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Tuesday, January 10, 2023

GANGA MAHASABHA: Sinking town: Joshimath

GANGA MAHASABHA: Sinking town: Joshimath:   Joshimath, Uttarakhand:  At Uttarakhand's "sinking town" of Joshimath, where more than 700 homes have developed cracks and r...

Sinking town: Joshimath

 Joshimath, Uttarakhand: 

At Uttarakhand's "sinking town" of Joshimath, where more than 700 homes have developed cracks and residents are being moved to safety, banned drilling activity has resumed in the dead of night.



At 2 am early Wednesday, an NDTV team caught on camera stone-crushing and drilling in full swing in the mountains just outside Joshimath, near the highway that connects the area to the holy town of Badrinath.

Cranes were seen carrying stones from the spot after the crushers did their job. The noise from the drilling could be heard for over a kilometre but there was no one to stop the workers.

All construction work has been banned in and around Joshimath due to land subsidence, or the sinking of the surface, which has caused dangerous cracks in 721 houses in the town. Work on an all-weather road was also stopped.

Thousands of people are living in fear in the temple town that is known to be the gateway to Badrinath.

Massive cracks have appeared in buildings and roads because of years of construction activity and unplanned infrastructure building, including hydropower projects.

The planned demolition of the most damaged buildings, including two hotels and several houses, was blocked by angry residents and shop-owners who said they were not given any notice.

Besides hotels and business establishments, 678 homes are in danger, the Uttarakhand government has said.

Some 4,000 people have been moved to relief camps after a satellite survey.

Joshimath and its neighbouring areas have been sinking at the rate of 6.5 cm every year, satellite data reveals.

Post a commentMany local residents blame the hydroelectricity project of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), alleging that the blasting of tunnels left the entire region unstable. The NTPC has denied the charge.

 

Tent city in Banaras

The Varanasi Development Authority (VDA) is reviving a proposal to establish a ‘Tent City’ on the sandy bed of the Ganges river on the opposite side of the ghats in the holy city.

“The ‘Tent City’ will allow its guests to enjoy the beauty of the mythological Kashi ghats both day and night. While it aims to reduce the burden on hotels, which opt for dynamic pricing due to increased footfall of pilgrims after the redevelopment of Kashi Vishwanath Dham opened in December, it will also be an attraction for locals by giving them a chance to get acquainted with Rann Utsav of Kutch and Konark Tent City,” said Deepak Agrawal, Division Commissioner and VDA Chairman.



Sharing their plan, the officials said that the “tent city” would emerge on an area of 100 hectares and would be equipped with “Swiss cottages” of three categories: Ganga Darshan Villas, premium tents and super luxurious.

Among all, Ganga Darshan Villas will be the grandest with a floor space of 900 square feet. It will be a riverfront air-conditioned living facility with king size bed, lounge, plunge pool, Rajwadi sofa set, dining table and other facilities.

Friday, August 22, 2014

The clean up of the River Thames

Fifty years after being declared biologically dead, the Thames has been hailed as an environmental success story. But how has the iconic river been transformed?

The kingfisher rises from the water with its food.
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The kingfisher rises from the water with its food. Photo: ©Charlie Hamilton James/National Geographic
Standing statue still on the shoreline, the heron is almost impossible to spot against the reeds behind it. Only once our boat draws near does the bird stir, flapping its broad, grey wings to lift itself into the air.
Other smaller birds dart across the skyline before settling in the water while there is the occasional plop as a fish breaks the surface. It is an idyllic riverside scene that is found in many places through out the English countryside. The difference on this occasion is this stretch of river sits in the midst of the country’s biggest city. We are on the lower reaches River Thames, in the middle of a large industrial estate at Creekmouth, in Barking, London.
It was near this spot in 1878 that more than 600 passengers on the steamship Princess Alice died when the pleasure boat sank in a collision. As they swam towards the safety of the shore, the passengers were overcome by the noxious cocktail of pollution in the water. In 1957, the pollution levels became so bad that the River Thames was declared biologically dead. The amount of oxygen in the water fell so low that no life could survive and the mud reeked of rotten eggs.
Fifty years later, the Thames has become a very different place. It teems with life: 125 species of fish swim beneath its surface while more than 400 species of invertebrates live in the mud, water and river banks. Waterfowl, waders and sea birds feed off the rich pickings in the water while seals, dolphins and even otters are regularly spotted between the river banks where it meanders through London.
The transformation has won the International Theiss River Prize, a £220,000 award given to rivers that have undergone outstanding restoration, will be picked from a short list of four rivers: The Thames, the Yellow River, in China, Hattah Lakes in Australia and the Smirnykh River in Japan.
Environmental officials now say the Thames is the cleanest it has been in more than 150 years and nearly 400 habitats have now been created to allow wildlife back into the river.
Back in Barking, the evidence of this recolonisation of the Thames is all around. The water itself still looks murky - due to the large quantities of silt and mud the water carries downstream - but it now supports a huge diversity of fish. Juvenile Sea bass, until recently never seen before in the Thames, now fill the creeks that feed into the Thames while flounder, a flat fish, have returned in ever growing numbers. Adult salmon have even been reported migrating up the river.
Above the water too, there are signs of how life has taken hold again.
Crouched among the reeds beneath Barking Barrier is Dennis Ellisdon, a 72-year-old retired marine surveyor and avid birdwatcher. He has been coming to the area, a short drive from his home in Bredbury Station, for 11 years and has spent the morning searching for a pair of peregrine falcons that have been reported nesting in the area.
“You often get kingfishers and a lot of wader birds when the tide is out,” he said. “There are also a lot of migrating birds that stop here now like red starts - that was a big surprise.”
“I seldom go out without getting a bit of a surprise. You can hear the clank of metal from the scrap yards nearby and the planes at City Airport, so it is not necessarily a haven of peace and quiet, but it is definitely a wildlife haven.”
Rare species of wildlife are also making surprise appearances. Water voles are critically endangered across much of the country, but at Thamesmead, just a mile upstream from Barking, the tiny aquatic creatures are thriving. Regular flashes of blue and green can also be seen on many stretches of the river, such as by Dartford Creek, revealing the presence of kingfishers in surprising numbers.
Otters have also set up home in several areas along the river while seals, more normally seen on the coastline than in rivers, are regularly spotted hauled out onto the banks after a good meal. Dolphins also often swim up the river.
Even one of the most fragile and rare sea creatures, the sea horse, have been found in the saline waters of the Thames Esturary.
David Curnick, marine and freshwater programme co-ordinator for the Zoological Society of London, said: “We have had reports of 4 short snouted seahorses over 4.5 years. The Thames has obviously undergone a tremendous transformation since the 1950’s. It is feasible that there a significantly greater populations than our results suggest.”
Much of the return of wildlife to the Thames has been due to improvements in water quality. Strict legislation now prevents industry from dumping polluted effluent into the river and its tributeries. Sewage from London and the surrounding area is now treated and then exported.
“Improving the water quality is only half of the battle though,” explains Antonia Scarr, a senior marine advisor with the Environment Agency. “We have had to create the habitats to allow the plants, fish and wildlife to move into.
“If you look along a lot of the River Thames as it passes through London, it is lined with concrete and pilings. Water can’t get into these and so there is no way plants can get a foothold.”
The Environment Agency, along with local authorities along the Thames, have now set about removing many of these old concrete barriers that contained the rivers. Instead they have been bulding up mud banks and allowing reed beds to take hold. Piles of rubble at the side help to capture sediment that provides a rich habitat for invetebrates and moluscs that are food for many other species. In areas where they have been unable to remove the barriers completely, they have tried putting sediment behind wooden panels along the walls.
“This essentially turns what would have been a horizontal mud bank on the river floor into a vertical one,” said Mrs Scarr. “When we have sampled them, we have found they are full of invertebrates.
“The fact that we have species like otters on the Thames shows we are getting rid of the pollution and creating the right kind of habitats for them.”
Even on the smaller rivers and streams that feed into the Thames there is a transformation underway. In Greenwich and Lewisham, extensive work is underway to re-naturalise rivers that for decades have passed unnoticed beneath residents feet. During the 1960s and 1970s extensive work was undertaken to help prevent rivers from flooding into the surrounding neighbourhoods and many were simply diverted into underground tunnels.
The river Quaggy in Greenwich is one such example. In an area called Sutcliffe Park, the river passed though a culvert hidden beneath a large flat area that was used for football pitches. But in an attempt to restore the wildlife and rich biodiversity that once lived on the river, the Environment Agency opened up the culvert allowed the river to meander through the park. It is now lined with bull rushes and reeds while dragonflies and damsel flies dart between the huge number of plants that have established themselves there. Frogs, geese, grebes and other water fowl also flourish on the site. The park also provides space for the water to spread out into when it does flood, so it doesn’t flood the houses downstream.
Dave Webb, biodiversity team leader at the Environment Agency who helped lead the project, said: “The idea in the past was to get water as fast as possible from A to B so these smooth concrete channels were created. Sadly, they are completely barren when it comes to life as nothing can get a grip there.
“In Sutcliffe park we now have huge diversity of life and it is providing a corridor to allow species to move up and down stream to places they couldn’t get to because of the old culvert that was here before.”
But for people like Dennis Ellisdon, the simple pleasure of having a river that supports the kind of wildlife he loves to watch is enough.
“The sheer variety of birds you can see here now is what amazes me. You would never have seen a heron here before as there wasn’t the fish to support them. Now the river seems to be doing well.”

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Swami Sanand alleges Shankaracharya Swaroopanand's muth tried to slow poison him

Noted campaigner for conservation of the Ganga, Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand alias GD Agrawal has accused Sri Vidya Math of Varanasi of subjecting him to slow poisoning. Sri Vidya Math monastery is headed by Swami Abhimukteswarananda, a disciple of Swami Swaroopananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Sarada Peeth in Dwarka. He is also the Shankaracharya of one of the two monasteries at Jyotir Math (Joshimath) in Uttarakhand. Swaroopananda had lately been in news for opposing Narendra Modi, though deciding not to campaign against him. Interestingly, he is also the guru of GD Agrawal. It was him who initiated GD Agrawal into monkhood (Sanyas) in 2011 at Sri Vidya Math. But the relationship between the master and the disciple has soured since then. Agrawal realised that Swaroopananda’s commitment towards conservation of the Ganga and Himalayan eco-system was duplicitous. Even the indifference of the Congress Governments at New Delhi and in Dehradun towards the tragedy in Uttarakhand last summer has not stirred the Shankaracharya. The Shankaracharya is considered close to the Congress establishment. He would do nothing to displease the grand old party.
Scientist turned monk GD Agrawal has undertaken fast several times against despoilment of the Ganga by dam builders. In 2013, his fast extended beyond 100 days, with little coverage in the media and was subject to Government’s monumental apathy. In 2012, he ended his fast on the 15th day (March 23, 2012) after the Government agreed to convene a meeting of National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA). The UPA Government had declared Ganga as the national river. But the NGBRA, headed by the Prime Minister, has a notorious track record of convening meeting. It went without meeting for full two years.
Two days after Agrawal undertook his fast in March 2012, three members of the NGRBA had quit, protesting UPA Government’s indifference to Ganga’s health. This was seen as a major embarrassment for the UPA Government.
GD Agrawal’s accusation pertains to the same 2012 fast at Matri Sadan in Haridwar. Sri Vidya Ashram was apparently supplying with Makardwaj, an Ayurvedic health supplement during those days. But Agrawal claims there was unusual presence of a red-coloured substance. He reportedly got it tested, whereby presence of cadmium was revealed. Sri Vidya Ashram’s head Swami Abhimukteswarananda has rejected the charges. But, it has sharply polarised the monk fraternity in Varanasi, just few days before the crucial May 12 polling. This is particularly because GD Agrawal has pinned his entire hope on Narendra Modi to save Ganga from extinction. Several influential monks like Narendranath and Jitendranand feel that charges are serious.
Swaroopananda was recently in news for opposing the pro-NaMo slogan –‘Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi’. He reasoned that it would demean Lord Shiva. It forced the BJP to dissociate itself from the popular slogan. Earlier this year, he had slapped a television journalist who had asked him his opinion about Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Religious heads to discuss bill on Ganga

The Central government had already declared Ganga as the national river and constituted National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) to address issues related to the holy river. Ganga Mahasabha has come up with a draft, proposing enactment of National River Ganga (Conservation and Management) Act-2012.
After toiling for months, the bill drafting committee head by Justice(Retd) Giridhar Malviya prepared a 14-page draft.
"The Ganga Mahasabha is going to hold a meeting of religious leaders of different faiths to discuss the drafted bill at NDMC convention hall near Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on November 21," said Acharya Jitendra, general secretary of Ganga Mahasabha. This organisation is committed for clean and unobstructed flow of Ganga.The letters and copies of the drafted bill are being sent to the religious leaders across the country, including Shankaracharya. After discussion, the draft will be submitted to the Central government to get it passed by the Parliament, he said.
"Though Ganga has been classified as the national river but it is yet to get the constitutional status. For this, there is a need of enactment of law by parliament," said Acharya, adding that taking an initiative in this regard, Ganga Mahasabha prepared the draft of the proposed Act with the help of noted persons from judiciary, environmentalists and scientists.
Justice (Retd) Malviya is the chairman of the bill drafting committee while other members are Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand (noted environmentalist GD Agrawal), Justice (Retd) SS Kulshrestha, MC Mehta, lawyer, Supreme Court, Paritosh Tyagi, former chairman, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Arun Kumar Gupta, lawyer, High Court, Allahabad, Santosh Kumar, lawyer, Supreme Court and Govind Sharma, general secretary, Ganga Mahasabha.
The draft specifies that the very special features and unique status of the sacred Ganga in the culture and daily lives is recognised and river is at the very foundation and core of civilization. It is the best internationally known identity of Indian nation. Recognising the special place, the Union of India had designated Ganga as the national river and constituted National Ganga River Basin Authority for certain aspects of its management, under the Environmental Protection Act-1986. The instruments and arrangements made for this purpose have not proved adequate to render Ganga the special consideration as a national symbol, unique entity and cultural heritage, in the face of pressures from growing populations as also aspirations for economic, industrial, urban and other developments.
The chapter 1 of the draft covers title, coverage, basic regulations and definitions. The Act shall be titled as the National River Gangaji (Conservation and Management) Act of 2012 (NRGA in short). The chapter 2 outlines the national and state authorities for Ganga, including the constitution of National River Ganga Authority (NGRA), an apex body at national level and State Ganga Boards (SGBs) at state level.
The chapter 3 explains the field implementation of the exercises for restoration, conservation and protection of the holy river, keeping in mind that Ganga is not just a common property but a divine entity and nobody, not even governments can be allowed to exploit and misuse it or its contents.
The chapter 4 specifies the offenses in respect of breach/contravention of the objectives/provisions of this Act and the penalties/punishment for these, while Chapter 5 speaks about miscellaneous things like funds and power to make rules.
The enactment of the Act is essential as the existing arrangements for the protection and conservation of the holy river failed to serve the purpose, said Acharya, adding that despite spending crores of rupees, no improvement was noticed in the health of Ganga, rather its condition continued to deteriorate.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Spiritual India, rich in holy places, traditions and rituals, offers much for those seeking knowledge and awareness. Visit these popular sacred destinations to maximize your spiritual experience in India.
Prefer to go on a tour rather than travel independently? This 14 day Spiritual India tour from G Adventures may be for you!

1. Haridwar


Ancient Haridwar (the "Gateway to God") is one of the seven holiest places in India, and one of the oldest living cities. Located at the foothills of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand, it's particularly popular with Hindu pilgrims who come to take a dip in the holy waters of the fast flowing Ganges River and wash away their sins. Unlike Varanasi, the water is clean and fresh in Haridwar. The evening Ganga Aarti holds special appeal.
2. Varanasi

Varanasi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, is another of the seven sacred Hindu cities with a very old history. Known as the city of Lord Shiva, the god of creation and destruction, it’s believed that anyone who dies here will be liberated from the cycle of reincarnation.  The fascinating thing about this mystical city is that its rituals are revealed openly to along the many riverside ghats. It's an intense city that attracts Hindu pilgrims and foreigners alike.

3. Bodhgaya


Bodhgaya is the most important Buddhist pilgrimage place in the world. Located in the state of Bihar, it’s here that Lord Buddha became enlightened during intense meditation under a Bodhi tree. The exact spot is now marked by the sprawling Mahabodhi Temple complex. The town is also home to dozens of Buddhist monasteries. Those who are interested will find plenty of meditation and Buddhism courses and retreats on offer.

4. Rishikesh


Rishikesh, the birthplace of yoga, is a popular place to come and meditate, do yoga, and learn about other aspects of Hinduism. It’s situated on the banks of the Ganges River, surrounded by hills on three sides, not far from Haridwar in Uttarakhand. Rishikesh lures those seeking knowledge and peace with its numerous ashrams and yoga institutes. It's particularly popular with spiritual seeking foreigners, while Haridwar holds more significance for Hindu pilgrims.

5. Amritsar


Amritsar was founded in 1577 by Guru Ram Das, the fourth guru of Sikhs. It’s the spiritual capital of the Sikhs and gained its name, meaning "Holy Pool of Nectar", from the body of water around the Golden Temple. The exquisite Golden Temple attracts pilgrims from all over the world. It looks particularly arresting at night when it’s beautifully lit up, with its imposing pure gold dome illuminated.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Cow poaching in Holy city Varanasi

Cow poaching in Holy city Varanasi : Varanasi is considered as a holy city, the city of lord Shiva and Nandi. Now these days, this city has  become a butchering place for cow traders, In this so called profitable business  some big names were involved , who were considered themselves as a Dharmatma  of city, basically these big names are businessman and they sell cow for butchering, skin  of cow, calf leather , bones of dead cow,etc.