Hemanth.Net: The Personal Website of Hemanth Meka Rao

Land worth fighting for?
Sunday, October 01, 2006 [My views]

Land has always been the centre of the world's disputes.

The Israel-Palestine conflict, the India-Pakistan conflict are just two modern day examples. But as far as history goes, land has been the start of wars, land has created and destroyed empires.
The greed to occupy and control more and more land has led wars between nations, empires and kingdoms.

But today's war is one that is different. Today's war is being fought between the people that have money (the big empires) and the small empires (villagers/villages). It goes back to the days of the Native Americans (Red Indians being the politically incorrect term). In those days, the white man came and displaced the Native Americans from their lands so that it could be exploited for their own gain. They did not respect nature as the Native Americans did and slowly but surely brought in their fortified towns, road, railways etc. They brought progress (?)

Today's story is no different. With more and more money being available, and the created hype of land having increased manifold, the rush for more land has got everyone running helter skelter for a piece of the pie. With the Indian government giving special incentives to companies to create Special Economic Zones (SEZ) aka large privately developed townships and cities around the country, every second person is trying to start one.

This is all fine as it allows India to actually create world-class infrastructure without the government wasting its money in trying. But what happens when such a huge demand is suddenly created. Pandemonium.

In the rush to create this infrastructure, the all but too familiar story of the Native Americans reminds us that - in will come the people that have money, with their fortified towns, roads, railway etc. In the process, they will evict the small empires - the villagers and villages from their land, to create their concrete jungles. And the people that have lived and toiled on this soll will have no choice but to adapt to this concrete bulldozer that is taking over every piece of pristine nature we have. All this - without any plan for sustainable development.

In will come manicured gardens, but no endless forests, mountains of concrete, but no actual mountains, streelight but barely any sunlight. Unless we have a sustainable development plan for nature and the villagers that protect and sustain it, then all that we fight for will be in vain, because once the trees, and the mountains, birds and animals, once they are all gone - we will again fight a war to retain the places that have them.. when we shouldn't have lost them at all.

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