From my scrap book :: 14 :: Rising environmentalism among youngsters

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Soothing greenery in an urbanscape

It is encouraging to see that concern for the city’s environment is on the rise amongst the youngsters. Plays are being enacted on street corners and elsewhere bringing home to the audiences the value the people get from a robust and green environment, And what provides it are trees, and more trees,

The provocation for this sudden upsurge in environmentalism among the young men and women was the revival of the proposal for construction of a rest house and some residential units for the elected members of the Legislative Assembly. The proposal was initially mooted after the 2014 State Elections. It was, however, withdrawn in the face of huge uproar by the general public as the proposal involved in cutting down a few thousand trees enhancing the depleting tree cover in the Arera Htlls in particular and the town in general. Then, as well as now, the proposal had been initiated by the Speaker of the House. While the Speaker of the last Assembly saw reason in the arguments of the environmentalists who were opposing him the Speaker of the current Assembly seems to be a little more tenacious and does not seem to be in a mood to yield.

One must say the lead in opposing the avoidable construction for our worthies was taken by Dainik Bhaskar, the local Hindi daily. As usual the newspaper takes its justifiable stance in favour of the city’s environment then the people who too are equally concerned chip in with their opinions and statements. This helps in fleshing out the newspaper’s stance giving it a greater substance. The newspaper appears to have a committed team in its stable of reporters which ferrets out facts from closed and dust-laden files to bring them out for the readers’ benefit.

As usual this time, too, the team has done remarkable work and brought out facts that were forgotten due to efflux of time. Some of the facts brought out by the newspaper are -

-       - There are 230 worthies in the Assembly but already there are as many as 272 residential units available for them. Besides, the Members have cornered several flats that have come up under various projects in the town under due provisions made for them. They either live there or, according to some other reports, have rented them out.

-        -As much as 33 acres land is still lying unused in the old MLAs rest house area which can be used for erecting new buildings when required. There would seem to be no need for felling trees in a new area of Arera Hill which has since been highly colonized and has lost most of its greenery.

-       - Post 2014 elections when the former Speaker proposed the new construction for our worthies the first act was to cut down around 1150 trees. The authorities seem to be always ready with axes in hand to chop down any tree that they see standing on a piece of land proposed for any construction. Eventually, the Speaker’s plan did not materialize but the trees stayed felled. Perhaps in a bid to cover up, a report of planting of 3000 trees was prepared – a report that was patently false.

Felling of trees for various development projects in urban areas has come in for criticism by superior courts in the country. Journalists have also been active in criticizing the loss of green cover all over the urban landscape in India. Even Bhopal has been flagged for serious implications due to loss of trees and consequential rise in temperature. Last July the newspaper Asian Age reported “an ominous climate change may be knocking on the doors of the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, now almost a barren shadow of it once green past”.

The paper reported a phenomenal increase in the city’s Mean Maximum Temperature (MMT) during the last ten years. As per the weather data the MMT which was 33.22 degrees Celsius in 2010 has galloped to 42 degrees Celsius in 2019. No wonder the City then had a climate that was every bit salubrious. The paper said that the massive loss of green cover in the city was the key factor in turning it into a heat chamber during the last summer. The city has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the four cities that are the fastest in losing their respective green cover. The newspaper quoted Commissioner Bhopal Division who is reported to have said while launching a tree planting campaign, “We are already late. A climate disaster is waiting to happen if the situation is not reversed”. Presiding over a plantation drive the Commissioner is enlisting several organizations including the Indian Army for assistance.

 A recent report in a local newspaper said that it is the “netas” and “babus” who are champions in felling of trees. If the city is to be saved from a rising MMT people, especially young ones, have to take concerted action to stop “netas” and “babus” from wielding the axe.

Our Life, Our Times :: 45 :: MP CM & ministers indulge in a rip off

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MP Legislative Assembly

When the Times of India reported earlier this year that the state treasury of the UP Government had been bearing the income tax burden of the chief minister and other ministers for years the Yogi Adityaraj government promptly announced that the law in this regard would be repealed soon. True enough, an amendment was soon introduced in the House and the law in question enacted during the era of Late VP Singh was repealed. The Chief Minister and his ministers have now started paying Income Tax from their respective pockets.

Later the Times of India again reported that the UP was not the only state where taxes of ministers and chief ministers were being paid by the state treasury. In fact, according to its report, there are five more states where Income Tax of the chief ministers and ministers are paid from the respective state treasuries. The states are Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

 In Madhya Pradesh this has been continuing since 1994. Haryana and Himachal Pradesh have been disbursing these taxes for more than 50 years – since 1966 when the state of Punjab was bifurcated and the states became separate entities. In Punjab the practice was discontinued in 2018 on orders of the new chief minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh. Chhattisgarh continues to pay these taxes of its chief minister and ministers after it was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000.

Madhya Pradesh government has not made any move to repeal the law that sanctioned payment of the income tax of ministers and the chief minister from the state treasury. This is despite the fact that the current chief minister is a crorepati and there are as many as 187 MLAs who are likewise rich enough. The Madhya Pradesh Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms has reported that MLAs in the MP Assembly have on an average net asset of around 10 crore and asset of 114 Congress MLA on an average is 9.41 core.

The chief minister and his wife are filthy rich having movable and immovable assets worth more than Rs, 200 crore. And yet he wants the state to pay his Income Tax. The ability to legislate on their own salaries and allowances has allowed these aberrations to creep in to the system. Aberration is a mild word; in fact it is a rip off. While MLAs have been periodically raising their salary and allowances they have not taken care to modify this particular piece of legislation that makes the state foot their tax bills. According to information available on the internet, the salary of a MLA of Madhya Pradesh is Rs. 2.50 lakhs per month. Besides the salary, there are other allowances and perquisites. All this makes them virtually living on the people of this supposedly backward and poor state.

If they happen to have any shame the chief minister should have a bill moved immediately in the Assembly for repeal of the law that makes the state treasury bear the burden of income tax of these multi-millionaires. 

Other states like Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh also need to critically examine the matter and repeal the relevant laws to lighten the burden on their respective tax payers.

*Photo from internet

Bhopal Notes :: 81 :: We have a dysfunctional municipality

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Two or three days ago the local daily Dainik Bhaskar published photographs of deplorable condition of roads. Drains were shown as overflowing and so were sewers and this was happening right across the town. I got interested as one of the photographs was from my neighbourhood on the Idgah Hills.

The manhole that was overflowing was the one on the tri-junction of Cambridge School and it seems to have been overflowing for a few days. It does so frequently; perhaps the sewer lines do not have the capacity to take the muck and it gets accumulated until it moves upwards and finds an outlet through manhole cover.

I think it is highly callous of the Municipal Corporation to allow this noxious fluid to flow freely through the road with substantial traffic passing by every minute. Students of Cambridge School go sloshing through the accumulated filthy water. Besides, a fishmonger sets up his shop on the road next to it and vegetable and fruit sellers park their pushcarts not far from it. People buy their needs despite the very unhygienic surroundings. Surely the Corporation officials would be collecting their informal tax (hafta) from these street-merchants periodically. And yet all these people are made to ply their trade in such insanitary environment.

Free-flowing manholes are so common that when we see one we take it as given. Actually, when we come across municipal workers de-choking a manhole we are surprised as it is something which is rarely witnessed. And, if the municipal workers happen to be wielding a de-choking machine it would seem to be out of this world. The other day, while passing by from the New Market area I happened to come across a municipal worker at work on an overflowing drain with a machine. The Municipality, quite obviously, has these machines that have been bought at the tax-payers’ expense, yet these are generally moth-balled or are deployed in areas inhabited by VIPs or are not deployed at all. The overflowing drain near Cambridge School is a case in point.   

My mind travelled back a few decades to pre-independence India where the municipality of Gwalior, the capital of the princely state of Gwalior used to do these civic jobs quite regularly. Although all the operations were done manually yet they were done at regular intervals. As a child I used to position myself on the verandah of our first floor house overlooking the street to get a ring side view of what the municipal workers would be up to. I distinctly remember the equipment they used to bring to switch on a tap embedded in the road and to attach a fat hose to it to wash the roadside drains. The high pressure of water from the hose would clean away in minutes all the muck in drains deposited over time.

Likewise, two people would come to clean the manholes. They would remove the heavy lid and uncover the manhole and one of them would climb down into it with a pan tied to a rope. He would manually shovel the muck into the pan and then holler for the other to pull it up. A pretty simple operation and, if conducted regularly, was devoid of any risks. In our national capital this system was prevalent until recently when a few workers were killed by the noxious gases. Obviously manholes had not been cleaned regularly and the lethal gases were allowed to accumulate.

Soon after independence all these operations were discontinued, seemingly because we had gained freedom and cleaning up the muck from the drains apparently became redundant. It is such a pity that what a feudal administration could ensure for the health and wellbeing of the citizens the people’s own governments have been unable to do. During the feudal times it was the fear of the higher-ups that made the municipal workers to carry out their duties regularly and sincerely. Now it is free for all; nobody needs to carry out one’s duties. Besides, things have become so big that the right hand does not know what the left hand does. In the process, hardly anything gets done. No wonder things are in a mess.

The Municipal Corporation is provided with every necessity by way of men and material and yet it fails to carry out its duties. Obviously, it is very loosely administered and the officers have no grip over the areas of their activities. It is nothing but sheer inertia and carelessness that keeps them away from carrying out their functions effectively. No wonder the city suffers from the ravages of overflowing manholes, potholed roads, denuded greenery and what have you.

*Photo from internet

Bhopal Notes :: 80 :: The city cannot take any more tree-felling

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Environmental ignorance is pretty widespread in this country. Unfortunately, even the people in responsible positions display this ignorance. One wonders whether environment should become a compulsory subject of study for children in their school years. A grasp of the elements that make our environment seems to have become necessary in the current times as many of our actions interfere with it to make our life eventually perilous for us.

An elected official of the Assembly, clearly, does not know that bringing down a full grown tree cannot be compensated by simply planting saplings. While with the felling of a decades old tree destroys its ecology, it could also be the nemesis for the organisms that find shelter in and around it and prosper because of its benign help. Numerous micro habitats find support for themselves in a tree; it also provides on the ground below a different kind of habitat in the shape of leaf-litter, decaying wood discarded by the tree and so on. There are trees that support some specialized kind of invertebrates. Hence a tree is just not a part of the landscape, it is a living and thriving universe for the organisms that inhabit its ecosystem. And the whole thing – the tree and its ecosystem – contributes in its own unobtrusive way to the larger ecosystem in which we and many other organisms live out our lives

This is being stated in the context of the ongoing controversy regarding felling a few hundred trees for construction of rest houses/living quarters for the honourable members of the state Legislative Assembly. The proposal in this regard went into cold storage after the term of the last assembly came to an end. It was the Speaker of the last Assembly who had initiated the proposal but withdrew it when there was a furore in the media about felling of trees. But by the time he agreed to withdraw his proposal a thousand-odd trees had reportedly been already cut down. Damage had been done but the consolation was that the Speaker was amenable to reason who quietly put the lid on the whole thing.

The current speaker is apparently not so malleable. He has spared none, including a former chief secretary who runs a redoubtable NGO that handles work relating to human settlements. And, trees – their existence or otherwise – have everything to do with humans and their settlements. She, therefore, had every reason to come out in the media and speak her mind about and against the proposal.

People of Bhopal have now become sensitive about cutting down of trees. Perhaps, the last summer was what broke the camel’s back with its searing heat. That is when the citizens realized how loss of trees in thousands for several developmental projects (many misconceived)  has adversely affected the city’s climate. The green cover of the city that was once more than 60% has now been reduced to only 11% and, if not checked, is likely to go down further close to a dangerous 4%. The citizens of this town fear for that summer day when the sun will fiercely beat down on the city to make it boil in its stark and bald surface bereft of greenery inflicting misery and pain to them.

Clearly, there is no scope for felling more trees in the city even if it happened to be for the sake of the highest dignitary of the land, leave alone the members of the Legislative Assembly. In fact, there is a need for planting of more trees in a campaign mode (like that of Swachha Bharat) so that in another ten or fifteen years the town regains its green cover. If the honourable members have to be provided in the meantime new rest houses or living quarters let the Speaker go and look for open vacant land in the town and negotiate with the government for construction on it. It is not necessary that the living accommodation for the honourable members should be provided only on Arera Hills. Enough damage has already been done to these Hills; it cannot be degraded any more.

*Photo from internet