NEW DELHI, Sep 16:
A parliamentary panel will visit the flood-affected State of Jammu and Kashmir to examine the causes behind the environmental crisis and also find ways of preparing for dealing with such calamities in the future.
The newly-constituted department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology will visit J-K after the relief and rehabilitation work there is over.
“We have decided that after all relief and rehabilitation work has been done, the Parliamentary Committee will visit J-K. It is very essential that the people of (the State) have this feeling that the entire country is with them.
“MPs of all parties, after going there, will discuss with Government officials the reasons which led to such a big disaster, its solution and how to be prepared in future to deal with such situations.
“What should be the steps of preparedness, what are the shortcomings which through the Centre’s help and the State Government’s coordination can be rectified,” said Ashwani Kumar, Chairman of the Committee, which had a meeting today.
He said their panel wants to focus the nation’s attention on the crisis through the parliamentarians and also send out a message of solidarity to the people of J-K.
Kumar said there is a lot of concern with what unfolded in J-K and the environmental and ecological dimensions of the crisis need to be considered.
He said that instead of doing everything at the same time, the committee has decided to focus on certain key areas within its jurisdiction and work on those.
Meanwhile, stating that the Wildlife Protection Amendment Bill is presently before the panel for its consideration, Kumar said that although several meetings have been held in the past, the matter is yet to be concluded.
“We will try and resume work on that,” he said.
Giving the example of a pilot desalination project started by the Earth Sciences department in Lakshadweep, Kumar said the panel will also look at the availability of drinking water in the country as various reports suggest that by the year 2040, there will be many areas which would be facing a lack of drinking water.
He said the panel also wants to study India’s development in space, especially when India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is set to enter that planet’s orbit on Sept. 24.
Kumar said that if that goes through successfully, India would have become only the fourth country in the world to have done it. He said that the remaining three nations — US, UK and Russia — had had many failures and claimed that if India is successful, it would be the first to have made it in the first attempt.
He said he had had a meeting with the secretary of the space department who wanted to give a presentation on space satellite applications in understanding forestation, water currents and other topics at the Homi Bhava Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. He said that the committee might visit it in mid-October.
According to Kumar, the panel also wants to take the country’s Super Computing technology further and ensure that India’s capabilities, which were bigger than China’s in 2005 but had fallen back, to again take the lead.
The panel has 31 members and its second meeting is expected to take place in mid-October. Asked if the committee will take up issues related to GM crops, Kumar said they would have to see about that although any feedback is yet to be taken on the issue. (AGENCIES)
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