G.L. Khajuria
What is the extent to which this mostly revered ‘Mother Earth’ shall bear the most sindful, gruesome, criminalisation. Man’s such merciless acts have though indeed crossed all barriers and is still on way more momentously than ever before. The lush green cover has dastardly been decimated, the nectar clear rivers and water bodies have been awfully polluted; the lofty mountains are loosing soil texture and subjected to denudation and the ruthless soil erosion are to an alarming proportion distorting the entire Himalyan and sub-Himalyan regions to a greater extent. The salubrious climate has become sick with ever escalating pollution , the oceans and seas are giving clarion calls for safeguards. But it is a matter of more than utter shame that the modern materialistic man is adamantly after this only bio-sustaining planet in the cosmos which the God has bestowed to us all. Who is responsible by the way? The self-speaking answer with oozing confidence comes, man himself! Today’s man prides of developments, what developments? Breaking of land which subsists the greenery, construction of roads over roads, the tunnelling and holing in the globe is to be named as progress. It is absolutely no progress, rather it is nearing the man to the death doom of holocaustic catastrophe. And such like environmental degradation which the modern man and scientists claim are doing down the line of nature.
Imagine today’s environmental scenario, the eluding monsoonal pattern, the ever-amounting floods, droughts and famine. Talking of home India, the Eastern Ghats were hard-hitted by droughts and floods-taking heavy toll of human life, their belonging. And see the other side of coin-the, farmers of Andhra Pradesh Punjab etc are on suicidal spree over a couple of years. Though the situation is taking a likewise scenario elsewhere in adjoining as states as when we talk of north easten states and that of Utterkhand and the Vale of Kashmir (Paradise on earth). Is this an appreciable progress? Around 72.21 per cent of our over 1.25 billion population live in the villages numbering more than 63,80,000 and 60 per cent of the population have no pacca houses, 25 per cent have no access to safe drinking water, 55 per cent live in darkness, 85 per cent have no sanitary benefits. Are all these in unison mirror progress on Indian scenario? Rightly HLManchem has remarked, “Democracy is a art of running the circus from money cage”.
The pollution of our nectar clear-waters of rivers over our land like the Ganga, the Yamuna face to face with ecological squalor in the industrial slums surrounding the cities and towns testify to our callousness towards environmental preservation. All these shall clutter our thoughts, make us diffident and send us filth-mongering. The overpopulation coupled with ever-mounting urbanisation have been heavily burdening the ‘Mother Planet.’
The industrial and the agricultural progress we have so far made is nothing else than a pernicious effect of the physical environment of man and his surrounds. India – a nation which has crossed 1.25 billion shall be number two heavily populated country crossing even china, in the coming couple of years. Industrialisation are belching millions of tones of pollutants et.al. noxious gases efffuence, emission of CO,CO2,SO2 the most deadly soots, hazardous fumes in the air and more of its equal in the pious rivers, lakes, other water bodies, the oceans and seas thus tantamounting to denaturing ‘Mother Planet’. This has in other words round made the sky smoke-ridden and the pristine glory and grandeur of glittering stars have lost luster.
All these factors in unison are adversely effecting the climatic changes resulting into global warming and the ambient temperature soaring high in the map of world. As per estimate more than 1,60,000 people die globally each year due more to the side effects of climatic changes, frequencies of rapid precipitation, floods, protracted drought. In either way the ‘environmental degradation’ or industrialisation work in collusion and squandering our biological capital et.al. its soil, forest, biomass, its flora and fauna (micro as well as macro) and to cap it all the biosphere (the air). And it would not be denying what Mr. Milan Kundra once remarked, “The only reason people want to be master of future is to change the Past” .But it is poetic narration nor ‘environmental imbalance’ which is being disturbed and shall yield unprecedented consequences of holocaustic death-knell signal which the modern man must take note of it.
Our revered late Prime Minister , Indira Gandhi once remarked in a World’s conference year back 1972, “We do definitely want development but not at the cost of destruction”. But most ironically, we have become a hunted civilization, the technological backlash is now in full swing by the tilt of century and in pursuits of developments. Long back (1574-1616) Miguel de Carrantes said, “Prudent men should judge future events by what is taking place in the present”. Indeed he was too right for his farsighted visionary.