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and all others are for his unrestricted use. This attitude has been mentioned and encouraged in Rigveda, Yajurveda, Gita and others scriptures. It triggered consumerism beyond carrying capacities of nature. All natural resources air, water, forests, soil, minerals have their respective carrying capacities and if utilised within these limits there will be no degradation for example water sources rivers, lakes can take care of pollution i.e. waste in them and some pollution is necessary as there are living forms called detrites who live on detritus (waste) and clean the water sources. Forests will never degrade if harvested to the limit of annual growth rate. Similarly air, soils, minerals remain, unpolluted and do not degrade if pollution is limited to their carrying capacities and rejuvenating time cycles which have been well researched, documented and their indices also established. Even minerals like coal, iron, crude oil etc. get generated with the help of naturally occurring bacteria. One such bacteria which occurs naturally and converts CO2 into CaCO3 have been found by Indian scientists at National Environment and Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur (The Times of India, page 7 dated 17-02-09, Jaipur Edition). The consumption levels gradually increased beyond carrying capacity of natural resources and happiness declined proportionate to reduced capacities of nature. Upto third era the decline was very slow and population levels remained constant because it continued to be forest based.
During fourth era food supplies from forest (kalpvrikshas) declined leading to birth of agriculture. People started cultivating the seeds of some grasses available in forests. This increased food supply and population started increasing requiring more food and for that more land for cultivation, further increasing population, then more land was cultivated for more food and vicious cycle started and is continuing even now. For increasing demand for more and more land for agriculture extensive areas of forests were cut, burnt and cleared for cultivation. We read of “Khandavdah" in Mahabharat. Agriculture have been advocated and encouraged in Vedas also. Till recently only a few decades ago rulers and governments all over including U.S.A. and Europe gave concessions and rewards for cleaning forests for cultivation. Though there is now realisation of need to protect forest and stringent laws have been enacted to preserve forests and wild life but they are more on paper only than on the ground. In spite of the stringent provisions of Forest Conservation Act 1980 in India, encroachments on forest area are going on and with pressure of population increasing on shrinking forests, their density and quality is diminishing. Population explosion is so excessive that vast areas of even fertile agricultural land is being devoured by housing colonies, roads, power houses and industrial units. This will further degrade the shrinking agricultural land and accentuate food shortage and hunger. There was obsession to clean more and more forest areas so much so that it was incorporated in religion also. The highly eulogised religious practice of performing havans is reminiscent token of the obsession to cut and burn forests. Forests and wildlife were indiscriminately and mercilessly destroyed.
