development and greenery can co-exist
Posting made in the local RWA yahoo-group in response to a mail denouncing protests against indiscriminate road-widening:
I am a member of the tree-lover group "Hasiru Usiru", the term literally meaning 'green alone is life'. While admittedly there are a number of youngsters in the group who are idealistic and hold extreme views, I have been trying to lend a voice of moderation to the on-going debates amongst them.
In fact, even as the 80 ft road was being widened, I had myself interacted with the BMP officials to identify a number of trees which needed to be removed (though, some of them still remain, for reasons not too clear) even while trying to prevent removal and chopping of trees in the indiscriminate fashion that the contractor was going about.
Development and greenery can co-exist, atleast to a great extent, is what I would like to believe.
In that respect, I totally agree with Maj Kapur when he says that there's no point widening a road at one end when you have no clue as to how to tackle the problem at the other end of the very same road. Also, years after widening, you can't bother to have the electric poles shifted out to the edges. Even in the case of the majestic Banyan tree that once stood at the Aishwarya junction, over the chopping of which Zafar Futehally (the famed naturalist in whose exalted company we Koramangalites are fortunate to live) shed quite a few tears, the entire stump remained in place for over two years, making a total mockery of the stated purpose of road widening.
As such, we need to say no to the 'bits & pieces' efforts of the BMP lot so that they are forced to come up with more comprehensive solutions, if not for the city as a whole, atleast for the same stretch of road.
Ultimately, again, as I have been repeatedly stating, the solution lies not just in widening roads, but in bringing about a check in the usage of personalised forms of transport. For this, people have to learn to start using public transport services, and the government has to facilitate that.
I am a member of the tree-lover group "Hasiru Usiru", the term literally meaning 'green alone is life'. While admittedly there are a number of youngsters in the group who are idealistic and hold extreme views, I have been trying to lend a voice of moderation to the on-going debates amongst them.
In fact, even as the 80 ft road was being widened, I had myself interacted with the BMP officials to identify a number of trees which needed to be removed (though, some of them still remain, for reasons not too clear) even while trying to prevent removal and chopping of trees in the indiscriminate fashion that the contractor was going about.
Development and greenery can co-exist, atleast to a great extent, is what I would like to believe.
In that respect, I totally agree with Maj Kapur when he says that there's no point widening a road at one end when you have no clue as to how to tackle the problem at the other end of the very same road. Also, years after widening, you can't bother to have the electric poles shifted out to the edges. Even in the case of the majestic Banyan tree that once stood at the Aishwarya junction, over the chopping of which Zafar Futehally (the famed naturalist in whose exalted company we Koramangalites are fortunate to live) shed quite a few tears, the entire stump remained in place for over two years, making a total mockery of the stated purpose of road widening.
As such, we need to say no to the 'bits & pieces' efforts of the BMP lot so that they are forced to come up with more comprehensive solutions, if not for the city as a whole, atleast for the same stretch of road.
Ultimately, again, as I have been repeatedly stating, the solution lies not just in widening roads, but in bringing about a check in the usage of personalised forms of transport. For this, people have to learn to start using public transport services, and the government has to facilitate that.
posted by Muralidhar Rao at
3:02 AM
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