World Environment Day!

I was browsing through the newspapers today morning; the day celebrated as ‘World Environment Day­1’ and was happy to see full 4 page coverage on environmental degradation. Knowingly or knowingly we cause damage to our local ecology in various ways.

It was though, not very surprising to know that people here are not even fully aware of the current situation. May be, people think that it is not there responsibility to take care of the environment and that government is solely responsible for that. This might be associated with the fact that nobody is able to see the direct effect of environmental degradation. People only blame the local governing body for not clearing the drains/sewage pipes before the monsoon, that too only when the rain water accumulates in their compound or cause disruption in traffic. They never realize that the waste they produce everyday result in all this havoc. I am not denying the fact that local governing body is also responsible for this. I remember ‘one fine day’ I was walking down the marine drive with my friend and we had a mineral water bottle that I was looking to dump in the dustbin. I could not locate a single dustbin in the 1 km stretch of marine drive. Nevertheless, I carried the bottle with me and dumped it in the lucky ‘dustbin’ kept at Churchgate station. But will everyone do the same, clearly no.

The point is not the presence of dustbin; the point is the awareness that has to be created among my fellow countrymen. Now, ‘creating the awareness’ seems to the buzzword these days. Everyone leaves their discussing by concluding that we need to create the awareness among people and this is for everything under the sun. In India specifically we need to create the awareness for Primary Education, Health, Women upliftment, AIDS and many more. If for the last 60 years of our independence and we are still not able to create the so called ‘awareness’ among people, that too on the issues that directly affect one’s life. So, we can now set our expectations regarding the “awareness” on environmental degradation.
1. http://www.unep.org/wed/2007/english/Information_Material/index.asp