Western Ghats

Story hook

On a rainy night in July 2024, the village of Mundakkai in Wayanad district of Kerala disappeared. Landslides — set off by 572 mm of rainfall in 48 hours — slid down the hills, taking schools, tea estates and 300+ lives with them. Within a week, two faded documents resurfaced on every editor's desk: the Madhav Gadgil report (2011) and the K. Kasturirangan report (2013). Both had warned that this exact terrain was a class-1 ecologically sensitive area where stone quarrying, hill-cutting and unrestrained tourism should be prohibited. Both had been shelved.

The Western Ghats run 1,600 km from Tapi River (Gujarat) to Kanyakumari, across six states, covering ~160,000 sq km. They are older than the Himalayas, host 30 % of India's plant and animal species, and feed every major peninsular river — Krishna, Godavari, Cauvery, Periyar. They were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012 and rank as one of the eight "hottest" biodiversity hotspots on Earth.

This file traces the 13-year tug-of-war between the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports, why the sixth draft notification of July 2024 still has not become law, and what an ecologically sensitive area (ESA) actually does on the ground.

Why this matters for UPSC

The Western Ghats ESA is the most-tested ESA topic in UPSC. At least 6 Mains questions and multiple Prelims MCQs have featured the Gadgil/Kasturirangan reports since 2014. With the Wayanad disaster fresh in the news, this is a near-certain 2026 exam topic. Interview boards from Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra routinely test candidates on this.