A year has passed since India's spiritual heaven crumbled under the fury of floods. Thousands lost their lives, infinite families were rendered homeless, the pain in the bereaved eyes of thousands of Indians stares at many more. Why would mother earth punish us with such vengeance, we surely have been an awful lot,misguided and lost in search of greed. Data suggests, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Environmentalists attribute it to unplanned development, pointing to the construction of dams, having adverse effects on bhagirathi and alaknanda leading to massive landslides. Reduction in forest cover has contributed unsparingly to this, mostly man made disaster.
Even if nature can be burdened with blame, for the afore mentioned reasons, damage could have been reduced considerably, if the administration had acted with responsible alacrity. The grit and greatness of Indian army, was evident in the rescue operations. True patriots put their lives on line to save every single life they could.
ABVP, true to it's ideology arranged programmes to honour our soldiers for their service The organisation launched a drive to collect relief funds for the families of victims on the 21st of June 2013. Lessons to be learnt are abundant, reflecting the apathy towards people and mother earth. The answer is straight, end unplanned development and build scientific models of sustainable development.
Students For Development(SFD), a forum initiated by ABVP has campaigned actively for measures to be taken to conserve natural resources. Ban on plastic, afforestation, methods to conserve water and most importantly, preserving ethics in unison with development, have been primary concerns for the organisation in order to move towards building sustainable models of development.