Yashvir Yadav, intern, opines about "The unvisible Scam": Lots of money is pouring into Uttrakhand now-a-days. It’s not the money but management of money which will be at the center stage during the rehabilitation programme. According to government officials more than 1000 have lost their life. The recently constituted Uttarakhand Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority had estimated a total loss of around Rs 6000 crore. The entire budget of ministry of environment and forests for the fiscal 2012-13 was Rs 625 crore and the sub- budget for ecology and environment was a meagre of Rs 4.83 crore. So it’s 4.83crore vs 6000crore which will decide the future course of these man-made disaster. Today we spend a miniscule of our monetary resources on prevention and a major chunk on cure. That applies to almost every sector whether it is health, education or environment. So money does matter. The money which we are going to put in Uttrakhand is similar to the money unearthed in the scams. The only difference is that this time the robber is environment. A fraction of this stolen money (by the environment) could have been used for the sustainable development of the environment itself. My next point: Progress towards what and progress for whom?? The kind of development strategies we were pursuing in Uttrakhand were totally unsustainable. It would be unkind to look at Indra Dev with rueful eye because it was not the rain but the irrational policies of tourism, silting, damming and so on. We should incorporate environment into our every development strategies unless natural hazards will turn into a man-made disaster. We have very less time as there is a prediction of a massive earthquake (of magnitude similar to the Bhuj) in the fragile Shiwalik in the near future. We have to have both prevention and cure strategies going on in our development plans.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 03:51:15 +0000
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