Nagesh Hegde was an assistant editor with Prajavani , a leading Kannada daily, and is a widely respected writer on environmental issues over the past four decades. He is an expert on the Western Ghats and has written extensively on a variety of issues pertaining to this hill range. In the wake of the landslide in Wayanad , serious questions have been raised on the situation in Karnataka as well.
Since the monsoon began in Karnataka almost 50 landslides have taken place in the State with the most serious one in Shirur in Uttara Kannada district where 11 people were washed away. According to official data, Karnataka reported 1,495 incidents of landslides between 2006 and 2023 with the loss of 81 lives. Why are regions of Karnataka along the Western Ghats prone to landslides? Hill ranges of both the Himalayas and the Western Ghats are highly fragile for different reasons: the Himalayan ranges are geologically quite young (about 45-50 million years) and they are still growing.
The Western Ghats are three times older. Both the toddler and the grandpa are prone to fall, right? The landmass along the Western Ghats has developed deep cracks and fissures ever since it broke away from Antarctica and Africa and got pushed along with the rest of the Indian subcontinent, bruised and battered. These tall mountains were further subjected to wear and tear (what is known as “weathering” in geological terms) due to the pressure of gushing winds and heavy rainfall resulting in deep gorges a.