A video of a young student reciting a poem in a school in Chisoti village in Kishtwar district, Jammu and Kashmir, prior to the catastrophe that wiped out this village, taking the lives of over a hundred people, is now in wide circulation.

This young Class 4 girl student is heard saying, “Hey manav ab tu sudhar ja, abi iss laalach ko chhod de; dharti maa ko samaj, prakriti se rishta jod de, warna ye prakriti nahin ruk payegi aur tu jhulas jaayega.” (O humans, mend your ways, leave this greed; respect Mother Earth and connect with nature, otherwise nature will not stop and you will be scorched).

She was to recite this poem on Independence Day, but the village was wiped out on August 14. Chisoti was a repeat of Dharali. Heavy rains saw an overflowing Bhut Nallah sweep down the village carrying an avalanche of slush and stones. Within seconds, the village was overrun by a river of debris.

This is a story that has been repeated in Dharali, Harsil, Mandi, and many other villages across J&K, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh. The government would like us to believe that this pattern of destruction is taking place because of recurring cloudbursts and landslides. They need to be corrected. This is a story of greed, an indifferent bureaucracy, and the steady commodification of our precious Himalayas, which are being pushed to collapse under the weight of profit-driven development.

In order to expand their vote bank, the present regime has bent over backwards to promote yatras, and so Chisoti, which used to be a remote village deep in the Himalayas, emerged as the basecamp for the Mata Machail Yatra.

The Mata Chandi has been systematically promoted as a Hindu pilgrimage site in J&K after the Vaishno Devi Yatra and the Amarnath Yatra. Community kitchens had been set up at Chisoti,........

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