The risk-benefit equation in Uttarakhand's growth story

The reasonable risk involved in the growth of tourism and hydel industries is loss of hundreds lives of the local poor who are apparently benefiting from development


Nearly all the visitors who survived the catastrophe in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region have been rescued. All that is left now is a ravaged valley and its hapless residents who will have to cope with the consequence of this calamity for years to come.

While offering to rebuild Kedarnath and much of Garhwal’s infrastructure that has been washed away, chief minister Vijay Bahuguna flatly refused to acknowledge that the disaster as manmade. Since he is not alone in his obsession for growth and contempt for the environmental bogey, it may be useful to examine a few myths that were reinforced in the past two weeks.

Dismissing the manmade angle to the disaster, the CM said it was childish to suggest that riverbed encroachment or illegal construction triggered the cloudburst that rained down on Kedarnath. He could have been more polite but certainly not more right.

Of course, construction – unless one builds a castle in the cloud – cannot trigger cloudbursts or heavy rainfall. Though I have not come across any such claim made by any activist or environmentalist in the media, it is possible someone had indeed lobbed that full-toss to the CM for a free-hit. Otherwise, Bahuguna was being either too clever or plain naive.

Natural calamities are called natural, or acts of god, for a reason: they are beyond human control. Now there is apparently enough evidence to suggest that global warming is changing the monsoon pattern and making it increasingly erratic. Unfortunately, that bit of science is still soaked too much in faith for and against and anyway Bahuguna’s Uttarakhand alone could not have reversed any global climate trend.

When a cloudburst and a cloudburst-induced glacial melt or landslide happens, a lot of water flows downhill. Till this part, the disaster is natural or an act of god. It is also natural that gushing water destroys properties and lives in its path. But way too many properties and lives came in the way of the Mandakini and Alakananda on 16 and 17 June because we placed ourselves where we were never supposed to. That part, the part that made a natural calamity an enormous human tragedy, is entirely and unquestionably manmade.

So when Bahuguna said it was not a manmade tragedy, he was probably objecting to calling it a tragedy. Maybe, the CM, too, like many in politics, media and other allied industries, believes that such loss of lives and property is in fact part of legitimate (read manmade) risk-benefit trade-offs.

There are several false and self-contradictory assumptions in this risk-benefit argument. For example, it claims all infrastructure development is fine if it takes necessary safety precautions. Now, any precaution involves certain restrictions on the size or even the scope of a project. Can development be restricted and yet unlimited? Can it be indiscriminate and yet policed?

Let’s look at the dams since these are the biggest bone of contention. The argument goes that no dam was ever breached in India in spite of the sustained scare-mongering of the environmentalists. But can the safety records from our plains or the old-rock Deccan plateau be any benchmark for the Himalayas which is the world’s youngest and most unstable mountain range?

It is convenient to forget the recent warnings from Sikkim (here and here). But suppose all our dams are quake resistant, what purpose will they serve if the rivers they are built on change course due to seismic activity? Or if landslides drop huge masses of debris in reservoirs causing overtopping, like it happened in Italy in 1963 and two weeks ago at Kedarnath?

Besides, susceptibility to breaches is not the only issue with dams. They change the very hydrology of a river by blocking water and silt, affecting the riverine ecosystem and livelihood of thousands downstream. If all goes to plan, the Ganga will almost entirely flow through tunnels for a distance of 130 km -- from 14-km downstream its origin at Gangotri to Dharasu near Uttarkashi.

Does our risk-benefit calculation factor in the damage to the tunnelled river’s hydrology or the biodiversity it supports? Does it account for the instability such extensive tunnelling will cause in the mountains, or the impact of blasting and widening thousands of kilometres of roads through the hills to carry heavy machinery and material for these monstrous constructions?

We are told that the Tehri dam saved the plains by holding the Bhagirathi discharge this disaster season. Indeed, the damage to the crowded floodplains downstream would be higher if the water released in cloudbursts flowed unrestricted. But only because we forgot that floodplains are supposed to get flooded and should not be used as real estate. Or did we deliberately put ourselves at risk?

But even Tehri will not be lucky every time. Ask the Srinagar residents who built on the Alakananda floodplain and had to abandon their houses on 17 June when dam waters were released without any warning. Even the massive Tehri dam can hold only a finite quantity of water and silt is steadily filling up its reservoir. During some monsoon in the future, it will be forced to release water and the impact will be more devastating than what we witnessed at Kedarnath.

This brings us back to the deadpan risk-benefit argument. To enjoy the fruits of development, we are told, we should be ready to pay a price. But who are ‘we’ in this question? The people of the hill in whose name the roads, resorts and dams are being peddled?

For all the hype, only 2 per cent of Uttarakhand’s jobs are in tourism. The resorts and tourist services are mostly owned and run by outsiders. For all the talk of the state becoming power surplus in three years, the electricity will be channelled to distant plains to run factories and light up shopping malls.

To make that growth story come true, the poor hill people must die in hundreds and thousands every few years. Because the power revenue earned by the state will soon change their fortune, just like the revenue of its booming tourism industry already has.

How Uttarakhand Dug Its Grave

A state created to safeguard the hill people, has become a graveyard of pilgrims and local aspirations in just over a decade

Tehelka, 28 June, 2013

On the afternoon of 16 June, local resident Manav Bisht watched dozens of constables leaving the paramilitary Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) Academy, which stood between his house in Shakti Vihar, a locality in ’s Srinagar town, and the river that had started swelling from 10 am. The waters threatened to enter the academy building after 5 pm and more jawans were shifted to Pauri, the district headquarters.
SSB IG S Bandhopadhyay was aware of the torrential rainfall up in the hills. There was also the flood warning issued by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). As night fell, the Alaknanda breached the meagre embankment and ravaged the academy building. Sometime after midnight, after drowning the 500-metre stretch of the SSB campus, the torrent rose above the 10-feet-high boundary wall on the other side and entered Shakti Vihar.
Bandhopadhyay’s timely action saved many lives. But busy evacuating his men, he did not inform the district administration. “I didn’t need to tell anyone. They could see what was happening. Everyone had information about the heavy rainfall,” says Bandhopadhyay. But nobody thought it necessary to warn the residents of Srinagar.
So, Bisht, much like his neighbours, was caught unawares when the river entered his house around 1.30 am. Suddenly, there was panic everywhere. Within an hour or so, the entire neighbourhood had gone under the roiling waters. Few managed to get hold of any valuables. Bisht’s family barely managed to escape in the clothes they were sleeping in.
About 100 km away, further up in the hills, another river was also in spate. While the Alaknanda was engulfing parts of Srinagar, the Mandakini began battering the temple town of  in the early hours of 17 June. Soon after pilgrims and residents of the pilgrimage centre woke up to sights of devastation, a massive landslide sent huge mounds of rock into the Charbari lake, 6 km upstream of .
Bahuguna
Binod Mantri, a pilgrim from West Bengal’s Hooghly, was uneasy since 16 June. With no let-up in the rain, worried locals advised him to shift closer to the Kedarnath temple from his hotel by the river. So he checked into the Rajasthan guesthouse with 16 family members and stayed indoors as landslides, rain and howling wind battered the town. Next morning, the family was preparing to venture out for a quick breakfast when the torrent entered the room. Mantri and his brother-in-law survived by clinging on to the window grill. Everyone else in the family, all 14 of them, climbed onto beds and were swept away within minutes.
“The landslide caused a giant splash like a brick dropped in a bucket of water,” recalls one of the four Indian  jawans posted at Kedarnath. The mass of rock smashed against the sand and boulders, giving the river momentum to sweep up more rocks on its way to become the destructive force that wiped clean everything in its path. By nine in the morning, Kedarnath had become a ghost town. Rambara, a settlement downstream, simply disappeared.
By 18 June, the magnitude of the disaster became clear. Across 37,000 sq km of the Himalayan state, landslide and floods trapped more than 80,000 tourists, triggering one of the biggest rescue operations by the armed forces and the biggest by helicopters so far. The race against time took its toll even on those who toiled round the clock to save lives. On 20 June, Rudraprayag District Magistrate Vijay Dhaundiyal suffered a heart attack. At least 20 rescue personnel perished, adding to the official death toll of 5,000, which, locals and eyewitnesses claim, will be in the range of 10-20,000 if those who have gone missing are also accounted for.
For each survivor, another seems to have died in this unfolding tragedy. Sixty-five-year-old Aishwarya made it alive, along with just seven of her group of 15. “Standing beside a bonfire to keep warm, she was having coffee at a roadside shop when the flood waters came. Before she could react, out of nowhere, a pack of mules charged towards her, knocking her over and pushing her into the open fire,” said one of her relatives at the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust in Dehradun, the state capital, where she is being treated for severe burns and an injured hip.
Against heavy odds, it took even the army’s best efforts more than a week to reach the stranded in many areas. “We were nervous when we first got here. We didn’t know if we would be able to pull this off. But today, we are getting the last of the nearly 300 survivors down from Jungle Chatti,” a Fifth Sikh Regiment officer leading the rescue operation in Kedarnath told TEHELKA, while keeping a watchful eye on able-bodied survivors climbing off a rope down a 80-degree, 90-feet-deep drop.
As of 26 June, there are still 5,000 survivors stranded in the Badrinath and Harsil areas and the rescue work — Operation Surya — continues despite intermittent rain and worsening weather conditions. While some locals allege that rescue operations have been skewed towards saving pilgrims and foreigners, villagers of Bhagori and Ganeshpur in Uttarkashi are going out of their way to shelter and feed the stranded. With the armed forces and the administration confident that the last few will be rescued in the next couple of days, the worst seems to be over for the visitors.
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The surviving tourists will return home. Uttarakhand and its people will have to face the consequence of this disaster. Nearly 1 lakh of them have become homeless and there is resentment among the locals that rescue efforts have ignored them so far. With more than 300 reported cases, acute diarrhoea is threatening to take epidemic proportions as rotting corpses have begun to contaminate water sources.
Already, the state has estimated the damage to be upwards of Rs 3,000 crore. Insurance companies are looking at claims worth more than Rs 1,000 crore. The Char Dham Yatra has been called off indefinitely. Damaged roads and other infrastructure may take years to rebuild. Religious tourism, the mainstay of  Garhwal’s economy, will now have to start from scratch.
In the 2011 census, Uttarakhand’s population was 1.08 crore. The state hosted 2.68 crore pilgrims and tourists in 2010- 11. Since then, the Garhwal religious circuit saw a four-fold increase in the number of pilgrims as year-round access to the shrines — earlier restricted to four months — was allowed.
According to Yatra Rotation Samiti member Sanjay Shastri, around 1 lakh vehicles — 50-60 percent of these not from the state — do three trips of the Char Dham Yatra each year. Since 2005-06, the number of taxis and jeeps registered in the state has jumped tenfold. Since 2010, the state has added 4,500 km of road under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) alone. Its total road length nearly tripled in the past decade.
“People became greedy. Everyone went overboard. How long would the mountain suffer thousands of jeeps and buses crawling up and down and accommodate thousands of tourists? All along the banks of the river, there is construction of houses. Where we used to have tents a few years ago, we have five-storey buildings. At some point or the other, nature had to hit back. This was it,” says Gaurav Singh, who runs a tea stall in Guptakashi village.
And this is when things have gone to plan. After an emotionally-charged political struggle, the creation of the Uttarakhand state in 2000 promised its people their right over the hills, forests and water. At the time, many professed that the new state could build its economy without compromising its pristine hills, by focussing on it and other soft-skill industries. Instead, Uttarakhand decided to go big on tourism, the only industry it had known until then.
In 2001, the state constituted the Uttarakhand Tourism Board and chalked up its tourism policy with the vision to “make Uttaranchal synonymous with tourism”. The focus was on drawing higher numbers of tourists and bigger investment into the state. From 1 crore in 2001, the number of visitors to the state grew to 3 crore in 2010.
Over the decade, a number of schemes and tax rebates for building tourism infrastructure ensured ‘development’ of pristine destinations and mushrooming of hotels and resorts. The state raised the budgetary allocation for tourism by 224 percent in the 10th Plan. At present, 22 tourism projects worth Rs 1,840 crore are coming up on the public-private partnership (PPP) model and account for 47 percent of the total investment in the PPP schemes under implementation in the state.
While promoting unrestricted growth in tourism, the new state decided to exploit its hydropower potential as well. Former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal prepared a ‘Vision 2020’ statement to make Uttarakhand a “prosperous state”. With the theme ‘Pahad Ka Pani, Pahad Ki Jawani’, the plan was to harness the natural resources of the state in an optimal manner and create more jobs.
“The state has a capacity to produce at least 40,000 mw of power from . Therefore, we have planned to install several hydel power units in the state. The surplus power will be sold to other states. We have invited investors and the response has been very encouraging. To rope in local talent and provide jobs, we have decided to employ local youths in mini hydel power projects,” Pokhriyal was quoted as saying in 2010. The result: 73  on the Alaknanda, Mandakini and Bhagirathi, and several more on other rivers of the state.
Unbridled tourism and construction of  on rivers had one common demand: newer and wider roads across the state.
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Uttarakhand started widening its roads in 2002. Till then, all roads here were two-lane, except for the Tehri road, which was widened up to the dam site in the 1990s. The story was to repeat under BC Khanduri, the then surface transport minister.
“People thought that all he (Khanduri) wanted was to widen the roads for the growing tourist traffic. It was only later that we started to see a different picture. For example, a road was widened till Lambagad and after that there was nothing. Now at Lambagad, there was a dam constructed by the Jaypee Group. It created a suspicion in our minds that this widening of roads was done primarily for the movement of big trucks with construction material for dams,” says Dr Ravi Chopra, director of People’s Science Institute in Dehradun.
The other reason behind the spurt in road projects, says a transport department official who does not want to be named, is that there was “a lot of money to be made”. Since the 1962 war with China, the  built the arterial roads in the region, putting in reinforcement walls in the unstable stretches. Under the cut-and-fill method, the excavated earth was used to pave the road. But as too many road projects were commissioned, nobody bothered to identify the unstable slopes; the earth was simply dumped in the rivers below. To cut costs, road projects even stopped creating adequate drainage systems.
“Usually, we cut the mountain side and leave it for two years to allow debris and overhanging material to come down. The mountain stabilises through two monsoons before we put in the hard topping. But growing traffic demands that we expand the roads and destabilise the mountains again. Also, while the widening was earlier done by men and machines, now we use dynamite to do it quickly. There are several roads that have become landslide-prone because blasting leaves cracks inside the mountain,” says a former civil works engineer who served in Rudraprayag district.
Since 2010, under the PMGSY, a number of approach roads have been built to villages way up on the slope, which further increases the risk of landslides. “There has been a lot of road cutting by state agencies, not by the BRO, and the degree of care, I would say, is marginal. It is a recipe for disaster in a young, unstable mountain,” says Chopra.
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The indiscriminate rollout of roads also spurred unregulated construction across the state. Unlike in rural areas, there are construction codes for urban areas, but few follow the rules. Just across the state Assembly building in the state capital are encroachments on the Rispana streambed.
The situation is well imaginable in rural areas, where the tourism centres have become death traps. After the 2011 earthquake in Sikkim, a study by IIT Roorkee found that traditional low-rise, lightweight timber buildings performed extremely well. But to accommodate the growing number of tourists, Uttarakhand’s traditional constructions gave way to unplanned multi-storied buildings on columns and beams. At Gaurikund, where the trek for Kedarnath begins, walking the 20-feet-wide road along the 200-odd metres of the main bazaar is like moving through a tunnel with airless three-storey buildings on both sides.
It is not a coincidence that Garhwal suffers heavy loss of lives and property year after year while neighbouring Kumaon reports far less damage. All major shrines of the state are in Garhwal and these destinations are all by the rivers. Since pilgrims have to access the ghats, hotels have cropped up on the edge of the rivers. The result is an unbearable load on the Garhwal mountains that are anyway much steeper compared to the rolling hills of the Kumaon. With this lopsided burden alongside rivers prone to flash floods, it was only a matter of time before the overhanging structures were swept away.
The construction boom, on the other hand, fuelled illegal mining of sand and boulders from riverbeds. Such extraction changes the slope of the riverbed, making the flow restabilise itself, causing the river to change course. With constructions right up to the bank, the disastrous consequence was visible last week.
Nowhere in the state is the SC order to restrict construction within 200 meters of a riverbed followed. The valleys here have been formed from debris rolling down from the mountain and are loose beds of gravel. When it rains, the water sinks quickly, giving the impression of dry real estate. But during monsoons, these gravel beds temporarily become very active. Yet, with the connivance of the local officials, scores of buildings have come up on such treacherous foundation all over the state.
The SSB Academy building that was inaugurated last year and damaged last week in Srinagar, for example, was built on the Alaknanda riverbed. Many houses that were buried in silt in the adjacent Shakti Vihar were also built illegally. “It is an old colony of Srinagar which used to be a fair distance away from the river. But in the past few years, it expanded towards the riverbed in connivance with local officials,” says Pratik Palwar, a Srinagar resident.
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Over the past week, much has been said and written about the absence of warning from the Met department, which, in turn, has claimed that its alerts went unheeded. On 15 June, the IMD flashed a “severe” warning for Kinnaur and Garhwal. It was upgraded to “very severe” the next day. It remained so till 17 June when flood and landslide ravaged Garhwal. While Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna dismissed the warning as “unspecific and non-actionable”, his officers apparently acted on it.
“There was a Met warning for high rainfall and we were watching the water level. But this happens each year. In Rudraprayag town, we shifted people. In Gaurikund, people were asked to climb up and some were shifted to Rambara (which was eventually wiped out) and the police kept people awake through the night. All the people alive today are those who were evacuated to higher ground. But no one expected a mountain to crumble and fall into the lake (in Kedarnath),” says Rudraprayag Superintendent of Police Birenderjeet Singh.
If the warning indeed alerted at least a section of the state administration, was it merely unprepared to meet the challenge? In its performance audit report submitted to Parliament on 23 April, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India had highlighted that the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA), constituted in 2007 and headed by the CM, had not formulated any rules or policies for disaster management in the state.
“Would we be better off with a policy?” counters a state official closely involved with relief and rescue operations. “The scale of the disaster was simply unmanageable. But we have done well. With the army’s help, we have taken control of the situation within a couple of days. While theoretically it might have been possible to save more lives by evacuating people before the floods hit, what do you do about the loss of infrastructure? Can we move roads and buildings to safety?”
Experts such as geologist KS Valdiya and environmentalist Himanshu Thakkar have faulted the government on that very ground. The rainfall, they maintain, was not unnatural but the human and infrastructural cost of the tragedy was the state’s doing. “The CM says this rain is unprecedented. It is not. Uttarakhand has seen so many disasters of this kind, but not this magnitude. Just last year, there were two tragedies — Uttarkashi in August and Rudraprayag in September — when houses collapsed like cardboard boxes and roads gave in. Yet, no lesson was learnt and blast tunnelling work continued for hydropower projects,” says Thakkar.
Others point out what they feel is the real tragedy of Uttarakhand’s people. “The state invests public money in ill-advised projects that compromise our safety. At the same time, damage to misplaced infrastructure causes the state economy huge losses,” says Malika Vridhi of Munsiyari-based NGO Himal Prakriti. “After all, it’s the people’s money. Instead of pumping it into destructive projects, the state should invest in sustainable agriculture and skill development programmes.”
Even where the warning system could save lives, the infrastructural damage was overwhelming. At the SSB Academy, the loss was estimated at 100 crore. Vast lengths of vulnerable roads have simply been swallowed by the rivers. Several hydel projects in the region are also hit. “What is the wisdom in making investment that self-destructs,” asks Thakkar, “while causing damage to the natural systems and people?”
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On paper, the population density of Uttarakhand is just 189 per sq km. But the sense of space is misleading. More than 90 percent of the land is mountainous and 64 percent is protected forests out of bounds for the locals. Mushrooming development projects are further elbowing out the hill people while the Tourism Board and numerous private players are hoarding land. The dams and reservoirs are also eating into agricultural land.
“Heavy influx of tourists and wrong tourism practices are stressing these hills. Our people mostly work in menial jobs while outsiders rake in the profit. In the time of climate change, it is very important that the people protect their streams and forests. That can only happen when they have the ownership,” argues Vridhi. “Our model of eco-tourism shows how communities can benefit by caring for their natural . This is not a model for boutique outlets but needs to be adopted across the state.”
Through community participation in eco-tourism, the hill people may actually benefit from tourism that, contrary to popular belief, now accounts for just 2 percent of the state’s employment. But the state tourism policy has no such plans. Its tourism Master Plan for 2007-22 identifies “very large, overall carrying capacity given the immensity of the natural environment” as the biggest opportunity for the industry in the state. Barring a 2012 report by Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd that examined the carrying capacity of Dehradun, Haridwar, Rishikesh and Mussoorie, no study has ever been conducted to determine how much tourism pressure the state’s overcrowded destinations can take.
Meanwhile, Bahuguna is determined to make Uttarakhand power surplus by 2016. “It is childish to suggest that the cloudburst at Kedarnath happened because of wrong construction on the riverbeds. Without tourism, there will be poverty, unrest and migration. We have clearance for 53 run-of-the-river hydro projects and we will roll out 36 for bidding by December. If you take a decision, then stick to it, don’t scrap it because of some activists,” he asserted, repeatedly, over the past week.
It may yet take more lives for Uttarakhand to realise how far down the suicide slope it has come.

For a home run, the UPA tramples over green laws

Rush to clear mega projects may rewrite rules of business


The countdown has begun. The general election is only months away. The last green roadblocks may now be bulldozed to push growth by a now sluggish, now exposed government.

The Project Monitoring Group (PMG) constituted recently by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided to take up big infrastructural projects stuck for green clearances with the project proponents and officials from the ministries of environment and forests, power, port and road on a weekly basis. Coming five and a half months after the formation of the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI), this is the government’s last ditch effort to bypass environmental bottlenecks (laws to the rest of us) stalling investment.

In his budget speech this year, Finance Minister P Chidambaram told Parliament that two meetings of the CCI had already taken some key decisions regarding a number of oil and gas, power, and coal projects. Hours later, the Prime Minister underlined that the CCI would take up issues related to wildlife, forest and land (tribal rights) clearances to tackle regulatory roadblocks.

The UPA’s intentions became clear two years ago. No sooner than the Reserve Bank blamed environmentalism for a one-third dip in foreign investment, the PM broke his silence to underline how it was “necessary to ensure that these (green) regulatory standards do not bring back the License Permit Raj”.

Last year, Chidambaram sprung the proposed National Investment Approval Board (NIAB) which was to unilaterally offer prompt one-window clearances to projects worth Rs 1000 crore or more. Plan panel chief Montek Singh Ahluwalia went on to assure skeptics that under the Prime Minister’s chairmanship, such a body would not take arbitrary decisions. Of course, he forgot that the National Board for Wildlife that has a dubious record of clearing dubious project proposals by overruling its independent members, is also chaired by the PM.

The board, however, met with strong opposition from environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan who refused to surrender her ministry’s role in examining the merits of such projects. The NIAB proposal was scrapped, and the CCI was set up in January, roping in representatives from different ministries. But the agenda did not change. The UPA government was desperate to circumvent forest and wildlife laws – its legacy from the years of Indira Gandhi – and the Forest Rights Act, its own showcase achievement.

According to the Centre, around 215 projects worth over Rs 7 lakh crore, for which bank loans have been made available, are held up mostly due to delay in environment and forest clearances and the lack of coal supplies. But why was bank funding made available to projects whose environmental viability was in question? But of course, with everything else in place, the green clearance became more of a compulsion than a decision to be taken on ecological ground. Highway projects, for instance, line up at the MoEF’s door once they have completed construction in non-forest stretches so as to force the ministry’s hand.

If it’s not infrastructure, the bogey raised is that of energy security. Here, the argument is that India should not have to import coal while sitting on a 100 billion tonne reserve. In fact, it doesn’t need to. The annual production deficit of coal is around 20 percent. Coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal himself conceded that but for corruption and inefficiency, productivity could increase by 25-30 percent. Now factor in a 25-35 percent transmission loss of power generated by burning coal. A long overdue investment in grid reform can lower the demand for coal by at least 20 percent.

While demanding vast tracts of virgin forests to be opened for mining, most private miners are interested in hoarding rather than mining the allotted reserve. The same profit motive is at work when power utilities flash their import bill to pressure Coal India (CIL) for subsidised coal instead of procuring at nonsubsidised prices through e-auction from CIL.

Yet, we seek more coal mines and strive to exceed mining targets as the first and foremost solution to the energy deficit. Such was the enthusiasm that in February, the CCI had to clarify to CIL executives that they could not be given immunity against prosecution for violating green norms because they were only trying to strengthen India’s energy security. 

Others have been luckier. Congress MP Naveen Jindal, for example. Now in the dock for alleged involvement in the coal scam, Jindal’s Jindal Steel and Power began construction at its Angul plant in Odisha without obtaining clearance for the forest land and was served a notice by a divisional forest officer in July 2009. In February 2011, the MoEF absolved its MP.

Under UPA II, 99 per cent projects have been cleared and the average clearance time has been reduced from 5 years during 1982-1999 to just 11 months. The long delays blamed for hampering growth are the result of the project proponent’s insistence on sidestepping laws and associated statutory provisions.

Given such a state of affairs, if the Prime Minister really wanted transparency while fast-tracking the clearance process, he could have insisted that every project factor in environmental viability and costs at the conception stage instead of bypassing legal restrictions and legally binding green safeguards later. Nothing stopped the government from finalising the go, no-go forest area map which would have ensured that no developer, government or private, pushes projects in the best forests and ecologically most sensitive areas of the country.

But, as Montek gave out last September, it is not his government’s intention to have any rule or regulations for a certain class of projects. Chidambaram’s “excellent idea” is, Montek was quoted as saying, to amend the rules of business for projects above a critical size so that “the permission that has to be given is given”.

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উন্নয়নের বড় গলায় সবুজ ফিতের ফাঁস আগাগোড়া কাল্পনিক


শুরুতে গল্পটা সংক্ষেপে বলা দরকার। উন্নয়নের গপ্পোও বলতে পারেন, বা জঙ্গল কেটে, জঙ্গলবাসিদের উৎখাত করে জল-জমি-আকর লুটের। এ গল্পের শুরু প্রায় দু’শ বছর আগে। সাঁওতাল বিদ্রোহেরই তো ১৫৮ বছর হবে এই ৩০ তারিখকিন্তু আমরা গল্পটায় ঢুকবো এই সময়।
ধন্দটা কেটে যায় ২০১১-র গোড়াতেতার আগে প্রথম ইউপিএ সরকারের আমলেই অবশ্য শুরু হয়ে গিয়েছিল দেশ জুড়ে জল-জঙ্গলের চৌহদ্দিতে যত্রতত্র উন্নয়ন প্রকল্পের হিড়িক । কিন্তু অনেকেই বিশ্বাস করতে চাননি যে বন্যপ্রাণী সংরক্ষণ আর অরন্যের অধিকারের মতো দু-দুটো মোক্ষম আইন সংসদে সংশোধন আর পাশ (২০০৬) করানোর পরেও এই সরকার সত্যিই খাদান আর কারখানার জন্য জঙ্গল চেঁছে ফেলে আদিবাসিদের বেঘর করতে চায়।
তার ওপর, ২০০৮-এ পরিবেশ মন্ত্রির পদে এসে জয়রাম রমেশ সকাল-বিকেল ‘আমি-তোমাদেরই-লোক’-মার্কা ধুন গেয়ে প্রকৃতিপ্রেমিদের মনে এক আষাঢ়ে আশা জাগিয়েছিলেন। তাই অধিকাংশেরই ধারনা ছিল যে ওই যেকোন-মূল্যে-উন্নয়নের তাগিদ মূলত মনমোহন সরকারের কিছু আগমার্কা ‘প্রগতি’শীল মন্ত্রির মন্ত্রকপ্রসুতএমন ভবিষ্যবানীও শোনা গিয়েছিল যে সনিয়া ‘নব-সমাজবাদী’ গান্ধীর এজলাসে তাদের অত্যুৎসাহে বালুকাপাত অনিবার্য।
কিন্তু বালি রইল মরিচিকাই। বদলে, গুড়ে মাছি এল ভনভনিয়ে। শুরুটা পরিবেশ মন্ত্রকেই। ছাড়পত্র পেল লাভাসা (মহারাষ্ট্র) আর পসকো (ওডিশা)। সম্ভবত উপায় ছিল না কারণ যোজনা দপ্তর ইতিমধ্যেই ছাঁটতে শুরু করেছিল পরিবেশ মন্ত্রকের আর্থিক বরাদ্দ দুধ দিয়ে কালসাপ পোষা-জাতীয় মন্তব্য আমলা মহলে নৈমত্তিক হয়ে ওঠার পর রিজার্ভ ব্যাঙ্ক-ও জানুয়ারি ২০১১-তে বিদেশী বিনিয়োগে একতৃতীয়াংশ কমতির জন্য আঙ্গুল তুলল environmentalism-এর  দিকেইবাকি ছিলেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী। ফেব্রুয়ারী-তে তিনিও হুঁশিয়ারি দিলেন যে সবুজ আইনের বিবিধ বিধি-নিষেধ নাকি প্রাক-অর্থনৈতিক উদারীকরন যুগের ‘লাইসেন্স-পারমিট রাজ’ ফিরিয়ে আনবে।
পসকো আর ভেদান্ত-র মতো বিতর্কিত প্রোজেক্টকে বেআইনি ছাড়পত্র দেবার চাপের পেছনে ছিল বিদেশী বিনিয়োগের অজুহাত। তার সঙ্গে এবার যোগ হল জাতীয় নিরাপত্তার প্রশ্ন। বোঝানো হল কয়লার অভাবে দেশে তাপবিদ্যুতের আকাল। জঙ্গল কেটে নতুন কয়লা খাদান না খুঁড়লে শিল্পের ভরাডুবি আসন্ন।
প্রধানমন্ত্রির দাবড়ানিতে অরন্যের অধিকার আইনকে বুড়ো আঙ্গুল দেখিয়ে পসকো-কে ওডিশায় কারখানার অনুমতি দিয়েই অকুতভয় রমেশ লেগে পড়েছিলেন তার বিনা-আস্ফালনে-নাহি-দিব-সুচ্যগ্র-জঙ্গল ইমেজ পুনরুদ্ধ্বারে। তার পরিবেশ মন্ত্রক সাড়ম্বরে ঘোষণা করল যে কোন জঙ্গল কাটা যাবে আর কোনটা যাবে না (go, no-go) তার হিসেব-নিকেশ না হওয়া পর্যন্ত কোন নতুন খাদানের অনুমতি মিলবে না। কয়েক মাসের মধ্যেই কয়লা মন্ত্রী শ্রিপ্রকাশ জইসয়াল-এর সামনে পরিবেশ মন্ত্রীকে তার কাটা-যাবে-না তালিকা থেকে কেটে দিতে হল ৮৫ শতাংশ জঙ্গল ।
শুধু বিদেশী বিনিয়োগ আর বিদ্যুৎ নিরাপত্তাই নয়, ইতিমধ্যে রাষ্ট্রীয় রাজমার্গ নির্মাণযজ্ঞেও বাধা সাব্যস্ত হয়েছে সংরক্ষণ আর অরন্যের অধিকার আইনগুলিদেশের দু-দশটা টিকে থাকা নিরবচ্চ্ছিন্ন অরন্যপ্রসরকে হাইওয়ে ছুটিয়ে ফালাফালা না করলে নাকি প্রকল্পের সুবিধা ও সাশ্রয় কোনটাই সম্ভব নয়। সব মিলে ২০১২ নাগাদ অবস্থা পৌঁছে যায় এমন পর্যায়ে যে জাতীয় অর্থনীতির যা কিছু সমস্যা তার দায় চাপে, বরং চাপিয়ে দেওয়া হয়, পরিবেশ মন্ত্রক নামক কেষ্টার ওপর।
চাপিয়ে দেওয়া বলছি কারণ কাগজে-কলমে দেখা যাচ্ছে ঠিক উল্টোটাই। উন্নয়নে বাধা হওয়া দুরে থাক, উন্নয়নের নামে কানুনের পরোয়া না করেই জারি করা হচ্ছে ঢালাও ছাড়পত্র। রমেশের আমলে  (২০০৮-২০১১) পরিবেশ মন্ত্রকে জমা হওয়া প্রকল্পের দরখাস্তের মধ্যে খারিজ হয়েছিল মাত্র ১ শতাংশ একাদশ ও দ্বাদশ যোজনায় ২০১৭-এর মধ্যে মোট ১,৫০,০০০ মেগাওয়াট অতিরিক্ত তাপবিদ্যুতের লক্ষ্য রাখা হয়েছে ২০০৭ থেকে ২০১১ এর মধ্যে পরিবেশ মন্ত্রকের ছাড়পত্র পাওয়া প্রোজেক্টের উৎপাদনক্ষমতা ২,১০,০০০ মেগাওয়াট, যা কিনা ২০১৭-এর সরকারি লক্ষ্যের চেয়েও ৪০ শতাংশ বেশি। ১৯৮২ থেকে ধরলে, ৯৪ শতাংশ কয়লা খাদানের দরখাস্ত অনুমতি পেয়েছে পরিবেশ মন্ত্রকের
তথাকথিত উন্নয়নপন্থিদের আরেক বড় অভিযোগ ছাড়পত্র মিলতে মিলতে সবুজফিতের ফাঁসে নষ্ট হয় অনেক সময়। পরিসংখান কিন্তু অন্য কথা বলে। ১৯৮২ থেকে ১৯৯৯ এর মধ্যে প্রোজেক্ট ফাইলে ফয়সালা হতে সময় লাগতো গড়পড়তা পাঁচ বছর। বিজেপি আমলে এটা কমে দাঁড়ায় তিন বছরে। প্রথম ইউপিএ সরকারের পরিবেশমন্ত্রী এন্দিমুথু ‘টু-জি’ রাজা প্রোজেক্ট-পিছু সময় নিতেন মাত্র ১৭ মাস। ২০০৮ থেকে রমেশের পরিবেশ মন্ত্রক গড়ে ১১ মাসে ছাড়পত্র বিলোতে শুরু করে
গত দু বছরে, রমেশের উত্তরসূরি জয়ন্তি নটরাজনের হাতে সেই ধারা অব্যহত। আঞ্চলিক জনগোষ্ঠী এবং বিশেষজ্ঞদের তীব্র বিরোধিতার তোয়াক্কা না করে, ৫০,০০০ মেগাওয়াট জলবিদ্যুৎ উৎপাদনের লক্ষ্যপুরনে তিনি ইতিমধ্যেই অরুনাচলের তাওয়াং আর লোহিত-এ দুটি অতিকায় বাঁধের অনুমতি দিয়েছেন। অরুনাচলেই ব্রহ্মপুত্র উপত্যকায় প্রস্তাবিত আরও ১৫০টি জলবিদ্যুৎ প্রকল্পের অবাস্তবতার বিরুদ্ধে তার মন্ত্রক এখনো রা কাড়েনি।
তাহলে সংঘাতটা কোথায়? সমস্যা হল যে কিছু বড় প্রকল্পের বিরুদ্ধে বিভিন্ন সংরক্ষণ সংস্থা আর পরিবেশবিদ সুপ্রিম কোর্ট পর্যন্ত পৌঁছে গ্যাছেন। ভেদান্তের আর পসকো-র ক্ষেত্রে কোর্টের রায় গ্যাছে সরকারের বিরুদ্ধে। বন্যপ্রাণী বা অরন্য আইন নয়, অরন্যের অধিকার আইনে আটকেছে স্থানীয় আদিবাসিদের ইচ্ছের বিরুদ্ধে জবরদস্তি প্রকল্পের প্রয়াস। একই রকম ভাবে, মূলত বন্যপ্রাণী আইনের ধারায়, বেশ কিছু হাইওয়ে প্রকল্প ফেঁসে আছে কোর্টে। শেষপর্যন্ত go, no-go তালিকা তৈরি হলে বেশ কিছু খাদানের বিলিবন্দবস্তও খারিজ হতে পারে।
সত্যি কথা বলতে কিছু কট্টরপন্থি ছাড়া, পরিবেশপ্রেমী কেউই কিন্তু বিদেশী বিনিয়োগ, বিদ্যুৎ উৎপাদন কিম্বা হাইওয়ের বিরুদ্ধে নন। তাদের আপত্তি অন্য জায়গায়। ভারত দুনিয়ার দ্বিতীয় বৃহত্তম বাজার। এখানে বিদেশী পুঁজির লগ্নি অবধারিত। সেজন্য সরকারের কোনো বহুজাতিক কোম্পানির অন্যায় আবদার মেনে নেওয়ার প্রয়োজন নেই। ওডিশার নিয়ামগিরির আদিবাসিরা যদি তাদের পাহাড়ে খাদান না চায়, কিম্বা ঢিঙ্কিয়ার বাসিন্দাদের যদি পসকো কারখানা থেকে পানের বরজ বেশি লাভজনক মনে হয়, বিদেশী বিনিয়োগের নামে তাদের উৎখাত শুধু অযৌক্তিকই নয়, অরন্যের অধিকার আইন প্রনয়নের পর, বেয়াইনিও বটে।
আর মোটা বিদেশী লগ্নিতে কি সত্যিই লাভবান হবে দেশের অর্থনীতি? পসকোর কথাই ধরুন। ওডিশার কারখানায় বিদেশী বিনিয়োগ হবে ৫২ হাজার কোটি টাকার। চাট্টিখানি কথা নয়, কিন্তু এর বদলে সরকার কি দেবে পসকো-কে? ২০০৫-এর মৌ অনুযায়ী পসকো ৩০ বছর ধরে ভারতে বাৎসরিক ৬০০ মিলিয়ন টন লৌহ আকর খুঁড়ে বের করবে যা আন্তর্জাতিক বাজারে কিনতে হলে কোম্পানিকে অতিরিক্ত খরচ করতে হত অন্তত ৩৭২ হাজার কোটি টাকা
আরও আছে। ২০০৫-এর চুক্তিতে পসকো তার কোরিয়ার কারখানার জন্য ভারতের বাজার থেকে অতিরিক্ত ৪০০ মিলিয়ন টন লৌহ আকর কিনতে পারবে। দেশি আর আন্তর্জাতিক বাজারে লৌহ আকরের দামের ফারাক টন পিছু ৩০০০ টাকার হিসেবে স্রেফ রপ্তানিতেই পসকোর মুনাফা আরও ১৭৪ হাজার কোটি টাকা এছাড়া স্পেশাল ইকনমিক জোনের সুবাদে রাজ্য ও কেন্দ্রীয় সরকারের কাছে পসকো করবাবদ ছাড় পাবে আরও ৩১৪ হাজার কোটি টাকা। এত কিছুর পরেও কোম্পানি ওডিশার কারখানায় তৈরি ইস্পাত ভারতে বেচবে আন্তর্জাতিক দামেই।
একের পর এক জঙ্গল কেটে খাদান খোঁড়ার তাগিদও একইরকম আত্মঘাতী । লৌহ আকর রপ্তানিতে অস্ট্রেলিয়া আর ব্রাজিলের পর ভারত বিশ্বে তিন নম্বরে। কিন্তু অস্ট্রেলিয়ায় আর ব্রাজিলে যেখানে মাথাপিছু আকরের আমানত ২০০০ ও ৩৩৩ টন, সেখানে ভারতের রসদ মাত্র ২১ টন। এই হারে রপ্তানি চললে আগামী ১৫-৩০ বছরেই আমাদের লৌহ আকর আমদানি শুরু করতে হতে পারে।
তাপবিদ্যুতের চাহিদা অনুযায়ী দেশে নাকি কয়লার ঘাটতি ২০ শতাংশকিন্তু মন্ত্রী জইসয়াল নিজে স্বীকার করেছেন যে দুর্নীতির কারনে মার খায় ২৫-৩০ শতাংশ কয়লা উৎপাদন। তাছাড়া, মান্ধাতার আমলের বণ্টনব্যবস্থার কল্যানে উৎপাদনকেন্দ্র আর উপভোক্তার মাঝখানে নষ্ট হয় ২৫-৩৫ শতাংশ বিদ্যুত। অন্যদিকে একের পর এক কয়লা খাদান আগলে উৎপাদন শুরু না করে ভবিষ্যতে বেশী মুনিফার আশায় বসে থাকা কোম্পানিরা কয়লার ঘাটতির অজুহাতে নিত্যনতুন বনাঞ্চলে খাদান খোলার দাবী করে চলেছে
হাইওয়ের কথাই ধরুন। অতীতে সমস্ত পথই তৈরি হয়েছিল জঙ্গল ভেদ করে মানুষের পায়ে চলার রেখায়। গত দুই শতকে সেসব পথে প্রথমে ঘোড়া, তারপর ঘোড়াগাড়ি, আধুনিক গাড়ি থেকে আজ ঘণ্টায় শয়ে-শয়ে গাড়ি ছোটেযে দু-দশটা জায়গায় এখনও পুরনো জঙ্গল টিকে আছে, সেখানে আইন এবং কাণ্ডজ্ঞান বলে যে হাইওয়ে বিকল্প জায়গা থাকলে তার রাস্তা বদলাবে অথবা বন্যপ্রাণীর অবাধ যাতায়াতের জন্য জমি ছেড়ে জঙ্গলের পরিসরটুকু ফ্লাইওভার হয়ে পার হবে।
বাকি জায়গার কথা ছেড়েই দিন, মহারাষ্ট্র-ছত্তিসগড় আর মহারাষ্ট্র-মধ্যপ্রদেশের মাঝখানে কানহা, পেঞ্চ, তাদোবা, নাগজিরা, নাভেগাঁও, ইন্দ্রাবতির মত প্রাকৃতিক সম্পদে ভরা ব্যাঘ্রসঙ্কুল অরন্যপ্রসরেও ন্যাশনাল হাইওয়ে অথরিটি এতটুকু ডাইনে-বাঁয়ে করতে রাজি নয়। অগত্যা রাষ্ট্রীয় রাজমার্গ ৬ এবং ৭–এর ভবিষ্যত ঝুলে আছে সেই সুপ্রিম কোর্টে।
আমাদের পরিবেশ আর জনজাতির অধিকারের আইনগুলি যথেষ্ট প্রাঞ্জল। কোন প্রকল্পের দূষণ, বন আর বন্যপ্রাণীর ওপর কি প্রভাব পড়বে তার সমীক্ষায় কিছুটা সময় লাগারই কথা। কিন্তু পরিবেশ মন্ত্রকের ছাড়পত্র নিয়ে যেকয়টি প্রকল্পে দীর্ঘ টানাপড়েনের অভিযোগ তার সব ক্ষেত্রেই দায়ী সরকারের যেকোনো মূল্যে, প্রয়োজনে আইন ভেঙ্গেচুরে, প্রকল্প চালু করার চেষ্টা।
গত সেপ্টেম্বরে, যোজনা দপ্তরের কর্ণধার মন্তেক সিং আলুওালিয়া দিল্লীতে এক সংবাদপত্রের ঘরোয়া বৈঠকে কিছু চমকপ্রদ মন্তব্য করেছিলেন। যেটুকু ছাপা হয়েছিল তার মধ্যে ছিল আইন ভাঙ্গার দায় থেকে আমলাদের রেহাই দিতে তার ফাইল নোটিং-এর পরিবর্তে ‘স্পিকিং অর্ডার’ প্রথা চালু করার পরামর্শ ঝুলি থেকে বেড়ালটি শেষমেশ বেরিয়ে পরে হাজার কোটি টাকার বেশী লগ্নির প্রকল্পের তৎকাল অনুমোদন প্রসঙ্গে। অর্থমন্ত্রী চিদাম্বরম বলেছেন, আলুওালিয়া জানান, যে প্রয়োজনে ‘রুলস অব বিসনেস’ বদলে ফেলতে হবে যাতে যে সব প্রকল্পকে ছাড়পত্র দিতেই হবে যেন দেওয়া যায়।
সহজ ভাষায়, কাগজে-কলমে যতই কড়া হোক, আইন থাকবে আইনের জায়গায়। আর জলে-জঙ্গলে-খাদানে বড় লগ্নির তৎকাল অনুমোদন থাকবে আইনের আওতার বাইরে। যতদিন না সেটা সম্ভব হচ্ছে উন্নয়নের এই কাল্পনিক বিপন্নতা কাটার নয়।

How Green Is The Red

The future of conservation in some of India’s most resource-rich forests hinges on how battles shape up between rebels and the State

OPEN, 23 June, 2013

The first time I entered the Indravati National Park in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, I had only a village youth who I met barely an hour ago for company. Lakshminath Nag, the lone beat guard manning the Farsegarh chowki on the park boundary, had refused to accompany me. To be fair, he did offer to take me on a “brief walk inside”, but would not venture into the park in my car. “I was beaten up very badly [by People’s War Group cadres] inside the park before I sought this posting. This chowki is not safe either and no forest staffer other than me will stay here overnight. I really don’t know why and how far you want to go inside,” reasoned Nag.
His words had an immediate effect on my driver. “Your men made me drive on cycle-tracks inside the forest [to avoid landmines on the road], and I did,” he said, “But I will not cross this boundary.” My men in question included the local contact I picked up from Jagdalpur and the ‘more local’ contacts he picked up along the way: a villager revered in the area for the quality of his homemade brew, and an electrician who was welcome to the Red Zone for his skills.
At this point, a local youth emerged with his motorbike who claimed he was no stranger to Maoists and agreed to give me a ride—after I had rehearsed my answers thoroughly for the imminent ‘interview’. Apparently, these Maoists would isolate us for a grilling session and unwise answers could result in my ‘punishment’.
The previous evening, I had met K Murugan, then field director of Indravati, at his Jagdalpur office 200 km from the tiger reserve. He had explained his predicament thus: “Our chowkis have been demolished. Naxalites don’t allow road maintenance, so the park is inaccessible by car. Our men try to go in on two-wheelers and foot. Villagers may not see us because we avoid them unless necessary.”
So were the forest and wildlife safe? Sub-divisional officer SG Parulkar took over from his boss: “Naxals have already banned hunting and tree-felling here. Even the month-long annual hunting festival of Tribals—paradh—is under check. We are happy that Naxals are doing our job. You can take the data from us.” His helpless smile did not explain how his men had conducted a tiger census of a 1,250 sq km area without vehicular access to it.
My young escort drove me on his motorbike for over an hour through fairly dense forests, whispering over his shoulder every now and then that we were being watched. But I was struck by a more sinister possibility. The undergrowth and canopies around us did not stir even once. Forget animals, I could spot only a few birds. Minus the engine, the silence and stillness was overbearing.
As we pulled up next to a wooden idol of a buffalo deity at a hamlet, a patriarchal figure surrounded by children approached us gingerly. He was the village teacher and happy to see us. The last time this hamlet had visitors was during the 2004 General Election, when armed choppers flew in a couple of poll officials with a ballot box, that too just for an hour or so. Soon we were joined by a handful of village women who made us tea. As shadows lengthened and we continued our conversations, I could not avoid asking the question. Did they hunt? The ladies looked away, but the old man threw up his hands: “What is left there to hunt?”
Before I could latch on to this lead, my cautious escort intervened to explain that Maoists did hunt occasionally for meat, that there were few wild animals left anyway when the PWG enforced its hunting ban, and that wild animals could still be seen deeper inside the reserve. So when did any of them last spot a tiger? There was no answer.
That was 2005. Not much has changed in the eight years since. Large stretches of forest along the Bihar-Andhra and Bengal-Maharashtra Red axis, and in the Northeast and Jammu & Kashmir still remain inaccessible to the concerned state forest departments. Just how badly wildlife is affected depends on the extremist outfit in control, the extent of its ground control and the proximity of the area to an international border.
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Most guerilla outfits in India follow the uncomplicated modus operandi of Veerappan, the late brigand. He and his band of dacoits needed the forest cover to dodge or ambush security forces. So, barring sandalwood trees, the forests of Sathyamangalam were never more secure than while under Veerappan’s watch. But for ivory, his men butchered so many elephants that it triggered a genetic response. The average weight of tusks in the region dropped from 20 kg to 10 kg and the number of makhna (tuskless by birth) males shot up.
A look at Project Tiger’s census data reveals an obvious pattern. All six tiger reserves—Valmiki in Bihar, Palamau in Jharkhand, Indravati and Udanti-Sitanadi in Chhattisgarh, Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh and Simlipal in Orissa—that fall in the Red corridor record very poor tiger numbers. The fate of a few other reserves—such as Buxa in West Bengal, Manas in Assam and Namdapha in Arunachal Pradesh—affected by other insurgent groups is similar.
What explains this? Have militants been poaching these prized animals?
It is not easy to smuggle out wildlife products from the Indian heartland while waging a war against the State. Veerappan was doing that through southern routes with the help of the LTTE, but he was not fighting for sovereignty or socialism alongside. Forests close to international borders, however, offer multiple opportunities because arms, narcotics and wildlife are trafficked through common routes.
For example, a prime source for Chinese weapons is Myanmar, where operators push consignments into Nagaland, usually under the supervision of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). Caches of arms also enter India via the eastern Indo-Bangladesh border, for which Chittagong is the smuggling hub. The third route is via Nepal, where local Maoists control the trade.
The two busiest wildlife trafficking routes from India are to Tibet via Ladakh and Nepal, and to Myanmar via Manipur and Nagaland. Kashmiri militants have been using the Ladakh channel to trade narcotics and wildlife contraband such as shahtoosh. A drastic dip in tiger numbers in forests close to Nepal such as Valmiki and Buxa make experts suspect that poaching syndicates here have bought protection from outfits such as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation.
While there is no evidence that Maoists in the Red Belt of central India are engaged in commercial poaching—except perhaps in the Srisailam and Nallamalai forests of Andhra Pradesh during the 1990s—sources claim that militant hideouts are frequently used by poachers for the safekeeping of skins and tusks for a fee. Maoists also back local tribes to continue with traditional hunting festivals in many areas, such as Odisha’s Simlipal, where the CPI (Maoist) is still fighting for a firm foothold.
Given their sway over vast tracts of forests from Navegaon in Maharashtra to Jangalmahal in West Bengal, it is, however, unclear if Maoists have been tempted to actively enter the trade themselves since they developed contacts with arms suppliers in Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam—all prime markets for wildlife products.
Other than its distance from international smuggling routes, what may have discouraged Maoists from poaching in central India is the absence of the most lucrative species in the region. “To generate the kind of revenues that would interest militant groups, huge volumes of tiger and elephant derivatives have to be smuggled out, which is very challenging logistically,” says an undercover anti-traffic agent, “Per unit of weight or volume, tiger skin and bone, or ivory, is much cheaper than rhino horn.”
Rhinos are easier to kill and a carton of horns fetches as much as a carload of tiger derivatives or tusks would. This had lured insurgents groups of the Northeast to opt for ‘cashless arms deals’. Operators in Myanmar have been more than happy to barter weapons for rhino horns.
In the process, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) wiped out the entire rhino population of the Burachapori forests, even as the National Democratic Front of Bodoland emptied Manas. Ironically, the ULFA in 1989 killed a prominent rhino horn trader and had a stated policy against harming ‘the pride of Assam’ till its cadres joined the loot. While Manas has recovered significantly since the Bodoland Accord, a number of former militants, along with members of the Karbi People’s Liberation Tigers and Kuki People’s Army are now targeting the Kaziranga populations.
Local and Bangladeshi Islamist groups such as the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, Harkat-Ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) and Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh have also joined the rhino trade. The ULFA had a change of heart again, but its recent warnings to rhino poachers did not prevent the killing of at least three dozen animals in and around Kaziranga since last year.
It was also provincial pride that moved underground groups in Manipur to ban the killing of Sangai, the brow-antlered deer endemic to Loktak Lake, and even chop off a poacher’s arm a few years ago.
In Kashmir, the decade-long unrest nearly exterminated the Markhor (spiral-horned mountain goat) populations in the hilly forests along the LoC. The mighty goats have made a comeback since the Indo-Pak ceasefire of 2003, though. A threat to the Markhor’s future today is the new Mughal Road that connects Srinagar to Rajouri. Seven years ago, the project refused to make a minor change in its alignment to avoid cutting through the Hirpora sanctuary. Such infrastructure projects were never easy to implement during the peak years of militancy.
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In 2009, FICCI published a report on National Security and Terrorism. Terming Naxalism Indian economy’s biggest party-pooper, it said: ‘The growing Maoist insurgency over large swathes of the mineral-rich countryside could soon hurt some industrial investment plans. Just when India needs to ramp up its industrial machine to lock in growth and just when foreign companies are joining the party—Naxalites are clashing with the mining and steel companies essential to India’s long-term success.’ Added the report: ‘Anxious to revive their moribund economies, the poor but resource-rich states of eastern India have given mining and land rights to Indian and multinational companies. Yet these deposits lie mostly in territory where the Naxals operate.’
The same year, a committee appointed by India’s Ministry of Rural Development submitted its draft report on land reforms and equity. Long before the Supreme Court banned the Salwa Judum, this report noted that the ‘open declared war [between Maoists and the Judum] will go down as the biggest land grab ever… being scripted by Tata Steel and Essar Steel who wanted 7 villages or thereabouts, each to mine the richest lode of iron ore available in India’. On what it called ‘massive transfers of agricultural and forest land for industrial, mining and development projects’, the report went on to note: ‘Though constituting only 9% of the country’s population the tribal communities have contributed more than 40% to the total land acquired till so far…due to connivance of the Government machinery… [and] a political economy growing around the tribal lands.’
Depending on which side of the growth-versus-green debate one stands, the Maoist insurgency can be viewed as the biggest obstacle to India’s economic growth or the most effective deterrent to the ‘connivance’ of State power with big money that seeks to destroy the last of India’s great forests still in Tribal custody.
In 2007, the ninth Unity Congress of the CPI (Maoist) identified ‘projects like Posco, Kalinganagar, bauxite mines etc in Orissa, Chargaon and Raoghat in Chhattisgarh, bauxite mines and Polavaram project in AP, massive iron mines, and uranium projects in Jharkhand’ and called on ‘all forest dwellers to resist till the end the massive displacement taking place and protect their land and forests from the robbers and looters’. This April, the Maoist party urged supporters to ‘fight unitedly for the withdrawal of the proposed [Land Acquisition] Bill and… for their inalienable right over Jal, Jungle, Zameen’.
But for such Maoist threats, major chunks of Chhattisgarh’s remaining forests would have been axed because they stand on one-fourth of India’s iron ore deposits and a lucrative bed of coal.
For the same reason, few MoUs have actually borne results in Jharkhand. The flare-up in West Bengal’s Lalgarh stymied the JSW Steel’s $7-billion project to set up a 10-million tonne steel plant at Salboni. In Odisha, officials see a Maoist hand in every mass movement, from Dhinkia to Niyamgiri, against displacement of locals for big projects.
But corruption among Maoist ranks has also let a number of mines and factories buy peace for hefty sums. For many years, illicit katha-khairtraders were the main source of funds for the militant Left, particularly in Jharkhand. Many paper mills and timber merchants got unhindered access to bamboo and teak after paying off Maoists, who have also supported mass encroachment of forestland by local communities in several districts.
To enforce any ban on tree felling, Maoists need to be in firm control of a forest area. But the power equation in a few pockets resembles that of Sathyamangalam under Veerappan or Abujhmaad (Indravati) under the PWG. In many areas, desperate to gain ground support, local-area Maoists have backed attempts by the local population to break forest and wildlife laws. In Andhra Pradesh, for example, local communities have encroached vast tracts of forestland in Adilabad, Warangal and Khammam districts, but the poorest of the poor in the region remain landless. Tiger reserves such as Valmiki, Simlipal and Palamu have suffered similarly. In West Bengal’s Jangalmahal, villagers backed by Maoists started felling trees to block roads. It did not take long for the timber mafia to step in. The upshot: long stretches of forests disappeared.
In Assam, since the beginning of the Bodo insurgency in the late 1980s, the leadership encouraged its people from all over the state to shift to the proposed Bodoland areas to ensure a Bodo majority. In the process, all 81 sq km of the Naduar reserve forest and two-thirds of Biswanath and Charduar reserve forests were wiped out. Balipara, Sonai-Rupai and Behali forests also came under the axe. But the wilderness along the state borders with Arunachal is fiercely protected by militants who are against felling so that they retain the operational advantage of sneaking in and out of Assam under dense forest cover.
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The presence of militants in forests legitimises the deployment of security forces in large numbers. But, unlike local militias, jawans of the central forces are mostly outsiders with little understanding of these forests. “In hostile conditions, they easily open fire and kill wildlife. They also collect huge volumes of firewood to keep their camps going,” says a forest officer who served in Jharkhand’s Palamu where forest guards were barred from entering the reserve by the forces.
A few years ago, the commander of an SSB camp in Bihar’s Valmiki defended—off-record—his men for “hunting occasionally” to compensate for their “limited rations” while posted in forests. In Simlipal, where four CRPF battalions are camping, it is difficult to ignore the telltale absence of wildlife near forest roads that the forces use for patrolling. In Assam, Army units have even encroached upon elephant forests and set up shooting ranges.
“It is not easy to stand up to the security forces because our field staff depend on them for protection. Anyway, [Army] officers try to brush aside our objections,” rues a former divisional forest officer in charge of Assam’s Sonai-Rupai sanctuary. “Nobody bothers about conservation in the time of conflict.”
Maoists are no exception. While their resistance to State agencies may have delayed large-scale loss of forest cover to mega development in some areas, this apparent gain for conservation is perhaps incidental—because the Maoist agenda seems to have nothing substantial on the sustainable use of ‘Jal, Jungle aur Zameen’—water, forests and land, the three principal natural resources.
In fact, as a former sympathiser of the PWG wonders, India’s militant Left is probably indifferent—even hostile at times—to conservation. Unlike Marx, who in Das Kapital described human societies as earth’s ‘usufructuaries’ who ‘like boni patres familias… must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition’, Mao emphasised the need to conquer nature, put into practice through a series of disastrous adventures in China.
“It’s important to resist top-down big development,” argues a veteran rights activist and conservationist, “but that can’t legitimise the politics of violence. The solution lies in decentralisation of growth, in small-scale efforts to promote crafts, sustainable agriculture and enterprise based on minor forest produce. Unless we have thousands like Mendha-Lekha [the first village to have the right to harvest forest bamboo in Maharashtra], both people and conservation will continue to suffer.”
Be it minerals, timber, wildlife or just real estate, the last remaining forests are India’s biggest assets. As long as guns blaze in this wilderness, as a forest officer laments in Chhattisgarh’s Kanger Valley, conservation will be the ultimate casualty. “When Maovaadis gain ground, villagers clear the forests like there is no tomorrow,” he says, “When the sarkar takes control, it opens up every little patch for miners.”
In the final analysis, India’s tragedy is this: a fair settlement of forest rights and an ecologically sound land-use policy do not seem to suit either Maoists or the State.