Joshimath 2.0? Nagaland’s Noklak town is sinking; will the govt help?

In part one, we locate the origins of the sinking issue in Noklak, the insurmountable challenges its inhabitants face, and what the experts have to say.

Thoho Shiu (49), a farmer in Noklak, a district headquarter in Eastern Nagaland, recently ‘lifted’ his house by a couple of feet. Made from locally-sourced oak and bamboo, Shiu said the process of ‘lifting’ and installing a longer stilt to prevent his house from sinking further has become a ritual: not just for him but for people living in 400-odd homes in Noklak.

Every year, during the monsoon season, a portion of Noklak subsides to the force of the gushing waters of Kiam, a stream that flows through the town. Over two decades, a landslide around the stream has slowly subsumed one-fourth of the town and continues to sink the land in and around churches, schools, and even the new Deputy Commissioner’s office. 

In places, according to the geologists as well as the district administration, parts of the town have sunk at least by a metre. In 2014, the residents formed Kiam Landslide Committee to cope with the huge land subsidence in the town after 60 houses were washed away during the monsoons.  

Geologists working in the region have warned that the Noklak landslide may impact India’s Act East Policy pursued by the Indian government as it was a threat to the connectivity to an International Trade Centre, 20 kilometres away at Dan, on the Indo-Myanmar border. With the state going to the polls on February 27, Noklak residents are hoping that the new government will find a permanent solution to the landslide against the quick fixes to preserve their dwelling place.  

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A four-decade-old problem

The issue in Noklak dates back to 1980, when a minor landslide in the western part of the town started expanding slowly over the next two decades. A small transboundary river called Lein flows below the town, while its tributary, Kiammoung or Kiam emerges from an older irrigation reservoir, which was built in the 1970s but was washed away during the landslide. Locals said there were several salt springs below the town, which still attract the Mithun or the local bison, birds and deer.

Geologists from Nagaland University in a paper published in 2022, found that 1.84 square kilometres of the 4.24 square kilometre town or more than one-fourth of the town has been damaged by the landslide. 

According to a Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA) preliminary investigation report of the landslide in 2018, a small patch of landslides occurred downstream in the beginning, but with time, massive landslides started occurring from the edge of the Lein river, eventually leading to a slow and complex landslide. 

“The debris which is taken down to the stream is swept away by water current from the perennial stream. This usually happens during monsoon season when the subsurface soil is saturated with water,” the NSDMA report states.

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Slope failures

Situated on top of a hill range in the heart of Khiamniungan community land along the India-Myanmar border, Noklak was a sub-division in the Tuensang district until recently. Following Nagaland government’s effort to redraw administrative boundaries as per the customary tribal laws, Noklak became the administrative centre for the Khiamniungan tribe, whose territories extend inside the Naga Self-Administered Zone in Myanmar.

Connected to Tuensang through a dirt road, the way to Noklak is littered with landslides and quartz mines. Apart from an Assam Rifles post, a sub-divisional office, a primary health centre and two government schools, locals said there was hardly any presence of the Nagaland administration here.

Geologists from Nagaland University who studied the landslide for two years have ascertained numerous factors contributing to it. According to Dr Temsulemba Walling, a professor of Geology at Nagaland University who was a part of the team that investigated the landslide, anthropogenic factors like deforestation and haphazardly-constructed urban sprawl have accelerated the landslide and its impacts. However, it was found that the geological composition, consisting mainly of weathered shale, tectonic factors, and extreme weather events has led to the hazard. 

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“Numerous rock striations/slickenside, quartz veins and joints and the presence of faults and folds in the study area indicate large-scale earth movements. Evidence points to the major role of neotectonic activity in slope instability in the area,” the Nagaland University geologists stated in their paper.  

Shiu hails from Kiamngan, one of the three worst-hit sectors in the town where almost all the residents have to realign their houses to the subsiding slopes. “One can see where my house stood nearly three years ago when it was built and the situation now. The ground is slowly sinking,” Shiu told EastMojo, pointing to a large stone precariously sitting on top of two other stones, supporting a portion of his house.   

At least 15 families have had to abandon their houses in the last two years, which include the house of a deceased Nagaland minister and Congress leader, Sedem Khaming. While Khaming’s family moved to Kohima after he passed away in Noklak, the property at the centre of the town developed cracks, becoming uninhabitable over the last two years. 

For Suko Shiu, a 59-year-old farmer, the terrace on which his house once stood, is gone. The entire line of houses – seven of them – went down the slope. He points to a mass of grey-black debris with dead trees several feet below. “The remains of my old house are somewhere below. You will not be able to go there,” he told EastMojo. 

Suko Shiu and other families moved to the eastern part of the town, adjusting and sharing compounds with the residents. “The land here is not cheap. I would not be able to afford another piece of land in this town,” he added.  

According to the study done by geologists of Nagaland University in 2022, it is estimated that 334 buildings, 1235 people, 2.99 km of roads, and eight hectares of cultivated land lie within the moderately and highly susceptible zones. “The problem has grown in magnitude and influence over the last four decades, damaging an area of about 1.84 sq. km and several households. Slope movements have caused immense distress to the local populace by posing a constant threat to nearly one-fourth of the town’s built-up area, roads, and cultivated tracts,” the study stated.

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Monsoon: The dreaded season

With the onset of the monsoon around late June, families from the west and south-facing hills in Noklak move to the less landslide-prone areas every year. “We are terrified to sleep at night during those days. Suddenly you will hear a thud. Next morning you would see an entire slope gone,” Pushan, a joint secretary of the Kiam Landslide Committee told EastMojo. 

“My house is barely standing now. I do not know about the next rainy season,” he said.

Cultivable land being scarce in the hilly tracts, even a few square feet of a terrace or a gentle slope is considered precious. The landslide, however, has impacted local food security by sweeping away farms. In 2022, Pushan lost his farm and his fishery to the landslide along with some other farmers. 

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“Even if your farm is still intact, farm access might be lost. Cultivable tracts have become fallow or in some cases, farmers have had to opt for other crops which require a fewer number of trips to the farmland,” said Thoho Shiu.

As more and more cultivable land fell prey to the expanding landslide, farmers began converting the rice terraces to cardamom plantations. “People started using the existing rice terraces for plantation to save their lands from the landslide,” Pushan informs. 

“During the monsoon, when essential supplies such as food materials to our area are hit due to road blockages caused by landslides on the road, locally grown rice and beans provide food security for all sections of the society. However, the landslide in Noklak and drought-like conditions in the winter have drastically reduced rice production,” added Thoho Shiu.

The Kiam Landslide committee has undertaken plantation in the town and prohibited tree felling around the vulnerable areas of the land subsidence zone. “The Committee has imposed fines up to Rs. 10,000 for chopping any tree in the landslide-prone areas of Noklak,” said Pushan. 

For the landslide committee, however, getting people to follow its diktat is an uphill task. “Wood is a basic need in our society. We have been going door-to-door asking the residents to stop using the trees in and around the town. Even then, people have been chopping trees and clearing land for cultivation in vulnerable areas,” added Pushan.

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New town

The committee also has been encouraging locals to avoid the haphazard construction of houses. However, the increasing pressure on land due to migration has barely deterred residents from building new houses. After Noklak was declared as the district headquarters in 2017, more houses started coming up. Several people over the last decade have migrated from nearby villages like Pangsha or Nokhu for higher education of their children when the town was upgraded to a district headquarter. As the Khiamniungan territory extends beyond the Indo-Myanmar border, Noklak has seen a steady stream of immigrants coming from across the border and settling in the town. 

“People from nearby villages as well as the Naga Self-Administered Zone in Myanmar have been coming here for education. They have relatives here in this town, which has led to so much construction. There are no schools in nearby villages and villages hardly have any roads. The situation is similar in Myanmar as well,” Pushan added.    

Even then, with the decades-old landslide threat to the town, the townspeople went ahead with the construction of a massive church, which sits atop the Kiam landslide. Locals maintain that a bigger church was built to accommodate the entire town for religious gatherings. 

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“The old wooden architecture of the church has given way to the new larger structures made of cement to accommodate more people,” Pushan remarked. 

Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority, in its preliminary assessment, stated that the road around the Longdong Baptist Church, one of the most prominent buildings in the town, is sinking each year, making the structure and the area around it vulnerable. 

“This location (Longdon Baptist Church) is the topmost portion of Kiammoung landslide and lies in the crown of the landslide,” stated the report presented in 2022.

Pastor Toshi from Yimkhiung Baptist church, located about 1 km from the Longdon Baptist Church, told EastMojo that a portion of the church started sinking before COVID-19 arrived in 2020. Despite being made mostly with locally-available wood, the structure’s integrity is threatened by the subsiding land. 

“The doors won’t close properly as the portion of the floor sank about four or five years ago. I stay with my family members. During monsoons, we are forced to remain awake throughout the night,” the Pastor added.   

Noklak residents are now wary of the quick fixes and want the new government to think of the way ahead. “For more than 30 years, we have suffered due to this landslide. Whoever comes to power, we want the new government to find a permanent solution to this issue,” Pushan added.

In part two of this two-part series, we will look at how the locals are tackling this issue head-on.

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