Melting glaciers may spell doom

By: Avnish Katoch

Tino glacier that has receded by 2 km from the Bhaga river in the Lahaul valley.

A very genuine threat to Himachal environment which would eventually completely turn a doomsday for Northern India. When my parents built their home back in 80s, we hardly use to run our ceiling fan during summers.

Nowadays they have a cooler which runs even all night long. The local Binwa river use to be totally full during peak summers then and I remember sneaking out from school/home with my pals for an afternoon swim during summers and there use to be so many deep places for nice swimming and last time I visited there I just saw more rocks/stones in the river as compare to water.

Weather is unpredictable and most of the lakes are drying every year. Beas river has many smaller rivers flowing to it from different parts of Himachal, one from my paternal Aunt’s home, Haroti river, we use to swim during summers in that river nowadays I shot a video of just rocks left in the river, a lady was washing her clothes in little left water.

If you ask any Himachali they would reciprocate my words. Temperature has changed and more and more natural disasters are happening. Reason is of course global warming, too many pucca houses, many with tin roofs, population growth, vehicle growth and of course every kind of pollution growth.

Back in Himachal we have huge power generation capabilities, but if you see the tribune article you would notice the glaciers feeding various rivers are receding. I wonder our local government gives any thought to it or even Central government cares about it. But why blame the state when we the people
dont care for our future I think it is time that we start doing something.