Sitting inside home, feeling the soaring heat of above 40 degrees outside, I' am unable to suppress my admiration towards the people responsible for giving a boost to our economy - by cutting down trees.
We all know direct advantages, one example is laying 6 lanes road to Trichy and beyond. Now I can reach Trichy from Chennai within 3hrs instead of 5hrs of time it used to take earlier. I save 2hrs of my precious time (travelling time is subject to variance as - I stop for tea, food and in long queues (length similar to anaconda snake) in every tolls. Ultimately what invaluable work I do in that saved 2 hrs - it needs exhaustive study by research scholars.
Above is an example of direct advantages of cutting trees. Have you ever thought of indirect contribution to economy from us by cutting down trees? I thought of few:
-
No
rain, so water shortage. Since it is scientifically proven that humans can’t survive
without water, we buy water from our water services department (our additional
contribution here is paying water tax every year). Economy is happy.
-
And
to encourage private investment (FDI will come in soon), we buy water from private sellers. God
knows from where they get water but we don’t question much because something is
better than nothing. Therefore we pay extra money to private ‘enterprises’ for
the millions and billions of microorganisms mixed water they bring. And they
must be paying some A to Z alphabets coined taxes to government. Economy is
happy.
-
Next follows is our health. Water pollution, air pollution - you name it. It is an insatiable desire of humans to pollute everything they see. As saying goes - "humans came, humans saw, humans polluted". After effect of pollution is a good number of unpronounceable diseases. And to treat diseases we need doctors who are specialised in treating unpronounceable body parts. You would have surely noticed sudden spike in number of hospitals in Chennai - multi speciality hospitals in multi dimensions. So, we pay money to hospitals, which in some way contributes to overall economy. Therefore, economy is happy.
-
Air
conditioning is no more a luxury in Chennai. We must have some air cooling
machines at home. To the people who don’t have such machines, I say, ‘do not
despair. Someone will promise air coolers to every home during next election.' Anyway,
we buy air conditioning machines, which contribute to production. Economy is
happy.
-
But
more important point is, we switch on AC almost 24 hrs a day. My goodness. Those
machines must be swallowing a great number of units of power consumption. At end,
we pay more electricity charges and thereby contribute to government’s revenue.
Not only that, since some percentage of power is bought from private companies
we encourage competition. Economy is happy.
I guess we can come up with more examples of how our country's economy is constantly fed by cutting down trees. So to progress, we must pull down trees in Chennai. If you feel Chennai looks like a desert, we can always go for a tour to some hill station to enjoy nature by spending money.
Economy will be happy if tourism brings more money - it doesn't mind whether tourists spend to see a hill station or to see a desert (Chennai).
*********************************
R.Bharathram
05/05/2019