Kerala buried over 350 people in a single monsoon morning.
Wayanad, July 2024.
A hillside just… gave way.
Now scientists are pointing at Karnataka and saying: you're next.
IIT Dharwad just dropped a number that should stop every policymaker mid-sentence.
👉 60.7% of Karnataka's Western Ghats is now highly susceptible to landslides.
Not "at risk."
Not "vulnerable."
Highly susceptible.
The study was triggered by the 2024 Ankola landslide.
But the real story isn't one landslide.
It's a pattern.
The Western Ghats have outlasted dinosaurs, ice ages, and every monsoon since.
Then came two decades of unchecked development.
Here's what's been quietly chipping away at those slopes:
🏗️ Hill-cutting for wider roads
🏨 Resorts and homestays replacing coffee estates
⛏️ Quarrying in ecologically sensitive zones
💧 Borewells draining groundwater that once held hillsides together
🌴 Monoculture plantations replacing forests that naturally stabilise soil
Environmentalist Suresh Heblikar put it simply: concrete disturbs soil, vegetation and drainage — and unstable slopes don't forgive heavy rainfall.
Madikeri. Virajpet. Mullayanagiri. Agumbe. Sakleshpur. Yellapur. Dandeli.
Real towns.
Real tourist hotspots.
Real people living below hills that are being widened, dug up, and built on — for tourism revenue.
Kodagu already flooded catastrophically in 2018 and 2019.
Did construction slow down after that?
No.
Luxury villas kept rising anyway.
Back in 2011, ecologist Madhav Gadgil warned about exactly this.
His panel wanted strict, graded protection for the Ghats.
It got diluted into the Kasturirangan report.
Even that watered-down version — banning mining and large construction in sensitive zones — sits unimplemented.
A minister promised a review after 2024's disasters.
Environmentalists say ground reality hasn't moved an inch.
Wayanad wasn't an outlier.
It was a preview.
Karnataka has the same ingredients — fragile slopes, aggressive tourism, ignored science — simmering across three coastal and four Malnad districts.
Experts aren't asking for a construction ban.
They're asking for something smaller: geological surveys before approvals, not after tragedies.
Right now, that bar isn't being cleared.
And the mountains are keeping score.
That's all for now!
