fall.
The widespread landslides that occurred in the Siju region during the June 17 downpour and Monday’s incident have similar hallmarks of a disaster-in-waiting.
Almost all the major landslides have taken place in hills that were dotted with areca nut plantations.
“People who have large tracts of land have felled all the trees to make way for plantation of betel nut trees because these grow fast and give quicker returns,” said a villager from Siju region.
With profit in mind, people have been discarding all environmental concerns removing trees that have for generations held the soil strong and secure. The roots of the areca nut tree are one of the weakest from the tree families and are able to penetrate only the top soil.
With entire hills no longer having trees to hold the soil, even a couple of hours of rain, as was the case on June 17, is sufficient to cause untold devastation.
Similar cases are now occurring even in other areas that once were thick forests.
According to a senior official from the Soil and Water Conservation department in Garo Hills that studies and provides scientific knowledge for the protection of soil, the need of the hour is to ensure a mixed cropping or natural farming pattern to prevent such incidents.
“Natural trees are deep-rooted and hold the soil. But areca nut or any monocrop for that matter, are shallow-rooted and cannot hold the soil. If one watches the landslide video of today (Monday) you will notice that there was nothing to hold back and retain the soil,” pointed out the official.
The Rongram block region, which is home to a large area of forest cover stretching towards the Nokrek foothills, is also slowly making way for areca nut plantations and even jhum cultivation, in the process exposing the rich fertile soil to the ravages of nature and paving the way for calamities.