Tuesday, 29 March 2022 | Lokesh Ohri
LOKESH OHRI
As I write this, Uttarakhand is swearing-in a new government, and hopefully we now will finally have a chief minister who will last the full term. A state that has consistently rejected its leadership in election after election, has, for the first time, bucked the trend and given a clear mandate to the figure currently most central to Indian polity, the Prime Minister. But make no mistake, the people of the state clearly distinguish between state and national politics. They are aware that the man they have trusted with a second term, the Prime Minister himself, cannot always be expected to remain present in a state that is somewhat inconsequential in national politics.
In this context, we see that Uttarakhand has a Chief Minister who is his nominee. Not by popular vote, but on the strength of the youthful promise of positive change. His last, brief stint was lacklustre, to say the least, and the young CM was candid enough to admit in public meetings, that he faced an uphill task. Lacklustre, though his stint may have been, it was free of controversy and inertia in comparison to the previous incumbents. In his re-nomination, perhaps, lies a tacit acceptance by the high command in New Delhi that their own previous government and indeed the ones earlier in the state’s two-decade existence have generally belied the hopes and aspirations of the people who voted for them. Most top leaders from the BJP I had occasion to meet before the elections were themselves quite livid about their chances this time. However, the state was won against all odds.
Now that the euphoria of the unlikely victory will give way to reality, the realpolitik of the ever-widening chasm between people’s expectations and government’s delivery will stare the new government in the face. More of the same will not help, because this could well be the last chance our state has at redeeming itself. We have suffered enough because of incompetent leadership and lack of right direction. Now is the time to break from the past and chart out a new course.
The new dispensation must begin with the realisation that we have not moved in the right direction in the past twenty-two years, in terms of a developmental vision. Our priorities have been incorrect, and we need a complete change to transform lives in the state. I do not have much hope, but no harm in blurting out the truth in the fond, even though false hope, that someone is listening. The state must recognise that its long-term prosperity lies in the protection of its environment. If one lists out the three main problems faced by the state, clearly, they would be unemployment, distress-migration, and man-animal conflict, all three leading to reduced agricultural production and destruction of livestock making living in the villages impossible. Redemption from all three lies in our fragile ecology and its protection.
The biggest resource of our state is its 38,000 square kilometres of forests, a whopping 71 per cent of its total geographical area, a goldmine most of the country depends on, which are dwindling fast. A football field worth of forest would have disappeared before you finish reading this. According to popular thesis that most politicians and commentators also subscribe to, migration happens because people find better employment, health and educational facilities in the plains. This, I would say, is at best a half-truth. They fail to realise that people have lived in their remote hill villages for centuries and in prosperity and contentment. Only now has our skewed education system and ill-effects of media lowered the people’s cultural guard and defence to such an extent that they have begun to suffer from an inferiority complex at being left behind in the village.
The crisis has been compounded by the rampant rape of mountain ecologies by myopic projects like dams, industries and highways. In our state, of the total 60,000 natural springs, about 12,000 have dried up. Several glaciers including the Gaumukh glacier have been steadily shrinking and changing course. Ground water levels have dipped to dangerous levels raising concerns over the survival of the rivers that give life to the entire Indian sub-continent. Who would want to live in a village where there is no water to drink or for farming? The government’s answer to this crisis has been provision of free rations, further alienating people from their land and livestock.
The answer to our unemployment problems also lies in the environment. The government has sunk enormous amounts of resources in projecting Tehri Lake as a tourism destination. And yet, the fact remains that very few conscious travellers want to visit an artificial reservoir that only tells horror stories of displacement and ecological destruction. Sinking in more resources in mega projects like the Tehri Lake would be like flogging a dead horse. Pursuing projects like Mussoorie ropeway or building six lane highways is foolhardy. Such actions only support a tourism economy that exists outside the state and puts more pressure on destinations that have infinitely more visitors than their carrying capacity. A six-lane highway encourages a pilgrim to hire a cab from Delhi and complete the Yatra circuit in three quick days. What Uttarakhand gets from such projects is only a destruction of its forests and a huge tourism carbon footprint.
All our policies have worked towards transforming pilgrimage into pleasure seeking tourism. Unless we do a reversal, bring pilgrimage values into tourism – values of slow travel, walking, community-based stay options, combined with being in the Himalayas as being a personal spiritual quest – we will continue to destroy our unique selling proposition, a pristine environment. Our plans should solely focus on benefitting village communities, projecting our pristine environment and people’s lifestyle in sync with nature, to attract the right kind of traveller. Therein lies the solution to the employment conundrum. If youth find gainful employment where they are born and brought-up, why would they migrate to the urban mess our cities are, to work at McDonald’s by day and run the streets at night to adorn a uniform?
Man-animal conflict also connects with the ecological crisis we face today in Uttarakhand. In a state where isolated villagers with no access to media or education, as pioneers of environmental activism, made global headlines by offering their bodies to the axemen to save trees, it is now a documented fact that 90 per cent of our forest fires are caused by humans. People have lost ownership over forests and therefore are completely disinterested in protecting them. No longer are these jungles the spaces where the deities and the spirits of our ancestors lived. Therefore, we degrade them, dump garbage near them, inviting wild beasts causing conflict with human settlements. Can we not invest in waste management that incorporates a zero-plastic packaging policy in the Himalayan state? Can the state not embark on a policy of planting fruit trees on a large scale to ensure enough food for monkeys and wild boars?
Running a state like Uttarakhand requires local knowledge and common sense. Hope this prevails and we find new solutions for chronic problems faced by our state. As I said before, more of the same will not work. Let us reinvent, rebooting the old system will lead to a crash.
(The writer is an anthropologist, author, traveler & activist who also runs a public walking group called Been There, Doon That? Views expressed are personal)
