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| Kedarnath Valley |
Any talk of “development” today
sounds ominous and one tends to visualise the motives behind it that are
sinister. Our political masters (mis) understand by the word development only
growth and expansion that is None is bothered about how that affects those
who people such developed habitat with an ecosystem that is often uncongenial
and degraded.
mostly spatial in the context of a city. That
there are other meanings also attached to the word, like improvement in
quality, refinement or even an attempt to attain fullness, do not seem to occur
to them. That a city has its own ecosystem comprising all the natural elements,
including the humans that need to attain fullness is missed by them. To the
politicians development means build and construct more and more eating away all
that comes in the way, farmlands, hills wetlands or whatever. The greater such
development, the thicker is the cream that can be skimmed.
In the context, for example, of Bhopal,
a city that could have been beautiful and eminently liveable, development has
wrought havoc to its environment. In the quest of that illusive or, more
appropriately, ill-conceived and misdirected development, the powers-that-be
allowed its green hills to be ravished, life-giving water bodies to be
degraded, tranquilising centuries-old parks ravaged and rendered a
once-salubrious clime immoderate and unwholesome.
Living in this city as I do, I
have, therefore, come to dread the word “development”. Fortunately for me I am
not alone. Even the Supreme Court recently echoed similar sentiments, though in
a different context. It said, (Mahanadi Coalfields case - 2010). A kind of tyranny that inflicts lifelong
misery and privation!
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| Gangotri Valley |
Nevertheless, driven by their
lust for power and eventual pelf the politicians, ably assisted by the construction
lobby (or is it a mafia?) and unscrupulous bureaucrats, swing into action for
development contributing to that buzz-word, “growth”. Looking for short-term
gains – of flow of votes and cash – they get into a mad rush for development
with utter disdain for the consequences of their actions in the long term.
Something of this nature happened
in Uttarakhand in recent times. As long as it was part of the massive state of
Uttar Pradesh (UP) it was neglected, being far away from the centre of gravity.
Born as Uttaranchal in puranic times. Soon the process of development was initiated by
those who fought for its separation. Having got hold of power they launched
themselves into a mad scramble to convert it into an “Oorja Pradesh” (The Energy State). For realising the state’s
hydro-power potential of an estimated 25000 MW building of dams, barrages and
embankments on and along the rivers became an obsession. In the process,
numerous roads by cutting the hills or tunnelling through them (weakening the
already weak young mountains) were constructed to get to the sites of dams and
barrages necessitating large-scale scarring of the mountain-sides and
deforestation. Forests were also lost to agriculture, housing for progressive
urbanisation and to other sundry activities.
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| Gaumukh |
Those who happened to be in power
could not resist the spin-offs from construction, logging and so on and,
virtually, the state was progressively stripped off of its natural assets.
Possessed as they seemed to be, they even refused to implement the Central
notification declaring an eco-sensitive zone between Gomukh (terminus of the
Gangotri glacier at around 13000 ft.) and its district headquarters Uttarkashi
(app 4500 ft.) for the sake of development. (A 1700 MW hydelpower plant had
been planned where generation of not more than 2 MW was permissible. Mass scale
land-use conversion was planned for mining, construction of hotels and
resorts.) Progressively, the mountains got scarred and lost their green cover
that deprived them of the capability to hold the soil, the dammed rivers lost
their waters, the animals their pastures as the locals looked on, presumably,
in dismay.
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| Badrinath Valley |
Blessed as the state is with the
four holy Hindu shrines, of which two are connected with the most holy and Rest
houses and hotels came up, shopping and eating joints were opened up all along
the routes on mountain slopes and dangerously close to the fast-running rivers,
throwing to the winds all environmental norms.
revered rivers of the country, it could never have escaped pilgrims from all
over the country. The new state, however, gave the subdued religious tourism a
mighty heave. It became a big collective enterprise and virtually every section
of the population got into the act. Roads were re-laid or newly-built on which
run hundreds of buses, SUVs and MUVs.
The country’s rising
middleclasses sent the tourist traffic soaring by the year so much so that on 16th
June 2013, thousands were milling around at the four shrines located at
elevations of 10000 to 12000 ft in ecologically fragile narrow valleys. While
the entire population of the state is 1 crore, 2.5 crore tourists had
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| The flood |
The question that authorities
must answer is “Development for whom? For those who lost their lives or are
still missing and presumed dead or for those who have lost their homes, breadwinners and all their means of
livelihood in the havoc that was wreaked?
Uttarakhand alone is not in the
race for development at the cost of environment. Another small state carved out
of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, is racing ahead to become the power house for
the country. Sitting on vast reserves of coal, it has cleared coal-mining even
in virgin forests, one of which was a proposed elephant reserve in a forest that
was declared “no-go” by Jairam Ramesh during his tenure as environment minister.
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| Kedarnath shrine after the cloudburst |
A large section of the Indian political
class care little for the environment as it often proves to be a hindrance in
their vote-catching and money-making devices. No wonder environment is taking a
beating all over the country in the mad rush for development. Dams, mining and
industry coupled with unrestrained tourism have devastated or are in the
process of devastating the environment in large tracts of the country in
ecologically sensitive areas, from North-East to Odisha in the East, to the
South in Karnataka and Kerala, from Goa and Western Ghats in the West to
Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the North. The most serious
instance of political aversion to the cause of the environment was the
suppression in 2011 of the Report of Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel by the very Ministry (of
Forests & Environment) that had constituted it. It had eventually to be put
in the public domain as a sequel to orders issued under the Right to
Information Act.
Politics of votes, coupled with
pervasive corruption, is out to destroy whatever little is left of the
country’s environmental assets. If no remission takes place in respect of all
that is currently happening, the country is likely to witness many more “Uttarakhands”
in the future.
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All photos are from Internet
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