As fears for the thousands of people missing following the recent floods and landslides in India's Uttarakhand state, environmentalists and experts pose the question: was it a man-made disaster? They attribute unplanned development and deforestation as a chief cause for the disaster. Times of India sites that a number of dams may have lead to hill slope instability; forest cover depletion could have led to lendslides; lack of urban planning allowed settlements in danger areas and finally, warnings reports on ecological hazards have been ignored.
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