Dehradun: As Lok Sabha elections 2024 draw near, voting is to be held in the state of Uttarakhand on 19 April when 102 parliamentary seats go to the polls. As the Election Commission along with political parties prepare for the polls, the adverse geographical conditions and limited resources of the Himalayan state Uttarakhand is a challenge.
The issues related to environment should ideally be a big burning election issue in the hill state. Despite this, the people of the state are not able to pay attention to this.
In a special conversation with ETV Bharat, Padmabhushan environmental activist Dr Anil Joshi said that the youth of the state are struggling with unemployment, due to which the attention of the youth is not going towards the environment.
Due to lack of public participation in the field of environment, there is no issue of environment or water-forest-land in the elections, Joshi said adding the purpose of creating the state of Uttarakhand was to save water, forests and land.
Joshi said that the state of Uttarakhand was formed on 9 November 2000, but the concept with which the state was formed has not yet been fulfilled. “Or rather, on the contrary, the mountainous areas are continuously becoming vacant. The main reason for this is non-availability of basic facilities. Even though the original concept could not be fulfilled after the formation of Uttarakhand, a big change has been seen in the politics of Uttarakhand since the formation of the state. Or we can say that there is a lot of difference between the earlier elections and the present elections,” he said.
Joshi said that after the last few elections, people have now started considering elections as very important part of their lives. “The main reason for this is that now people are paying attention to how effective their decision is. Besides, people have also become aware of their voting. Villagers living in remote areas of the state are also emphasizing on their participation. Also, people no longer want to vote only on slogans, but choose leaders keeping in mind their society and change,” he added.
On the question of the current political equation in the state of Uttarakhand, Anil Joshi said that there are only two main parties in the state--BJP and Congress. “The effect of the functioning of the present government will also be seen in this election and it is always there. There has been a tradition of the incumbent government not retaining power in Uttarakhand. But this is the first time that the public has brought a party back to power on the basis of performance. However, this election is of national level, so the upcoming election results will tell what is the state of mind of the people,” he said.
Vote thoughtfully: Describing his experience of voting for the first time, Anil Joshi said that when he went to vote for the first time, he did not understand how important his vote was. “However, at present the Election Commission of India informs the people about their voting rights. But still many people consider it to be just a holiday, due to which the voting percentage remains low,” he said.
“There is a lot of difference between before and now. Because now people vote according to their understanding and it is not necessary that all the members of a family vote for the same candidate. It is a good thing that people are voting to elect their leader as per their understanding,” Joshi said.
Parties Not Paying Attention to Real Environmental Issues: Joshi said that during the elections in the state of Uttarakhand, the political parties emphasize on many issues, but are unable to pay attention to the real environmental issues of the state. He said that at present environment and nature are far from the understanding of the common man. “This is the reason why the central issue of political parties is development and the public also wants the same. In such a situation, when the public and political parties focus only on development, then development becomes an important issue during elections. Unless the public decides that nature and environment should be made an issue, it will not become a political issue,” he said.
“But in the coming time, we are going to become such a state, where apart from GDP, the discourse of GEP (Gross Environment Product) has also started. This will be such an experiment of Uttarakhand that the country will introduce to the world,” added Joshi.
Joshi said that unemployment is increasing year after year in the state of Uttarakhand. “This is the reason why the youth of the state are emphasizing on employment and development rather than nature and environment. If we had developed a focused understanding of the environment, then the environment itself could have become a source of employment. Planting forests, connecting water, purifying the air and improving the soil can be linked to employment. Due to the adverse geographical conditions of Uttarakhand, not much space can be given to industries on the hills. So, work should be done on such industries which are ecological,” he said.
