Indian Central Gov Forefully makin Punjab Desert

http://www.sikhsangat.com/index.php?showto...mode=linearplus
http://www.witness84.com/water/
http://www.punjabnewsline.com/content/view/2981/40/
Jay Punjab Mukka Taan India Daa Vee Kujh Nahin Rehna

The Energy Research Institute, a New Delhi think tank, says that already in an agriculture-based state such as Panjaab in the north, 98 percent of ground water has been exploited. The Forum for Bio-Technology and Food Security adds that if the trend continues, the once fertile Panjaab- once known as the country's granary - will turn into a desert.

FORCING A DESERT UPON THE LAND OF FIVE RIVERS

International environment agencies have cautioned that Panjaab , the land of the five years, could become a desert by 2025.

The water table in Panjaab is at 30 meters deep and even 80 meters in some areas; each year it loses over a metre.

Panjaab 's economy is largely dependent on Agriculture. It has been the bread basket of Indi! a . In the 1960's it solved the nation's long suffering food shortage problem by achieving the highest yields per acre of wheat production.

However current forecasts paint a dismal picture of impending desertification.

The Panjaab State has not been allowed to diversify its economy to non agricultural alternatives. Whilst the Indian nation's dependency on Panjaab may be overcome by diverting agriculture demands to other states, the Panjaabi farmer is becoming destitute and poor. The Panjaab State could go into irreversible decline.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

Panjaab lacks autonomous decision making, the state is subject to Indian Government's policies which also determine investment strategies. While this relationship may be acceptable as any other relation between a state within a union nation, serious concerns arise as to why Panjaab has been the subject of neglect an! d indeed deliberate policies to erode its economic status.

The facts speak for themselves -

1. The Panjaab State was forced to rely on agriculture.

2. The State has harnessed about 98% of its agriculture potential; 95% of which is dependent on irrigation - 60% of this is from groundwater, i.e. water pumped from ground.

3. Panjaab was not allowed to invest in alternate industries to reduce pressure on its agriculture, and thereby create jobs for new graduates.

4. Panjaab farmers have been forced to grow rice due to the small margins imposed by the central government on other crops. Rice demands considerably large amounts of water, almost all of which is pumped from the ground; hence increasing the depletion of the water table.

5. Unlike western countries where farmers are subsidized to rotate cropping, the central government has prohibited such subsidies. This has forced farmers to use every inch of their land to its fullest capacity, r! esulting in water and mineral depletion.

6. The central government has forced diversion of Panjaab 's river waters to other states.


REMEDIES

1. Let Panjaab decide on subsidies or crops consuming less water.

2. Better water management. Let the Panjaab State have a say in its economy

3. Let Panjaab diversify its economy

4. Subsidies to farmers to keep land free of cropping.

However it is unlikely that the Indian government will take any of these steps , unless International pressure is imposed through organisations like the UN.

The environmental and water crisis in the Panjaab

Several decades of Green Revolution agricul! ture - the intensive use of water and chemical pesticides and fertilisers on hybrid crops to increase crop yields - has degraded much of the land and water in north-western India , making it difficult for people to live there.
Pardeep Singh Rai

Panjaab, the famous land of five rivers, is a semi-arid landlocked region in the north-western part of South Asia . The very existence of this vulnerable region depends on the waters of the five rivers, all tributaries of the Indus River . This highly productive region is known as the breadbasket of both India and Pakistan , and it was here that the Green Revolution was considered a success.

But various practices have led to the environmental degradation of the Panjaab. Industrial agriculture, involving the excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers and intensive irrigation, was implemented in the region through pressure ! from the government and multinationals. The planting of rice, a non-traditional crop in this semi-arid region that requires intensive irrigation, is causing an environmental crisis. The International Rice Research Institute has questioned to what extent rice cultivation should be permitted in the Panjaab. Price ceilings on agricultural produce and restrictions on its export imposed by the government on Panjaabi farmers have prevented them from planting other crops that use less water. Despite the intensive irrigation, river water is diverted to less productive regions in Haryana and Rajasthan, leaving the Indian Panjaab with only about one-quarter of the water from its rivers. This diversion means that the Panjaab does have the water it needs for irrigation. Panjaabi farmers have had to dig tube wells to extract groundwater and have done so beyond sustainable levels. The construction of dams on the Panjaabi rivers has served the elite only and has altered both the volume and the cou! rse of the rivers. Many are now dry sand beds, especially the smaller streams.

As a result of all these practices, in just four decades, the Panjaab is extensively degraded.

Groundwater depletion

Groundwater has been pumped out at a much faster rate than it has been replenished. As a result, farmers have deepened their tube wells, and the entire irrigation process has become much more expensive. In future, village wells might dry up as they depend on the same aquifer. This would cause immense hardship to rural people who have little or no piped water supply. The annual State of the World Report produced by the World Resources Institute in Washington , DC , estimates that the gap between water usage and the aquifer's sustainable yield is so high that the aquifer under the Panjaab could be depleted by the year 2025.

Degradation of watersheds

Deforestation along the banks o! f the rivers is also having a dramatic impact on the aquifers under the Panjaab. Because of less rainfall because so many trees have been cut down, they are not being recharged. In addition, because of the accompanying soil erosion, about 60% of rainwater is lost due to runoff.

Water pollution

Aquifers become polluted when they are recharged with irrigation water contaminated with agricultural chemicals and fertilisers. During the monsoon, heavy loads of silt, along with large quantities of dissolved salts, nutrients, organic material and bacterial contaminants, are washed off the land into the aquifers.

Water logging

Due to increased mechanisation and inadequate drainage, seepage from unlined canals and over-watering of fields have raised the underlying water table. This has led to increased health (especially malaria) and environmental problems.

Salinisation

In the drier climate o! f the Panjaab, water evaporation near the soil surface leads to a steady accumulation of salts in the land that eventually results in kalar (soil affected by salt) and reduced crop yields. An estimated 21% of irrigated agricultural lands in the Panjaab are affected.

Loss of aquatic habitats

Streams and ponds are now running dry, affecting aquatic and wetland habitats and resulting in reduced biodiversity.

Desertification

The land has been intensively cultivated at the expense of grazing and traditional long fallow periods. Few conservation measures have been followed. In this semi-arid region, moreover, wind erosion is also a serious threat to water balances.

Global warming

The Himalayan glaciers that feed Panjaab's five rivers have been receding faster than in any other part of the world. In addition, changes to the monsoons are likely to reduce the water sources of the Indus River ! system and directly affect the people of Panjaab.

The very survival of the Panjaabi people in a sustainable environment is at risk. Continued excessive use of groundwater for agriculture in India and Pakistan could well result in the Panjaab becoming a desert in the early 21st century. Before this, however, water scarcity might well lead to confrontation and armed conflict between India and Pakistan , which both have nuclear weapons, with disastrous consequences for the Panjaab, particularly for the poor and the environment.

The socio-political problems plaguing this region need to be tackled. Moreover, integrated water resource management in the Panjaab must encompass the needs of the poor, women, landless and tenant farmers. Irrigation should be made more efficient by adopting micro-irrigation techniques, and crops that need a lesser amount of water should be planted. Programmes governing the use of water need to incorporate ecological sensibility, and need to st! art at the village level to develop holistic solutions that meet people's needs.

www.therefugeeproject.org

Pardeep Singh Rai works with Defenders of the Environment and Ecology of Panjaab.

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The forest cover in Punjab is less than the desert state of Rajasthan that has 4.62 per cent of its total area under forests. In Punjab it is 3.14 per cent of the total area. The forest cover in Punjab is now the lowest in the country.

As per the latest report of the Forest Survey of India (FSI), the dense forest cover in Punjab has decreased by whopping 80,600 hectares. The vested interests cleverly concealed the figures that reveal the real picture of the state of the forests in Punjab.

The worst affected districts in terms of forest cover depletion are: Ferozpur that has witnessed 111 per cent depletion, Amritsar 106 per cent, Hoshiarpur 84 per cent, Bathinda 76 per cent, Gurdaspur 21 per cent and Ludhiana 55 per cent during the period extending from 2001 to 2003. Hoshiarpur district comprised of 22 per cent of the total state forest cover as per the 2001 forest survey report. However, in just two years the percentage of forest in the district has gone down to 18 percent. The dense forest areas in Hoshiarpur have gone down by 51 sq km. INTERESTINGLY, on the World Environment Day, 2005,the Department of Forests, publicized in leading newspapers, claiming that the forest cover in the state increased from 1,387 sq km in 1997 to 1,580 sq km in 2003.

However, the department cleverly concealed the figures that reveal the real picture of the state of the forests in Punjab The department deliberately concealed the figures as regards the forest cover in 2001. As per the Forest Survey of India report, the forest cover in the state in 2001 was 2,432 sq km. It included 1,549 sq km dense forest cover and 883 sq km open forest cover.

Another interesting fact available from the data is that the entire forest that has vanished formed the dense forest cover. The dense forest cover in the state reduced from 1,549 sq km in 2001 to just 743 sq km in 2003. The open forest cover remained almost the same at 837 km. The forest cover loss in the state was also the highest in the country. It was even more than Madhya Pradesh, the biggest state of the country in terms of geographical area. ( The figures have been quoted from the latest Forest Survey of India report published in 2005).

The dense forest cover has depleted despite the fact that the state had raised a loan a Japan bank for plantation. More than Rs 600 crore has been spent under a Japan aided scheme for afforestation in Punjab in the past one decade. The department had claimed that 20,000 sq hectares area had been brought under plantation under a Japanese project. A large percentage of the said amount has been mostly spent by the state on plantation in kandi forest ranging from Ropar to Gurdaspur. However, if such a large area was brought under plantation, how the dense forest cover in the state went down by more than 55 per cent.

In view of it environmentalists demanded that instead of claiming false accolades, the department should order an inquiry into such large-scale depletion of the dense forest cover in the state. Further, in a public interest litigation (PIL) filed in Punjab and Haryana high court, certain persons from the forest department had demanded a high level probe into the large-scale depletion of forest cover in the state.

Unconfirmed sources reveal that the sum of rupees 600 crores taken as loan from a bank in Japan had gone down the drain. This is said to have been usurped by the officials responsible for plantations with these funds borrowed from a foreign land. When the departmental enquiry was ordered, it is believed that the forest officials and the powers that be maneuvered to shield the scam and the enquiry officers and the concerned were made to believe that no misutilization of funds had taken place. However, they failed to escape the vigilant photographers who showed that only few unplanted tree saplings were lying abandoned at the place where the funds would have created a dense forest cover. It's a matter of shame.

We understand and feel worried about the low rate of economic growth, fiscal deficit, huge foreign and national debts, but what about the mounting ecological deficit that the country accumulates year after year.

The protective life line is turning fragile. The world is looking ahead in this twenty first century towards growth and development. Indeed, the development is possible, but only when the earth's natural environment and resources are well protected, conserved and thoroughly managed. Ironically, this has not been the case so far, for most of the natural environment has witnessed a heavy toll on account of excessive development activities, that have not only degraded our natural resources drastically even, the major renewable resources- forests, groundwater, agricultural soils and marine fisheries among others- have been polluted to the extent which poison the living beings. Unique and irreplaceable species are becoming extinct at rates estimated at upto 30,000 a year- the fastest destruction to have occurred in the last 65 million years. The agricultural soil of every continent is being destroyed more quickly than nature can restore them. The basic resources are under intense pressure from increased displacement of soil particles from land surfaces, has also become a serious problem.

Now the excessive human dwelling, growing industrialization and neglect of forestry is driving animal and bird population off. In fact, this is causing not only death of many species, but resulting into draughts, floods and global warming as well. The decaying twigs and tress are making soil porous and ultimately barren. Forests are also the home and heaven for wild life. Their constant degradation is causing misery to the wild life and our ecosystem. India's woods, once dark and deep, now are a living example to man's savage destruction. The saying that man finds forests but leaves deserts, could not be more true to India. Trees known as mother of rivers act as depositories for water resources, are unable to sustain their own existence. In such a pitiable situation, how can they be expected to sustain others?

Under the prevailing conditions, it would be in the fitness of things to give exemplary punishment to those who are digging the graves of the civilization by indulging in scams to the detriment of our ecology in which hangs the future of the world and for the cause for which people laid down their lives.

*Dr.G.S.Bhalla is professor in Guru Nanan Dev University Amritsar

**Ms. Hema Khanna is research scholar under Dr.G.S.Bhalla

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if it in those links then fine otherwise ill look for it but it say that the value of the water taken from punjanb @1980 values is 36,000 crores if you take 1 crore to be 100 lakh or 10 mil rupee. the value of crops lost another 2500 crore. and damage by flood for example the 1988 flood caused by dams was 20 billion rupee. punjab bein screwed and the central gov knows it. india %$@#!ed up right now cuz one of poorest countries in the world. almost 1/2 of the poorerst of the poor live der, 1/2 country got drought other 1/2 got floods, and the so called almost 10% is bullshit cuz agriculture basically not growing and that where 70% of the workforce is. n in other sectors take out poor n what we have? the bramins who already rich get richer while everyone else is %$@#!ed literally by the system.

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What Slavery Do To Africa

Louise Marie Diop-Maes
We know much about 16th century sub-Saharan Africa from surviving remains, archaeological excavations and written sources. There were integrated kingdoms and empires, with substantial cities (60,000 to 140,000 inhabitants) and significant towns (1,000 to 10,000); and less organized territories with large scattered populations. People practised agriculture, stock-rearing, hunting, fishing and crafts (metalworking, textiles, ceramics). They navigated along rivers and across lakes, trading over short and long distances, using their own currencies.In the 14th century the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta praised the security and justice of the Mali empire. Until the arrival of firearms, the Arab slave trade was insignificant in relation to economic activity and population. At the beginning of the 16th century, Leo Africanus noted in his Description of Africa that the king of Borno conducted only one slaving expedition a year.

Everything changed when the Portuguese reached the area south of the Congo River and conquered Angola. They attacked and destroyed the main ports on the east coast, and overran Mozambique. Firearms enabled the Moroccans to destroy the Songhai empire in just nine years. Thousands were killed, or captured and reduced to slavery. The victors carried off men, animals, goods, precious objects.

Kingdoms and empires fragmented into principalities, which were forced to wage war to capture prisoners who could be traded for the rifles necessary for defence and attack. The resulting population movements provoked further confrontations, with refugee settlements, and the spread of a state of latent war to the heart of the continent. The number of raids increased: The Tunisian writer Muhammad al-Tunsy, who travelled to Darfur and Ouaddai (in modern Chad) at the beginning of the 19th century, reported that in the northeast of the Central African Republic they had reached 80 a year.

The social, economic, political and administrative fabric was damaged, then destroyed. Many people were forced to fend for themselves in defensive positions where food and water were hard to get. Living standards fell. The fate of those taken into slavery worsened. A parasitic social class of collaborators emerged: brokers, warders, caravaneers, interpreters and suppliers of provisions.

At first, rulers gave up only prisoners under sentence of death. But the Portuguese wanted more, and took them by force. Every year from 1575 to 1580, Paulo Dias de Novais, the first captain-governor of Angola, sent off an average of 12,000 captives.

Throughout the 17th and the 18th centuries, most European ship-owners participated in this profitable business. By the second half of the 18th century the numbers involved were enormous; excluding periods when England and France were at war, hundreds of ships transported more than 150,000 every year. The prevalent state of insecurity across much of Africa caused famine and encouraged indigenous and imported diseases, especially smallpox. As these became endemic, epidemics spread.

Africans were killed in raids or during the journey from the interior to the coast. They committed suicide or died resisting embarkation. They died because the disruption of existing political entities provoked further raids and internal wars. They died as populations fled from greedy slavers. They died of disease, and of hunger when their crops and supplies were destroyed. They were also killed by firearms, bad liquor, declining hygiene and the loss of inherited knowledge.

If the number transported is added to all those killed, the demographic deficit exceeds the number of viable births, itself in decline. The fall in population varied between regions. The decline accelerated from the end of the 17th century and by the middle of the 18th century it was widespread and rapid.

How great was the loss? In Africa, as in India, there are no baptismal records from the period, but we know from descriptions by explorers and travellers that in 19th century West Africa the largest towns contained no more than between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants. They were about a quarter of the size of the largest cities of the 16th century.

The same sources indicate even greater declines among the rural population and in the number of warriors that individual princes or chiefs could muster. But does this four-to-one ratio hold for all of black Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries? From Cape Palmas, on the modern frontier between the Ivory Coast and Liberia, to southern Angola, the losses were even greater. There were 2,000 dwellings in Gwato, the port of the kingdom of Benin (in modern Nigeria), when the Portuguese came; there were no more than 20 or 30 when 19th century explorers arrived. There was a similar reduction in the population of Angola. Parts of Chad remained quite densely populated until late in the century, with towns of 3,000 recorded in 1878.

In modern Sudan, depopulation began during the 1820s, when Pasha Muhammad Ali of Egypt conquered the country and took slaves. From the beginning of the 19th century, the impact of English settlers in South Africa, coming on top of the Boers, dramatically reduced the indigenous population. It seems reasonable to conclude that the population of black Africa in the 19th century was a third, or even a quarter, of what it had been 300 years before.

But are population estimates for the mid-19th century accurate? Colonial conquest (artillery against rifles), forced labour, the suppression of resistance, food shortages, diseases (indigenous and imported), and the continuing eastern slave trade all contributed to the decline of the population, which remained at about a third of its former level until 1930, when administrative and sanitary reforms began a slow reversal of the demographic trend.

This assessment is possible because the Europeans began to collect statistics. In 1948-49 a general, co-ordinated census was carried out right across sub-Saharan Africa. After adjustments for incomplete declarations, the approximate population was between 140 million and 145 million. Given the increase recorded between 1930 and 1948-49, it is possible to conclude that in 1930 the population was between 130 million and 135 million, two-thirds of the estimated approximate population of 200 million between 1870 and 1890. My research suggests that the population in the 16th century could have been at least 600 million (an average of about 30 people per square kilometre).

Between the mid-16th century and the mid-19th century, the sub-Saharan population fell by some 400 million. It is impossible to calculate what percentage was deported by sea or across the Sahel; numbers were falsified and many slaves were taken illegally, both before and after the trade was abolished. Sources and estimates indicate that official figures for the European trade should be increased by 50 per cent. Estimates for the Arab trade are problematic. But the total figure for the European and Arab trades should probably be between 25 and 40 million. This is highly controversial, but lower estimates fail to take into account the enormous level of falsification.

At least 90 per cent of total losses occurred within Africa as the cumulative, destructive effects, direct and indirect, of the simultaneous and intensifying trades created a permanent state of insecurity across the continent. The colonial conquest and occupation turned sub-Saharan Africa in on itself, culturally and economically, and made general and local reconstruction difficult. The population of black Africa has only returned to 16th century levels in the past decade, but distorted by the massive flow into capital cities.

The consequences of the slave trade have been damaging, and its scale is still underestimated
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http://www.thestar.com/article/299695

Why old white people so retarded? look i said old not yall today well maybe some today na mean but old times. wtf is wrong with them. n arabs yall aint innocent ethier.