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Geological hazards

Earthquakes, landslides, glacial lake outbursts, avalanches and the cascades that join them, and how India assesses and prepares for each.

Asked before

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See all: Prelims · Mains 1 · Mains 2

Himalayan hazards: lake outbursts and avalanche cascades

Copy link to Himalayan hazards: lake outbursts and avalanche cascades

LeadPrelims and Mains29 Sep 2026

  • 195 high risk glacial lakes on the National Disaster Management Authority's list
  • 30 of 100 marks in the Central Water Commission's risk index go to downstream vulnerability
  • about 73 per cent of mapped Himalayan glacial lakes lie outside India

Read the lead

Landslides: the 2026 monsoon season and the warning that exists only in pilots

Copy link to Landslides: the 2026 monsoon season and the warning that exists only in pilots

StandardPrelims and Mains7 Jul 2026

What it is

  • A landslide is the movement of rock, debris or earth down a slope, set off in India mostly by monsoon rain that saturates the slope, and made likelier by cutting, loading and deforestation.
  • The Geological Survey of India has mapped 4.3 lakh sq km of landslide prone hill and mountain country at 1:50,000 scale, across parts of 19 States and Union Territories: the Himalaya, the Tertiary belt of the North East and the Western Ghats. Of it, about 15 per cent is of high susceptibility, 29 per cent moderate and 56 per cent low.
  • The Survey's inventory holds 91,000 past landslides, of which 33,904 are field verified; the maps are free on the Bhukosh portal, the Bhusanket portal and the Bhooskhalan app.
  • Its Regional Landslide Forecasting System, built from 2020 with the India Meteorological Department and the National Remote Sensing Centre, issues forecasts from rainfall thresholds and numerical weather prediction; a prototype early warning system began bulletins in the 2025 monsoon for 21 districts in eight States, operational in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and the Nilgiris and experimental elsewhere, including two districts of Kerala.

What happened

  • On 7 July 2026 a landslide struck the construction site of the Anakkampoyil to Kalladi tunnel near Meppadi in Wayanad, Kerala, burying the worksite. Eighteen people were caught in it and seven died.
  • On 11 July the Chief Minister announced a five member expert committee to examine contract violations and compliance with environmental and forest clearances, and suspended all work at the site. The State said contractors had ignored repeated orders from the District Disaster Management Authority to remove excavated soil.
  • The same slopes produced the Mundakkai and Chooralmala disaster of July 2024; a fortnight before it, an evacuation in the Munnar hills on the advice of a team testing a warning system had cost no lives.

The map and the warning

National Landslide Susceptibility Mapping4.3 lakh sq km mapped at 1:50,000 in parts of 19 States and Union Territories; 15 per cent high susceptibility, 29 per cent moderate, 56 per cent low
Inventoryabout 91,000 landslides, 33,904 of them field verified; 160 critical sectors mapped at 1:10,000, 200 by 2028
Early warning prototype (since 2025)21 districts in eight States; operational bulletins for Darjeeling and Kalimpong (West Bengal) and the Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu); experimental in Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka
How it forecastsrainfall thresholds and numerical weather prediction, with the India Meteorological Department, the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting and the National Remote Sensing Centre

Why it matters

  • Kalladi was a man made slope: excavated soil stacked on a hillside in the monsoon, in a district the Survey classes as high susceptibility. The question is not whether the warning existed but whether anyone was bound to act on it.
  • The warning network exists only as pilots. Three districts have operational bulletins, eighteen have experimental ones, and none is tied by law to an evacuation protocol, which is what turned a Munnar warning into zero deaths and a Wayanad warning into nothing.
  • The Western Ghats and the Himalaya slide for different reasons, the Ghats from saturated laterite and cut slopes under intense rain, the Himalaya from young rock, earthquakes and road cutting, and a national strategy has to treat them differently.

Exam lens

  • Prelims: the Geological Survey of India is the nodal agency for landslides; 4.3 lakh sq km mapped, 15 per cent high susceptibility; Bhukosh, Bhusanket and Bhooskhalan; the early warning prototype covers 21 districts in eight States; the National Landslide Risk Management Strategy of 2019 came from the National Disaster Management Authority.
  • Mains: why a warning that works in a pilot does not save lives without an evacuation protocol and a slope licensing regime.

Asked before: Mains 2021 GS1 · Mains 2021 GS3 · Mains 2019 GS3

Show the questions
  1. Mains 2021 GS1: Differentiate the causes of landslides in the Himalayan region and Western Ghats.
  2. Mains 2021 GS3: Describe the various causes and the effects of landslides. Mention the important components of the National Landslide Risk Management Strategy.
  3. Mains 2019 GS3: Disaster preparedness is the first step in any disaster management process. Explain how hazard zonation mapping will help disaster mitigation in the case of landslides.

Connects to

Sources
  • Ministry of Earth Sciences
  • Khaleej Times, 11 July 2026
  • Deccan Chronicle, 10 July 2026
  • The Indian Express, 11 July 2026

Settled facts (dates of Acts, constitutional provisions, standing definitions) are from standard references.

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