There's a problem with judging people by how they look. More often than not, you will be wrong
A visit done by a Bombay High Court appointed team to inspect the transplanted trees that were affected by the Metro work showed that the team, during the Aarey inspection, has found that of the 993 transplanted trees, 523 are already dead and only 470 have survived.
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An activist has been quoted in a report in this paper stating that people with limited or close to zero knowledge are carrying out the transplantation and post care. Hardy trees
that survive in any condition are hence dying.
Transplanting must be done with great responsibility and seriousness. It cannot be treated with frivolity or some kind of eyewash to hoodwink the people of this city, or simply appease the environmentalists.
If there are shortcomings, maybe experts need to be roped in to these committees and brainstorming must happen, so that the trees are transplanted well and do survive. From the time the Metro has started we have seen the inevitable clash between environmentalists and officials.
Now that the project is going ahead, the Metro officials have to transplant trees in a way that they survive. This helps the city of course, but will also close the trust deficit between officials and people who are always sceptical about their claims to preserve nature or even keep their promises.
It is disappointing to see that we do not seem to have learnt from the abysmal rate of survival of transplanted trees from other infra projects in the city. Given the mammoth scale of the Metro work, it is all the more important that the large number of trees live elsewhere in the city. The death of these trees is surely a twist of the knife in the gut of a city with negligible to zero green cover.
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