“The Himalayas are highly prone to landslides.” Discuss the causes and suggest suitable measures of mitigation.

The Himalayas, young fold mountains still rising along active thrust faults, account for the bulk of India's landslide incidence; the Geological Survey of India estimates about 0.42 million sq km of the country is landslide-prone, most of it Himalayan.

Causes

• Tectonic and lithological: seismically active terrain with crushed, fractured and weakly consolidated rocks along thrust zones makes slopes inherently unstable.
• Steep slopes and high relief accelerate gravitational failure, while toe-cutting by swift rivers undermines valley sides.
• Climatic triggers: intense monsoon spells and cloudbursts saturate slopes, as at Kedarnath (2013); glacial retreat and freeze-thaw action destabilise debris, as in the Chamoli disaster (2021).
• Anthropogenic aggravation: unscientific road-widening and slope-cutting, hydropower blasting and tunnelling, deforestation, and unregulated tourist construction; Joshimath's land subsidence (2023) is a standing warning.

Mitigation measures

• Hazard zonation: GSI's national landslide susceptibility mapping must translate into enforced land-use restrictions and carrying-capacity-based planning for hill towns.
• Engineering: retaining walls, rock bolting, slope benching, geotextiles and, above all, proper surface and sub-surface drainage, since water is the chief trigger.
• Bioengineering: afforestation with deep-rooted native species and curbs on slope farming to bind soil.
• Early warning: rainfall-threshold-based regional systems piloted by GSI with IMD, plus instrumented monitoring of chronic slide zones.
• Governance: implementing the NDMA Landslide Guidelines (2009) and the National Landslide Risk Management Strategy (2019), regulating muck disposal and blasting, and community preparedness drills.

Mitigation must marry engineering with restraint: hazard-informed planning that treats the fragile Himalayan slope itself as critical infrastructure, not an obstacle to be cut away.