Ecological Tragedies - Old and New
There has been a series of detrimental news related to the pristine forests of the Nilgiris in the past few years. We have been hearing stories of how the Nilgiris is likely to be turned into a marvel (as if it is not now) of development/progress. The economics bogie that has been repeated across various parts of the country is most likely to enact its new play now - right here in the Nilgiris. 
First we heard about the growing rumours of the proposed 156 km long railway line from Chamrajnagar to Mettupalayam which will shave across some of the nation's best forests of Sathyamangalam, completing a historic venture for the railways but devastating the forests. It is not about the elephants as many would like to believe, but about an even muter organism, the forest. Forest that should be protected for the sake of ensuring what has existed for centuries continues to do so. It is here that the eastern and western ghats meet, a hitherto undisturbed region, difficult to access for an average person, resulting in rich biodiversity as compared to similar regions that were opened up for development. Luckily, we were spared this misery...
Yes, it is true that pressures of population is leading to increased fatigue of the existing roads between Sathymangalam and Chamrajnagar. However, having already cut roads in Nagarhole, Bandipur, Mudumalai, Hasanur, the upper Nilgiris plateau - man is still not content with the harm caused on the ecosystem. Simply put, it would be a fallacy to construct this rail line at a time in history, when we have the convenience to reach from one place to another with too much bother. Read this - http://www.countercurrents.org/shaji030607.htm
The second we heard in the year 2010 was the Masinagudi, Siriyur, Mettupalayam road that would have supposedly lit the lives of millions of people of the nation.... forget millions, not more than a few score of people live in the region This road is the grandest ploy conceived by interest groups to ease the convenience of passengers wanting to reach Coimbatore faster. But consider the facts first - From Masinagudi to Coimbatore –by the conventional road takes about four hours. The other option takes one hour to reach Siriyur from Masinagudi and through an incredibly winding road that is barely enough to accommodate one vehicle at a time - through elephant herds who have been resting in the shade perhaps, from Siriyur (the short hills becomes difficult for people to walk) to Thengurmarada would take an estimated one hour and lead beautiful hills to be devastated. From then on to Mettupalayam takes anytime between one and half to two hours and then another 50 minutes to Coimbatore - Add it and you would find that it takes about five hours on a good day were you dont hit and run over black bucks or enjoy mock charges with these pitiful elephants.
Even the British could not penetrate this patch of hills and it indeed would be a good record for our engineers who would stand with their hands raised high when crews coming from both sides meet. Perhaps, even the Discovery people would make a film, a panama canal like scenario.
Great, but why.... I could go on and on about the richness of the region, the isolation which has led to civilization coming to a rest - at least for the time being - It is possibly the last of the critical zones that has not been covered by well meaning TV crews but yes - a truly wonderful place, one that needs to be preserved and hidden from our view forever.......
The third point (which got resolved in the Nilgiris but shifted to Theni) to take note of is the upcoming Neutrino observatory. (See http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/18/stories/2008041853240300.htm). 4 hectares of land would be occupied for the lab which is of national importance. It is an honour for this lab to come up in this region and would be a site to the best brains working together. Yes... and these brains would need a place to stay, eat and sleep. I do know a thing or two about colonies of this sort for they require huge colonies to stay in and offices to work from. I come from a family of coal miners and have seen the devastation unleashed in Bengal and Jharkhand. These colonies, many of which I stayed in close to santhals but rarely interacting with them cause social upheaval in the region. Imagine people with monthly incomes of more than 30,00 living int D type flats and bungalows next to poverty prone Irulas.... Their whole world would change and for the worse for it would take generations for them to obtain these jobs and at the same time would have lost the only thing which makes them so rich - their culture.
Then again, the Chamalapura Thermal plant was another of the grand dreams planners had, in their zeal to bring in prosperity. But what would you prefer, the verdant hills of Mysore, famous as one of India's most clean cities or an obvious blackening of our environment and of our hearts. Nagarhole would remain nothing but a picnic spot with soot covered trees and some cheetal running around. the elephants would run away to Mudumalai and further south, causing more conflict with the demanding farmers of these regions and ultimately end being shot. Why.... yes development but even my relatively young eyes see through the maze of deceit that planners have put in.... Why can't you.....
What would you prefer ending up as... an ideal city lad whose idea of a holiday is France as India is one of those dirty, godforsaken country or an Indian whose heritage scoops deep dollops from our inherently nature based culture.... I don't know and I hope that well meaning people manage to drown these brilliant ideas in those alleys of decision making........
India with its vast diversity is home to unique bounties of nature, few other nations can match. When one starts reeling off statistics, the listener can merely shake his head in amazement. India is also home to a large proportion of the world's population - rapidly growing and turning increasingly western in its outlook. Western in their consumption pattern, western in their outlook and definitely western in their relationships with each other.
Yet, we are pretty unwestern and unmodern when it concerns our present day relationships with nature in the nation. Unmodern because we have ceased to see ourselves as a part of the Earth we live in, it is rather preferable to visualize oneself as that modern looking car we all drive nowadays - the feel remains that of a flaky body while we rest under the vast shade of the Peepul tree, blabbering over our mobiles to god knows which interested folk in this world.
India or rather, we Indian were not so long ago, the perfect example of an ecosystem people. Now all our claims are humbug, to say the least. Just as we harp about our culture, similarly we harp about our forests. Yes, it may be true that a lot of the urban drivers of the society were ecosystem people, not very long ago - when knowing how to milk a cow, smelling the rain in placid winds, respecting the earth as our mother and so on were the norm and not exceptions. We had innumerable sacred groves where we worshipped and inadvertently encouraged life in its wild form. We would all know what gardening was all about, if not agriculture and strangely we would keep away from the dark, foreboding masses of trees and forests. Forests were considered eerie yet holy place. Our hermits lived there, wrote the Aranakayas and put forth mystical theologies. A person who had no relation to any forest would still be aware that the wood used to fire his hearth was sourced from the forest. Venerated they were, respected and always kept away from. Tribals, living closest to these regions developed an animistic relation towards trees and animals of the forest and looked up to them for benevolence and protection.
But as it happens with communities seeking more pleasure and comfort... our sights shifted. The focus has now shifted from a symbiotic interface to a more direct relation with forest and the so called forestry resources.. And this is best embodied by the respected proponents of scientific forestry who in their born-again attitude contributed much towards alienation and mass scale exploitation of these holy places.
Ruthless it has been. This wanton destruction, this unwarranted misery that has been piled upon these invaluable living objects. And for me the greatest fear is the apathy of the vast masses of India, who are no longer interested in being termed as worshippers and religious. The friends in cities, the relatives in villages, the scholars in universities - all are interested in the pursuit of their individual happiness, marked out by the reluctance to hand out space to anybody else. In this scenario, as I see it...... and I sometimes work in forests... That there are but very very few, who gather their wits to understand the consequences of their actions on the environment.... happily as they race as rats...................
First we heard about the growing rumours of the proposed 156 km long railway line from Chamrajnagar to Mettupalayam which will shave across some of the nation's best forests of Sathyamangalam, completing a historic venture for the railways but devastating the forests. It is not about the elephants as many would like to believe, but about an even muter organism, the forest. Forest that should be protected for the sake of ensuring what has existed for centuries continues to do so. It is here that the eastern and western ghats meet, a hitherto undisturbed region, difficult to access for an average person, resulting in rich biodiversity as compared to similar regions that were opened up for development. Luckily, we were spared this misery...
Yes, it is true that pressures of population is leading to increased fatigue of the existing roads between Sathymangalam and Chamrajnagar. However, having already cut roads in Nagarhole, Bandipur, Mudumalai, Hasanur, the upper Nilgiris plateau - man is still not content with the harm caused on the ecosystem. Simply put, it would be a fallacy to construct this rail line at a time in history, when we have the convenience to reach from one place to another with too much bother. Read this - http://www.countercurrents.org/shaji030607.htm
The second we heard in the year 2010 was the Masinagudi, Siriyur, Mettupalayam road that would have supposedly lit the lives of millions of people of the nation.... forget millions, not more than a few score of people live in the region This road is the grandest ploy conceived by interest groups to ease the convenience of passengers wanting to reach Coimbatore faster. But consider the facts first - From Masinagudi to Coimbatore –by the conventional road takes about four hours. The other option takes one hour to reach Siriyur from Masinagudi and through an incredibly winding road that is barely enough to accommodate one vehicle at a time - through elephant herds who have been resting in the shade perhaps, from Siriyur (the short hills becomes difficult for people to walk) to Thengurmarada would take an estimated one hour and lead beautiful hills to be devastated. From then on to Mettupalayam takes anytime between one and half to two hours and then another 50 minutes to Coimbatore - Add it and you would find that it takes about five hours on a good day were you dont hit and run over black bucks or enjoy mock charges with these pitiful elephants.
Even the British could not penetrate this patch of hills and it indeed would be a good record for our engineers who would stand with their hands raised high when crews coming from both sides meet. Perhaps, even the Discovery people would make a film, a panama canal like scenario.
Great, but why.... I could go on and on about the richness of the region, the isolation which has led to civilization coming to a rest - at least for the time being - It is possibly the last of the critical zones that has not been covered by well meaning TV crews but yes - a truly wonderful place, one that needs to be preserved and hidden from our view forever.......
The third point (which got resolved in the Nilgiris but shifted to Theni) to take note of is the upcoming Neutrino observatory. (See http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/18/stories/2008041853240300.htm). 4 hectares of land would be occupied for the lab which is of national importance. It is an honour for this lab to come up in this region and would be a site to the best brains working together. Yes... and these brains would need a place to stay, eat and sleep. I do know a thing or two about colonies of this sort for they require huge colonies to stay in and offices to work from. I come from a family of coal miners and have seen the devastation unleashed in Bengal and Jharkhand. These colonies, many of which I stayed in close to santhals but rarely interacting with them cause social upheaval in the region. Imagine people with monthly incomes of more than 30,00 living int D type flats and bungalows next to poverty prone Irulas.... Their whole world would change and for the worse for it would take generations for them to obtain these jobs and at the same time would have lost the only thing which makes them so rich - their culture.
Then again, the Chamalapura Thermal plant was another of the grand dreams planners had, in their zeal to bring in prosperity. But what would you prefer, the verdant hills of Mysore, famous as one of India's most clean cities or an obvious blackening of our environment and of our hearts. Nagarhole would remain nothing but a picnic spot with soot covered trees and some cheetal running around. the elephants would run away to Mudumalai and further south, causing more conflict with the demanding farmers of these regions and ultimately end being shot. Why.... yes development but even my relatively young eyes see through the maze of deceit that planners have put in.... Why can't you.....
What would you prefer ending up as... an ideal city lad whose idea of a holiday is France as India is one of those dirty, godforsaken country or an Indian whose heritage scoops deep dollops from our inherently nature based culture.... I don't know and I hope that well meaning people manage to drown these brilliant ideas in those alleys of decision making........
India with its vast diversity is home to unique bounties of nature, few other nations can match. When one starts reeling off statistics, the listener can merely shake his head in amazement. India is also home to a large proportion of the world's population - rapidly growing and turning increasingly western in its outlook. Western in their consumption pattern, western in their outlook and definitely western in their relationships with each other.
Yet, we are pretty unwestern and unmodern when it concerns our present day relationships with nature in the nation. Unmodern because we have ceased to see ourselves as a part of the Earth we live in, it is rather preferable to visualize oneself as that modern looking car we all drive nowadays - the feel remains that of a flaky body while we rest under the vast shade of the Peepul tree, blabbering over our mobiles to god knows which interested folk in this world.
India or rather, we Indian were not so long ago, the perfect example of an ecosystem people. Now all our claims are humbug, to say the least. Just as we harp about our culture, similarly we harp about our forests. Yes, it may be true that a lot of the urban drivers of the society were ecosystem people, not very long ago - when knowing how to milk a cow, smelling the rain in placid winds, respecting the earth as our mother and so on were the norm and not exceptions. We had innumerable sacred groves where we worshipped and inadvertently encouraged life in its wild form. We would all know what gardening was all about, if not agriculture and strangely we would keep away from the dark, foreboding masses of trees and forests. Forests were considered eerie yet holy place. Our hermits lived there, wrote the Aranakayas and put forth mystical theologies. A person who had no relation to any forest would still be aware that the wood used to fire his hearth was sourced from the forest. Venerated they were, respected and always kept away from. Tribals, living closest to these regions developed an animistic relation towards trees and animals of the forest and looked up to them for benevolence and protection.
But as it happens with communities seeking more pleasure and comfort... our sights shifted. The focus has now shifted from a symbiotic interface to a more direct relation with forest and the so called forestry resources.. And this is best embodied by the respected proponents of scientific forestry who in their born-again attitude contributed much towards alienation and mass scale exploitation of these holy places.
Ruthless it has been. This wanton destruction, this unwarranted misery that has been piled upon these invaluable living objects. And for me the greatest fear is the apathy of the vast masses of India, who are no longer interested in being termed as worshippers and religious. The friends in cities, the relatives in villages, the scholars in universities - all are interested in the pursuit of their individual happiness, marked out by the reluctance to hand out space to anybody else. In this scenario, as I see it...... and I sometimes work in forests... That there are but very very few, who gather their wits to understand the consequences of their actions on the environment.... happily as they race as rats...................
