Thursday, 24 April 2025
Thursday, 24 April 2025
Ladakh-based educationist and activist Sonam Wangchuk has shared a video from New York’s Central Park, highlighting how political intent has ensured that the lungs of the Big Apple remain intact while in India nature is destroyed in major cities in the name of development.
“Manhattan is the costliest part of the world in terms of real estate, where 1 square feet costs Rs 3 lakh. The central park is 843 acre prime land and could fetch the city $1 trillion, which is Rs 85 lakh crore. If the mayor of the city wanted he could have made a shopping mall, metro and offices in this area. But no, some things are sacred & priceless & better left untouched,” he wrote.
In 1853, state officials approved funds to purchase the land—rocky, swampy and home to small farms and settlements—from 59th to 106th Streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. Construction began in 1858 and the park was built over the next 15 years and cost $14 million.
Wangchuk, who is also a climate activist, asked why we can’t respect nature in India like New York does.
“Why can't Hyderabad's Kancha Gachibowli, Pune's River Front, Mumbai’s Aarey forest be left sacred as lungs of the city!” Wangchuk wrote. “Or for that matter why can’t the lungs of our country, the Himalayas, be left alone as sacred abode of Shiva so that nature can breathe and provide us clean air and water?”
The Gachibowli controversy arose early this month when the Telangana government was accused of deforestation on 400 acres of forest land under the guise of development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday said that the Congress government in the state was betraying both nature and the people. “Forests are being razed in the name of infrastructure. Wildlife is being pushed out,” he said.
The Rs 5,500 crore Pune Riverfront is another controversial project conceived in 2015-16. It aims at constructing embankments, walkways, plazas and besides planting trees and gardens along the riverbank.
The project covers a length of 44 kilometres along the Mula-Mutha rivers. Pune lies at the confluence of these two rivers. And environmental groups are up in arms because the project reportedly destroys the river ecosystem.
Aarey forest, known as the lungs of the bustling Mumbai city, faced the development onslaught in 2019. The Maharashtra government cleared 99 acres of the 1,300 hectare forest to build a zoo and thousands of trees were chopped to build a Metro carshed.
Both the Pune riverfront and the Aarey project took place during the BJP government in Maharashtra under Devendra Fadnavis.
The Telegraph online had reported Monday how the central government planned several projects, which are perceived as environmentally detrimental.
The list includes, the Rs 72,000-crore mega infrastructure plan to transform Great Nicobar Island into a strategic transshipment hub, the Char Dham project in Uttarakhand, has seen extensive deforestation and hillside blasting, and the Hasdeo Aranya forests — rich in coal but also biodiversity — have been at the centre of protests since the Modi government cleared multiple mining projects in the area.
But the BJP isn’t the only perpetrator of damaging the environment at the cost of infrastructural development.
In Bengal too, there are allegations of cutting trees from Jessore Road to Shantiniketan and allowing illegal resorts at forest encroached land in north Bengal.
In September last year, Wangchuk had embarked on a 1,000-kilometre foot march from Ladakh to New Delhi, aimed to pressure the central government to include Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule, granting it special protections and self-governance rights.
The activist, a long crusader of environmental issues in the upper Himalayan region, had emphasised the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers and warned of the impending climate refugee disaster if action is not taken.
The Telegraph Online had earlier reported how Wangchuk, who is in the US currently, had experienced a one-hour delay and criticised America’s rail system, calling it a key reason for the country’s high dependence on polluting cars and airplanes.
He took the opportunity to urge India not to be like America and pay more attention to Indian railways and prioritise its development.
