Kuldeep Bhan
World has been through many unusual situations for the last more than two decades with phenomenon like Global Warming, Climate change occurring almost in every state and the nation across the Globe on regular basis. The consistency in the nature’s fury can be gauged from the fact that many parts of world this time are flooded, some are experiencing draught and at same other places, the violence, demonstrations, agitations, shutdowns and strikes.
Apart from this, world is experiencing lots of bloodshed as a result of growing terrorism and increasing fundamentalism. Inter caste and inter religious disputes are on the rise and the destruction of civilization as a result of bomb lasts, missiles, rockets and deadly ammunition with encroachments and infiltrations inside deep forests and sensitive ecosystems has increased remarkable. Be it the naxalism, maoistism or any other terrorism, the destruction has to be borne by the humanity, the mother earth and its sensitive ecosystems, leave aside the nuclear attacks which have created havoc in Hiroshima a few decades ago in 1943. The toxic and hazardous emissions from these missiles, bombs, rockets and other deadly weaponry have added a lot to global warming and climate change. The burning of oil wells, forest fires as a result of intrusion into forests where smugglers and militants find safe heavens during conflicts have raised earth’s temperature and toxicity of atmosphere considerably resulting in big ozone holes. Now for our lapse to act, the nature can turn more furious adopting Newton’s 3rd law of motion i.e. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Our hunger for grabbing more and more of natural resources and lust for consumption has to be checked. Everyone in the world has to be more responsive to the environmental degradation of any type and anywhere. We say municipalities don’t pick-up the garbage but can we think of a collective responsibility, we sit back waiting to be pampered and expect the Government to do everything for us while our contribution is totally negative. We expect Government to clean up but we are not going to stop chunking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick-up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect Railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn proper use of bath rooms. There are so many thing like this, the list is very long but we are not there to own anything rubbish or unwanted instead throw it on to somebody else shoulders. When it comes to other burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child and others what we do is to make loud drawing room presentation and continue to do the reverse at home. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries for away and wait for Mr. CLEAN to come along and work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away like a lazy coward hounded by our fears. We run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When USA become insecure we run to England, when England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight to Gulf and when the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Government. Everybody seems to abuse and loot the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscious is mortgaged to money and only to money and not to many and many who leave miserable lives.
Recently , the demonstations held in distt. Samba have put many vehicles into flames , leave aside the other losses to the public property, during these days when Gujarat has also started burning . The people are intolerant to the suggestions or repeated requests of the officials at the helm of affairs. Jammuites are fighting for establishment of AIIMS in Jammu region for boosting health care facilities locally. But the very purpose of it gets shadowed when one sees lumps of smoke coming out from burning of public property, tyres and effigies on roadsides. We must know the consequences of toxic emissions which are released during such activities in any part of the state, nation or the world. It has become clear now that we can not escape nature’s fury with such activities which are highly polluting and contaminating in nature. The emissions from toxic and hazardous wastes by carrying out such highly polluting activities are definitely going to destroy our atmosphere, lithosphere and the hydrosphere which are interdependent for maintenance of ecological equilibrium on our planet.
There are ways and means of non-polluting and non-violent demonstrations that can be adopted without disturbing and destroying the environment. It is high time to give up such anti environment and antisocial acts and adopt non-violent and non-polluting methods to express one’s anger. It is said that we cannot prevent a bird of sorrow from flying over our head but we can definitely prevent it from making a nest in our head. Moral and environmental education has to go side by side for de-polluting the human mind. The words of wisdom by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam that when you salute your duty , you need not to salute anybody but when you pollute your duty you have to salute everybody. Mindset of the people has to be changed. We must understand that wellbeing of human being depends more on the quality of environment than on the economic development. It is collective responsibility of every citizen on this planet to prevent further deterioration of environment, the sooner we take to prevent it, the better it is, otherwise point of no return will not be far away. Thus de-polluting of the human mind has to be taken up by every state and the nation across the Globe on priority basis mainly for the youths who are involved in violent & militant activities by imparting them strong dozes of moral and environmental education, simultaneously.
(The author is Divisional Officer, State Pollution Control Board, Ramban )
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