Have Indian leaders already seriously compromised the country’s ecological food security and the nation is within sight of the scenario now prevailing in Ethiopia Chad and Nigar? Bittu Sahgal a naturalist and environmentalist paints a grim picture in The Independent Journal of Politics and Business.
Satellite and ground surveys show that forests grasslands and swamps (mothers of rivers) have almost vanished. All 1574 large dams are facing premature death.
Forests have shrunk to 2 tenth of their former size and soon the country will be in the grip of terrible droughts. Misplaced confidence and shortsightedness of planners and politicians have played havoc with the country’s future.
Water table has fallen from 10 to 300 meters in parts of Kutch Constant deforestation has made reservations and barrages to over suit in Andhra Pradesh (Nagarjunasagar) Gujarat (Ukai) Orissa (Hirakud) and West Bengal (Farakka) to name a few dams. Industrial pollution has made hundreds of rivers lakes and wells degraded and useless for irrigation or for human and life stock ‘water drinking.
Irrigated lands in Punjab Haryana Gujarat and Maharashtra are threatened with waterlogging or salivation. However leaders have not understood acknowledged or accepted any of these facts. Deforestation leads to both floods and droughts. School children know this but not our rulers and planners.
Soils are becoming depleted because engineers are blind to the fact that a dam is only as good as the natural vegetation in its catchment area.
But catchment areas lie tattered and 850 million people have to worry about their future.
There is need for reverse migration to end urban problems. We must also save our rivers. For example 1200 industrial units throw untreated toxic wastes in the Sabarmati river. If one drinks its water one will most probably die. If it is used for irrigation crops will wither. India is planning to add 10 nuclear reactors even though the technology is uneconomical and unsafe. The USA has not permitted one new nuclear Plant to come up in the past two decades.
When will it wake up and stop poisoning the land water and air? After all it does not have the assets to re-achieve environment sanity once it destroy its resources!
Article extracted from this publication >> May 24, 1991
