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| Dal Lake continues to shrink |
| Conservationists want these people moved out but for those who have spent their whole life here, it is not an option.
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| INDIA
, 2-February-2008
1:40:15 AM |
| With militancy down, more and more tourists have been visiting the Dal Lake in the past few years.
Yet the lake is continuing to shrink. Now it is just 11 sq km. It is not just the sewage from Srinagar city, it is also the garbage dumped into the lake by the 60, 000 people who live on the lake.
Conservationists want these people moved out but for those who have spent their whole life here, it is not an option.
Ali Muhammad, head of a family of seven makes his living by growing vegetables in the lake.
''Our position is like fish out of water. If it comes out it will die. Same is the case with us, people living in the lake. If we come out of the lake, we will lose our living,'' said Ali Muhammad, Dal Lake resident.
''We don't need any plot or cash compensation. We need alternate source of living,'' said Ghulam Rasool, General Secretary, Zamindar Association.
In the past years, the government has spent 300 crores rupees on conservation of the lake but all their efforts are undone by the garbage and sewage from the lake residents who have for 30 years resisted the government's efforts to move them out.
''Sometimes one justifies these encroachments for the reasons that for last 25 years you have been telling people you will be rehabilitated and so far we have not been able to rehabilitate them,'' said Mir Naseem, Vice-Chairman, Lakes & Water Ways Development Authority.
Despite pumping in hundreds of crores of rupees to preserve the lake there has been no significant improvement in the overall health of this water body. It seems that the money spend here goes down the drain.
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