Transcript of Nepal Floods: China’s Silence, Medog Dam And India’s Himalayan Nightmare w/ Abhijit Iyer-Mitra

In 2022, for no rhyme or reason, they refused to renew it. So with us, since 2022 to ’26, four years now, they have not shared any hydrological data.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:08:32 – 00:08:33) That is two years after Galwan.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:08:34 – 00:09:09) Two years after Galwan. Had they done this during Galwan, you could have said, well, political tension. What is your excuse with Nepal? You have some very loose agreements with Nepal which the Chinese sometimes they share, sometimes they don’t share. It’s like it’s an optional extra. It’s like when you order a tandoori chicken, it is the little one or two pieces of coriander that they put on top, hara dhania, on top of tandoori chicken that they’re willing to throw at you. They’re not willing to give you the tandoori chicken.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:09:09 – 00:09:43) So what’s this? I want to discuss this more in detail, maybe now, maybe later, but perhaps now since we’re already on it. Why this hesitancy to sign these binding agreements? This is what observation, right? This is about sharing information so that people don’t die unnecessarily, that property is not destroyed unnecessarily. People can be better prepared. It’s not a life and death situation. It’s not a national security situation. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Then why not?

The Pamir Knot and China’s Water Leverage

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:09:44 – 00:12:11) See, this is where China has a huge trust problem in the world, okay? They keep making these generic statements. Everybody, even Pakistan, agrees that terrorism is evil. You find me one international treaty where Pakistan does not condemn terrorism. And yet Pakistan is the fount of global terrorism, right? It’s like that. The Chinese agree there are upper riparian rights and lower riparian rights. They agree in principle to everything. In practice, their thing is — we need to remember that the entire Pamir Knot is such a crucial — the Pamir Knot is this thing somewhere in Central Asia. I’m not going to get into the specifics again, look it up in the map. It is this kind of knot. When you tie your shoelaces, you see there are the two bows and the two strings that come out. That is the Pamir Knot from which the Kunlun Mountains, the Himalayas, the Himadris, the Karakoram Range, the Hindu Kush Range — they all originate from there. Just look down at your shoe and look at the laces of your shoe. That knot in between, that is the Pamir Knot.

That and the Tibetan Plateau is where all of South Asia’s perennial rivers, Southeast Asia’s perennial rivers, and China’s perennial rivers originate. So in Sichuan, from Tibet to Sichuan, the Jinsha River, the Yangtze River, they all originate from there. The Mekong originates from there. The Brahmaputra, the Ganga, the Indus, all of them originate from there. Ultimately the Yamuna also and all the tributaries and distributaries and everything originate from there.

Now their thing is, this belongs to us. It is always this property, right? And what is mine is mine, what is yours is negotiable. So their thing is, tomorrow when there are water shortages, we should be able to divert, and we don’t want to commit to any binding treaties at all. Right now they say, look, all our power projects up in Tibet, they are all run-of-the-mill projects, which is to say, run-of-the-mill is literally like, you know, watermill — mills were used to grind flour, and what would happen is they just move the wheels, but you wouldn’t stop and store waters, and you wouldn’t divert waters. The problem with those projects is it’s like saying, I have a gun for self-defense, right?

ADITI PRASAD: (00:12:11 – 00:12:14) Because when you want, you can do whatever you want with those.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:12:14 – 00:13:23) Right now it’s self-defense because Aditi is much stronger than me. Therefore I am fat, obese, and I’m scared, weak, and therefore I needed to protect. Tomorrow when, say, you lose God knows how much weight, you’ve become very weak or whatever, and I’m the strong one, I’ve gone to the gym — not in my lifetime, but anyway — gone to the gym and become strong. When I want to intimidate you, I’ll come and bring the gun and shoot you one day. This is like what Pakistan does with American weapons. They always promise the Americans it will never be used for wars against India, but then, oh, but India attacked us, therefore we had to use it in self-defense, right?

This is one part. The second part is how they keep testing boundaries every single time. They’ve done this with human rights in the past, where you get away with egregious human rights violations. When Tiananmen Square happened, the West cut off all — in ’89, the West cut off all arms supplies to China. Since then, China has become the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. The situation has changed. Nobody dreams of sanctions against China anymore. So then a few years back when China threw 2 million Uyghurs —

ADITI PRASAD: (00:13:23 – 00:13:26) You were where? The problem with the Uyghurs.

Buying Silence: The Uyghurs and Global Complicity

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:13:26 – 00:14:10) Yeah, so if you remember, a few years back they locked up 2 million Uyghurs into concentration camps. Uyghurs being Xinjiang Muslims. Forced them to eat pork, destroyed all their mosques, killed off a few of their muezzins and chief muftis and all of that. God knows what they did, how many hundreds, thousands of people died in those concentration camps because of brutal conditions. The New York Times even ran a full-page story on it. Did you see a single sanction? Did you see a single body put out the amount Human Rights Watch and Amnesty keep crying on every other thing? Squeaks, not even real squeaks on China.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:14:10 – 00:14:11) Why is that?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:14:11 – 00:14:12) Just lip service.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:14:12 – 00:14:13) Why is that?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:14:13 – 00:15:58) 2 million people locked up in concentration camps, you’re able to get away with it. What was the difference between 1989 and say 2015, ’16, ’17? It’s that China wasn’t the manufacturing center of the world. China became the manufacturing center of the world. They don’t want to commit to treaties because what is currently run-of-the-mill power projects will become storage and diversion projects. They know that.

Which is why, it is worth asking the question. Nepal — now, with India they have political tension. With Nepal, what political tension do you have? Absolutely nothing. With Laos, which all of ASEAN thinks is a Chinese stooge, a Chinese spy, that all ASEAN meetings are recorded by the Laotians and sent to Beijing — what is your problem signing these treaties, at least with them?

Because see, China has a very unique approach to alliances as well. Have you noticed they’ve never signed formal treaties of alliance with Burma, with Pakistan? The Burmese at least understand China better. The Pakistanis fundamentally believe that anytime India attacks, China will come as their great protector. The Chinese have — every war game that they’ve done with the Pakistanis, the Chinese always ask, listen, we sent you very clear signals we’re not coming to help you. Why did you think we would ever come to help you?

So the Chinese have this thing — there is no such thing as friends and allies. Everybody is a, sorry to use the word, but a condom. And tomorrow, if we need to screw you over or dispose of you, such is life. Which is why they’ll give lots of empty, grandiose-sounding statements but never commit to anything on paper.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:15:59 – 00:16:08) Unlike China, which believes that this is my area and that is your area. And that is one of the reasons for this entire situation that we are finding ourselves in.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:16:08 – 00:16:14) Just to correct you quickly, this is my area, that may be your area.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:16:14 – 00:16:16) Maybe your area could be mine tomorrow.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:16:16 – 00:16:17) Could be mine.

Infrastructure Race Along the Tibetan Border

ADITI PRASAD: (00:16:17 – 00:16:54) Could be mine tomorrow, right? But the Himalayas do not recognize borders, right? And there is a race to fortify borders as far as China is concerned from the Tibetan side. There’s a boom in dams, in tunnels, highways, railways, bridges, all sorts of things happening there. Somewhere the buck has to stop because the Himalayas are a very fragile ecosystem. But this race to fortify with infrastructure, how much is that responsible? Because that seems to be the biggest problem for all these, apart from global warming and glacial melts.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:16:54 – 00:20:13) Combined with this, it is not a proximate cause for this particular disaster, right? It adds to sort of the unpredictability. But remember, the big hydrological project which is in Mêdog County in Tibet, southeastern Tibet, is a further 1,000 kilometers further east. This is north of central Uttar Pradesh, really. That is north of Arunachal Pradesh.

Okay, the thing is, when you build it in Arunachal Pradesh and there is no opposition to it, there is no international outrage forcing you and binding your hands because of it, it will slowly start moving westwards, westwards, westwards, westwards. They keep testing the waters. You remember they did this with the Wuhan virus as well, which is wrongly called COVID. It’s actually the Wuhan virus. They did this with the Wuhan virus. They paid so many people, including so-called EcoHealth Alliance and that Peter Daszak fellow. This fellow Fauci was completely in their pocket. He’s the one who funded the research and then lied about it, including to their own Congress. And every fact-checker was busy trying to show Fauci had not lied till ultimately Biden had to give him a blanket pardon. What was the pardon for? If he had done no wrongdoing, what was the pardon for?

It is so pervasive. Their money power, they’ve bought so much of international academia, so much of the international voice, the normative ecosystem. There’s very little you can do. Why is it George Soros will wag his tail about literally everything under the sun, but not about China? Why will he do democracy promotion in Russia and Eastern Europe, but no democracy promotion in China? As if China is this great democratic — the absolute gold standard of global democracy. Why will Pierre Omidyar do nothing about these places? So what can you do? This is normative power.

America talks a lot. They believe in some kind of rules which they tend to break every now and then, quite frequently. China is much scarier because they don’t even want to draw the baseline. America draws the baseline, on international law, but then they went to Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, Iraq and Afghanistan are still questionable, but what they did in, say, Libya, or what they did in Kosovo and Bosnia — complete violations of international law. But they set that standard for themselves, and then Russia used that to justify its invasion of Ukraine. With the Chinese, what do you pin them down to? Absolutely nothing. And tomorrow, if — it used to be America and Russia, today it is America and China. Tomorrow, if China becomes number one, what will you do?

The Medog Mega-Dam: A “Water Bomb”

ADITI PRASAD: (00:20:13 – 00:20:38) Now Beijing is aiming to transform the region into a high-altitude green energy powerhouse with projects including a $167 billion mega dam which is currently under construction. Now that could stretch the limits of what human engineering has achieved so far. In doing that, how much of this is a potential threat to India downstream?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:20:38 – 00:20:47) This is much bigger than the Three Gorges Dam project, right? Well, the technical magnitude — because this is a seismologically very active area.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:20:47 – 00:20:50) Yes. And Chinese researchers themselves have said that this is —

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:20:50 – 00:22:16) This is right. And Xi Jinping suppresses all dissent. Imagine if this dam — God forbid anything happens to it, because I have not seen any human engineering right now that has been able to conquer seismological forces, any force of nature for that matter. Imagine that dam breaks at some point. You’re looking at catastrophic flooding of Arunachal and especially Assam. I don’t really care what happens to Bangladesh, but the flooding of Assam will be catastrophic to a scale we may not have seen in our lifetimes. It could be a flood of biblical proportions.

That much water — if you look at the volumes of water we’re talking about, it is humanly incomprehensible for that much water to be rushing down. It doesn’t matter that 98% of the water catchment — because we have the rainward side and they have the leeward side. They are mostly fed by glacial melt on their side. But when that much water accumulates and is then forced down in a sudden thing, it is what you saw. The visuals are very scary of what you saw in Nepal. Multiply that by, I don’t know, 10,000, a million times, and you are truly looking at a disaster waiting to happen.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:22:16 – 00:22:21) So a water bomb, as many are calling this dam project, which is coming up.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:22:21 – 00:22:47) It is a water thermonuclear bomb. The devastation caused will be bigger than any nuclear explosion that any human has ever carried out on Earth, because the affected area is going to be — I think the biggest bomb that was exploded was the 100-megaton Tsar Bomba that the Russians exploded somewhere in the ’60s or ’70s, I forget, in one of their Arctic islands.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:22:48 – 00:22:49) This is —

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:22:50 – 00:23:33) Even the scale of radioactive fallout is not going to be anything compared to the actual ground destruction that a catastrophe is largely going to be. Assam, it’s going to be, because see, with Arunachal, at least the floodwaters, because Arunachal is on a slope, it will be devastating but it will move down quickly. Assam, the kind of flooding you’re going to see — I mean, nobody covered the Assam floods, which were absolutely tragic last month, but it will make those floods look like — boss, you are looking at the complete submerging of Assam. Complete submerging of Assam. There will be no high ground, low ground.

China’s Silence and Global Complicity

ADITI PRASAD: (00:23:34 – 00:23:35) So how do we stop this from happening?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:23:36 – 00:25:36) It is on. Look, there is nothing we can do because the rest of the world is completely complicit with China in this through silence. Silence is acquiescence, right? The problem here has been that what noise we could have made before, we did not. We were just sit, wait, watch. And we had our own political interests because now maybe we want to dam some of those Indus Water Treaty rivers, the three southern or the three northern rivers. Short-sighted, very, very short-sighted.

But even let’s assume we weren’t that short-sighted, what could we have realistically done? Where are the European countries that are so loud about clean energy, green energy, climate change, climate catastrophe, and all of that — where are they opening their mouths about this? What is India expected to do by itself on this, other than Bangladesh? I think the real — what we are betting on is that China will not want to mess with Bangladesh, they won’t want to screw Bangladesh over. But the Chinese callousness with their own lives is an indication of how much more callous they are with other people’s lives. What we’re seeing is sheer Chinese callousness with the lives and livelihoods of other people, and the fact that they see no friend and foe. For them, you’re just a disposable commodity. You are that little disposable leaf, palm leaf cup in which your chaatwala sells you disposable chaat that you throw into the basket later on. If anybody thinks they are so valuable to China, think again, boss.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:25:37 – 00:25:55) Do you think that there is something on the agenda? Could this be taken up at that level? At the end of the day, we have come back a lot from the Galwan days. Could we restart some of those — look, we can talk to the Chinese till kingdom come.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:25:56 – 00:26:31) Exactly. The issue is the Chinese ability to keep saying no to everything is a sight to behold. It’s the eighth wonder of the world after the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza and all of that. I think the Grand Canyon is one of them, but anyway, it is, right? Huge problem because they will just keep saying no to everything, and there is very little you can do. Ultimately there’s that Hindi saying, खुद को बुलंद करें (raise yourself up). So how do you make yourself aware of this? First is that very scary emergency warning message we got on our phones. Did you get it?

ADITI PRASAD: (00:26:31 – 00:26:31) No, I didn’t.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:26:31 – 00:26:37) When was that? My God! So a few months back they were testing out the emergency warning system where everyone’s mobile —

ADITI PRASAD: (00:26:37 – 00:26:42) I heard about that. Yeah, I didn’t get it for some — I didn’t know what the hell happened.

What India Should Do Now

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:26:42 – 00:30:00) I thought it was some cop trying to arrest me or something till I realized it was — they should have told us there was going to be an emergency warning, but apparently they did, but nobody paid attention. Use that, sensitize people to it. I think we need to do calculations now. It is no point engaging with the Chinese. We know that is a dead end anyway. BRICS is — we can do a very long podcast on how useless BRICS is, we will, when the date comes nearer. For me, what you think of as BRICS, I think of as Kabaddi. Okay, it is Kabaddi International. I’ve never seen a more useless forum than BRICS, and anybody who talks about BRICS currency and whatever ought to be sterilized for sheer stupidity.

Now, what can we do? The lowlands of Assam — first is get your water measurements and keep making assessments public. That is a fantastic way of consistently putting pressure. You don’t say after it happens, there’s no point saying, oh, we said this. Put up a “let’s shame China” Twitter handle, Instagram handle, whatever handle, and keep it up. Even if you don’t do something frivolous like that, keep publishing the damage assessment: if that Medog Dam breaks, what is the current water being stored? What will its force be? And this you can do very well. We’ve got good scientists who are able to predict — because it’s coming from an extremely high altitude to a low altitude in a very short span of time, so the ferocity of the water increases massively. What is the impact going to be? And then measure what kind of heights — what are the lowest areas of Assam, what is the height that it needs to be to avoid that. You need to do drills on the ground to see how quickly people can run away to high ground. What will our prediction of water flow speed be? How soon can we evacuate our people up to high ground?

So one example of this is how Israelis react to rocket attacks. I don’t know if you’ve seen constructions in Israel, when skyscrapers go up, you first see the reinforced center of every skyscraper where it doesn’t matter if a rocket hits — if you go hide inside that, you are safe from rocket fire. You need to have those kinds of immediate quick reaction mechanisms, and you need to avoid — stop crying wolf about this, right? You can’t keep saying “आ गया, आ गया, भेड़िया आ गया” (it’s coming, it’s coming, the wolf is coming) and then nothing happens. And they will need to know where the high ground is. Now lots of Assam are fertile alluvial plains where there is no high ground. What are you going to do in those cases? Because if you put up artificial structures, the sheer force of the water coming will wipe them down. What do you do in cases like that? I think it is now too late to do anything upstream. What has to be done has to be done downstream. And it is mostly a case of disaster management. The entire focus now has to be on catastrophic disaster management in the Assam plain.

Why a Regional Coalition Won’t Work

ADITI PRASAD: (00:30:01 – 00:30:34) I was listening to Sadhguru and he called for a five-nation board to strengthen cooperation in response to disasters affecting the region. I think given what we’ve spoken about, the question should be, how not to get to the situation of disaster, sort of mitigation, rather than coming together to mitigate a disaster. Might as well try to think of how not to get into the disaster situation. But I think that ship has sailed as far as China is concerned.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:30:35 – 00:31:26) Look, my issue with this is, as much as I love and respect Sadhguru, this is a kumbaya statement, right? That board will become a classic venue where bureaucrats get to travel business class, stay in five-star hotel suites, and rack up their Marriott points and their Star Miles, Star Alliance miles. I don’t know, Maharaja Club, or whatever Air China has. I don’t even know if they’re Star Alliance. This is going nowhere. This is going to become another bureaucratic thing where China will just keep saying no, no, no, no, no, full stop, right?

One of the things which will be crucial for us is dam monitoring, dam health monitoring of the Medog Dam. Do you think the Chinese will ever allow it?

ADITI PRASAD: (00:31:26 – 00:31:26) Never.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:31:26 – 00:31:28) Never. In fact, their first response to this —

ADITI PRASAD: (00:31:28 – 00:31:42) There were huge numbers killed on the Chinese side. But the official numbers are what, 15? Yeah, 16 or something like that. 16 people killed. Thousands killed on the Nepali side, just 15 killed on the Chinese side.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:31:42 – 00:32:00) And if you look, I’ve sent you the Google Maps coordinates. If you look, there are so many Chinese villages on that. 15 people died? Are you kidding me? And they cut off connectivity at a time when you need it. They cut off any information flow from there.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:32:01 – 00:32:04) They’ve deleted the visuals that popped up on Chinese social media.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:32:04 – 00:32:05) They’ve all —

ADITI PRASAD: (00:32:05 – 00:32:06) All of them have gone.

China’s Attitude Toward Information

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:32:06 – 00:32:33) Yeah, they’ve all been scrubbed. Yeah, this is not a good sign. Okay, so get out of this kumbaya moment. The notion that you can get China to agree to anything at all is a very, very dangerous one, especially on water. Like I said, their attitude is what is mine is mine and is not negotiable. What is yours is supremely negotiable — your life, your property, your assets, your land, your wealth, everything.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:32:34 – 00:32:48) The fact of the matter is, at what point — because you are controlling information, to what objective, to what end? How does this help China? Everybody knows that this has been a disaster.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:32:49 – 00:33:45) So with China, you have to understand their mindset. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. What you do know, we don’t know how you will use it to hurt us. So my information is mine, your information is negotiable. That is why I held on for so long, and when I bought a connected car, I bought a Korean car, not a Chinese. I will never touch a Chinese EV, okay? And that is the one reason I refused to buy an MG, because I did not want any device of mine ever syncing with a Chinese device. They will suck up all information you have, but their information is their own because they don’t know how you’ll use it. It is better to withhold it than ever give you a tool to use against them. That is their general attitude towards information in general. It is that same attitude they have towards land, to sovereignty, to borders — applied to information. It is that exact same attitude.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:33:46 – 00:33:48) So for no logical reason?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:33:48 – 00:33:52) No logical reason, except maybe something can happen. Why take the risk?

A Coalition Without China

ADITI PRASAD: (00:33:54 – 00:34:20) In terms of Assam, you put a system in place where you start preparing for acute disaster mitigation, disaster management strategies, but other places also. What measures could we look at? An advanced disaster mitigation broadcast, some sort of coalition with which like-minded countries can come together? I don’t know, without China, who those countries would be.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:34:20 – 00:34:35) I think for us it’s only India, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma. Okay, I think with these five countries we have to come up with some kind of a collective system to protect ourselves.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:34:35 – 00:34:37) But if China is not part of it —

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:34:37 – 00:35:24) China is never going to be part of it. This is like SAARC. So now the format is SAARC minus one. Why? Because Pakistan was always going to be the, you know, that one chap in class who destroys, makes life miserable for everybody else. What is the point? You know they are not going to come together. The best you can do is cajole Nepal and Bhutan. If ultimately Bangladesh doesn’t want to join, Burma doesn’t want to join, congratulations to them. They are lower riparian. If we deal with things on our side, they will be saved. They will be saved, or if they don’t want to save themselves, best of luck to them. We can’t be responsible for their citizens. Ultimately, it’s an open coalition. You want to join? Please join. That is the only thing you can do.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:35:24 – 00:35:33) Like I said, खुद को बुलंद करें (raise yourself up). Hydrological data, the manner in which the advanced systems that China has — does India have?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:35:33 – 00:35:34) Has and refuses to share.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:35:34 – 00:35:49) Has and refuses. Even with Nepal, they have refused to share hydrological data even though they have MOUs in place. Does India have this hydrological data, or can we become capable enough to get this hydrological data in real time?

5,000 Dead as a Wake-Up Call

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:35:49 – 00:37:36) Now, this is going to sound horrible, but let me give you the flip side to it. 5,000 dead should be a wake-up call to us. What is 5,000 today can become 50 million tomorrow. You don’t want a disaster of that scale because remember, this is the beginning of the disaster. The bodies will wash up, the danger of disease, and invariably where a flood like this happens, famine happens later on, drought happens later on, and things like that. Horrible things happen. And now because the entire topsoil has been eroded from there, because there’s been heavy deforestation along the path as well, there will be landslides and things that will ensue in this area. Because see, when you have compacted soil and this much force has removed the chabutra, the platform, then all the upper soil is very dangerously exposed and it’s loose, and it’s been weakened because of hydration.

So you have to have all your — it can’t be tomorrow, it can’t be a government committee, it needs to be handled. Our NDMA is pretty good at these things, but they have to be tasked correctly. Don’t send them off on wild goose chases. This is your thing. Let us set up serious hydrological — if the Chinese refuse to share hydrological data, let us keep taking daily photographs of the Chinese side to gauge glacier melt. What can we do? Develop technologies that will enable you to sense glacial melt or imminent collapse, because there is ground-penetrating radar and things where you can still — with water, it’s very difficult, ultimately it is frozen water. But can you? Let’s look into those.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:37:37 – 00:37:39) Have we started anything in that direction, in your—

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:37:40 – 00:37:41) Not that I know. No.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:37:42 – 00:37:43) So basically.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:37:43 – 00:37:54) But let’s look at the flip side. Like I said, 5,000, yes, terrible tragedy. Let’s hope this wakes us up to prevent a much, much, much bigger disaster.

National Security and Data Access

ADITI PRASAD: (00:37:54 – 00:38:17) Yeah, because disaster data, or in this case hydrological data, has itself become a national security asset as far as China is concerned, and should become for us also as soon as possible. So if you had to identify the regions most exposed to a similar cascading event within India, where would you look first?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:38:18 – 00:38:57) Look, I’m going to say the entire region starting from our entire border, which except Ladakh, which is very high ground where it’s almost impossible for something — it’s never impossible, but tough to happen. I would say anything downstream from the Himalayas, your entire eastern border is a danger zone. You do not have the luxury of — and the dam makes it a much more exacerbated danger zone in Medog. Arunachal, Assam, eastern Assam, North Arunachal area. But the rest of it, you never know which glacier is going to—

ADITI PRASAD: (00:38:57 – 00:39:11) Yeah, because India has already identified 195 glacial lakes which are vulnerable to glacial lake outburst floods, out of which 67 they said are very high risk. Is that reassuring at some level, or is there—

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:39:11 – 00:39:35) Fine, you’ve identified it, and then what? And then what? There’s this joke in Yes Prime Minister, where I think it’s about the nuclear deterrent. I think you watch Yes Prime Minister the same amount that I do, because I watch it once a year, because it shows you there are such profound truths in Yes Prime Minister about how government actually works.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:39:35 – 00:39:37) And imagine when that was made, and imagine today.

The “Yes Prime Minister” Problem

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:39:38 – 00:41:09) Imagine. And the thing is, I forget the episode, I think it’s called The Grand Design or something. It’s his very first, after Jim Hacker becomes Prime Minister. The Chief Scientific Advisor comes and talks about, you know, when is Britain going to use nuclear weapons against the Soviets? So he says, accidentally on purpose, the Russians cut off railway lines to East Berlin. On the invitation of West German police, the Soviet Army crosses into West Berlin for law and order maintenance. Will you use nukes? No. Okay. Accidentally, on purpose, some Soviet troops cross the actual border, not West Berlin, into West Germany. Will you use nukes when they reach Bonn? Nope. When they reach Paris, will you use nukes? Nope. When they reach London, will you use nukes? I don’t know.

This is the problem. Our thing is, we will do this then, we will do this then. What are you going to do? Set those plans in place now and have your plans ready. Do not count on the Chinese. Our worry is that the costs are going to be exorbitant. But boss, the costs of losing millions of people when it does happen will be far, far greater. You don’t have the luxury of waiting this out.

Too Many Agencies, Too Little Coordination

ADITI PRASAD: (00:41:09 – 00:41:42) For the purpose of this conversation, I’d been reading up and finding data about what the government is doing. So there is the Central Water Commission, which is tracking 2,843 glacial lakes, including the ones vulnerable to the GLOFs, or the glacial lake outburst floods, while the NDMA is using another different classification system to measure exactly the same thing. Do we have perhaps too many data sets and agencies? Should there be a central—

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:41:43 – 00:42:26) There needs to be a central coordination agency, but it’s good we have two different data sets because you need to have a red team and a blue team, right? There always needs to be a naysayer who will contradict everything one person says. It is through contradiction that the truth emerges, right? The question is, what is happening above that? What is our preparation? This is like saying I am preparing for Aditi to come stab me. I have two committees, one saying Aditi will stab you tomorrow, one saying Aditi will not stab you tomorrow. But what precautions am I taking to prevent Aditi from stabbing me? Am I buying body armor? No. Am I putting steel doors on my house? No. Am I buying a gun to stop you from stabbing me? No.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:42:28 – 00:42:29) What’s this?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:42:29 – 00:42:35) This is bureaucratic committee sitting, you know, and I remember, with nothing coming out of it.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:42:36 – 00:42:48) I remember 2023, the Sikkim disaster. They had identified South Lhonak Lake as a high-risk lake, years before the 2023 disaster struck. And still the—

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:42:48 – 00:43:21) And it happened. Now tell me, is this data accessible to the public? If any person sitting downstream from these places, high-risk areas, where do they go and check? How does the public have access to this data, right? Where is the public access, boss, right? These are serious issues that need to be taken up with the government. Unfortunately, our opposition is so hell-bent on — if India is a union of states, take this up.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:43:22 – 00:43:23) Right. Take this up.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:43:23 – 00:43:25) No, they don’t give a damn.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:43:27 – 00:43:36) Then they will indulge in “छत्तीस इंच, पचपन इंच का” (36-inch, 55-inch chest) monkey business.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:43:36 – 00:43:37) It always comes down to this.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:43:37 – 00:43:38) Or Manusmriti.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:43:38 – 00:43:39) Or Manusmriti.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:43:39 – 00:43:40) Or smash the book.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:43:40 – 00:43:43) The glacial melt is happening because of Manusmriti. Did you know that?

ADITI PRASAD: (00:43:44 – 00:43:52) I’m sure I didn’t know that. Now you’ve educated me. But having said that, India is experimenting. Like I said, I read up a little.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:43:52 – 00:44:28) No, no, let me explain to you. This is very serious. You see, women are always recommended to have a sattvic diet, okay? It is because of women wearing short skirts and eating meat that their body temperature is rising, and therefore global temperature is rising, which is accelerating global melt. And therefore the Congress must oppose Manusmriti because this is Manuvadi way of thinking. Manuvadi thinking is what is leading to climate change, and therefore in order to combat glacial melt, we must oppose Manusmriti.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:44:29 – 00:44:44) Congratulations on that imaginary flight that you just had. But India is experimenting, as I said, with early warning systems and lots of satellites and sensors, which is why I’ve just written these points down because these are not things that we talk about in daily life.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:44:44 – 00:44:56) We’ve got — unfortunately, we’ve got monitoring. The issue isn’t the monitoring. My issue is access to data, access to usable data for average citizens, and what are you doing after that, right?

What Downstream Villages Don’t Know

ADITI PRASAD: (00:44:57 – 00:45:01) Evacuation routes, resume, nothing, emergency shelters.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:45:01 – 00:45:17) I would suggest Times Access send reporters to — I just plot these lakes, send people to downstream villages, ask them if they know they are in a danger zone. The answer will be no. Do they know where they should evacuate to? What is the plan? What are the dos and don’ts? The answer will be no.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:45:19 – 00:45:24) Okay, if you were advising the government today, what would be your top five things that you would tell them?

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:45:25 – 00:47:17) Stop listening to the China faction within the MEA. They’ve got an over-bloated sense of their own abilities either to gauge China, to predict China, or to cajole China. Two, stop pointlessly engaging with China on things where you know you can’t get them, because we are not interested in babus’ frequent flyer miles and Marriott points. Third, start planning for the worst, start planning right now. Fourth, start local education schemes. Fifth, make the data accessible. Have a threat chart which warns people downstream when they are in the high-risk zone. And as part of that, educate them on the emergency thing that happened on the phone, on where their closest escape routes are, where things happen.

With Indians, if you notice, one of the things — when you remember when Shashi Tharoor had complained about that Emirates Boeing that had — on how they used old planes on the Kerala route, right? The Europeans and all the Western folks on there, they immediately ran out through the emergency access. The Indians were mostly sitting and worried about getting their documents out. You know why? Because European embassies will issue them passports immediately. With the Indians, all their IDs are there, it’ll take them 10-15 days to get their IDs and things back. So you’ll always be, where do I take my gold? This is the only savings I have. Where am I — my TV, I just brought this new, I don’t know, 65-inch LG OLED TV, I don’t know what the latest technology is, I need to carry this. No, stop where you are. I don’t care if you bought your car yesterday, get out of it and run up. That needs to be it. You need to have these drills.

Closing Thoughts

ADITI PRASAD: (00:47:18 – 00:47:24) So miles to go before we sleep, and just celebrate 7.8% growth in the last quarter.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:47:25 – 00:47:30) Look, 7.8% growth is very good considering the circumstances. Let’s not connect those two.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:47:30 – 00:47:32) No, I know, I’m just connecting.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:47:32 – 00:47:32) Right.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:47:33 – 00:47:36) The fact is that this government has managed to do a lot of things.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:47:37 – 00:47:38) Yeah, right, right.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:47:38 – 00:47:49) There is a lot to be done, and especially in this area, given the kind of calamity that we’ve seen happen on the Nepalese side, it’s been heart-wrenching.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:47:49 – 00:47:50) Yeah.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:47:51 – 00:48:26) I shudder to think, because China is not stopping building dams. China is not stopping becoming opaque. China is very unreliable at giving you advanced hydrological data and advanced warnings, even if it has the data, as we’ve seen in the Nepal disaster. So therefore, as you’ve pointed out, we have to become self-sufficient in this area and really fast, because you never know, given the state of the Himalayas. It’s a ticking time bomb, or a water bomb, if you might want to call it.

ABHIJIT IYER-MITRA: (00:48:26 – 00:48:36) It’s a ticking multi-mega, mega, mega-ton thermonuclear bomb waiting to happen. And that’s why you should care.

ADITI PRASAD: (00:48:36 – 00:48:58) And that’s why you should care. Thank you so much for joining us, viewers, and thank you, Abhijit, for this very, very insightful episode of Why Should You Care. It’s scary to think of what’s in store if things keep going the way they are. But thank you, viewers, for watching this broadcast. We’ll come back to you next week, same time, with another episode of Why Should You Care.

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