Published in Dwarka Express on 7.5.23

Karnataka state elections are on 10^th May 2023 and political parties are busy with hunting. Hunting of votes and the freebies galore is touching the sky. Castes, anti-incumbency, price rise, unemployment, poverty are the usual political gimmicks used by all parties. While the ruling party uses 6 promises starting with the first letter A, namely Anna (food security), Abaya (social welfare), Akshara (education), Arogya (health), Abhivrudhhi (development), and Aadaaya (income), the main opposition party bats for 5 guarantees namely Gruha Jyothi (family welfare), Gruha Lakshmi (poverty alleviation), Anna Bhagya (food), Yuva Nidhi (youth welfare), and Shakti (women welfare). Well, If Social welfare is important, one has to think of the earth where we live and the environment which enables the living. The manifestos have become just an election ritual.

Our scanner captured one glaring factor. There’s no mention of greener initiatives in any of the manifestos! Alas, it appears that there’s no green ideologies for any of the political parties. One fails to comprehend why this serious concern has been overlooked. Don’t we realize that even the Finance Minister of the Centre has highlighted several aspects of green budget and earmarked crores of rupees for green projects under the budget allocation for 2023-24. Prime Minister was mentioning once that the Circular economy should replace the existing linear economy. The circular economy talks about the recycling of waste and this is seen as one of the significant measures to achieve the climate change targets accepted by India in global Climate conference held in Egypt during November 2023. The political parties failed to stress this dire need to save the environment from a long term perspective.

Green Manifesto is the need of the hour. All political parties should emphasize on the need for protecting the green cover, natural resource management and forest conservation. Green cover is depleting day by day. Waste is not managed properly even in small towns and villages. Landfills are growing equal to a mountain. Air quality is deteriorating day by day. Failure of monsoon, man induced change in climatic condition, annual drought and floods still are looming large. Urban waterbodies are drying out and slowly disappearing. In the name of development, infra projects denude the country. Why can’t a political party promise to plant one crore trees every year. Why can’t a manifesto include clean city initiatives? Why can’t a political party promise to create green job and highly dynamic sustainable development, ensuring long term value creation?