Jharkhand State Food and Civil Supplies Minister, Saryu Roy, submitted a letter to the Manifesto Committee's chairperson of BJP, Rajnath Singh, requesting him to include water and environment conversation in the party's manifesto for the upcoming elections.
"I have personally met Rajnath Singh to hand over the letter and have sent it to other members via e-mail, requesting them to give space to environment related issues in the party's manifesto," Roy said.
The letter reads, 'On the basis of our experiences since last 14 years of successful environmental initiatives such as save Damodar movement as well save Saranda Forest campaign I am placing before your goodself a few noble points to be considered for the election manifesto-2019.'
Roy in his letter wrote that in coming days there is a possibility that freshwater will be very scarce and there will be no alternative to it. Pointing out that all living beings, including humans, animals and plants need minimum amount of freshwater for their survival and growth, Roy wrote, “Needless to say that most of the freshwater bodies – rivers, wetlands and groundwater are vanishing very fast. With development of technical knowhow our quality of life is increasing rapidly and besides drinking and other civic amenities we are consuming more and more waters in cultivation of paddy, wheat, potato, onion, sugarcane, which are water intensive and require more and more water.”
Roy focused on how with economic development of the country, there is creation of competitive infrastructures including highways, railways and waterways which are putting adverse impact on several freshwater bodies day by day.
“We need to give top priority to conservation of water and all freshwater water bodies throughout country. Wetlands are not only the most productive ecosystem in the world, they in fact function as kidney of nature and abode of very rich biodiversity,” Roy wrote in the letter.
He pointed out that the river flow is declining in all the Indian rivers and the rivers are getting severely polluted due to unscrupulous functioning of industrial umpires situated on its banks.
“We also must protect our forests to insure water availability in our rivers, wetlands and wild lives. Overall we must take into account the issues of Climate Change in view of think globally and act locally,” Roy wrote.
The minister also wrote that River Ganga is losing its ecological integrity, water quality and quantity very fast and only engineering interventions will not serve the purpose. There is a need of scientific and social interventions urgently.
“An effective policy planning institution other than the regulatory bodies like central and state pollution control boards are needed to be constituted from national level to state and district level to monitor and guide the implementations of environment laws and regulation keeping in view the health of human, biosphere and geo bio chemical cycle impacts,” Roy wrote.
He said that there is a requirement of urgent and serious action to maintain healthy air quality.
“Around the places of economic activities such as industries, mining, construction, heavy vehicle transportation an online real time monitoring system be established. Like corporate social responsibility (CSR) the execution of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) should also be made effective,” Roy wrote in the letter.
He also requested that Ministry of Environment should be delinked from Ministry of Forests as the environment requires multiple-disciplinary short-term and long-term actions and approaches of which forest is just one discipline.