Shirui Lily festival brings to fore plastic menace
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: June 13, 2022 -
A TRUCKLOAD of discarded materials, mostly single-use plastic items, collected from along a 22-km stretch route leading to the venue of the just-concluded Shirui Lily festival in Ukhrul district testifies acute deficiency of civic sense amongst the citizens.
Subsequent to outbreak of the coronavirus, resumption of the festival considered the second grandest tourism promotional event of the state after the Manipur Sangai Festival expectedly generated great interest among the recreation-starved indigenes and drew large number of visitors to the hilly district.
Among other reasons, poor road connectivity has been deterring domestic and international tourists from foraying into Ukhrul district consequently hindering development of the tourism sector in-spite of enviable scenic landscape.
Nevertheless, resumption of the Shirui Lily festival coupled with sharp decline in the Covid-19 daily cases in the state encouraged many to ignore the logistics issues and head to the district.
The festival organising committee and local volunteers succeeded in keeping a close watch on visitors ascending the Shirui peak where the rare lily species grows and managing to prevent carrying of single-use plastic items beyond a certain point.
However, there was no way the volunteers could impress upon the visitors not to use plastic items and other littering materials as bottled water and packaged edibles have undoubtedly become the most convenient items of daily use nowadays, for both the ordinary citizens and influential sections of the society.
As reported by our district correspondent, the festival, the visitors in particular, left, a lasting imprint of a mess that refuses to go even long after the days of revelry and celebrations are over.
The festival celebrates bloom of the state flower in its pristine surrounding and of course aims at enhancing state's profile as a tourist destination but the event ending with a trail of trash left behind definitely exposes how naive people are when it comes to shouldering responsibility for safeguarding the natural environment.
The situation vis-a-vis garbage strewn on the sides of the roads as well as at the celebration venues could have been lessened to some extent had the visitors disposed of their unwanted items at designated disposal bins or sites.
But, such a high degree of civic sense is unlikely to become a reality in the state in the immediate future, for almost everyone sees empty bottle of packaged drinking water, among other plastic items, as disposable anywhere unmindful of the fact that such irrational conduct is causing serious damage to the environment.
While it is heartening to learn that the festival messes have been collected and disposed of after like-minded youth of Ukhrul launched a drive to clean up the littered roadsides and gathering sites, there is no way the plastic menace could be stopped in the state till the planned prohibition on sale and use of single-use plastic items from July onward comes into effect.
However, it remains to be seen how effective the prohibition would be enforced, for earlier pollution preventive measures like gradual replacement of diesel auto-rickshaws with electric auto-rickshaws and introduction of electric bus transport service haven't been generating interest neither among the masses nor the policy makers.
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