hyderabad that hyderabad today stands ripped off its precious green wealth and is crying for fresh air and clean water isnt the doing of just one government successive governments over the last few decades have repeatedly abused what the city had in plenty once and pushed it to this point of crisis in the name of development they thrust upon the people completely unsustainable development plans backed by no scientific study for years now i have been crying hoarse over implementation of infrastructure projects that lack futuristic vision one of the early battles i unsuccessfully fought was against the first set of flyovers including the one at begumpet and masab tank that were built after the erstwhile andhra pradesh high court dismissed my plea aga inst their construction my argument was that it would not solve the traffic problem as they were unscientific and would only add to more chaos on the city roads and in the environment today i regrettably stand vindicatedbut even while the high court had then allowed the flyovers it had also instructed the state to strengthen its open spaces and lung coversthat part of the verdict of course the authorities conveni ently ignored in fact the present government is yet again headed towards a similar fiasco with the strategic road development plan srdp that threatens to cause irreparable damage to the kbr national parkalready the sanjeevaiah park has been reduced to a pale shadow of its former selffirst they built a tennis court there and then a portion of it was axed to make way for necklace roadtoday you cant even call it a park on the other side of the city the situation is much the same with the botanical garden there is absolutely no planning and concern for the future among the powers that bei recollect a time when the temperature in secunderabad was distinctly two or three degrees lower than that in hyderabad it was because that belt was full of green patches now there is no differencenobody is against development but what we want is sustainable and uniform development centering all the growth around hyderabad isnt the healthy way for ward it has resulted in too many people chasing too little its also left the city bereft of the three basic things the people need clean air safe drinking water and food security all of these are under threat today land use by humans play a critical role in the regional and global climate studies prove that densely populated cities are warmer and create urban heat islands uhis as urban land use involves modification of natural environmentwilderness into built environmentthe consequences of increased uhis are manifold they directly influence the health and welfare of urban residents impact water bodies tree cover and energy usetherefore the high temperatures and heavy rainfall being experienced by people in hyderabad can be directly attributed to its vanishing green cover open spaces and water bodiesit is time we wake up