By: Aqib Javed Katoch

A doctor and his wife and two kids were asleep in their rented accommodation—just a short walk from the Ramban hospital they were posted at. In the din of the night a massive hailstorm struck the area followed by torrential rains. The couple woke up and knew this wasn’t normal. Rain soaked the hillside behind them and low rumble stirred the earth.

After sometime, mud crept in slowly through their kitchen window. What started as a slow seep turned into a surge of mudflow in the fraction of minutes-the window shattered! A flood of mud crashed into their home, sweeping away their belongings as they escaped from there anyhow. By now the whole town was buried under this mudflow in a matter of an hour or two. The devastation was not only tragic—it was revealing, unearthed a darker truth.

Chenab Valley sits with a gun to its head. On one side are the dams that dictate the river’s course and the valley’s fate and on the other side the geologically fragile, young mountains being chopped, drilled, and dynamited to carve highways and tunnels.........

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