MARGAO
An environment awareness walk through the village of Guirdolim on Sunday brought out startling facts as participants stumbled upon chunks of coal dropped from the goods trains plying along the existing route and the quaint little “Chandor railway station” which once housed a single track and has now paved the way for four mighty tracks and three more on the anvil.
Organized by the Biodiversity Management Committee of Guirdolim for the villagers, the Environment Awareness Walk participants were left to ponder whether any power is truly left in the hands of the people to stop the destruction of the environment.
Biodiversity Management Committee Chairperson Agostinho Antao said the questionnaire handed out to the participants led to the sudden realisation that there were already four tracks developed along the path and the construction of the fifth seemed to be in progress.
“As the participants walked along the tracks, they kept stumbling over huge chunks of coal dropped from the goods trains currently plying along the route”, he said.
"A walk along the dusty station road, that starkly contrasts the greenery of the coconut trees and vegetation that surrounds it, one can easily find huge chunks of coal on the tracks. While many villages, affected by the expansion of the Indian Railways, are trying to evade the idea of turning into a ‘coal hub’, the question that arises is, are we doing enough to protect our environment from the atrocities of development, he said.
The participants of the walk were led by locals who shared their expertise on the various urgent topics at hand. The groups were composed of both young and old villagers, who understood the sad plight of the environment surrounding the railway expansion.
Marcelino Fernandes, who led one of the groups that consisted mostly of the youth of the village, highlighted how the development had led to the drying of one of the streams of the river, and how it has impacted the surrounding vegetation.
“The people's movement against the Indian Railways finds its traces in 2018, when the people and I, through a people’s movement, stopped the Railways from dumping the debris in the nearby river which could eventually have led to flooding in the same area”, Agostinho recalled.
Another villager, Jose Coutinho, who led one of the groups, shed light on how the development had impacted the cultivation by the river banks. The drooping coconut trees and as well as the excessive soil erosion indicated that it is nature that is paying the cost of this expansion.
