HYDERABAD: Environmental and human rights activists on World Environment Day voiced their collective opinion that without addressing the crisis facing democracies around the world, problem of climate change could not be mitigated.
At the ‘Jal Jeevan- Save our Sagars’ event organised at Lamakaan on Sunday, the movement to save the historic twin reservoirs of Himayatsagar and Osmansagar took a cultural turn, with dancers, rappers and beat-boxers performing on the theme to protect them and GO 111, which has recently been repealed by the State government.
Speaking on the occasion, social activist and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Dr Sandeep Panday drew a parallel between Varuna and Assi rivers in Varanasi and the Musi river, predicting that Musi could meet the similar fate of those two rivers, which had turned in sewage channels and couldn’t even be seen, after large-scale construction has laid a blanket of destruction on them.
By renaming the Ministry for Water Resources as ‘Jal Shakti,’ he said the Centre had given clear indication that rivers would be used to generate power because big dams were being opposed in the country.
On the State’s indifference towards the issues raised by environmentalists, he has pointed out how the NDA government had let a great environmentalist like Dr GD Agarwal die after he went on a 112-day fast in 2018, demanding the Centre to act upon its promises to save the Ganga.“When a river like Ganga couldn’t be saved, Musi is nothing. Unless the politics in our country change, environment can’t be protected,” he said.
Dr Babu Rao, leader of Human Rights Forum, said the State government was planning to abandon the Musi River and turn it into a sewage channel, and that though Osmansagar and Himayatsagar are contributing more water than what is being consumed in all the cities in Telangana combined, the State government was shutting its doors from protecting them.