Mainstream Mainstream, VOL LIX No 9, New Delhi, February 13, 2021 Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Feb 13, 2021 Friday 12 February 2021 The big news on the China India Ladakh Border is of possible military disengagement by the two armies after months of a heavy standoff with the deployment of tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour. News is still trickling in and any sober assessment of the causes, the backstory and the implications will take time. o o Another man-made disaster struck the Chamoli district in Uttarakhand Hills on February 7, 2021, this time wiping out the trace of two hydroelectric dams being built on the Alaknanda river basin, leaving some 37 people dead and sweeping away 200 people. It brought back memories of the 2013 Kedarnath deluge that had killed hundreds. The latest disaster has certainly been caused by repeated blasting for building the hydropower projects and the Char-Dham all-weather highways (the widening of some 900 km of roads is leading to the felling of 56000 trees on the fragile mountain slopes). The locus of the disaster happens to be the cradle of the Chipko movement of the 1970s that spread environmental awareness to protect the mountain habitat. All calls for putting on hold the unchecked construction on the river bed and in the mountains have gone unheeded and the powers that be continue on their path of destruction of the mountains. The Supreme-Court constituted Chopra Committee had so clearly warned the authorities against deforestation, tunnelling, reservoir formation, in the sensitive higher Himalayan region.