Aiborlang Nongsiej
BoscoBEd College, Dimapur
The theme of Environmental Day 2018 is “Beat Plastics Pollution”. The world has come to its senses that plastics are very dangerous for the Mother Earth. When you travel to every nook and corner of the earth you will hardly find a place without plastics. Hence, I wonder how far the world has achieved with that theme for almost one year now. They say that 10 percent of the wastes we generate are plastics and 500 billion plastic bags the world use annually in which 8 million tonnes of plastics end up in the ocean. Is this not a big concern for the society particularly for the coming generations?
In 2014 when the BJP won the general election, one of their agenda is ‘Swatch Bharat’. The government is doing well with this agenda in which many places are aware of cleanliness particularly with less using of plastics. However, it is very sad to see that our Dimapur remains the same since many years and some places become worse with the increasing of using of plastics. For the past five years I have been travelling from Thahekhu to Dobhinylla and not a single day I find that, a particular place in Lhomithi colony (which is near the road) is without plastics. I wonder why the Dimapur Municipal Council (DMC) cannot do anything to clean that particular place and why the DMC allow people to dump the wastes there especially the plastics. As a concerned citizen I wrote this article not to pinpoint anyone but to motivate the readers on the ill effect of plastics in the future. On the other hand, I appreciate the Municipality who take the initiative of cleaning the drains in the town in the past few days. The drains are blocked and so the town is flooded with water whenever there is heavy rain. At present the drains are dry because of winter season and we could see the lump of plastics inside them. These lumps of plastics will surely block the flow of water during the rainy season and causes flood in many areas in the Dimapur town as we have seen in the past.
It is very unfortunate to see the town becoming dirtier with plastics when the educational system is developing. The literacy rate of Dimapur district is 85.44 percent according to the 2011 census and why should we be controlled by the 14.56 percent who are illiterate of the importance of cleanliness.The other day I met a teacher from one of the top schools in Dimapur (who is also teaching an environmental subject for the students) but unfortunately the teacher throw a plastic on the drain after using it. Thus, I asked the teacher, the dustbin is ahead of us, why not throwing the plastic there? To my surprise the teacher replied, why bother when the drain is already filled with plastics. This is a simple example that many of us educated people do the same in the public places and how far we are growing in education but we remain the same because we never apply our education in life, for this reason Education appears merely as a theory in the classroom and not a practical outside the classroom. I do not know how many of the Environmental teachers of the different schools in Dimapur are aware of the theme for the Environmental Day last year. If they are aware of it, that particular teacher won’t commit such kind of crime to the Mother Earth, which is also against the profession of the person.
Lastly, as I have said I wrote this article not to pinpoint to anyone instead to help the readers to make a better Nagaland and particularly a better Dimapur, a clean and a plastic free Dimapur. At the same time it is very encouraging to see that many institutions have developed an idea to the students of not using plastic inside the campus. In fact, whenever we enter any institution a notice board is placed in front of the campus with a statement ‘Free Plastic Zone’. This shows that the institution is inculcating and discouraging the younger generations in using plastic because plastic is very dangerous to the Mother Earth. However, it is very discouraging that even if we buy a little thing from the shop we ask for plastic to carry that material. Hence, let us cultivate the culture of reducing the use of plastic in our area in order to achieve the theme of Environmental Day last year at the same time to build a good environment with free plastic pollution, because ‘no plastic is fantastic’.