om e 's Ali a - Land ss De elo en - Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office

94
Women’s Alienation
entails more powerful blasting
than usually required. This leads
to huge pits being created which
then need to be filled. The
debris is often thrown down the
mountain, destroying the forest
on the slopes of mountains. The
natural inclination of the hill face
is also disturbed by road cutting
operations. Destabilising the terrain
has resulted in many roads getting
buried during recent earthquakes
beneath rubble that was initially
loosened when the roads were
blasted through the mountains.
Additionally, road construction,
together with quarrying has greatly
disfigured the mountain landscape,
and the ensuing traffic pollution
is expected to affect wildlife
severely.
At times the construction of roads
frequently cuts across debrisflow
tracks. The result is that
debris is dumped on the roads in
every surge, particularly during
monsoons. When enough debris
has accumulated to block the road,
it is pushed down on to the lower
slopes to clear the road. Besides
causing traffic hindrance, this also
destroys the natural vegetationecosystem
on the lower slopes.
As a result of ecologically unsound
methods of constructing roads,
a large number of roadside trees
are falling down. Improper road
construction results in soil erosion,
which, in turn, leads to uprooting
of large trees and degeneration
of lower plants. This can cause
serious ecological imbalance,
adversely affecting run-off factors,
temperature gradient, surface
radiation etc.
Exploitation of Forests
Historically, roads have been
developed with the objective
of providing access to valuable
resources hidden in a region.
Even when the roads are not
built primarily to provide access
to valuable resources such as
forests, they often lead rapidly to
new pressures on resources by
implication, if not by design.
There is growing realisation
that roads not only destroy the
environment but also provide
little financial return for locals in
exchange for a heavy ecological
price. Local groups and one
regional political party have
begun to protest such development
priorities.