Prof Javed Mughal
Countless precious lives stand washed away in Uttarakhand deluge and disaster so much so that it left an imperishable traumatic scar on the face of human history. How can one forget the cries of thousands for help and futile attempts to save their life? A video clip, displaying the small family trying hard to save their life but carried away by the strong waves of angry water allowing them to come back never, sent a galvanic shock through my spine.
Such heart-rending moments have many times been witnessed by the history of mankind in the past also. But none with a rational mind to think should blame nature for this formidable dimension to history of human life for the simple reason that Nature is not cruel, it is very compassionately justice loving instead. To the best of my belief, God is not relentless; he does not wrong his creature; he does not do injustice. He has created the human being fully blessed with general will and a common sense and has taught them all to live life according to certain principles. And he, of course, punishes us when we digress from the track just as a student is punished by the teacher or a son is reprimanded by his father when they do wrong.
Our biggest blunder is that we have never respected the Nature-“the detached manifestation God,’ as Wordsworth says. We harmed environment irreparably and now is the time we are facing the music. Quite clubbed with it is the poor planning of the Government in regard to the development, absence of proper attention to the environmental issues especially when roads and buildings are carved out and erected. The tragedy of Uttarakhand is attracting the attention of environmentalists, who are blaming the Government for this natural calamity which resulted into the death of thousands of people and destruction of property worth thousands of crores. This natural disaster may be the making of men, but the response of the Government, after the calamity happened, was far less than adequate.
The whole administration of Uttarakhand Government seemed to be paralyzed. When Chief Minister was needed in Uttarakhand to oversee the rescue relief and rehabilitation works, he was seen running towards Delhi to get Central help. One District Magistrate suffered heart attack. The administration even could not coordinate properly the rescue operations being carried out by para-military forces and Army. The rescued persons could not be provided even food and shelter and in most cases even medical facilities. The whole administration seemed to have collapsed. What kind of development is taking place there can be seen by the figures of their development. One basic fault of our development model is that we attach this development with the development of the region. In this development model, we leave the local people residing in the region out. Not only local people, we ignore the ecology and environment of the region as well. Developments can be made and are being made at huge social cost. We just ignore it. No cost- benefit analysis based on social cost is made. People of a region want separate state to develop them, but new states were made to develop the region at the cost of the people. If some studies are made to see the response of local people of Uttarakhand to the so called developmental projects, it may open up our eyes to see how people were resisting them but their resistance went unheeded, if not unnoticed.
There was a Chipko movement launched by the local population of Uttarakhand. People were resisting the cutting of trees for development purposes. Their Chipko movement went unheeded and trees continued to be cut for their use in development and for clearing the areas where trees were standing for some development projects. There was a stiff resistance against the building of Tehri dam. The works on the dam went on for decades. The anti-dam slogans of the people were relegated to back-drop of ignorance and what they could get by their movement was only infra-dignitary compensation. Thousands of tons of explosives were used to complete the dam injuring the Himalayas and its natural habitats. So far dam has not caused any damage, but what would happen, if an earthquake damages it and water stored in it comes down abruptly?
According to an environmentalist, the whole low lying areas would get destroyed; the destruction would not be limited only to the hills, but even to the plains of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. The water of Tehri dam can even reach Delhi and cause devastation there by washing out the national capital. In fact what we needed in Uttarakhand is not the exploitation of its waters for electricity and development of religious place for tourism, but to preserve it in its natural form. Himalayas cannot withstand the population pressure witnessed in the Gangetic Plain. They cannot withstand a consumerist society, which has come into existence lately, where the destruction of ecology has become a rule to own more consumer goods and go for more consumption.
Himalayas save us, when they are in natural form, if we play with them, they will finish us. Development of India is not sustainable, if we give injuries to the Himalayas. Nature has not to be harmed to make cities and towns with Ferraris and Mercedes plying on it and the skyscrapers meddling with the sky. Apart from it what the vctims of Uttarakhnad disaster are getting at the moment from their Government or the Central machinery is extremely disgusting and condemnable. Thousands of people are still held in the affected areas and are waiting for assistance but all in vain. There may be two reasons behind this sadistic attitude of the Government mechanism–first the Government is not competent enough to help the victims out for want of adequate resources and secondly our Government is simply not interested to do anything for those who have lost their lives or those who are likely to succumb to nature’s wrath.
By cutting both the ways the Government is condemnable. Thanks to the NGOs who have voluntarily come forward for the noble cause of human service at such a critical juncture otherwise the scene would have been far worse that it is now. Apart from it the environment is to be escorted. Plantation drives must be carried out widely. The soil has to be strengthened and the chances of floods and deluges have to be discouraged. Our developmental pragrammes must not be implemented at the cost environment. The development setting aside the environmental concerns is transitory and is quite possible bring disaster sooner or later.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel