eco weekend

The weekend or Monday morn is providing a lot of random thoughts. Mostly triggered by the Mag section. Why do I find it always much more interesting than the News section?


Dr. Ullas Karanth who has won the Paul Getty award from WWF. He's a Mech engineer, turned farmer, turned biologist and conservationist. Obviously passionate about tigers and wildlife and he studies and helps to study the ecosystem very systematically. He says we know very little about our ecosystem. I thought there were millions of studies going from what he see on national Geo. But they are only scraping the tip, so says a fabulous book of photographs on rain tree forests I was lent.

But a thought that has stayed with me from Amitav Ghosh is that this eco conservation is always at the cost of the poorest who can barely afford it. He talks of the tigers in the Sunderban area who prey on the people there. And so many of them die every year. Its natural that they kill the tigers then.

As with elephants. The conflict between the farmers and the elephants is always on. With electric fencing and whatever they can come up with to keep the elephants out.

But where will the poor things go? Their forests are getting so depleted.

Then it comes to our govt shift on industries. And encouraging MEZs and MNCs. India should stop shining this way.

The rangers come down heavily on our poor locals foraging for firewood while the lorries cart it away in tons.

And conservation is something that only the minuscule english speaking population is talking about. Only something we can afford to think about???


I'm reading about a group who has been taking evening tuitions for local kids in Puliakulam for 17 years! And Sat is for extracurricular activities. What I am doing but in a very organised way with lots more people, Maybe if more people get involved, then it will grow. And we could influence the cleanliness and healthiness of the area.