(IN): Lack of understanding towards nature

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Lack of understanding towards nature

Jay Mazoomdaar

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First Published : 15 May 2009 01:55:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 15 May 2009 02:16:48 AM IST

 

PSEPHOLOGISTS and punters may burn their fingers trying to predict the

results of this Lok Sabha election and the nature of the subsequent

political realignments, but I’m not giving away any prizes for guessing the

next government’s stand on certain issues.

 

Whichever formation comes to power, the defence budget will go up. No

government can significantly alter India’s foreign policy. No finance

minister dare slash self-defeating subsidies. Corruption will stay

institutionalised. And mindless plunder of our natural resources will

continue.

 

I understand that the demands of development will always make a few

sacrifices necessary. In an informed, responsible society, such decisions

are made in the absence of an alternative.

 

In India, successive governments have cleared projects that allow

destruction of forest, riverine or marine ecosystems in amazing hurry and

without any economic or scientific justification.

 

What helps this tradition of official plunder is a general atmosphere of

mistrust that dismisses even the most logical voices as anti-development

ranting.

 

Every time activists and experts object to development projects, we reduce

the case to a petty growth-versus-green debate.

 

Surely, neither a blanket approval nor ban on such projects makes sense. But

why cannot the authorities decide every case on its merit, relying on an

objective cost-benefit analysis? Take a highway project cutting through a

sanctuary. To calculate the cost involved, the authorities need to formulate

a standard mechanism for computing, in monetary terms, the value of the

ecological loss in question. The benefit is easier to calculate: how much

will be saved on construction expense by avoiding a longer alignment outside

the forest and how much time and fuel will be saved by vehicles avoiding

such a detour. Unless government agencies derive such concrete cost-benefit

comparatives project by project, their decisions will continue to be

arbitrary and leave room for manipulation.

 

Why only highways, most government approvals for destroying forests through

mining or construction fail to justify the need for such drastic measures.

 

Consider the infamous example of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited which

was ripping apart one of India’s best forests for opencast mining even

though the quality of iron sludge there was so inferior that the same could

be obtained from hundreds of other places in the country.

 

Take our dams. Still considered a great symbol of development, most dams are

not only harmful, they are unnecessary.

 

For example, Gujarat boasts nearly 400 water bodies, other than the rivers,

and a total water surface of over 2,000 sq km. Still the state’s overdrive

for irrigation has led to construction of more than 200 dams with a total

inundation area of about 1,400 sq km. Apart from submerging hundreds of

hectares of forest land under reservoirs, so many dams and their massive

irrigation network are destroying river ecologies and fast turning large

areas saline.

 

Unfortunately, our governments do not desist from quick-fix measures even

when they bring disastrous consequences.

 

Consider the tragedy of the Kosi, notorious for devastating floods in north

Bihar. Embankments stopped the river’s natural dispersion of sediments on

the floodplains, making the riverbed rise by 12-15 feet with silt.

 

Modern hydrology says that a meandering river with heavy silt load, like

Kosi that has drifted 160 km in the past 250 years, cannot be stifled to

equilibrium.

 

Such rivers need to be tackled with spatial flood protection measures,

allowing room for moderate flooding.

 

But even after thousands of lives have been lost, the government is again

trying to build embankments on Kosi and, in the process, setting the stage

for another flooding disaster.

 

Let alone forests and rivers, something as basic as water supply can lead

governments to seek outlandish solutions where simple correction of the

system will do. Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has revived the 15-year-old Renuka dam

project in the name of meeting the Capital’s water shortage.

 

Ironically, Delhi wastes more than 40 per cent of its supplied water due to

distribution losses, largely due to old, corroded pipelines. While the

Renuka project earmarks 275 million gallon water per day for Delhi, DJB can

save up to 268 million gallon per day by fixing the distribution network.

 

This should not be a tough task if DJB diverts the Rs 3,000 crore allocated

for construction of the Renuka dam to modernise its distribution and

regulatory network.

 

Instead, the authorities have decided to inundate 2,000 hectares of forest

and agricultural land in an eco-sensitive lower Himalayan landscape. The

plan includes denotification and submergence of the Renuka Wildlife

Sanctuary and displacement of at least 700 families. Moreover, no assessment

has been done of the impact of the proposed dam on the nearby Renuka Lake, a

wetland that was declared a Ramsar site (under the International Ramsar

Convention) in 2005. But of course, it is easier to dam a river than fix

leaking pipelines or rein in rich Delhiites who still love to use garden

hoses to wash their cars.

 

As long as this mindset determines policy making, I have little hope that

the next government, whatever the unique arithmetic of the Lok Sabha, will

do anything different to secure the country’s precarious ecological future.

 

True, none of our politicians ever sought mandate on the environmental

plank. But can we not expect a little common sense from our governments

though it never figures on any list of poll promises?

 

*(The writer is an independent journalist and filmmaker. E-mail:

mazoomdaar)*

 

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