Bhook Hartal: A Bus Service as a Reminder of Climate Change

What a mountain bus route tells us about protest, climate change, and how local knowledge might still lead the way. A quiet reflection from Guptakashi.

Girl wades through floodwaters, holding backpack over her head

Guptakashi is a small market town located on a ridge, on the west bank of the Mandakini. The town is among the last inhabited edges north of Rudraprayag. It serves as a market and a staging station for pilgrims to Kedarnath and for approximately 15/20 villages, it is also a point of departure to connect with the rest of the world.

Guptakashi is best known for its Vishwanath temple, believed to have been constructed between the 4th and 6th Centuries CE, which would place it in the Gupta period, of our history. Myths that surround the temple are most interesting, but I am not going to talk about them today.

The importance of Guptakashi, stems from the transport, accommodation and related services it provides to pilgrims going to Kedarnath. They now number in the millions every year. That is right, a town of a few thousand residents, has literally millions of people passing through. It has brought prosperity, rising prices and a lot more that is the hallmark of growing and unplanned urbanisation in our country. 

This was not always the case. In the early to mid-eighties, there was a growing resentment stemming from the fact that the majority of pilgrims, which numbered in the thousand’s, in those days, tended to `pass though’ on their return, preferring to stay in places lower in the valley, and then move on to Badrinath. This tendency of pilgrims of not spending a night in Guptakashi, was attributed to the lack of a suitable (direct) bus service from the town to Badrinath.

Concerned citizens approached the government to rectify this error. Their petitions had little impact on the Bada Sarkar, then located in faraway Lucknow, or even the Chota Sarkar, (DMs office), then headquartered in Gopeshwar, Chamoli.

The citizens then did something that had even brought the Angrez Sahabs to their knees. They started a bhook hartal. A bus service to Badrinath, as demanded was the outcome, It started, if memory serves me right, in the mid-eighties. Precise year I cannot recall and no one I know can. 

The service is functional to this day. It leaves Guptakashi at 06:15, crosses over towards the Akash-Kamini valley, before winding its way, from Mastura, Tala, travelling through forests of flowering Rhododendrons (in spring), towards the Makku bend, from where it turns sharply east to cross a pass at Chopta, (3000 MSL). This stretch is home to the last remaining old stand oak forests of Uttarakhand, and perhaps India. The bus then moves down to the Mandal valley, and up again to Gopeshwar, before moving down to Chamoli, where it crosses the Alaknanda to meet the Rishikesh – Badrinath highway, reaching its destination by late evening.

Fittingly the service is still called Bhook Hartal! I recall many a summer morning, rushing down to the point, just above the Bharat Sevashram Sangh guest house, from where it picked up passengers from Ukhimath, when on visits to Mandal or then Gopeshwar for work.

The catch was, that the service remained functional from late April/early May to late September/mid-October. At the time I lived in the area, the pass at Chopta was snow-bound and unnavigable for motorised transport of any kind, before and after this period.

As with so much that has and continues to change, the pass, snow bound for close to six to seven months in the year, is now unnavigable, for weeks and for small traffic (cars), not even that much. In-fact there have been years in the recent past, when it has remained open for the entire year. That is the extent of the dramatic shift in the region’s climate.

The decreasing winter precipitation is a subject of a number of studies that point to a significant decline in snowfall, with a shift towards rainfall, even in areas which traditionally received snow. The 2013 and even subsequent disasters in the area, also point to more erratic climatic tendencies and intense precipitation events.

In her editorial published in the latest issue of Down To Earth (December 1 -15th), Sunita Narain points to 2024 as a beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch.  I would love for you to read the entire article, but will quote portions of its opening paragraph:

`(2024)….is the year that marks the beginning of the time of climate change – when each day some part of the world is hit by extreme weather events; when a new record of heat or cold stress is made and then broken…..This is a different era. Scientists describe this as the Anthropocene Epoch, which in geological time is defined as the period when human activities have significant impact on the Planet’s climate and ecosystems. Everything we have done for human progress – for increased well-being and wealth generation – has breached national as well as planetary boundaries.’ 

What is said here is possibly known to many, or then, to all. Then what is it that makes it difficult to for us to act as communities, nations or then as being part of a human civilisation. Three reasons are generally attributed. A temporal `distance’ that makes it difficult to prioritise. Economic self-interest of nations, and lack of effective institutions for global coordination – that the issue demands.

Early on in my stint with Kaivalya Education Foundation, I learnt a vital lesson from its CEO, Aditya Natraj. Change in society and in the way we do things will in all likelihood, be an outcome of an effective answer to the `how’ question, not the `what’. Not that the two are mutually exclusive. The `how’ cannot exist without the `what’. Just that those working for change in society are best served by focusing on the `how’ in their interactions with stakeholders.

Action on climate change will happen, when communities and societies show understanding and concern and prioritise on change. One way this can happen is to leverage the strengths of the millions of small and tiny NGOs, embedded in local communities, who carry within them the seeds and the essence of being able to reach out, sensitise communities on their own self-interest and communicate the `how’ to make it possible for the actualisation of change that we seek and dream about.

If this seems far-fetched, remember there is much documented evidence of simple villagers working together to mitigate the effects of climate change. There are even cases where concerted action has resulted in rejuvenation of rivers, groundwater resources, forest areas and shown us a path in managing waste.

If there is one lesson that we have learnt from 75 years of efforts to evolve as a developed nation, it is that governments cannot do what communities need to learn to do for themselves. Perhaps 2025 will become the year when we begin to focus on how we can usher in change, quietly, without the shrillness of big events and tamashas, with a quiet determination, leveraging the strengths of small voluntary institutions and associations, to strengthen belief in our constitutional vision and show how change is possible.

That perhaps will be the finest tribute to (Late) Padma Shree Tulsi Gowda, Vruksha Maate, resident of Honehalli, Karnataka, who dedicated her life to nurturing trees, lacs of them. As a tribal she knew, what many of us stubbornly refuse to acknowledge - trees are an extension of our existence on this planet.