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Journalism of Courage
MAHABALESHWAR, the most popular of western Maharashtra’s hill stations which attracts more than 10 lakh tourists annually, will now have a namesake.
Called New Mahabaleshwar, this soon to come hill station, comprising a cluster of 52 villages of three talukas and spread over 37,263 hectares, is being flaunted by the Maharashtra government as the original Mahabaleshwar, only better. It’s advertised as a hill station with sophisticated and entertainment-oriented facilities and amenities.
About 100 kms from Mahabaleshwar, the identified new area is located between Mumbai-Bangalore national highway No. 4 and Mumbai-Goa national high way No. 17.
The proposed development in New Mahabaleshwar Hill Station Project (NMHSP) includes transportation facilities, hotels as well as public utility buildings. The idea is to take away tourist pressure from the original Mahabaleshwar and get some business to the laid-back villages. Since Mahabaleshwar is the only hill station in the country to be declared an eco-sensitive zone by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, it has stringent norms for development activities. This, say environmentalists, made the authorities find a new area to develop and destroy.
But it’s the borrowing of name that has left Mahabaleshwar angry. Councillors of the Mahabaleshwar Hill Station Municipal Council led by its president D.M. Bawlekar, are shooting off protest letters to the state government for using the name of their town. Says Shivaji Pallod, a local activist: ‘‘How can you have a replica of the Mahabaleshar plateau which has a unique aforestation, air so pure that it contains a high percentage of oxygen and at a height which cannot match any other area in this region? It is like having a replica of one of the wonders of the world and actually expecting people to believe.’’
The neighbouring hill station of Panchgani is protesting too. Says J Wadia, member of the state government appointed monitoring committee for Mahabaleshwar against environmental degradation: ‘‘It seems so silly to use a namesake since you cannot have the same environment and personality of Mahableshwar. It’s okay to call Navi Mumbai since it is an extension of Mumbai but this one does not even touch Mahableshwar.’’
The name is not the only issue. Environmentalists and botanists fear forest land and the flora and fauna it supports may be destroyed while developing the new hill station. In fact, the villages of Satara, Patan and Jawli talukas under which this New Mahabaleshwar project comes, have an alternative plan of developing this area into a ‘biodiversity park of Sahyadri’.
Forest officials are not ecsatic over the New Mahabaleshwar project either. ‘‘We have not consulted,’’ says Sunil Limaye, DFO, Satara. ‘‘Development is welcome but not at the expense of pushing invaluable trees, medicinal plants and wildlife into extinction. The proposed area is a part of Western Ghats region, which is one of the mega biodiversity, centre and considered as a global hot spot region,’’ says Limaye.
‘‘The region is very rich in biodiversity and gives shelter to many endemic threatened, rare plants and animal species,’’ says biodiversity expert Dr Madhukar Bachulkar.
Many plant species such as Aponogeton satarensis is found only on plateaus of the proposed area. This area hosts about 400 plant species, many of which are endangered.
‘‘Many of these species are very rare and their medicinal and economic value is still not known to science,’’ says Bachulkar.
Counters Satara’s collector O.P. Gupta, under whose jurisdiction Mahabaleshwar and the proposed site for New Mahabaleshwar falls: ‘‘Hardly any forest area has been encroached on and no biodiversity stretch will be destroyed beacuse of this project.’’ Not many are convinced.
