Those green trees won't be there by next week
That's a lovely view of trees lining up on both the sides of the road, it will be a thing of the past- not any more in cities. This is a picture of a section of Mettupalayam Road (NH 86 or something) in Coimbatore. This road leads to Ooty. Now the government is broadening the road into four lanes and hence are cutting the trees. Earlier they did it on Avanashi road (NH 47) in Coimbatore. That was when the many buildings that were standing on that road for decades came to our view. One such building had been constructed by GD Naidu and the front wall of that building bears the words "Construction is for Destruction - G.D.Naidu". How true is it?We are destroying nature to construct a concrete world, unmindful of the consequences and the perils to which we put our future generations. Who cares? We need the comfort of our cars, bikes and we have no time to wait for the few extra minutes to accommodate nature alongside us. Green is slowly going out of our view in our cities.
I was driving down this road yesterday and captured a last glimpse of this splendour before it is brought down by men with their axes.
It is sad balajhi, that we have come to this- it seems that nature is in the way of development.
ReplyDeletepossibly in about twenty to thirty years, we will have trees made of solar panels and what not, lining up our roads, not messy, squeaky clean- mopping up the fumes, harvesting the sun and so on: but we won't have the trees as we know them.
And our children won't miss what they are missing.
Very true. unless you know what you are missing, you won't miss anything. Those trees are only saving grace for the commuters on Mettupalayam road. Now there is a barren look to it. What is left is what I clicked. Even that will be gone in a week. It's really sad.
ReplyDeleteAll that I want is a good, strong road with good public transportation system. That will save lot of trees.
if the rail link between coimbatore and mettupalayam is best used you dont need to cut the trees.
ReplyDeleteand in addition a flyover from sanganoor bridge to ITI and from GN mills to Tudiyalur would have solve the problem.
I think we should use our brains to go green, as the title of Bala's blog suggests.
ReplyDeleteOnly one thing what I understand here is, we cant help it. THIS WILL HAPPEN. Thats it!
ReplyDeleteOne suggestion:
They have to plant number of plants equal to the trees removed.
I think that ruling is already there for Private builders Giri. I don't know about whether it is applicable to NH also. But end of the day no does it. Even those who plant trees don't care to maintain it. It's 'naamkewasthe' that's it.
ReplyDeleteYou know Bala, how I ached to see Delhi's last lungs being hacked up for the Metro, widening and CWG.
ReplyDeleteThis is a tug of war with environment which it will ultimately decide - man will be helpless.
On a similar topic, I had spent many years loafing around the Himalayas. Shimla was almost a second home for one of my uncle's family was based there and he himself was posted at Kasauli for a long time. I have trekked upto Leh, Tibet and all along the Indo-Tibetian border districts at various times. The amount of deforestation and denudation of the Himalayas makes one actually feel pain.
It's now child's play for a landslide to happen and block the rivers flowing in the gorges between the mountains. When that happens to Sutlej or Ravi or Spiti...the effects can be devastating due to flash high-speed floods. People are even wary at places to make loud sounds or break steps so that landslides aren't triggered off by step-in-step sound waves.
Also, I was at the Marina last in 2002. The sea brought up so much of filth and debris, I was shocked.
We can see these things happening before our eyes. The before and after are easily visible.
and there are no easy solutions to a rapidly expanding and demanding population.
SB, it's a tricky problem. But barring a minority, it hasn't registered with people. We are unmindful of compromising and degrading environment. Environment is taken for granted. I waste energy, dump plastics, cut trees, pollute the environment unmindfully yet whine about soaring temperature, lack of rains and what not. There must be strong campaign of environment awareness.
ReplyDeleteTo borrow the words of Mr.Bala, from his blog at http://openneuron.blogspot.com/, to go green, we must use our brains. We should look for innovative solutions. Clean, Connecting, Swift public transportation alone can save millions of trees. But then corrupt people and governments do not care.
I have really loved the mettupalayam road with huge trees. Now whenever i go on that road my heart really aches. I am an urban planning student, and i feel very bad whenever they cut the trees on the roadside in the name of road widening, as they teach in planning school that it is not the solution. I am thinking about doing a research on it. i am still framing the topic. need some ideas.
ReplyDeletePlease check this blog : http://bldgblog.blogspot.in/
ReplyDeleteI think you'll get everything you need to know about urban planning, architecture, landscaping and so on.
Wish you well.