Himachal: Devpt comes with a price in Palampur

Palampur, June 15: Development in this small town in the Kangla valley in the foothills of the beautiful Dhauladhar ranges of the Himalayas has come with a heavy price.

The Himachal Pradesh town is also a case study of the effect of climate change due to human induced global warming, which itself is a consequnce of industrial development.

Large chunks of once beautiful hills stand denuded of their green cover, the gurgling streams crisscrossing the region have turned into a quiet trickle, and the wildlife deprived of their habitat constantly come into conflict with humans.

The violence with nature becomes glarigly visible as one approaches the Himachal Pradesh town by road from Chandigarh.

Rocks which once held beautiful vegetation now stand barren and disfigured by heavy quarrying to obtain stone for constructing buildings.

Further up, one finds large scale interference with the landscape for construction of micro-hydel projects for providing electricity to every village.

Will remote villages of the Kangra valley have been electrified but the locals had to pay a price it.

An activist of the Himachal Eco Development Society Sandeep Singh said large scale diversion of rivers had been done for construction of the microhydel projects, which has created water shortage in the town.

Moreover, material for construction has been obtained from stones in the river bed, depriving much of the cushion against floods.

''They use heavy machines to remove pebbles from the bed of the river on which they are constructing the hydel plant, as it is an easy way to obtain material as compared to blasting of barren rocks somewhere else and transporting the material to the site,'' he said.

Mr KB Ralhan, an inhabitant of the town and associated with the World Environment Foundation, said the construction of the small hydel projects had affected the riperian rights of the people of the Palampur.

He said his organisation has been demanding that the state government should take up only projects of one to two megawatt, while those in operation or being planned were of four to six megewatt, which need construction of big reservoir leading to change in the course of the river and depletion of the flow downstream.

Mr Ralhan also said that the fault lies not so much in the concept of the project as in its execution.

''The private companies which have been given contract for construction of the microhydel plants are not sensitive about the ecology and the place, which has sometime resulted in mishaps,'' he said.

About denudation of the forests, he said the bureaucratic attitude of the forest department had played a great part in the loss of trees. They don't involve the local people and are in collusion with those felling trees illegally, he said.

One Palampur resident and an environment activist said that in the name of afforestation, only monoplanting was being done.

''They plant only 'cheer'(pine) trees which when dry cover the land with a cushion of their needles which are burnt by farmers to get to the grass below to provide fodder for their cattle. There should be a mixed plantation of a variety of trees which providing both shade and fodder to villagers,'' he said.

He said the forest fires provide great opportunity to the corrupt forest officials to mint money. ''After the loss of trees in the fire, they are given huge funds for reforestation under which they plant only cheer trees using a small fraction of the money and that's all.''
The Palampur resident was also critical of the Pradhanmantri Sarak Yojna under which a network of roads has been laid down linking most of villages. The roads had been constructed on agricutural land, he alleged. He said that while construction of link roads was welcome, it was not wise to sacrifice the agricultural land to lay a thick network as ultimately that requires felling of large number of trees which are never replaced.

When asked whether the road link had not made life easy for them, he said,'' Well the hill people have always been used to walking up to two to three km. Myself and many others think that they would rather exert their legs than sacrifice the natural landscape of their region.'' The loss of biodiversity cannot be estimated by those who are not living here, he added.

Underlining the urgency of planting thick and shady trees which can provide fodder to farmers, he said useful trees suiting the climate of the region like 'ficus', a tree of the peepal family, 'prunus pirus'(pajja tree) a shady tree and good for fodder, and Shatoot(for silkworm fodder) can be planted. But the forest department was not planting any of the them, he lamented.

The climate change due to global warming has also taken toll of the beauty of the Dhauladhar ranges. The snowline on Himalayan peak visible from the town is no more there all the year round. The snow has receded due to increased temperature, say the experts.

The hot weather has also affected the freshness of the vegetation in the region.

Palampur is situated at about 1250m above sea level. Besides its picturesque mountains, it was also famous for its tea gardens which are located between 800-1600 meters above mean sea level.

The town was devasted by an earthquake in 1905.

UNI