Young minds across the globe today demanded immediate action to fight the climate crisis to their respective government. Some even left their school to protest against the inaction of the government over the nature’s rage. It was only yesterday that people across the globe witness thousands staging rally urging the global leaders to act for protection of the future and ironically it was amidst such a protest that Public Works Department of Manipur Government cut a fully grown tree in the middle of Imphal city just because it create hurdle in lifting an iron bar meant for construction of a Foot Bridge on High Way to bridge between the foot path of adjacent to Kanglapat and Johnston Higher Secondary School. Thanks to the State Forest Department for acting tough. Now, as per an order of the department the Department of Forest , the PWD now have to plant 20 more sapling and will be nurturing until those are fully grown.
Human society needs development and the Foot Bridge being constructed is also the need of Imphalites for public safety. While PWD need appreciation for construction of the Foot Bridge at different places, the educated and qualified employees should also have some sense of the climate crisis being face by the people of the globe. Something that need to make realize our engineers at PWD is that it takes days, weeks and months of caring a sapling to see it as a fully grown tree.
It is not only those qualified engineers that had forgotten about the future of their children. Almost everyone of us have forgotten that the earth may not be the right place for children if we continue committing crime against the nature.
Greed for materialistic world today has overshadowed the humane I human being. Forest land or Agricultural land are converted into Brick factories, resorts or store rooms. In their greed for money, today farmers are compelled to poison the land with chemical fertilizers and pesticides for boosting their crop product. When the reality is that the soil that they yielding more food crops today will turn into barren. It will be their children that will have to live on in such environment. Greed for comfort makes human – a crazy mindless criminal, be it to the environment or be it to their weak fellow human beings, these mindless criminals commits every heinous crime in the name of their offspring, when in reality they do not know that they are leaving nothing for their children.
It is worth mentioning that in 2015, South Delhi police registered a case against an owner of a house, situated in Jor Bagh, for allegedly cutting a tree inside his house. According to the police, a case under Section 24 of Delhi Preservation of Trees Act has been registered in Lodi Colony police station and intimation has been sent to the Delhi government’s forest department in this regard.
Leaving aside of the trees being cut down in the name of taking up developmental project, there has not been a single official report of any individuals being punished for cutting of trees in the state of Manipur even though the state government has adopted the Manipur Forest Rules , 1971.
Well let this incident of cutting tree in the name of development be the last not because there will be penalty but because we all love our children and their future.
