Industrial Impacts
Indigenous ways of farming replaced by pesticides, herbicides fertilizers have made the land dependent on chemical use, greatly impacting soil health. Because of the terrain and labour shortage increased dependence on chemicals is imminent. However lack of education and awareness about chemistry and chemical impact on ecology impacted the soil health of the region without any scientific checks and balances.
Government apathy and dysfunctional policy – civic authorities such as departments of environment, forestry and agriculture seem to be immersed writhing a culture of servitude to industrial clearances and licensing, rather than that of direct environmental conservancy as such.
Industrial influence in the area, monoculture tree plantations (a.k.a. Green deserts). Govt leased land to paper mills, timber industry which led to growing of acacia and eucalyptus – affecting water table, ecosystem, bio diversity, and impacting lifestyle.
Snapshot:
10 billion non indigenous trees (e.g, Acacia and Eucalyptus) were planted farm-forest between 1980 and 1988 between 5 million hectares of land , about 60% was eucalyptus. Source: ‘Paper Chase’, Down To Earth, 1995
Societal constructs
Being a primarily agricultural society, orthodoxy, caste system and socio-economic disparity is prevalent in the region. As such, there is no community feeling between classes of society that suffer the caste system and its many dogmas.
There are few opportunities for bringing classes of people together, besides the medium of local theatre such as Yaskshagana, and other such local cultural market place events.
Forums and platforms for public debate are few and far between, therefore the sharing of discourses as such is fragmented. No existing community or visitor centre has yet been established. Some examples of concurrent themes prevalent in the region that lead to social imbalance.
SARA CENTRE 