SHIMLA, June 9:
Vice President Hamid Ansari today called for re-examining the meaning of sustainable growth while stressing on embracing the Gandhian philosophy of “good of all, including the weakest”.
Speaking at the 22nd convocation of Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) here, Ansari asked his audience to look beyond GDP and other market values while measuring development.
“There is a clear need to go beyond GDP and market values while measuring development as human well-being and quality of life are important additional values.
“The approaches to sustainability governance, based merely on economic values are not only insufficient but partly the cause of unsustainable development,” he said.
The Vice President also talked spiritedly about the need of ecological conservation in a hilly state like Himachal Pradesh that is susceptible to many natural disasters due to its geographical location.
Himalayas are endowed with fragile and vulnerable ecosystem and recent happenings have reminded us that human excesses extract a cost and emphasised on “a re-look at the questions relating to management of environmental and community resilience”.
The active nature of geological forces in these mountains and their geographic location make them susceptible to a range of natural hazards that get magnified to the level of disasters when they are coupled with activities like human habitations, road building, agriculture, deforestation, mining and dam building, he observed.
Ansari noted that as the impact of environmental changes is felt most by those living on ground zero because their livelihoods, habitation and sustenance is linked to the environment.
“The poor, weaker and weakest segments of the society are more vulnerable to risks from natural and man-made environmental hazards,” he said.
The Vice-President bated for greater participation of stakeholders in decision-making regarding their environment.
“The communities which are most closely associated with the natural landscape should have the greatest say in governance of their environment but this objective is impeded by the urge for energy intensive, resource hungry economic growth often leading to appropriation of resources, particularly of land, by the state or private players, thus restricting people’s access to their immediate environment,” he said.
However, he noted that there is increased awareness of environmental problems among the people today.
The dignitary conferred Doctor of Science, Honor-is Causa on eminent space scientist Dr K Radhakrishnan and Doctor of Literature on Prof Vepa Rao, famous poet Gobind Vyas and Governor Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Govind Rajan.
Rajan was awarded the degree in absentia while the others received the awards in person.
Ansari also awarded gold medals to 20 toppers of the university while Vice Chancellor Prof A D N Bajpai awarded gold medals to 86 toppers and PhD degree to 139 students.
Himachal Pradesh’s acting Governor Kalyan Singh, who is also the Chancellor of Himachal Pradesh University (HPU), had stated earlier that he would not be present at the convocation and had authorised the Vice Chancellor to confer the degrees. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
