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Srishti-2022   >>  Article - English   >>  Environment Vs urbanization

Reji Thomas Mathew

Tech Masters

Environment Vs urbanization

Industrial revolution has given way to job and better life to many. Due to this, pace of urbanization also is at a very high rate in last few years, which is very good, but at the same time we should ensure it doesn’t affect the environment adversely. If an eco system is curtailed for better living, it will have its own repercussions. Recent incidents also state these truths. Let us see few of such incidents and think about some practical solutions to reduce such impacts.

 

Flood in Kerala – In 2018, Kerala faced its worst flood in hundred years. With that we went back by 50 years and it will take years to rebuild the charm fully. Though it’s debatable on whether we could have controlled it, since it’s a political sensitive topic I don’t want to rub pepper into it. We had heavy rain fall and didn’t have proper mechanism to evaluate and forecast rains. I am not sure whether such systems are being implemented anywhere effectively?  Let us leave such things and rather put our thoughts into why this much damage occurred? If we look into that we can see we filled paddy fields, did constructions on river beds and all such areas affected badly. We had to close down Cochin airport for many days! Huge boundary walls fell down. Digging soil from rivers has caused damages. We should be doing nature friendly constructions and not damage the scenery of the environment.

 

Landslide in 2019: Though not as severe as floods in 2018, landslide also caused heavy damage and death toll also was on higher end. If we flatten the mountains, cut down the big trees and move the soil to other low level areas, surely such things will occur. Lucky that it was not worst. Few farmers do farming of one item alone (like rubber) depending on what give more yield and profit. This is not the right approach. You should simulate natural forest concept of different variety trees. That will control soil erosion. The unfortunate incident is induced and inducted by land mafia lords. They have made huge ransom out of these anti environmental actions and even stay somewhere else happily. It’s the poor people who has hit badly. What wrong they did to see such a bad fate. Never alter the nature in such a manner, rather keep such changes minimal.

 

Girl’s death due to snake bite: All Medias are behind teachers who didn’t take care of the snake bit child. It’s so unfortunate, but why should snakes come to school? Because the school is near a forest area. So to make it simpler human has gone to forest and acquired that to make a school. Now where will snakes go? Why tigers or pigs or monkeys come to populated area? Because forest is being curtailed animals are forced to get into human space now. Let us understand that world is a place for all living beings and not just human.

 

There is a song sung by KJ Yesudas “gori thera gaav bada pyara me tho gaya maara aake yeha re”. you know who made that song/ it was by Bombay Ravi. He came to kuttanad and when he saw the beauty of  nature he wrote those lines. But now what is the stage of Kumarakam, Kovalam etc? Lot of garbage. We make our life more miserable. I have seen educated professionals throwing plastic bottle to drainage pits in Bangalore. You know the reason? 90% of such professionals are from other states and not Bangaloreans. So they are least bothered about the cleanliness of the city. Similar is the issue we saw with Chennai flood. Improper waste management leads way to more troubles. Few years ago Trivandrum city water management was very poor. But thanks to the strong leadership of Trivandrum corporation under mayor V K Prashanth, city waste water management is much better. Even high court requested Cochin Corporation to study the measures taken by Trivandrum Corporation. When we travel in train and near Kollam, we see lot of plastic being dumped. That is going to be big menace for society. We should take environment friendly steps. Plastic banning need to be more vigorous and rigorous.

 

We need good leadership, planning and thought process with good funding to do things in a professional and better manner. It is not just the leaders who implement this. It’s the common man, with civic sense who can respect nature and environment, failing which sooner the world will not be a good place to live. If we do urbanization considering the environment, then surely world will continue to be known as a better place to live in.

JAIHIND