It is with uncanny accuracy that Dr Sangita Lama's map (top) in the book "Rains, Landslides and Floods in the Darjeeling Himalayas" (edited by Profs Leszek Starkel and Subhasranjan Basu) depicts landslide prone areas around Darjeeling town.
The sketch (below) is what I prepared in 2007 and in 2009 (after Cyclone Aila) with inputs from friends in Darjeeling - almost a decade after the book was published.... as you can see the landslides occurred almost entirely in the vulnerable zones indicated in the map....had we been more more alert and responsive perhaps we could have prevented some of the landslides....
Alas! we never seem to learn and seem destined to keep on repeating our past mistakes...
Praful Rao
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