Ever heard of a model eco-city or eco-campus? This is what the planners and citizens of Manipal, a small town about 60 km from heavily industrialized Mangalore on the western coast of India, are dreaming about.
They want to turn their cosmopolitan hamlet into India’s first showcase green city. Their task should be easy given the fact that the town is one of the smallest and, yet the busiest in the country.
It bustles with thousands of educated people, both students and teachers, eager to take their life forward in virtually every discipline one can think of. Probably swayed by this high literacy factor, the Ministry of Environment and Forests had no qualms when it recently entered into an agreement with the region’s reputable corporate entity, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) to set the town as environmental model to the rest of the country.
MAHE is known for its towering educational presence in the country as it runs several institutes in India and in the Middle East, Malaysia and South America. It imparts courses in various disciplines — medicine, engineering, pharmacy, nursing, allied health, communications and management.
Now MAHE promises to make Manipal a ‘Sustainable Eco-campus’ after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Indian government’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The group has formulated a joint program known as Advisory Services in Environmental Management (ASEM), which aims at environmental improvement and sustainable development by collaborating with German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
Manipal happens to be the group’s largest campus and with public-private partnership it hopes to develop sustainable eco-campus and raise an eco-city the country can be proud of.
Besides acting as policy adviser, the ASEM will assist MAHE in professional planning and implementation of the project and provide state-of-the-art solutions to complex environmental problems.
It will also help in creating demand driven capacity through institution building and relevant academic activities.
“If it can’t happen in such a clean and naturally blessed lush green place, it would be very disappointing,” says one of the professors. He has a point. Nestled in the Western Ghats’ — India’s famous mountain ranges on the west coast — green hills, Manipal remains unpolluted as there are no industries around unlike neighboring Mangalore where all kinds of mega industrial projects are being conceived and implemented much to chagrin of environmental activists.
This is the first time that a corporate entity has come forward to develop an eco-city and this project is the first of its kind in India.
The president of the Manipal Group, Dr. Ramdas Pai has already expressed his happiness on being given an opportunity to play a leading role in such a challenging eco-development project. He has assured his complete cooperation with all those involved in the project. He has also promised to set up a training center on Urban Sustainability Management Program at the Manipal campus.
The commitment and enthusiasm at Manipal to achieve this goal could be gauged from the fact that the citizens are cooperating with MAHE’s recent appeal of not using plastic bags and packets in the town.
“Although, it is inconvenient to our customers, for packaging we are using old newspapers of which there is no shortage since people buy at least two newspapers here. Some bring their own gunny and re-usable cotton bags which are not as attractive as plastic bags but it serves the purpose,” says a bakery shop-owner.
There is plenty of awareness about keeping the environment neat and clean. People of the town have already adjusted their lives to the new lifestyle demands.
They have accepted environmental measures such as rain water harvesting, conservation and recycling of water, state-of-the-art waste disposal systems, energy saving devices and usage of solar energy wherever possible.
In fact, in most of the hostels run in Manipal, hot-water requirement is met by heating water from the power generated by the solar energy devices perched on the terraces of the hostel buildings.
However, it remains to be seen whether the enthusiasm of the people continues over a long period of time to help MAHE and the government realize the stiff target set to make the town as the most environment-friendly in the country, if not in the world.
