Impact of global warming and man-made ecological disasters in Uttarakhand, time to save Uttarakhand, Himalayas and Ganga, Prime Minister’s intervention necessary
The perils of Global warming and ecological disasters taking place in various parts of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Wayanad claiming hundreds of lives have indeed become a very important question which needs to be resolved expeditiously by the active participation of our governments , at the centre and states including intellectuals, the environmentalists, seismologists, earth scientists, writers, journalists, thinkers and above all the leaders of all political parties representing various thoughts and ideologies.
You will appreciate that the degrading Himalayas due to increasing global warming and the polluting Ganges on massive scale belongs to each one of us, the entire nation and the Globe and therefore it is our collective responsibility to ensure that the widespread fires in Uttarakhand forests destroying and disturbing its flora and fauna and adding to the increasing global warming including massive deforestation, unfriendly development, building resorts, hotels, commercial buildings and residential luxury accommodations on Riversides violating all the set governmental norms and becoming easy victims of the flash floods during excessive rains and bursting of cloudbursts etc have become common phenomenon leading to human and animal deaths wide scale including colossal loss to public exchequer.
In Uttarakhand, massive landslides due to cloudbursts, excessive rains, bursting of underground or within mountain aquifers during road or tunnel construction activities and dynamite explosion during road widening activities to crack rocks making already fragile mountains hollow from inside including building of 75 % of tunnels inside hills from Rishikesh to Karnaprayag for underground railways with lakhs of fully grown up tree cutted on massive scale have infact adversely added to disturbing and destroying the already fragile environment and ecology of Uttarakhand hills and other states.
Wayanad ecological destruction on massive scale is another recent consequential follow up of the angered nature due to man made nature’s incursion on massive scale where hundreds of innocent people have succumbed to the nature’s ire.
If we take the case of Uttarakhand in particular, apart from massive landslides and more than three thousand villages becoming ghost villages including several villages being wiped out due to the naturefury as happened in two villages of Tehri Garhwal in Ghanshyali recently , these are clear cut indications of massive ecological catastrophe in the offing.
In Uttarakhand Himalayas while Glaciers are expeditiously melting with Gaumukh glacier too melting fastly going 40 kilometre backwards, the landslides on all weather road’ routes being built in a most environmentally unfriendly way has been at nine places where the entire highway road to Kedarnath including the mountain parts at several points have been completely washed away with two thousand people stuck for hours together during torrential rains.
In addition to this despite the most dangerous ecological disaster witnessed in June 16, 2013 leading to more than ten thousand human deaths and large scale loss to properties amounting to over Rs.50 thousand crores with several villages of Garhwal and Kumaon divisions of Uttarakhand uprooted, the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the completely damaged nearly 200 villages haven’t taken place through renovation and rehabilitation as assured by the then chief ministers of Uttarakhand viz Vijay Bahuguna and Harish Rawat – but on the Kedarnath and Badrinath Dham vicinity the construction work did took place with a budget of thousands of crores of rupees despite the hard fact that our seismologists, earth scientists etc from Lucknow had categorically warned not to make any further renovations or constructions in the Kedarnath precincts, rather should shift the entire township to some other safer place selected by them to avoid the massive human losses in case the ecological disasters arrive in future. They had clearly said : In future if God forbidding, another ecological disaster takes place in the Kedarnath equalising the massive disaster that took place in 2013, even more dangerous devastation is sure to take place keeping in view the increasing construction and human presence at Kedarnath precincts with footfalls increasing manifold in every season to about eight lakhs multiplying with vehicles , four and two wheelers emitting unaccounted quantity of green house gases including noise pollution by choppers destroying and polluting our environment frequently through repeated sorties.
Uttarakhand today is unfortunately the grave victim of massive road accidents too including human kills by man-eater attacks, especially during the monsoon season.
Conclusively, the perils of ecological disasters,one also seen in Joshimath through its subsidence, cracking of over ine thousand houses, hotels n commercial building , hospitals etc , massive pollution, melting glaciers ,increasing global warming , massive forest fires during summers and Ganges becoming the victim of excessive pollution with lakhs of KAANWAR YATRIS, pilgrims and tourists in millions leaving behind their plastic bottles, used clothing and dirt have made it mandatory for our ruling party governments , the opposition parties, intellectuals, earth scientists, environmentalists, NGOs etc to come on one platform and formulate a credible policy to apply checks on massively increasing foot falls in the Himalayan regions including the massive number of vehicles compounded with applying strong checks on environmentally unfriendly development and legal brakes on construction alongside the river periphery etc.
What is more astonishing and shocking to note is that Uttarakhand have five Lok Sabha and three Rajya Sabha MPs hailing from the ruling political dispensation, the saffron party BJP elected for the third time but they seem to be busy in attending reception events in the national capital accepting garlends and bouquets rather than raising the pivotal issue of enormous ecological devastations in the Uttarakhand hills in Parliament leading to massive human lives’ loss and several villages, highways, roads , school buildings, hospitals being wiped out in the incessant ecological disasters.
Moreover the allocation of merely Rs 315 crores for coping with the situation after such an enormous devastation also seems to be too less. The prime minister’s visit to Wayanad is being lauded by everyone even the former Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi but nor Prime minister sir or a single union minister has paid any visit to the ecological disaster hit areas of Uttarakhand till date to apply balm on the hurt sentiments of the victims of the himalayan state.
The prime minister Narendra Modi should take the entire opposition into confidence and formulate a credible national policy on checking the expeditiously degrading environmental status and speedy melting of Himalayan glaciers to save our humanity from extinction.
A meeting was held yesterday ( Sunday) at Uttarakhand Sadan convened by the Tehri legislator who had joined BJP a day before apprehending that his Congress ticket is being cut in 2022.
The meeting was on environmental degradation and massive ecological devastation in Uttarakhand where majority of the speakers including this writer spoke at length on the various shortcomings of the successive governments of Uttarakhand for not formulating a credible policy on illegal constructions on river sides, massive deforestation, environmental unfriendly development, number of shortcomings in the all weather roads projects and literally making our already fragile mountains hollow from inside up to 75 % on Rishikesh to Karnaprayag railway project including massive fires during summers with flora and fauna tremendously destroyed n deforestation etc.
When this journalist urged to call an all party meeting on Himalaya glacial melting and increasing global warming and its fatal consequences not only was this journalist badly yelled and bullied by those present by his henchmen but also scolded as asked to leave the venue in the midst of all insulting me to the core giving a clear cut impression that their agenda is not actually protecting our Himalayas but unambiguously earning cheap political popularity and goodwill of their political leaders for future political beneficence. This was really uncalled for as this journalist sincerely wanted that since the degradation of the environment and ecology of the environment, Himalayas and Ganges concern all why not to involve all the political parties and stakeholders in this significant discussion in order to arrive at a definite cumulative solition to this impasse but they want to do it own individually and insult journalists and those with dissent. Sorry to say. Was deeply hurt.
Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion were Kishore Upadhyay, MLA, Sunil Negi, President Uttarakhand Journalists Forum, Madan Mohan Sati, Press Advisor CM, Delhi, Mr. Khatri, Dr. Hari Suman Bisht, eminent writer, litterateur, Dinesh Dhyani, linguist, Ramesh Ghildiyal, eminent Hindi writer , Chandramohan Papnai, journalist, Mr. Dhoundiyal, Ajay Singh Bisht, President, Garhwal Hitaishi Sabha, M.S. Rawat, educationist, Arjun Singh Rana, social activist Udai Mamgain Rathi, Durga Singh Bhandari, Mr. Hardoliya and others. The former pro with the CM Pushkar Singh Dhami was also present on this ocassion.
