“Your descendants shall gather your
fruits."
— Virgil
Truly said what we do today will affect the life our children. Every
tree planted today will provide oxygen to our children, our descendants and
with every tree we cut, we are ruining our children future. But it is important
that we grow, it is important that we live a comfortable life and it is important
that we live every moment of our life to its fullest. And to ensure that we
will our life to its fullest we have to do certain activities that will affect
our ecology. Like for example if we want nonstop electricity we will have to
burn coal and to get coal we need to do mining and in order to mining we need
to cut down forest and disturb other important vegetation.
“Change and the world changes for you”.
Our ecology, our nature has a great endurance towards change. The fact is that
our ecosystem can change itself and adjust to a new environment which is
created by the species living in it. Human civilization is living and thriving
on the Earth since 1000 BC, and since then we human have brought about changes
in our ecosystem, earlier the changes were slow and the ecosystem had enough
time to bring about a change in itself but in the 21st century the rate
of development is very fast and furious and our ecosystem is not getting enough
time to change itself. But our ecosystem is changing and in order to maintain a
balance the rate of change is disproportionate which opens door for new
environmental troubles like climate change, greenhouse effect and many more. I
firmly believe that the ecosystem will change itself as per environment
provided if and only if we give it some time. But the only way to give time
means to stop or rather slow down the development rate, which is impossible in
21st century.
Everybody knows the Newton’s 3rd
law of motion-‘to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’, well
this law is actually universal whether it be a bullet or our environment. Every
object in this universe has a certain limit to endure the change brought about
in its surrounding and when this limit is crossed we have disasters,
catastrophe, dead and destruction. One such disaster was witnessed by ous in
the summers of 2013 when 5000 people were officially killed in a flash flood
and many when missing. Now leave aside the disaster and loss of property the
main reason of this disaster was the uncontrolled construction and development
which took place in the foothills of Himalayas and specifically the
construction of the Tehri dam, India tallest and the fifth largest in the world
is a multi-purpose rock and earth-fill embankment dam on the Bhagirathi River near Tehri in Uttarakhand, India generating 10000 megawatts (1,300,000 hp) of
hydroelectricity.
Everybody now days talk about the natural calamity of 2013 but let’s go
back in time to 2012, (precisely June 2012), when this every dam saved millions
of life living in the catchment area of the river Ganges when this dam stored
the rain water filling it to the maximum level and preventing floods. But the
construction of this dam did affect the ecology of the river catchment and thus
we had the disaster. Now we shall see the affect of the construction of this
dam on the ecology of the area:-
1-
The dam has a surface area of 50 sq Km and so
deforestation and damage of the land took place with the construction of Tehri
dam.
2-
Submerging of the
land destroyed the species and the wildlife of the area.
3-
Change
in the (i) water chemistry, especially with respect to dissolved oxygen and
(ii) turbidity of water.
4-
Impact
on biodiversity, i.e., flora and fauna of the area.
5-
Obstruction
of movements of migrating fish species during breeding season.
6-
Rivers
carry a lot of sediment, which on construction of a dam, will be locked up
behind the dam wall. The collected silt
in the reservoir eats away the capacity of the reservoir. This impact of reducing the capacity and life
of reservoir.
7-
Impact
of water accumulation on the upstream side of the dam, which causes inundation
of land including forest-land.
8-
Since
109 villages (full or partial) and Tehri town (full) were affected and the
residents were to vacate their ancestral homes and agricultural fields.
9-
Problem
of water-logging and salinity of the land in the command area.
People from time to time have agitated
against the construction of this but the government took no action leading to
the death of thousands.
 |
| old Tehri |
 |
| clock tower of old Tehri |
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| Old Tehri Sinking |
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| sinking clocktower |
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| Tehri dam |
 |
| Tehri dam |
According to the
South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) and other sources, in
India, 5,500 big dams built since independence have together displaced an
estimated 55 million people and submerged 44,00,000 hectares of land . Nearly
47 per cent of people displaced by these dams are adivasis (Indigenous people).
Despite having
invested 200,000 million Rupees in these projects, electricity and irrigation
facilities continue to be dismal in the country. Nearly 30 per cent of the
electricity produced gets lost through transmission and distribution. Dams have
only contributed to a marginal 10 per cent increase in the food production, an
equal amount gets eaten by rodents, and another 20 per cent gets destroyed due
to poor storage and warehousing facilities. Dams also contribute 45.8 million
tones of CO2 and are a major contributor to climate change today.
So it’s up to us to
decide, do we need this kind of development which will destroy the future of
our coming generation. As I said our ecosystem has the power to bring about a
change in itself, but it also has the power to bring about a change in the
place we are living so our development should be in harmony with the rate of
change of our ecosystem.
Thank You,
Rishabh Phulera.
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