The city planners cannot give a free-for-all in construction and automobile pollution. A massive greenery programme should be taken up in all available spaces.
Paediatrics, physicians, community health experts, and environmental health scholars have all been warning for long that landlocked Bangalore can go this far and no further. But nobody heeds. Consequently, the once-garden city has already turned into a concrete city with health problems growing with every passing day.
“I see an increase in the instance of respiratory troubles in the babies I treat,” says paediatric Dr Hirdi Prasad Tekur.
The city planners cannot give a free-for-all in construction and automobile pollution. A massive greenery programme should be taken up in all available spaces.
Each Bangalorean who can spare a little space must at least nurture a potted plant indoors.
The increasing fashion of glass and chrome building is dangerous for environmental health as it radiates heat far more than brick and mortar. “Very strict implementation of the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act should be done forthwith before the city crosses the point of no return,” says Tekur.
While presenting a paper on a 30-year study of Bangalore’s health status at an international conference held here in February, Dr H Parameshwar, director of Lakeside Hospital, said that allergy diseases, directly related to deteriorating environment, had gone up to 26% from 9% in 1979.
Persistent asthma increased to a dangerous 50% to 70% in 2009 from 26% a decade ago.
The Centre for Ecological Studies has noted an increase of 1 degree to 1.5 degree in temperature in certain pockets of Bangalore that have witnessed intense urbanisation.
The centre’s director and lead researcher TV Ramachandra blames it mainly on the loss of water bodies.
According to him, there is an increase of 466% of building area or paved surface in a three-year period from 2006. This prevents water from percolating into the soil.
“Of 200 tanks present in 1985, only 17 survive today,” Ramachandra says. He too calls for an urgent halt to unbridled construction which is sired by corruption.
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