One is never too old to learn a lesson or two about life. I found that out this month, the lesson being that you can try to run away from the effects of climate change, but you cannot hide from it : it will get you, sooner than you think. We ran away, as is our usual drill, from the heat, water shortages, power outages of the NCR to our place in Puranikoti in April end: amidst the dense forests, flowing nullahs and quiet of the village, we thought, we could put climate change behind us for a few months.
How wrong I was! The forests are dry as tinder, afire in many places; the nullahs no longer flow; the sun beats down on us like a physical force. For the first time in 18 years, ever since I built my cottage here, I am having to buy water from water tankers! Even though we get water from a govt. scheme and I have a 25000 litre roof-top water harvesting tank. The problem is that the water sources of the former scheme have almost dried up, and there has been no rain for the last six weeks to fill the water harvesting tank. There has been hardly any winter snow here for the last two years and all the underground aquifers have been depleted, the rainfall pattern has also altered: earlier we used to get a locally induced shower every three or four days but now we are dependent, it would appear, on the north-westerly disturbances emanating from the Caspian sea. Whatever happened to our micro-climate, I wonder?
[ Mountains on fire. Photo by Pankaj Khullar, IFS (Retd.)]
The lesson is writ large on the burning forests, the dried up streams and "kuhls", the unbelievable temperatures in Una and Hamirpur rivalling those of Chandigarh and Gurgaon. But, like a student with an attention- deficit disorder, our state govt. will just not learn it. It carries on with its business as usual policies, it continues to level the mountains and slaughter thousands of trees for airports which are not needed, build four-lane highways which devastate the mountains and whose muck chokes the rivers, approve more hydel projects which are environmentally disastrous.
[ Forest fire near Solan. Photo by Pankaj Khullar, IFS (Retd.)]
The Chief Minister has announced that he wants to double tourist arrivals, from 20 million a year to 50 million! Is he smoking Malana hash, I wonder? Our infrastructure and natural landscapes are already crumbling under the onslaught of the existing 20 million tourists; one cannot even visualise the devastation that will be necessary to accommodate another 30 million- just their potable water requirements will amount to 3 billion litres per day! A June 2021 report, quoting the HP police states that 18370 tourist vehicles enter the state every day; even these numbers have made a mess of the traffic in every single town of the state. The Atal tunnel near Manali recorded 20000 vehicles a day passing through it this year. Can one imagine the state of affairs if all these numbers were to be doubled, which is the Chief Minister's fond wish ?
The fate of Himalayan states can be seen, even as I write this, in what is happening to the Char Dham yatra: the lakhs of people stranded for days on the Gangotri-Yamunotri-Kedarnath routes: the mountains just cannot bear these numbers any longer. The blame has to be shared by an ecocidal government ramming through the four-lane Char Dham highway in a fragile mountain system, as well as by the brain-washed urbanites, riding high on an SUV-driven religiosity, unmindful of the consequences to nature. Himachal should learn from all this, before it's too late.
Smell the smoke of the forest fires, sir, and the stench from the dry nullahs filled with plastic waste and human refuse. Learn from countries who are putting the health of their natural landscapes and ecology over tourist dollars. Stop the felling of trees, the cutting of mountains, the unnecessary building of roads, airports, not-so-smart cities, the damming up of rivers and streams. The cumulative effect of all these hare-brained policies is what is imparting a local impact to the global phenomenon of climate change. Do a course correction while you still can. Concentrate instead on protecting your forests, implement water harvesting schemes on a war scale in both urban areas and the forests, limit the tourist numbers to a sustainable level, bring back the micro climate which nurtured the state, climate proof the sustainability of your eco-systems. Show some vision beyond defeating Kangana Ranaut in the elections. Make your money by protecting your natural ecology and assets, not by destroying them.
Or be prepared to be taught a lesson by Nature. The classes have already begun.
Avay, your blog has touched a raw nerve as far as I am concerned, but I doubt it will make an iota of difference to the political or bureaucratic polity of the state. The way things are going, it won't be long nefore Shimla, if not the entire state, loses the very attraction that draws tourists to its environs rvery summer ... It's climate, it's greenery, it's culture! Mussoorie has already suffered that fate, and Nainital is not far behind. On my recent visit to my dentist in Shimla, it took me an hour to drive up to Taradevi, and then another forty five minutes from there to New Shimla. (I would have found a dentist here in Solan, but this chap in Shimla is just too good to be true.)
ReplyDeleteComing back to the subject, Avay, the government needs to seriously consider replacement of the overmature deodar trees on Jakhu hill, most of which were planted over a century and a half ago. The forest department has the silvicultural techniques to do so, provided the 'environmentalists' and the courts let it do so! As far as the chil forests are concerned, fire is a part of it's natural ecology, and should be understood as such. Long term protection from fire will end up in a more mesophytic broad leaf vegetation, that may not be as economically benefial. However the intensity of the fires can, and should, be managed, employing age old silvicultural practices such as control burning, pruning and fire lines.
Enough said. Thank you for highlighting environmental concerns, friend.
This blog touches a raw nerve.... Mindless govt quest for notching up tourist arrivals displays total ignorance of a) need to calibrate and disperse tourism throughout the state and over the year consciously to distribute the formal and the resultant revenues while decongesting high density destinations like Shimla, Manali, dharamsala, sissu! B) more tourists don't necessarily mean more revenues as their contributions of our resources-natural and built- far exceeds their spending here! Such a cost-benefit analysis is forsaken in the pursuit of mass numbers of any kind of tourists who chew away our dwindling resources leading to growing resentment among host population c) a professional data capturing and analysis protocol needs to be in place to replace this chaotic inflow with data based strategies to disperse tourism and then sync infrastructure needed accordingly... The newly constructed abandoned Benito at Dhalli bypass on the heart of Shimla is a testimony to the mindless investment in a city that is NOT SCARY from any angle! D) what are we as citizens doing to improve our carbon footprint and minimise resource use? Shall initiatives can make a huge difference- 3 years ago we motivated one week ladies to collect, cut into a flap and dry the high poly grade empty milk pouches to be sent to an NGO in Mumbai for penetrating aave then conversion into beautiful items like municipal benches, thotta etc that is generating livelihoods at different levels along the supply chain! Similarly water refuse is easily possible by conserving all GREY WATER that we use by capturing it innovatively! Our places get only the kitchen grey water! Shimla had over of the most expensive and the most subsidised water supply in the country! Until this cost of supply from source to tap is shared with citizens they will merrily contribute waiting this precious irreplaceable resource. Let's ask ourselves are we the Yeti with such a big carving footprint or we are aware of being resource googlers and dear to bring this consumption down while participating with the govt in ensuring pudding of wastage at all levels! Else Apocalypse will stamp us in one fell blow with NATURE'S HUGE FOOTPRINT!
ReplyDeleteTragically, the development versus displacement debate will never end. But now the scales weigh heavily against unbridled so-called development. A friend who just retired as Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, U.P. told me that over 30 years ago he had warned the then U.P. Govt against the indiscriminate widening of roads in the fragile sub-Himalayan region
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ReplyDeleteWonder if it has occurred to commentators that it is now beyond the capacity, managerial, financial, political or intellectual of the Forest Department, to sustainably handle climate change driven forest fires?
ReplyDeleteThe cruelest joke is the sarkari pronouncement that our forest cover has actually increased over ten years !!
ReplyDeleteWe have already passed the tipping point for global warming and lament is all that remains.
India is disadvantaged when it comes to climate change. With a population twice the size optimal for its landmass, it has multiplied itself out of thinkable solutions. The load of our humongous number negates any and every attempt to reduce carbon footprint. Add a low literacy rate to the below average IQ of Indians, and the plight worsens. Which is compounded by a widening economic divide that is creating a vertical wedge in our demography. All of this exacerbated by an unfeeling, vacuous political order that stays in the pursuit of power and pelf. The annual COP and environment summits, where solemnities and solutions are brokered and bartered, come to nought because, back home, the definition of a forest is broadened to include even a roadside thicket and record an increase in the area under forest cover.
ReplyDeleteIn a country whose Premier boasts of raising its GDP to the 3rd largest globally, yet feeds 60 percent of the people free rations for the next 5 years, how and what premium can environmental thoughtfulness command. India seems to be careening down a slippery climate slope with no stopping mechanism. To this, additional thrust is being lent by the proponents of doom with newfangled theories on climate warfare. Avay Shukla’s exhortations - simple, understandable and perhaps implementable - may go unheeded.
Scary. Most of the hill houses get water from own spring source unknown to urban and outsiders. Govt taps have no supply. The day these springs die and die they will due to construction, deforestation, garbage upstream, Himachal will die
ReplyDeleteI would be happy to host a blog called the ‘Arrowheads of Shock and Awe’ and hand over ‘ownership’ to Mr 'Keen Observer', Mr. Ajay Sawhney and friends so that their intensely intelligent, academic and now, geopolitical focus may find a wider readership by which to spread the critical education they have to those who don’t.
ReplyDeleteI offer because just as their apparently erudite and esoteric views have every right to be stated and published, the present blog over which they have sought to make their comments, has every right to its own form and features without being subject to vicious unwarranted attack. It is one thing to refute and another to refute with uncalled for contempt.
Of course I realise where such an attitude stems from and how once embarked upon, the spiral of conspiracy overtakes all by sheer gravity (of the falling kind). However, since the View From [Greater] Kailash blog is a dearly enjoyed blog by hundreds of readers (perhaps thousands by now), in its own pristine form without any intellectual aspirations, it deserves and has every right to its own space and not be vitiated by those who choose to see “sinister play sinister”.
It were best therefore, as Mr Patankar has suggested, that such a high level of intelligence (before which we duffers must quail), occupy a much larger stage so that more and more may be duly educated without need for rancour.
If the offer is acceptable I shall try to have it up and running within the month and hand over accordingly.
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ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Shukla,
ReplyDeleteThere is something very sinister at play here. The above comment has NOT originated from my end! I was stunned.to see my name as its source. Someone who is clearly your detractor, not limited to a single entity, is into a vicious campaign hijacking identities and posting all sorts of irrelevant, immaterial and insidious comments here. This needs to be stamped out immediately and from the root, else could have disastrous repercussions on the blog, the owner and the commenters.
For starters, please delete the above post that has originated at 15.06 with my name , just above this post of denial, which is genuinely mine. Thank you.
Ditto the post of 15.24. Fake.
ReplyDeleteThe other commenters too should observe at their end if the DELETE button is available to them next to the REPLY button below their comment. That post is sent genuinely from the genuine source. Any other post with the same name cannot have the same source because Blogger only permits the DELETE facility to the originator of the post and the owner of the blog.
ReplyDeleteGenuine readers of Mr. Shukla's blogs should stay flocked together and take note.