Monday, July 1, 2013

The Uttarakand Tragedy

The recent tragedy in the northern state of Uttarakand and to a lesser extend in the state of Himachal Pradesh has to be one of the worst in memory.  Due to cloud burst, rain came pouring down the hills and the river swelled and took everything in its paths. Big buildings were washed away in seconds. Thousands of people and pilgrims were either left stranded or lost their life.

This tragedy was waiting to happen. Due to pilgrimage sites like Kedarnath, Badrinath and many more and the natural beauty of the place, people from all over India and the world thronged the place. The locals saw a way to harness this boom in tourism and started developing the place. This put great burden on the fragile ecosystem of Uttarakand.  Increasing number of tourist led to greed and mis-governance and huge unauthorized structures were built on the riverbank restricting the flow of the river despite warning from numerous ecologists. They argued that it is a well known fact that during the rainy season, the river always breaks its banks and swoops down the hill with unimaginable force but unfortunately their warning was never heeded.

Now that this tragedy has happened, everybody is pointing fingers at each other. It may be the Congress or the BJP or any other political party, everybody is equally to blame. To satisfy their own greed and of their followers, they allowed unrestricted construction on the ecologically sensitive land.

Now the tragedy has happened, the rescue effort was not coordinated by our ruling class and due to this, many lives were lost unnecessarily. But like always our military came to the rescue and are doing a awesome job.

My point is that let this tragedy be a lesson to all those people who put their own benefits over lives of the common people andshould learn from their mistakes. If India is to develop all round, we should always place the people of this country above everything. 

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