practicing environmental protection.....

It is a lot easier to talk about environmental protection than to practice it. Fifty-five years of 'development' have spurred on unplanned urbanisation, extensive industrialisation, and the building of a series of big dams. In the process, India has landed bang in the middle of an ecological crisis. We have lost half our forests, poisoned our waters, eroded our lands and rendered millions homeless, resourceless and more impoverished. Three of our cities are amongst the 15 most-polluted cities in the world. Several of our plant and animal species are extinct. Why and how has this happened? And how can the situation be remedied? What is the difference being made by government legislation and people's movements for the environment?
According to the Eighth Five-Year Plan document (1992-97), the total irrigation potential of the country was 71.8 million hectares. However, according to landuse statistics, the net area irrigated is less than one-third of the net area sown. To irrigate this one-third of the total area, the government has spent over Rs 3 trillion during the Eighth Plan (Chitale, 1998).
Of all natural resources, freshwater resources have been exploited the most. Deforestation and changes in land use are major causes of imbalance in the hydrological cycle. Industrial pollution, rapid urbanisation and agricultural runoff have worsened this problem.
Indian rivers are a classic example of rapid, unplanned development at the cost of an important natural resource. For example, from the time the River Yamuna enters Delhi, about 1,700 million litres of untreated sewage are discharged in it per day.
Several autonomous agencies, offices and institutions have also been set up by the government to implement environmental programmes and policies. Equally important has been the peoples' response to the environmental crisis. Literally thousands of citizens' groups have sprung up in the last two decades or so. Several experiments with watershed management and simple rainwater harvesting techniques have achieved with much less ecological, social and financial cost, what big dams cannot. Also many other cost effective techniques like bio sanitisers, septic pits are being used in localities in various cities for purifying and reusing waste water. but all this is still being done on a very small scale....a large part of the water in india still remains polluted and unsafe for use by the people.
The clear lesson from the dynamics of both environmental destruction and reconstruction in India is that people -- local communities everywhere -- have to be involved in any kind of natural resource management. But there is still a long way to go before local communities are centre-stage in decision-making. And just as long to go before the development process becomes truly environment-friendly.