It does not take long to figure out that many of Nepal’s urban and urbanising areas have been on a building binge. Travel along the east-west highway, and they are visible in front of our naked eyes. One unmistakable feature of any existing and emerging town is the sheer number of buildings that have been recently finished or in different stages of construction. The number of people has gone up. Many have made money from overseas work. And they want to move up the social ladder. What could be a more apt way to do that than by building a new house?

But this growth in construction has not been matched by a thoughtful design process that emphasises functionality, strength, beauty and ecological consequences. The results have blighted urbanising landscapes and contributed to the destruction of the ecology besides adding an enormous burden on our energy distribution system. It is a safe bet to argue that while land prices might have gone up in many of these urban areas, they are becoming less and less humanly habitable.

The air in them has become difficult to breathe. The water has become contaminated with sewage. And increased mobility of vehicles and their constant power honking have become increasingly intolerable. The buildings themselves are not adding to comfort or beauty.

In the Tarai, the rooms in most of the new buildings are freezing in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. The same thing seems to be happening across the mountains. Therefore, there is growing demand for cooling machines—fans, air coolers and air-conditioners—in the summer, and heaters in the winter. We are used to blaming the government or corrupt politicians for the long electricity blackouts. One of my Facebook friends even named the Nepal Electricity Authority the Darkness Authority (Andhakar Pradhikaran). However, let’s pause and think. It does not take much time to realise that every new building creates an additional burden on energy just because of the faulty design and material mix.

Many may not be able to travel across the border and into India’s mining areas to see how destructive our modern construction has become. Huge patches of forests are cleared up to give way to mineral and coal mining operations on a scale that

displaces tens of thousands of people and their villages in Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Many of these villages are thousands of years old, all of them to be sacrificed at the altar of progress. But this progress is also becoming a nightmare at the other end—as we produce uglier buildings, unhealthy towns and destroyed ecologies.

Many have seen brick kilns in and around the Kathmandu Valley. Looking at those smoke belching chimneys might give some people reason to pause and ponder as to where we are heading and why. But what happens if you live near the brick kilns?

I regularly wake up early in the morning in my home in Chitwan near Tandi Bazaar and walk up to the rooftop. The near permanent haze does not form until the sun comes out. On a relatively clear day, I can see the beautiful Gorkha Himal and the Annapurna peaks to the northeast. But that sorely contrasts with what I see not one kilometre away from my home. I see at least seven smokestacks, six of which are visibly in operation. My dad told me recently that one of the brick kilns ceased operations for want of soil for making bricks.

Thick plumes of black soot come out non-stop. This becomes even more intense when they light the starter fire. The morning breeze blows the smoke around. I almost feel like ducking as the smoke flies overhead. A few days ago, I walked up to the main road and stood at the edge for one full hour counting the vehicles. Two heavy trucks and 18 tractors trundled by. I did not count the motorbikes and bicycles.

All of these vehicles were laden with fired bricks. A few days later, I strolled along a road that loops back to my house. Half-way along the loop, a huge wood depot appeared. The pile of logs must have been several metres high and it covered a wide area. I asked the depot owner what he was doing with so much wood.

“Oh, this is not enough at all. I need much much more,” he replied.

“What do you use it for?” I asked again.

“I run one of the brick kilns.”

As a child, I had seen how the thickly forested hills nearby were transformed

into barren red earth as the sal trees in them were cut for construction of homes in Chitwan and beyond. The brick kiln operators then used to compete to get the tree stumps to use as fuel.

“Where do you get this wood from?” I asked.

“From Gorkha, Dhading and Chitwan’s hill areas,” he replied nonchalantly. His face looked familiar. Later, I realised he used to be an influential local politician when I was growing up. Like me, he had aged.

The brick kiln sites themselves are no less revealing. The earthworks are massive. They employ excavators these days. The bricks are made by people who are visibly underfed, and among them are 10-year-olds. A low hut made of adobe house many of them. The constant movement of tractors and trucks create clouds of dust all the time.

The first thing I did after coming back home that morning was to ask how many bricks went into building our own house. My dad scratched his head for a while and said, “Many truckloads. But I know how much cement went into it: 1,000 sacks of 50 kilos each.” That would be 50,000 kg of cement.

These days, I sometimes pause in silence and think: Everyone who participates in the modern building binge is contributing to the blighted landscapes we see all around. Point your forefinger at others. The rest point to yourself.

source: Bhattarai , Anil (2010), "We are all responsible",The Kathmandu Post, 21 Dec 2010