Melting point

EAR TO THE GROUND

Nobody knows how many glaciers there are on the Indian side of the Himalayas. The rapid speed at which these glaciers are melting may well change the basic economics

Munching on chapatis and a bit of onion, does the man on the street think of ice? The great rivers of ice that flow down the frosted crown of this country, that irrigate the fields of wheat and onions, the mustard, the abundant potatoes. Does it occur to him that these rivers of ice are now perhaps melting faster? And one day, the fields would be flooded, or perhaps some day there would be no water, or less water?

Yet, nobody has a clue how many of them are there in the Indian side of the Himalayas. And there is hardly any sentinel up there checking the speed of the glacial melt each year even as the latest report from the UN body of 2,500 scientists "" the Inter-governmental Penal on Climate Change "" has pronounced the worst: Human error is causing glaciers to melt faster than they should.

Syed Hasnain is one of India's rare snow experts, a glaciologist. A hydrologist to start with, he studied the deserts in the US, graduated to setting up a school of environmental studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi in 1985 and from then on he has thought nothing but ice. He even chaired the working group of the International Commission on Snow and Ice on Himalayan glaciology.

In 2002, he set up a base to study glacial melt in Chota Sigri in Himalayas while heading the JNU department. Thus was created the only data bank on the mass and speed of glacial melt on this side of the Himalayas.

Today he is retired. The glacier station is shut down, so is his department in JNU. But Hasnain is not giving up. He plans to reopen it this year with help from an NGO "" the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, whose enterprising founder Major S S Ahluwalia had been associated earlier with the Chota Sigri project and more recently joined Hasnain in promoting research on the glacial source of the Brahmaputra in the Chinese side of the Himalayas.

Hasnain says the country has no database on glaciers. No one knows how many glaciers are there. The Geological Survey of India found 7,000 of them in the Sutlej basin in pre-satellite times, he says.

But now, apart from a project in Sikkim's Teesta basin, where satellite technology was harnessed to detect 84 glaciers, none knows about the glaciers on the hundreds of other basins on the Himalayas.

Nepal and Bhutan have used satellite technology to this end. China is also doing its part on its side of the Himalayas. India as well as Pakistan are sitting idle, says Hasnain. Time is running out. Glacial melt data base has to be built if a management strategy for likely impacts of global warming has to be worked out, he says. It is easy to say that data on global warming is fake and dust it down the carpet.

Taking preventive steps is the wiser option, he says. Because glaciers ultimately melt down to basic economics "" the chapatis and vegetables on your plate. But today glaciers are about rains and drought. That's some hot ice for thought.