DEVASTATING FOREST FIRES IN UTTARKHAND
Thursday, 05 May 2016 | Hiranmay Karlekar |
The builder and the timber mafia, which work closely with politicians, bureaucrats and villagers, are to be blamed for the increase in the number of forest fires
Finally, the Uttarakhand forest fires are reportedly close to being extinguished. At the time of writing, the Indian Air Force has deployed two MI-17, and one Dhruv ALH, helicopters, spraying water on the fires. Six thousand people are fighting the blazes. Army personnel and three teams of National Disaster Relief Force have been deployed. The Union Minister for Home Affairs, Rajnath Singh, is keeping himself briefed. Home Ministry officials have been asked to monitor the situation on the ground, which is alarming. There have been more than 400 forest fires in the State in the last three months or so. Fires have been raging in Chamoli, Almora and Tehri Garwhal districts, and also in Pauri in Garwhal district. The whole of Pauri is enveloped in a thick smoke haze that restricts vision.
The devastation has been severe. Thousands of animals — deer, snakes, rodents–and birds have been killed. Eight humans have died and over 20 have been injured till the time of writing. Over 2,200 hectares of forests have been destroyed. Considering that Uttarakhand accounts for a significant part of India’s total forest area, the consequences have a national, and not just State-level, impact.
The question is: Why have the fires been ignored for three months since these began, until the recent spurt of activity? Equally important, why no comprehensive plan to cope with these exists despite their being an annual phenomenon, albeit on a smaller scale? These questions need particularly to be asked as the fires, according to several environmentalists, are 100 per cent man-made, the culprits being minors in many cases. Even if this is considered an exaggeration, people start the overwhelming majority of these. In many cases, these are re-lit after fire fighters have extinguished these and moved away.
For years, villagers have been setting fire to their lands after harvesting in the belief that that this will make better grass grow after the rains. Over the past few years, however, there has been an increasingly steep rise in their incidence, leading to their emergence this year as a national calamity. Responsible for this is the activities of two groups of criminals — builder and the timber mafia — working in close cooperation with political leaders, bureaucrats and villagers.
A major development in Uttarakhand during the last decade-and-a-half has been the increasing sale of land by villagers and the consequent rise in their affluence and consumption levels. Not only individuals but builders as well have bought over huge tracts and built ugly apartment and cottage complexes that have destroyed the green cover over entire hill sides. There are restrictions on the felling of trees meant to prevent deforestation and rampant construction. But trees, killed by fires, can be legally cut and the land sold to builders. And, of course, the felled trees are sold to the flourishing timber mafia.
Both mafias and a section of villagers aligned with them have been flourishing under the benign gaze of politicians and conniving babus, which makes the task of preventing and controlling fires more difficult than these would otherwise have been. One answer could be banning the sale of land — and the dead trees on it — devastated by fire, and/or of construction on it. The second would be quick and full implementation of the pre-fire alert system, which, as the Union Minister for Environment and Forest, Prakash Javadekar, has said, is being established in the country. Third, Uttarakhand’s forest department needs to be revamped and expanded and the corruption and inefficiency in it, contained. Finally, exemplary punishment should be given to those lighting fires.
All this is easier said than done. Inaction, however, will extract a frighteningly heavy price. It could mean the destruction of the eco-system of the whole of the Himalaya region, including the foothills and the Terai, as the fire spreads to other States. Parts of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir have already started to burn