But then the question comes, if there was so much dust in the atmosphere, wouldn't everyone be inhaling it? And with lax industry laws, there of course are many pollutants in the air too! And all of them simply, pretty much forcibly just get into your lungs!
The next question is why are people not doing anything about it? Well, I think that's because people, mostly, are not empowered to do anything beyond their own backyard. And the people who are empowered, are either so dumb to not see the issue, or plain and simple ignorant, or just too busy minting money to see that this effects everyone! including the PM and the President. Well, only when they are out in the open...
So then how do we actually see how bad the picture is? For one, every one could take a flight in to Delhi, which, for obvious reasons isn't the most economical way of conducting a study. So I thought I should do the next best thing. Take pictures from high above and paste them here.
Thanks to google maps and jing technologies, I was able to put these pics here:
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| Lucknow, India |
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| Hyderabad suburbs, India |
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| Nerul, Navi Mumbai, India |
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| Noida, India |
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| Schaumburg, US |
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| Nice, France |
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| Tooting, London, UK |
I tried to compare apples to apples by keeping the resolution level the same. I also tried to consider only what I thought were suburbs, since they seem to have a better control over land and hence tree cover.
What is clearly visible is that number of trees in the captured area are faar less for Indian cities, no matter where they are, when compared to, suburbs in US or Europe.
This is not a research study, so I am sure the sample data I am looking at would be flawed after a point. But I definitely wanted to put up some comparison between what Indian cities are doing, vs the 'better' cities of US/Europe. Also, since these are suburbs, in both cases (India or others) they were settled down into, rather recently.
We all have known that tree cover is said to be beneficial for MANY things, including water table restoration, reduction in free dust just flying around in the air, reducing average temperature of the areas, and keeping the land healthier in general.
Given this, I wanted to hit at at least one problem. That of awareness in people in India about the shoddy state of their green cover. Only 12% of land mass in India is covered with forests, as compared to 33% in the US, 30% over the world, 34% in Canada, 22% in China and so on.
I think the green cover is especially more important in city areas given the concentration of pollutants in general.
Maybe we should start from where we do have control. Our backyard. And then move up from there. Otherwise the average life expectancy in our cities will continue to be low and maybe drop lower with new industrialization and growth happening...
4 comments:
I agree with most of your points. Thats what I keep on discussing on facebook and got backfired by many people who say themselves patriotic and I have no right to criticise these Indian facts as I dont stay in India and not an Indian taxpayer. It was disgusting.
They dont want to understand they have full right to ask for taxpayers money which is not used anywhere.
I dont want to agree that Indian govt cannot do things to imrpove....attitude from both the public and govt needs to be innovative. But somehow as we both hail from India, we know whats there keeps on creeping in Indian minds. This country can do better but according to me everythign is decentralised in India and not scrutinised. PEople need to know what their rights are ...I am sure many of them dont even know.
Why we are so much reluctant to even think about environment in India and similar stories on other issues as you said before?
There are other sustainable methods of conducting games and urban developments but dont know where we are heading.
BAck at university, there are so many profound case studies on India e.g. bhopal gas tragedy, coca cola and now professors around the world are heading to India to do research on Commonwelth games and include that under the topic " Urban developmets, politics and games " !! I guess we can provide the best examples in universitities about things which are not supposed to do.....!!
Regards
Himanshu Dogra
+61 423699033
himanshudogra@gmail.com
himanshu.dogra@microsoft.com
just wondering why is delhi snapshot missing?
As per my observation from roads, Delhi is far greener than any of the maor Indian cities I have visited off late (barring maybe old bangalore!).
South Delhi is lush green and CWG ensured quite gud amount of it in east delhi too.
Would like to see how it fares as compared to other better cities of the world.
@mepretentious: That's a good point. If you'd notice I was trying to consider only suburban areas. My logic was that since they aren't as stretched for commercial purposes, they tend to have more freedom to use it for seemingly less commercial purposes, namely planting trees. It's for this reason that I didn't snapshot London, or Washington DC, New York downtown.
Also if you notice Delhi's case and compare South Delhi with say Punjabi Bagh or even Trans Yamuna areas, you'd see a huge difference in population density. Almost hinting at affluent, or politically connected class vs the rest of the citizens. I am sure there are enough affluent people all over Delhi, but not all places are as trees endowed as South Delhi specifically. Any posh areas in London, NY, DC etc will always be a little greener wrt the rest of the countries.
or atleast thats what I think :)
A great example of a very green city, all over, is Charlotte NC. I actually thought that they just made small spaces in the forest to start living.. check it out on google earth :)
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