Wake up call for the people of Himachal
Being born and brought up in the lap of Himalayas I always feels special connection with mountains. It is always refreshing when I go my home from a busy and fast city life. I feel blessed to be born in the mountains of Himachal. From past few years I have been experiencing a lot of change in the climate, vegetation, forests and rivers in the mountains of Himachal. I always feel Himachal is god’s gift to India with its immense natural beauty.
From my recent experiences I have noticed following alarming things which we have to think about -
1) Forest area in Himachal is depleting. I see the forests which used to be densely covered with deodars, oak, pine, etc. slowing losing their existence.
2) Because of various Dams and Hydro-electric projects built on rivers like Sutlej, Ravi and Beas these rivers have less water now. If nothing is done these will become seasonal rivers in coming 10–15 years.
3) Our source of water for drinking and agriculture is from natural resources like waterfalls and rivers. This water gets generated from snow and glaciers in the mountains. From past several years we are experiencing less snowfall than average. We don’t have ground water source so just imagine if this will continue people will have huge water crisis in coming years. Migration of human population have happened in the past because of water scarcity. Do we want to face the same situation?
4) More urbanization is creating scarcity of land. People now live in nuclear families and thus more houses are being constructed. I remember when I was a kid there used to be 30 families in my village Now I see more than 80 houses in my village. In past we use to have one or two water taps in our village, now every house hold has 5–6 taps. More houses require more electricity, more resources, more water. Are we creating or protecting the resources with growing needs? Demand is more and resources are depleting.
5) People have raised their living standards. We have cars,big houses, and enjoy all luxuries but do we need all these things at the cost of nature?
6) Growing number of tourists? I understand Tourism can create employment opportunities and revenue for state but this also have to progress looking at other parameters as well. Tourism will only flourish when we will have beautiful mountains, rivers and snow which Himachal is proud of. There will be no tourism without these things.
It is good that we are progressing and our living standard has been raised in past few years. People are sending their children to good schools, owning cars, spending lot of money in marriages, owning smartphones and big houses. All these are signs of development and of course our life has become much easier now. All these mountains, rivers, land, our soil and water resources are equally important part of our development process. But in this course of development why have we forgotten these things? We no longer pay attention to nature and it seems we are getting least bothered about nature . Human life cannot survive without nature. Because of these resources today we have orchards, agriculture, cash crops, clean drinking water and air. Its time people in Himachal realize this and educate themselves on the effects of these climate changes on their lives. I understand govt. needs to be active on this topic now and have to play active role in this but I feel people of Himachal also have to realize this thing and make every person around them aware of this. We have to understand that our past generations have enjoyed living in this beautiful land of Himalayas and have always treated this land as DEV BHOOMI. In this article I am not giving any solutions or measures but this is just a start to make every person in Himachal give a thought about this.
We have many solutions, many measures but the first thing is we start realizing what’s happening around us? This is the time we should start thinking on this seriously because this will impact the future of our generations to come.
