Bhadrachalam Karakatta
Monsoon seems to be almost arrived. This year, with the onset of rains and gusty winds, mercury levels are getting subsided. It's a bit earlier compared to the bygone years. Our temple town, usually synonymous with sizzling heat, turned out to be modest in temperature.
Well, plants and trees wear green masks and take our minds off the humdrum of life. With effective initiatives taken by voluntary organizations and state government, different saplings used to be planted every year as soon as the monsoon hit the town.
Either side of public roads along with educational institutions and other places will be decked up to have planted with the likes of neem, peepal, tamarind, and so on. These are supposed to be grown well to provide immense shade and increase oxygen levels.
Here, the real surgical strike remains lurking around the corner. As soon as the plant bursts bigger, some people would arrive from nowhere to start their mission impossible to cut the branches with axes. Leaves and twigs will be seen on the ground in heaps to upload into a tractor.
Who are they? Some are shop owners who want their boards blocked free of grown-up trees and others from electricity people with the pretext of protecting ongoing current wires over the branches of trees. The same exercise has been performed almost every year.
It shows clearly the damn dimwit nature of the average Indian. There must have been clear-cut planning before the plantation and a tree should not be axed down at the wish of every Tom and dick.
If it is so with plantation without foresight, what's the meaning of the entire idea of go-green? It should not be a hollow exercise every year. By exploring new avenues to protect every planted sapling, the green dream would come alive.
Most of our educated people also think that development means sky-rising concrete buildings with less green cover. But in reality, superpowers like the USA, Russian Federation, Canada, China, and others have more than half of the world's forests.
And one more example, if we see London from above, fifty percent of the space is covered with greenery.
----- Murthy Kvvs