A paradox sits at the heart of the Char Dham road programme. Connectivity has expanded and pilgrim footfall has soared, yet travel has become less reliable, more dangerous, and costlier for local people and ecosystems. That is not just an anecdotal claim. It is what the data and court records show when you follow the money, the muck, the trees cut, and the landslides triggered.
Begin with scale. The Char Dham Pariyojana is a ~889–900 km highway-widening programme costed at roughly INR 12,000 crore, split into 53 sub-projects along the four shrine corridors and the Tanakpur–Pithoragarh stretch. The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways itself lists 53 civil works across 889 km; by late-2022, an oversight committee told the Supreme Court that ~579 km had been completed out of ~646 km awarded, with a total project cost of ~INR 12,130 crore. (Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Hindustan Times)
How did it move so quickly in a region where large linear projects normally require comprehensive environmental appraisal? By dividing the highway into many packages under 100 km, the works were treated as “improvements” that did not trigger a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This “segmentation” was not merely alleged by critics; in December 2023 the Union road transport minister publicly acknowledged the bypass. (Down To Earth)
The environmental ledger is stark. Analyses drawing on court-appointed committee materials estimate ~690 hectares of forest diverted and on the order of 55,000 trees felled (with additional, uncounted loss from landslides). A 2021 report tallied over 56,000 trees “to be claimed,” and Down To Earth documented fines on a construction agency for illegal muck dumping into the Bhagirathi—precisely the kind of practice that clogs channels and heightens flood risk. (The India Forum, The Times of India, Down To Earth)
Landslide risk, meanwhile, has spiked. Uttarakhand saw over 1,100 landslides in 2023—more than quadruple 2022—according to state disaster data reported by national dailies. A 2025 peer-reviewed study mapped 811 landslides across ~800 km of Char Dham corridors and found 81% lay within 100 metres of the road; many slopes had been cut at >80°—well beyond safe norms—leaving rock faces exposed and drainage poorly managed. This is classic “risk externalisation”: short-term cost savings for projects, long-term hazard costs for communities and the exchequer. (The Times of India)
Water security is fraying in parallel. The Himalaya’s lifeblood is its springs; government-commissioned assessments estimate about half of Indian Himalayan springs have diminished or dried. Scientific reviews explicitly list road building and unplanned construction in recharge zones as aggravating factors that reduce infiltration and destabilise slopes—precisely what one observes along newly cut benches. The economic case for springshed protection is strong: recent Hindu Kush Himalayan evaluations find net benefits from spring revival programmes exceed costs. (Department of Science & Technology, ScienceDirect, ICIMOD Blog)
The result is tourism that is bigger and more brittle. Yes, Char Dham footfall has surged—56.1 lakh pilgrims in 2023, a modern record, up from 34.77 lakh in 2019. But volume without resilience is a false triumph. In early September 2025, authorities suspended the yatra for multiple days amid heavy rain and fatal landslides; Kedarnath movement was halted after two pilgrims died in a slide near Munkatiya. Such multi-day stoppages translate into literal “zero-pilgrim” days on some routes, wiping out income for traders, porters and mule handlers while stranding visitors. In August 2025, for instance, flash floods near Gangotri paralysed tourism, with local traders estimating INR 50 crore in losses as ~300 shops shut. (The New Indian Express, The Times of India, The Economic Times)
Urban systems along the corridor—parking, sewage, solid waste—are already buckling. Researchers and civic observers have warned that the project’s mobility gains are overpowering small-town carrying capacities, amplifying air pollution, garbage loads and congestion absent robust public transport or waste systems. Without hard caps and service upgrades, each new “all-weather” lane funnels a larger pulse of unmanaged pressure into fragile valleys. (Citizen Matters)
Officials counter with three claims. First, improved connectivity is vital for religious tourism and local livelihoods. Second, national security requires wider feeder roads to the China border. Third, projects create jobs. The Supreme Court itself—citing security—allowed 10-metre double-lane paved shoulders (DL+PS) in December 2021 on three strategic stretches, while setting up oversight for environmental compliance. The government’s tourism policy statements also emphasise year-round visitation and employment multipliers. All true in their domains— but incomplete if we ignore the risk costs now embedded in the system. (The Indian Express, Press Information Bureau)
An environmental economist reads this as a mispriced infrastructure push. We under-priced forests (carbon, slope stability, water regulation), under-funded slope and drainage engineering, and tolerated compliance gimmicks (segmentation to dodge EIA) that raised hidden liabilities. Those liabilities now appear as: (1) higher disaster response and maintenance outlays; (2) income volatility for households dependent on yatra flows; (3) rising accident and mortality risk; (4) reputational damage as “all-weather” roads repeatedly close in monsoon windows.
What would a sounder cost–benefit framework recommend?
First, engineering for the mountain, not against it. Retire vertical cuttings; mandate safe slope angles, benching, rock-bolting and tie-back systems where unavoidable, and fully engineered surface/subsurface drainage on every cut. Require independent geotechnical audits of the most failure-prone reaches before each monsoon and link contractor payments to slope performance over multiple seasons. Evidence from recent geotechnical studies points to drainage and cut-slope geometry as decisive risk levers. (The Times of India)
Second, stop the muck. Enforce zero-tolerance for in-channel dumping with real-time supervision (CCTV, GPS- tagged tipper logs) and stiff, escalating penalties. Designated, engineered spoil sites with silt traps are not a “nice to have”; they are flood insurance for downstream towns—an insight hammered home by investigative reporting and ground inspections. (Down To Earth)
Third, price and protect water. Declare springshed protection zones along the corridors; prohibit hardscape expansion in recharge areas; fund community-led spring revival at scale. The social return on such investments is positive and immediate in reduced tanker dependence and drought risk. (ICIMOD Blog)
Fourth, manage demand, not just supply. Cap daily pilgrim entries by shrine-specific carrying capacity; stagger start times and mandate off-site parking with shuttle systems; levy a modest, ring-fenced “mountain stability and waste” fee on yatra registrations to fund slope maintenance, waste logistics and insurance pools for local businesses facing forced closures. This is standard congestion pricing and Pigovian correction for negative externalities.
Fifth, restore legality and legitimacy. No more segmentation sleights of hand. Site-specific EIAs and cumulative impact assessments must be the norm for linear projects in this biome, with transparent disclosure and continuous, independent monitoring (the Supreme Court’s oversight architecture shows the way). The state gains more durable infrastructure and public trust by front-loading science than by firefighting every monsoon. (Down To Earth)
Sixth, diversify access the mountain can live with. Prioritise landslide-bypassing solutions (micro-tunnels where geologically viable), ropeways for the last-mile where they reduce road load, and climate-robust early- warning plus closure protocols with service-level guarantees (e.g., automatic refunds and emergency shelter standards during suspensions). The point is not to romanticise hardship but to internalise the true cost of safe mobility in an active orogen.
Finally, keep the bigger arithmetic in view. In 2023 the yatra set attendance records; in 2025 we have multi-day stoppages, fatalities, and crores in local losses within a single monsoon spell. The same governance that celebrates milestones must own the maintenance, safety and ecological accounts. Without that, we are shifting risk from budgets to households and from this year’s pilgrims to the next generation of mountain residents.
Development in the Himalaya is not a binary of “road or no road.” It is a choice between cheap roads that fail the moment the rains arrive, and smart roads that cost more upfront but pay for themselves in lives saved, livelihoods stabilised, and journeys kept sacred. The Char Dham corridor can still be the latter—if we stop treating the mountain as an obstacle to be blasted through and start treating it as capital to be stewarded. (Citizen Matters, The Times of India, Hindustan Times)