Development vs Environment
There’s always been a debate on how much of environment can and should be sacrificed for the sake of development. In a way, its a question without an answer and if there’s an answer, its a never ending loop of arguments and counter arguments.
Coming from Bangalore, where I’ve lived all my life, I’ve seen it go from a garden city to something that is totally contrary to it.
I remember the time when I would travel from Lalbagh West Gate to J.P.Nagar and there’d hardly be a couple of patches on the road where it’d be sunny. But today, with the Metro being constructed, these rows are in such a sad state that its only the hot sun, dust and sand everywhere on the road. On a road where there were hardly an traffic, nowadays, there’s hardly any space for any vehicles to pass through. It takes almost 15 minutes to clear this one road on the best day and the root cause of this is the construction of the metro rail. One may say that the metro rail is leading to heavy levels of pollution by increasing the traffic pile ups, dust, etc., but looking into the future, it is going to be a major pollution killer. Just imagine the number of vehicles that’ll go off the road, at least in the immediate vicinity of the metro rail.
Although it is causing a bit of inconvenience during the construction, there is no doubt that we’re going to save a bunch of trees and a lot of asthma cases. But is it worth losing so many trees that they’re planning to chop off for this? I don’t know about the trees, but having the metro will definitely improve the air quality here and definitely reduce the traffic pile ups.
Having said this, being someone who thinks that protection of trees and thus, of our environment is one of the most important thing ever, it is also important that the other form of protecting the environment, that is reducing pollution by reducing the vehicles and usage of fossil fuels.
There definitely will come a day when we have a balance of both, until then, just grin it, bear with it, plant more trees if possible and pollute less 
Posted: October 1st, 2009 under Uncategorized.
