Landslides, cloudbursts in Himachal because people eat meat: IIT Mandi director

Director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi, Laxmidhar Behera, said on Thursday that landslides and cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh are happening because people eat meat.

A video clip of Behera surfaced online in which he can be heard telling the students sitting in an auditorium to shun meat-eating to become good human beings.

"To become a good human being what do you have to do?" the IIT director asks and then states "No to meat eating." He then asks students to take an oath "I will not eat meat".

"Himachal Pradesh will have a significant downfall if the innocent animals are butchered. You are butchering innocent animals," said Behera said as he addressed the group of students in the auditorium.

"That (butchering of animals) has a symbiotic relationship with the degradation of the environment as well which you can't see now but it will have."

He continued, "….the mass scale landslides and so many other things, cloudbursts, that you see again and again, these are all the effect of these…cruelty."

HT has reached out to Behera for comments (The story will be updated after his response).

The IIT director was later criticised for his comments after the video, which was uploaded on YouTube, went viral.

Rahul Siddharthan, who shared the video of X (formerly Twitter) wrote "Director of an IIT. Why is Himachal having landslides? Because of unplanned construction/deforestation/climate change/all of the above? No. Because of meat-eating. Is he saying farming animals leads to deforestation? No. He says it leads to cloudbursts."

Another user @Ckj Mumbai wrote "Indian Institute of Technology Mandi is one of eight new Indian Institutes of Technology established by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. This is the quality of newly opened IIT. Pity the students who will graduate with Degree in Entire Engineering."

Meanwhile, Ambrish Kumar Mahajan, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Central University of Himachal Pradesh (CUHP), dean and a noted geologist said that the recent disasters were a result of geological reasons coupled with anthropogenic factors.

"I can't comment on what someone has said. However, the disasters in Himachal were due to geological and anthropogenic activities," said Mahajan.

He, however, added that there is a lot of tectonic plate movement in this region and the ecology of the region is fragile. Secondly, the state witnessed a long spell of rain causing the soil to super-saturate which led to landslides, he said, adding that cloudbursts are also a weather pattern having some scientific reasons.

Then there are anthropogenic reasons like construction activities and muck dumping etc., added Mahajan.