Introduction
Every year people celebrate World Environment Day. From local bodies to the highest decision-making bodies, our fellow citizens have campaigned with a great voice that we have limited resources and we should not over use them. Have these persistent campaigns percolated to the ground? Can we see the discernible change in the mindset of people? These are the vital questions we need to look at if we have to keep something for the future generations. The fact of the matter is that things have not changed much on the ground and environment disintegration is happening everywhere. In this article, we would be critically analyzing the facts on the ground to see where we stand on environment preservation.
World Environment Day
We have been celebrating World Environment Day with great pomp and gaiety every year. We have campaigned hard to maintain order and utilize the resources with great care. Many celebrities, including popular actors, came with their precious views on environment preservation. People have spent lakhs of rupees on the topic of looking after the environment.
Response to World Environment Day
Some of the government departments such as Gurkha division of Indian Army went out of its barracks to clean the environment. In response to the Clean India campaign, the pet project of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, many people came out and started cleaning the environment around them. When people saw the celebrities and functionaries on the street with a broom, they started coming out in large numbers. But the enthusiasm died down when the media glare diminished. Authorities have conducted many competitions for the benefit of children to let them understand the need of keeping the environment clean and intact. As part of this initiative, they created campaigns through the medium of All India Radio (AIR). These campaigns had slogans on environment preservation and they targeted the distant villages that don’t have television sets.
Reality Check
Despite the campaigns and sloganeering, nothing on the ground has changed. The forest cover is slowly diminishing due to the felling of trees. The only thing is that deforestation has picked up and people have become aware of the need of trees in cooling the environment. It has to pick up at the massive scale to offset the felling of trees, which is quite rampant in many parts of the country. The authorities are turning a blind eye towards these destructive trends. As a result of this, the soil erosion and landslides have occurred in many parts of the country. These environment indicators show that things are not in good shape. Unless people handle these things on war-footing, the days are not that far off when desertification of land becomes quite fast. So, we need to pull up our sleeves and start doing whatever we can to save the environment from those people who want to exploit it in the name of commercialization.