Please remember its our SIKKIM...............

Despite many initative, the quality of the urban and rural enviroment continues to decline. The root cause of this problem is the slack performance of the enforcement agencies.

Recently, the Supreme Court Lamented :" if the mere enactment of the laws relating to the protection of enviroment was to ensure a clean and pollution free enviroment, then India would, perhaps, be the least polluted country in the world. But, this is not so. There are stated to be over 200 central and state statues which have at least some concern the enviromental protection, either directly or inderectly. The plethora of such enactment has unfortunately, not resulted in preventing enviromental degradation which, on the contrary, has increased over years"

We the people of "SIKKIM" might be oblivious about this fact, that although Courts are ill-equipped to take over enforcement functions, the dismal performance of Governmental agencies has compelled a higher judiciary to secure compliance through Public Interest Litigation.

The only thing that is ' Constant' in this world is change, forget the question ' ARE WE READY' rather stress on 'DO WE REALLY' need change.????????????

The enviroment is not just pretty trees and tigers, threatened plants and eco system. It is literally the entity on which we all subsists , and on which the entire agriculture and industrial development depends. Development can take place at the cost of the enviroment only Until a point. Beyond that point it will be like the foolish man who was trying to cut the very branch on which he was sitting.

DRAMATIC EXAMPLES of changes can be seen where man has altered the course of nature. It is vividly evident in his well- intentioned but poorly thought out tampering with river and lake ecosystem . The 'ASWAN DAM' was primarily built to generate electric power. It produced power, but it also reduced the fish population in the mediterranean, increased the number of disease bearing aquatic snails and markedly lowered the fertility of the NILE VALLEY.

NOW LETS TALK ABOUT URBANISATION......................... SHALL WE???????????

Many people prefer to call the urban migrants economic refugees from the countryside. But, in fact many of them are really ecological refugees, displaced by dams, by mines, by deforestation,by destruction of grazing land, by floods, by drought, by urban expansion and what not. We have today the world's 4th largest urban population. Before the end of the century we will be the largest.

A cognizance of eco system services, expressed in terms of their loss, dates back at least to Plato and probably much earlier:

what now remains of the formerly rich land is like the skeleton of a sick man with all the fat and soft earth wasted away and only the bare frame work remaining. Formerly, many of the mountains were arable. The plains that were once covered with forest and produces abundant pasture now produce only food for bees. Once, the land was enriched by yearly rains, which were not lost, as they are now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea. The soil was deep, it absorbed and kept the water and the water that soaked into the hills fed springs and running streams everywhere. Now the abondoned shrines at spots where formerly there were springs atleast that our description of the land is true

I quote:

" thy shall not shift into someones shoes, to be someone famous ..... someone known.... someone great.... thy shall still be recognised, by being what you are.... thy don't need to change thy shoes, to walk through the lane of fame and success...........