Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Mother Nature?

how is it that when we derive everything--our survival, our comfort, our riches--from nature (think:water,electricity, diamonds, fuel, steel) and yet we continue to destroy it? why are we killing the goose that lays the golden egg? Or cutting the branch that we sit on?
We rape the forests, gouge the mountains, poison the waters, kill the river, slaughter the wildlife, pollute the air, pillage the valleys, flatten the hills.
We degrade, destroy kill Nature.
and we call her mother.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

value of nature...

There is no doubting the economic value of nature, but how do you weigh the value of tranquillity, the spiritual serenity that is the blessing of a forest. How do you quantify the pleasure of catching a fleeting glimpse of hangul, the rarest deer in the world, or following the tracks of the grey ghost of the mountains, the snow leopard or being a witness to the power of the tiger as it downs its prey--a thousand pound gaur.
Such moments are rare today as habitats are razed and species fade away. Wilderness, in its truest form, is almost an impossible find. You would be hard pressed to find a place where no man has gone before...man has his footprint everywhere...

Monday, July 5, 2010

'Common'wealth?

Sadly, our value system has become so distorted that we link our international prestige to providing a 10-day Commonwealth Games whose chief characteristic is hiding beggars from public gaze so that foreign dignitaries will perhaps be fooled into believing that India has no beggars. This distortion of values is proved by Suresh Kalmadi getting Rs 1,600 crore for the games while the victims of Bhopal have now been given a supplementary amount of 1,500 crore. The games, for which the perfectly good roads of Lutyens’ Delhi are being paved all over again, get Rs 100 crore more.”

This comes from Mani Shankar Aiyer--a senior Congress leader. For once, i couldn't agree more,
What are we doing, where are our values? another innane, insane move i read today:
A Draft law gives Maharashtra SEZs the powers of a local body..here is the link: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/draft-law-gives-maharashtra-sezs-the-powers-of-a-local-body/642238/. how can we let this happen? where are the poor in all this? the ones whose land is grabbed for SEZ? shuttled out of their homes so that the rich can get richer? and they make a noise--the human rights activists, when people are relocated--with a fairly decent deal, now, and on a voluntary basis--out of forests--so that that can get more opportunities and into the mainstream, and out of the wilderness? why are there no protests over this one?
if you want further shocks, read the cover story on mining in frontline...