Intercourse of nature and commerce

For an economically backward country or state, ‘development’ sits in the first bench of priority. No matter what the situation may be, people seek for advancement in their lives with maximum facilities in terms of everything. However, the real deal is the fundamental question whether technologically advanced countries or states should be considered as developed or the place where people live with all the requirements without ignoring the importance of nature. With advancement in science and technology, everything seems possible nowadays except the ability to bring back life to a death body. The rise of science and technology also has its own competition in some way that many scientists try to invent or create something which might be with an intention to leave their identity or legacy on the face of Earth before or after they die. So far, several inventions had been both boons and curses but humans call those inventions as creations of geniuses. Although catastrophe pops up when the ‘creation’ tend to be commodified, and commercialised in the name of development. Eventually, human values became less considered and money comes in power which has generated the whole issues of the world from the past many decades.

For countries like China and India, competitions are extremely high with the rest of the world. While China dominates the world market, India runs up to become one of the super-power countries. From every aspect, India competes, and the best example would be the nuclear bomb test in Pokhran though the country is not considered to be Nuclear-Weapon States (NWS) under the terms of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Well, the progress continues, however the adverse effects on the north-eastern states of the country remains unacknowledged. To be precise, the northeast states of India are the greenest part of the country. May be in other parts of India, there are hilly regions where anyone can find greenery but the natural virginity of the beauty of ‘green’ can be found in northeast. The reason to term it as ‘virgin’ is that many places are unexplored and the exploration is itself a part of living with nature. If anything is commercialised in between, the whole beauty is likely to be gone.

As the state government is following fast in the footsteps of Central government, the state is turning from ‘green to grey’, grey in the sense of being ‘cemented’. Not only the hilly regions, the cemented city of Imphal was green some years ago but the drastic deforestation in the name of construction has reduced the place to almost a ‘concrete jungle’. If cemented buildings are called development then what is left for nature?! Many political leaders preach preservation of nature but the real core idea on how to preserve it is missed out. Recently, there had been a ‘brainstorming session on natural resource management and rural bio-entrepreneurship’ in which director of Institute of Bio-resources and Sustainable Development said that northeast India has abundance of natural resources sharing 8 percent of India’s geographical area, and one-fourth of forest area of the country lies in this region. He also stated that the socio-economic development of this region is still lagging behind when compared with rest of the country and the problem can be ended by tapping out resources in a sustainable way by utilising modern technology. Well, good enough to uplift the economy but what about the people and the nature. Extracting minerals or natural resources can boom the economy but on the contrary it creates havoc, naturally or politically that could bring an end to the entire state.

Manipur is a state filled with enormous natural beauty and it needs to be preserved. If tourism is to be promoted, it should be in a way that tourists come for the beauty of nature rather than for the sake of visiting a place where people find a place to gratify their guilty pleasures. To be precise, the state should not become a second Bangkok where anything is available. A country or state is not all about becoming superpower or being superior as compared with the rest. It is better to understand its own place in terms of how the place should be.

Sikkim became the first fully organic state of India because the people understood the natural aspects of the place and the people opted out of commercialising the state. It would not be entirely wrong to state that if the people or the government of Manipur is exchanged with Sikkim, it is pretty sure that Sikkim will end up with lots of traffic jam and pollution. Competition with other states is not the solution but understanding one’s own makes a better state. Hope so, commercialisation of natural resources will result in the state being another Congo where extraction of Coltan (Columbite-Tantalites) resulted in major crisis that affected both the people and nature of the country.

Leader Writer: Khogen Khoibam