Joshimath sounds alarm bells

 

When ecology is shortchanged for so-called ‘development’, Joshimath like disasters come rushing in to wreak havoc. If it is Joshimath today, and Kedarnath, Varunavat and Rishiganga sometime in the past that have rained misery on Uttarakhand, our hill state has reasons to worry.

Shimla already sits on the simmering volcano of nature’s fury ready to erupt any time. Pictures of the ugly monstrosity that this once-upon-a-time ‘queen of hills’ has become, send shudders down the spine. In them one hears silent but desperate alarm calls of nature growing weary with the uncouth load, and impatient to retaliate. Doesn’t the bizarre maze of buildings on steep hills seen vying with each other for space and sky, reflect an insane, crazy picture of modern living? How the successive governments have let this brazen rape of hills and valleys go on and on? How illegal constructions and encroachments have been sanctioned, laws bypassed and new acts framed to regularize them? How the sane commandments of the NGT/law courts have been flouted with utter impunity? Why? To please the rich and the powerful? And because many of the lawmakers and bureaucrats are partners in the crime? And of course ‘freebie vote politics’–  the sweet candy that the venal politician serves with reckless glee: damn the ecology, damn the threat to human life, damn the law, damn the economic costs?

If Shimla is sitting on a powder keg, can other tourist towns be far behind? Manali, once a tranquil oasis of green, where the stately, saintly deodars stood saluting you with a smile of welcome, has given way to a horrifying wilderness of metal, glass and concrete. A frequent visitor once, I now squirm at the very idea of getting lost in its soul-wrenching urban maze and cacophony. Even the pristine Lahaul & Spiti is choking and groaning under the mounting footfalls of the filthy-rich, law-flouting, noisy, irresponsible, meddlesome ‘desi’ tourist fouling its virgin land, culture, air and water–  thanks to the Atal tunnel.

 McLeod Ganj once exuded serene charm: the little hill town blessed by that angel of love and peace, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to lend it spiritual aura, and enlivened by the (less intrusive) videshi tourist/pilgrim.

 But unregulated construction has turned this gentle-paced town humming the song of nature into a chaotic sprawl pockmarked by urban eruptions on its lovely, canopied slopes. It suffered unprecedented flash flood some years back. More natural disasters are not far away.

Even other towns like Palampur, Mandi, Solan, Kasauli, Dalhousie are under severe strain of tourist-oriented urbanisation. Nature-engendered catastrophes of one kind or the other have become routine.  Mandi was in the news this January for a land cave-in. Subsidence in most places is already happening. It will only get worse.

Well it is always expedient to crack the whip of blame on the blundering politician. While we do so – and rightly too – how responsible are we as citizens? We waste water and power, pollute our land, air and water with gay abandon and don’t think twice about grabbing govt/public lands at the first opportunity wherever the law is lax or has a loophole to exploit.

Himachal, we proudly pontificate, is gods’ own abode. But with our rabid greed and all-consuming hunger our gods must be getting impatiently wrathful and thinking of pitching their tents in some quieter isle of peace and bliss elsewhere!

Alas, Homo sapiens is digging his (and the planet’s) own grave which is widening with every ticking second. It is time therefore we became ‘Sonam Wangchuks’ in our villages and towns and launched our own ‘climate hunger-protests’.

*