Disasters don’t just wash away bridges — they test the bridges between people and power.
In Himachal Pradesh this year, nature and governance collided in a way that exposed how fragile both can be.
The mountains have barely stopped trembling from the damage of the last monsoon. Villages remain scattered among broken roads, cracked homes, and disrupted lives. The government, facing one of the harshest rainfall seasons in decades, decided to postpone Panchayati Raj elections. The reason given was simple: the terrain is too damaged, and people cannot even reach polling booths.
On paper, that makes sense. In reality, it opens an old question — should disaster silence democracy?
When local bodies are dissolved or delayed, governance shifts upward. Relief decisions become bureaucratic rather than participatory. Panchayats are not just political units; they are community networks that help rebuild lives, identify those in need, and keep aid accountable. To pause that system, even temporarily, risks turning recovery into a top-down exercise rather than a shared effort.
While politics debated the delay, another story unfolded quietly in Shimla.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu met a delegation from the World Bank to review the Himachal Pradesh Resilient for Development and Disaster Recovery (HPREAD) project, a ₹2,837 crore initiative that aims to restore the state’s infrastructure after back-to-back natural calamities. The plan is ambitious — rebuilding roads, strengthening bridges, improving early warning systems, and making the state “climate-resilient.”
It’s a powerful example of how international support can help a small mountain state recover, but it also highlights a larger truth: rebuilding is not just about engineering; it’s about ethics.
A strong road without a strong community is a hollow achievement. Recovery needs participation — the people must have a voice in how their world is rebuilt. That’s where democracy meets disaster management.
The irony is that the same local bodies that could have helped guide this recovery — the panchayats — are still waiting for elections. Decisions about villages are being made in boardrooms, not courtyards. A democratic pause, however well-intentioned, always risks creating distance between policy and people.
True resilience is not built with concrete alone. It’s built when every person, from the engineer to the farmer, feels that they are part of the rebuilding.
Disasters will keep coming — that’s the geography of the Himalayas. But if democracy falters whenever the mountains shake, we lose more than roads. We lose our sense of collective strength.
The challenge before Himachal is twofold: to rebuild what has fallen, and to restore what keeps it standing — trust.
Because in the end, recovery is not only about returning to normal. It’s about returning to belonging.
