Skip to main content

Woes of God’s own country

 

Trucks carrying stones from quarries near my house
 

Kerala has been experiencing unprecedented natural calamities in the last few years. Floods, landslides, cyclones and extremes of weather wreak immense havoc again and again. These are the prices that the state is paying for the mindless greed of certain sections of people.

Kerala is not what it was until a few years ago. When I was a school student in 1960s and 70s, there used to be heavy rains in the monsoon season as well as the retreating monsoon. That means heavy rains for almost half the year. But these rains did not carry away houses. Hills didn’t come tumbling down in the form of massive landslides. Cyclones didn’t uproot trees. The rains poured down and the waters flowed naturally into the numerous streams and rivers whose swelling was a marvel for us children and not causes of disasters. Those were days when people had not exploited the nature brutally. There was a symbiotic relationship between man and nature. Farmers could predict the weather with more accuracy than today’s scientists who have a lot of technology and gadgets. The people respected the weather patterns. They respected nature.

Today the people rape the nature. There are 2557 stone quarries in this small state of Kerala many of which are in highly sensitive regions. When I was a school student, there used to be a hill about a kilometre from my home. That hill disappeared a few years ago: granite miners excavated it totally. So many hills have vanished from the state similarly.

Paddy fields which played a vital role in controlling the ground water flow vanished too. Resorts came up in their place. Residential apartments came up. The people of Kerala even levelled the backwaters and erected monstrous skyscrapers. And then they demolished some of them when the Court of Justice ordered. One wonders why Justice always opens its eyes too late. Anyway, that’s a different matter.

Forests have disappeared from the state. Those who know the Wayanad district will tell you how resorts have replaced forests there. And that district alone witnessed 250 severe landslides in 2018. 2018 was a disastrous year for Kerala. There were about 1000 major landslides in the state. Yet the people don’t seem to have learnt the necessary lessons.

Extreme weather patterns have become the norm in the state because of what the state has done to its environment. When it rains, it is a cloudburst and not just a rain. A few days back central Kerala witnessed severe landslides in a few places. The amount of rain that came down in four hours then was 200 mm. 200 mm of rain in 24 hours in considered as extremely intensive rain. And Poonjar received that much rain in just four hours.

This is going to become worse, according to scientists, unless the state takes serious actions. We need to rediscover our deities in the forests and rivers, paddy fields and backwaters, the majestic mountains and the little dragon flies.

PS. This post is part of Blogchatter's CauseAChatter #EnvironmentalTalks

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    I have been reading with concern the recent onset of floods there and elsewhere yet again - it is true that mankind seems not to learn the lesson of balance with nature rather than the conquering of it. The matter is made more complex by the expansion of population and the need for more land for living and not simply cultivation... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True that the world has changed over the past few decades. Burgeoned population, changed lifestyles, pollutions of all sorts... have all imposed their shares of burden on the earth. But if you observe Kerala one thing you will notice is that half of the houses/apartments constructed are not occupied by anyone at all. People who have settled down comfortable abroad just buy up or construct these huge mansions and then leave them vacant. In my own neighbourhood which is a rather remote village there are over a dozen such houses. I mean to say there's a lot of unnecessary construction taking place. Sometimes I am left wondering whether people have gone absolutely insane.

      Delete
    2. Ha ha, the other day, I heard a minister taking pride in answering to a question in a media discussion why Kerala is keen only in developing the educational institutions and not manufacturing, that the educational institutions are producing qualified candidates, who seek employment in foreign countries and send back remittances to the state. Yes these people who work abroad are sustaining the manufacturing-less Kerala's economy. They buy houses, pay taxes, and they don't become economic burdens to the state. The real issue is the state is corrupt unable to handle the wheel of justice and equality. That should becthe role of governments, but not be the agents and benamies of the corrupt.

      Why hasn't the scientific community there developed research to find an alternative material for home construction? Has it really got a research based development? Nothing, the fact got exposed in the time of pandemic. Kerala is not God's country, the unrealistic and exaggerated projection of what it is not will help only to bring more disaster to the place.

      Delete
    3. Indeed a whole lot of things are wrong with this state. That may be one reason why a lot of people are leaving and settling down abroad. Yeah, that brings in money too. So the government's happy too. Look at the state's revenue. The major share comes from liquor and lottery, absolutely unproductive and wasteful methods of generating money. It's extortion.

      The real catastrophe is not the natural disasters but our politicians most of whom are worthless people fit to be street goons.

      Delete
  2. Without any further delay, its time to act for the benefit of everyone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We're already in a state of worse, and even if we don't look back now and realize the mistake, nothing is supposed to say. Not only Kerala, but Tamil Nadu also faces a similar situation esp. around the places of western ghats where deforestation and resorts are doing well. We had our historical downpour in 2015 in Chennai, and being a victim, we understand the suffering of others. But people get back to where they are once the water recedes, forget that nature has marked its border, and will return if we didn't clear the waterways. Lastly, I think we need selfless leaders and honest officers to monitor illegal activities of people because it is impossible without these people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You said it. We keep forgetting, we refuse to learn, we fail to act... And our leaders are as bad as ourselves.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

The RSS and Paradoxes

The oldest racist organisation in the world is all set to celebrate the centenary of its existence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 with the specific goal of unifying the Hindus in India under a religious and cultural banner. The Indian Independence struggle that was going on in full force at that time was no concern of the RSS. Though it gave the liberty to its individual members to take part in the struggle, the organisation’s official policy was to stay clear of it altogether. That was only one of the many paradoxical ironies that marked the RSS which was a nationalist organisation that cared little for the Independence of the nation. Today, the Prime Minister of India is a man who was trained and nurtured by the RSS. Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book on the paradoxes that underscore the personality of Mr Narendra Modi. The RSS and paradoxes go hand in hand, if we take Modi as a specimen of the organisation’s great achievements. Tharoor’s final asses...