DIONNE BUNSHA

New Internationalist, December 2014.

India’s rightwing government attacks NGOs in an attempt to undermine people’s movements. Sections of the Left believe they sap people’s radicalism. But are they a real threat to India’s development? DIONNE BUNSHA picks her way through the barbs.

An anti-nuclear demonstration under way in Mumbai. The government considers such movements ‘anti- development’. Vivek Prakash / Reuters

 

It was time for payback. Less than a month after rightwing Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi took over as prime minister of India in May, he started delivering on his promise to his corporate supporters that he would clear all hurdles in their path.

The biggest hurdle they face is people. Across the country, several mining and nuclear projects have been delayed due to nonviolent protests by farmers, fisherfolk and indigenous communities.

In June, a report by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) titled ‘Concerted efforts by select foreign funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to take down Indian development projects’ was ‘leaked’. It accused several grassroots movements, national and international NGOs and prominent public intellectuals of ‘threatening the country’s economic security’.

According to the report: ‘A significant number of Indian NGOs (funded by some donors based in US, UK, Germany and Netherlands) have been noticed to be using people-centric issues to create an environment which lends itself to stalling development projects.’ In the report’s gun sights are people’s movements against nuclear and coal-fired power plants, uranium mines, genetically modified organisms, mega-industrial projects (particularly by POSCO and Vedanta), big dam projects (on the Narmada River and in Arunachal Pradesh) and extractive industries (oil, limestone in the northeast). The negative impacts of such activity on GDP growth is two to three per cent, says the report, without mentioning how its writers arrived at this estimate.

One of the first groups to be choked financially was Greenpeace India. The home ministry instructed the Reserve Bank to block its foreign funding, which Greenpeace India successfully fought through the Delhi High Court. ‘This case throws light on the arbitrary manner in which the government has attempted to muzzle voices of dissent in democracy in
the name of financial scrutiny,’ said Samit
Aich, Executive Director of Greenpeace
India, after the hearing.1 Responding to
the ‘anti-development’ accusation against Greenpeace, Aich pointed to a recent judgment on corruption in coal mining allocations. ‘Environmental watchdogs have been blamed for slowing down the economy, but now the highest judicial authority of the country – the Supreme Court – has deemed all coal blocks allocated since 1993 as illegal. The court has come down heavily on the government and
the companies for “arbitrary” and “mindless” decisions. It is increasingly becoming clear that rampant corruption and crony capitalism are stalling the economic progress of the country.’

Fake debate

The IB report has triggered a fake debate
about NGOs sabotaging development. ‘It all depends on how you see development,’ says SP Udayakumar, a university teacher and anti- nuclear activist, who was named in the report. ‘When the Prime Minister travels the world to invite foreign capital and sell the country to corporations, it is called diplomacy. But when we try to safeguard our environment and our grandchildren’s future, we are considered anti- national.’ As part of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, Udayakumar is one of thousands fighting against the installation of 10 nuclear power plants along India’s coastline. He was harassed and intimidated by the previous government, too. His passport has been impounded, phones tapped, and he has been followed by intelligence officers.

There is also a case to be made for the generally more equitable employment provided by NGOs, which surely contributes to the economy. Activist Kavitha Kuruganti from
the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture asserts that this contribution exceeds that of India’s Information Technology sector.

Some of the non-violent movements listed 
in the report are supported by international groups such as Greenpeace, Amnesty and ActionAid, but several take no funding from NGOs. ‘We receive no foreign funding. We don’t even have an NGO registered. We are a local Gandhian movement that runs on people’s contributions, labour and support. Greenpeace has attended our meetings but has not funded us,’ says Udayakumar.

Going after NGOs, particularly with accusations of the ‘foreign hand’ working against India’s interests, is nothing new.
The previous government, led by former World Bank economist Manmohan Singh, also targeted NGOs that did not fit in with the neoliberal worldview. In April 2013,
his government suspended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licences of 4,000-odd NGOs with an ‘anti-national agenda’. An FCRA licence allows NGOs to receive donations from outside India. The Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), a network of more than 700 grassroots organizations and people’s movements, appealed against this arbitrary action in the Delhi High Court. In September 2013, the court cancelled the home ministry order that had suspended INSAF’s FCRA licence – a landmark victory for NGOs across India that routinely face official harassment.

Handpicked enemies

India has possibly the largest number of NGOs in the world – more than 3.3 million, according to a 2009 government study.2 There is one NGO for every 400 Indians. They differ widely, and include religious charities, corporate-funded groups, political trusts, Gandhian groups, UN organizations, private school trusts, research organizations and advocacy groups. Some are little more than fraudulent fundraising vehicles; others are small, unsung groupings working tirelessly at the local level.

While warning against foreign funding, the IB report ignored the millions of dollars sent to affiliates of the rightwing organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from corporates and other donors
in the US – funds that have gone to extremist organizations that instigate religious violence and propagate the nationalist Hindutva ideology. The RSS heads the Sangh Parivar, a network of rightwing organizations that include the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and militant groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, which share an ideology that defines Indian 
culture solely in terms of ‘Hindu
 values’. Inspired by Hitler, Mussolini
 and European fascism, Sangh Parivar’s ideologues envisioned India as a Hindu nation, where others live as ‘second-
class citizens’.3 The Stop Funding Hate campaign in the US attempts to create awareness about the Sangh’s insidious and violent activities, and stem the flow of funds from unsuspecting donors. However, in India, these organizations continued unhindered, with the blessings of the ruling BJP.

The Right picks on a particular kind of NGO to attack: those that support popular movements aiming to thwart the state’s attempt to sell off the public interest to the highest bidder. The movements themselves are branded as anything from ‘anti-national’ to ‘Maoist terrorists’.

Volunteers of the
 Hindu nationalist RSS go through a drill at a training camp in Bhopal. Foreign funding for these rightwingers 
goes unquestioned. (Raj Patidar / Reuters)

The left critique

The IB report rightly created a furore, with 
the left media and intellectuals mounting a strong defence of NGO activity and pointing out the report’s bias towards the government’s corporate agenda. But traditionally, the Left has offered a wider critique of NGOs, saying they offer sops to the poor, defusing their discontent and deflecting revolution. According to Arundhati Roy: ‘[NGOs] turn people into dependent victims and blunt political resistance. NGOs form a buffer between the sarkar [government] and public. Between empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators.’4 Roy also faults them for being ultimately accountable to their funders, not the people they work with. This is likely true of several corporate- or institutionally funded NGOs that use Corporate Social Responsibility to obscure dissent against large industrial projects. But whether it holds for all other NGOs – even international NGOs like Greenpeace India, which raises more than 60 per cent of its funds from individual donors living in India – is debatable.

One reason for the rise 
in the number of NGOs in 
India is that no political force is responding to people’s issues. The left parties, once the locus of anti-establishment dissent, have become part of the establishment. The Left’s peasant or urban labour movements are much weaker, so independent social movements have filled the vacuum. Anil Chaudhary of Popular Education and Action Center (PEACE), a group that trains rights activists, puts it succinctly when he compares NGOs 
to ‘scavengers who clean up what no-one wants to touch’. Several grassroots movements prefer to retain their independence from NGOs, while appreciating their support. ‘NGOs come and attend meetings and write reports, and that’s how they provide support to the movement,’ says

Lingaraj Azad from the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (Niyamgiri Protection Association), which is fighting against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills, Orissa. ‘But if NGOs were to run the movement, it wouldn’t last too long. Their work ends when project funding ends. We have to stick it out even after projects end. That’s why we are a self-reliant movement, and that’s why it is so strong.’

Azad is skeptical about the net impact of NGOs. ‘There are so many NGOs in India, with millions in funding. After so much funding, what have they done? What has changed in health or education or any of our other problems?’

Other local activists are sometimes betrayed by NGOs that buckle to government pressure. There have been cases where they have changed their stand abruptly and misrepresented local activists in order to save their own skin, says academic and activist Dip Kapoor.5

Whereas NGOs may at times fall short in their support of people’s movements against the state, it would be remiss to ignore the sterling work being done by hundreds of dedicated NGOs throughout India. Several work with the poorest in the country on a wide range of issues (that governments often ignore) and have had a positive influence on government policy.

The great grab

Their capacity to effect change does not always displease the government. For example, the former chief minister of Bihar praised Greenpeace India’s renewable energy projects in rural Bihar. It was an alliance of NGOs that led a successful campaign to get the government to pass the landmark Right to Information Act 2005, which has been used to tackle corruption and bring greater transparency in governance. In a region of Andhra Pradesh where farmers’ suicides are widespread, several NGOs and scientists are working to help farmers get out of the cycle of debt and grow crops without pesticides.

The crux of the issue is a countrywide land grab, often facilitated by the government, which has the power to acquire land forcibly from local people for development projects. This is part of a global trend in which transnational corporations are taking over millions of hectares of land.

Is the IB report just a warning before
a crackdown on movements against
corporate land acquisition? ‘We now have a democratically elected totalitarian government,’ said Arundhati Roy in an interview to Dawn newspaper shortly after Modi was elected. ‘What Modi will be called upon to do is to sort out what is going on in the forests, to sweep out the resistance and hand over land to the mining and infrastructure corporations.’ Will her words prove prophetic? n

Dionne Bunsha is an award-winning journalist who divides her time between Mumbai and Vancouver. She was a senior editor at Frontline magazine and is the author of Scarred: Experiments with Violence in Gujarat, published by Penguin India.

1 Greenpeace India, 2 September 2014; nin.tl/delhihc 2 ‘First official estimate: An NGO for every 400 people in India’, The Indian Express, 7 July 2010; nin.tl/indianex 3 Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A report on Nonprofit Groups, July 2014; nin.tl/hindunat 4 Arundhati Roy, ‘Help that hinders’, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2004. 5 ‘Social action and NGOization in contexts of development dispossession in rural India: explorations into the un-civility of civil society’ in NGOization: Complicity, contradictions and prospects, edited by Aziz Choudhry and Dip Kapoor, Zed books, 2013.

PDF of article: NI478_NGOs_cov,ed-let,big-story

DIONNE BUNSHA
in Gangtok, Sikkim

Students and young people are at the forefront of a protest against hydel projects that are being planned in Sikkim.

The relay fast that has continued in Gangtok since June 2007. The Affected Citizens of Teesta comprises students, professionals and former politicians.

DAWA LEPCHA has a tube stuck up his nose. It goes right down to his stomach. Sometimes, while he is asleep, it moves and chokes him. But the tube is his only sustenance. The juices poured through it are the only nourishment that keeps him alive.
Dawa Lepcha has been on a fast since March 10. Last year he fasted for 63 days. He and his friends are protesting against the dams on the river Teesta in Dzongu in north Sikkim, the home of the Lepchas, Sikkim’s earliest inhabitants. These young men are in hospital, starving to make sure their tribe survives.

“The entire Teesta river is being tunnelled. The main river of Sikkim is disappearing underground. Is this development?” asks Dawa Lepcha. “Sikkim is a very small State, but very rich in biodiversity. If they are allowed to go ahead with the hydel projects, they will ravage, plunder and destroy everything.”

The Sikkim government has discovered that there is money to be made from hydel power. It has proposed around 26 dams across the State. Of these, seven projects are in Dzongu. It is part of the Central government’s master vision of the north-eastern region as “India’s Future Power House”, with around 168 dams planned. The projects are being cleared at any cost. Recently, Union Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh said at a press conference in Guwahati: “I want to check this MoU [memorandum of understanding] virus in the north-east.” Laws have been flouted to grant clearances. Environmental protection has taken a backseat.

The power house of the Teesta Phase 5 project.

“They plan to build four dams inside the Kanchenjunga National Park, two inside the Kanchenjunga Biosphere Reserve and two on the border of the reserve. Most of Dzongu falls in the Kanchenjunga Biosphere Reserve. The biodiversity of the entire region is at stake,” says Dawa Lepcha. “We Lepchas are nature worshippers. Many of our holy lakes and springs are in Dzongu. We cannot let our sacred land be destroyed.”

Lepchas are the indigenous people of Sikkim, but they constitute less than 7 per cent of its population. They call themselves rong-kup (people of the ravine). Over the past two centuries, Nepali migrants have outnumbered the Lepchas in their homeland. The Lepchas are now a minority, a dying race. The Lepcha population is now 40,000, of which around 7,000 live in Dzongu, near the magnificent Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain peak in the world.

Dzongu, the holy land of the Lepchas, was a protected area even when Sikkim was an independent kingdom (Sikkim merged with the Union of India in 1975). Any outsider, even a Lepcha living outside Dzongu, has to apply for a permit to enter it. Only Lepchas from Dzongu can own land here. This was done to protect the sacred land, the dying community and its culture. “By building seven dams in the Lepcha-protected area, and allowing such a large influx of migrant labour, the government is violating its own laws. There are only 7,000 Lepchas in Dzongu. With just one project, we will be outnumbered. Our culture is under threat,” says Dawa Lepcha.

Sitting on the hospital bed across Dawa Lepcha is Onchuk Lepcha. He has left his village Tingvong and come to Gangtok to join the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) hunger strike. “If the land is taken by industrialists, we will be refugees in our own land. It hurts us to see Dzongu being destroyed,” says Onchuk Lepcha. The ACT comprises students, professionals and former politicians who have come together to save the Teesta basin. It has not only Lepchas, but also members from the Bhutia community (Tibetans who migrated here several centuries ago) and environmental groups.

To counter the ACT, politicians who want to see the project go through have started a pro-dam movement. They are organising rallies and have submitted a petition to the government asking for the dam projects to be implemented immediately.
“Sikkim has the potential to generate 8,000 MW of power. We will get 12 per cent of the revenue from these projects. In every development project, there will be some minor destruction, but it’s not much,” says Sonam Gecho Lepcha, a Member of the Legislative Assembly from Dzongu, who is leading the pro-dam lobby. He was earlier part of the anti-dam movement and promised to stop the dams during his election campaign. “No doubt there is some apprehension in my constituency, but the majority of people are in favour of the project. Why else would our party win in the local elections?”

Politicians are using their clout to beat the locals into submission, allege ACT activists. “The MLAs are pressuring people to give their consent to the dams. Even my father was with them earlier. But now I have convinced him about how much damage the dams will do. Most of the politicians and big land owners want the dam so that they can make money,” says Onchuk Lepcha. “People in our villages are innocent. They don’t understand the value of our land. Others can take advantage of them. That’s why the educated Lepcha youth are fighting. We know the dangers,” Onchuk Lepcha explains.

The dams will channel water through tunnels into an underground powerhouse. Sikkim’s Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling claims to be a “green C.M.”. He claims that run-of-the river projects such as the Teesta dams involve smaller submergence of land as compared to storage dams, and hence cause less damage. However, construction of the Teesta Phase 5 project, the only dam which is almost complete, has proved otherwise. “The blasting of rocks to build the tunnels has resulted in the drying up of water sources and landslides in villages near the 23-km-long stretch. A lot of mud and debris has been dumped along the river banks,” says Dawa Lepcha.

Close to the power house of Teesta Phase 5, we met Jung Bahadur Chetri, 70, from Singbel village. Though the State did not acquire his land for the dam, it has made him homeless. “Owing to the blasting, there are so many cracks in my house that it is not in a condition to live in. There are 20 of us in my family. We had to move to another person’s house during the monsoon,” says Chetri. “What’s even worse is that our farms are destroyed because the streams have dried up. We used to sell fruits and vegetables in the market. Now, there’s none for us to eat. The four District Collectors and the MLA have come and gone but no one has listened to us.”

Ever since the dam was constructed, Bhim Prasad Nepal had to give up farming and work as a labourer at a quarry. “This dam has destroyed Sikkim. Water used to spring out of the earth here. Now, it’s all gone – the trees, the farms, the grass. All the villages are hungry,” says Bhim Prasad. “This is the mango season. But there is no fruit. The flowers dry up because there is no water below.”

In Ralap 5 Mile, on the banks of the river, women complained that their homes were sinking. They have to walk several kilometres uphill in search of water after the streams have dried up. “If you ask for even a glass of water now, its difficult for people to get. People say that this dam is for our development. But we haven’t got anything from it, not even a single job. Just misery,” says Leila Chetri, a housewife.

The environmental clearance for Teesta 5 was given in May 1999 on the condition that “no other project in Sikkim will be considered for environmental clearance till the carrying capacity study of the Teesta basin is completed”. However, the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) violated its own condition, and cleared six projects even before the final carrying capacity study was submitted in August 2007.
Floods and landslides

It is a wonder how the MoEF cleared the dam projects after reading the carrying capacity report. The report recommends that there should be no large-scale development in the geologically sensitive and biodiversity-rich regions of north Sikkim because there is the danger of glacial lake outburst floods, massive landslides and flash floods. The report says that dam-building activities should not be carried out upstream of Chungthang, a town situated at the confluence of the Lachen and the Lachung Chu, tributaries of the Teesta, which is the starting point of the river. It is also a town imbued with Buddhist legend. Guru Padmasambhava, the revered founder of Tantric Buddhism in Tibet, is said to have rested here and left his footprint on a rock. There are seven projects planned north of Chungthang.

Considering that the Teesta basin is in an earthquake-prone area, the report also recommends more surveillance of seismic activity. It recommends small-scale projects south of Chungthang rather than large projects. The report also warns that the views of local communities should not be undermined or neglected. Besides warning about the dangers of dams, the carrying capacity report also focuses on local development measures such as reviving agriculture, organic farming and minor irrigation projects, infrastructure for floriculture, improving schools and health care facilities, protecting biodiversity and endemic species, and restricting commercial taxis.

Although scientists have warned about the dangers of the dams, the Sikkim government insists that they are harmless. “It is the most eco-friendly project. There is no pollution, only a little during the construction,” says an official from the Sikkim Energy and Power Ministry. “We have got all the environmental clearances from the Central government. These are not big dams, just small diversion dams. They are not within the Kanchenjunga National Park.” When asked if dams are dangerous in a seismically sensitive zone, the official said, “The entire Himalaya is a sensitive zone but the Central government has planned hundreds of dams across the mountain ranges, not only in Sikkim. No one can prove that people’s homes were damaged owing to the blasting. It could be for other reasons such as earthquakes or landslides.”

Though the Sikkim government’s newly formed Glacier & Climate Change Commission has initiated scientific studies on its melting glaciers, it has not factored in the effects that receding glaciers would have on the dams. “There’s no way the melting glaciers will affect the dam. Even if glacier water is not there, rainwater will feed the rivers,” says the official. His opinion contradicts international scientific opinion, which has warned of short-term flooding and the eventual drying of rivers owing to melting glaciers.

Local people have consented to the project, the official claimed. “All landholders have given up their land for the Teesta projects without any objection. We have acquired 40 hectares of land. There was no force. They willingly took the money,” he said. “We are willing to address the concerns raised by the ACT by ensuring that workers who work on the project live in colonies outside the Lepcha area so that they are not affected.”

Jung Bahadur Chetri from Singbel village. Chetri’s farm and house were affected by the blasting of rocks to build tunnels. His house has developed cracks and the streams that fed his farm are now dry.

When asked if the damage outweighs the benefits, he said, “We will get 12 per cent of the power, which we can use or sell for revenue. We need electricity. If people don’t want it, why are they sending their children to schools and colleges in the cities?”
But it is the students who are at the forefront of the ACT protest. The tunnels being built under the Teesta could kill the river basin. That is why these youth are risking their lives. They say they would rather choke on the tubes than let the tunnels destroy their sacred land.

Frontline, Jun. 07-20, 2008.

A historic opportunity to protect BC old growth forest, through new partnerships.

By Dionne Bunsha, 19 Aug 2013, TheTyee.ca

It has been 20 years since Clayoquot witnessed one of the biggest civil rights protests in Canada’s history against the logging of old growth forests. Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is one of British Columbia’s most popular tourist destinations, with white surf, long stretches of beaches and towering rainforests. In the summer of 1993, over 12,000 participated in the historic protests and more than 800 people were arrested. The protests were accompanied by an international campaign to boycott timber from B.C. Today, efforts to protect Clayoquot’s intact watersheds continue. The old growth forests haven’t yet been logged, but they are still not legally protected. Clayoquot Sound is considered important for conservation because it has some of the last remaining rare intact watersheds and old growth temperate rainforests in Vancouver Island.

 

Rapid sea invasion along the Gujarat coast is forcing families of fishermen to abandon the sea and their homes.

TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS BY DIONNE BUNSHA

 

Villagers with bricks retrieved from their old homes in Danti.

DANTI in Valsad district of Gujarat is being invaded. More than half the residents of this sleepy fishing village have fled already. It is not guns and troops that they are running away from. The sea they revere has swallowed up the village and is making them beat a retreat every year. Only the poorest remain on the edge of the village, with just a sea wall for protection. On one side of the wall are lashing waves. On the other are ramshackle, makeshift huts. No one here has permanent brick homes. They have to rebuild every year after the waters rush in over the wall. The sea knows no boundaries.

Govindbhai Tandel is the first to face its fury. His hut lies at the tip of the village, very close to the seafront, unprotected even by a stone wall. Govindbhai is back home after spending eight months away at sea on his fishing boat. He returns to Danti during the monsoon, when it is too rough to be out fishing. But there is no rest at home. His family is hard at work filling their porch with sand, trying to elevate the entrance to prevent the tide from coming in. There is not much they can do. Water will flood their home anyway. It is only an effort at damage control.

“We have moved back three kilometres in the last 20 years. Our original village was out there. You can’t even see it now,” says Govindbhai. “Three village wells have been submerged. We’ve relocated the school thrice. I’ve shifted home thrice so far. Can you see out there? That’s where my last house was,” he says pointing to a distant spot in the sea.

The village is long gone, but lives in memory. As we walked around the village, most people pointed to various landmarks – all in the water. Nostalgia is the only thing that remains. During low tide, the beach is a hive of activity. Families are hard at work, trying to salvage bricks from the ruins of their old homes.

On the seashore is a brick wall with an arch – the remnants of Damentiben Tandel’s house. “It broke three years ago. Since then, we have kept moving and rebuilding every year,” she says. “When the water comes in every monsoon, it’s knee-high. We have to put our kids on the roof in the pouring rain. We don’t have the money to buy land and move out, so we remain here.”

A road built two years ago near Kaladra village has been eroded. A sea wall (in the foreground) offered little protection.

There is often a lot of water in their homes, but not a drop to drink. “Our wells are in the sea. We get drinking water from the tap once every week or in 15 days. Otherwise, we have to buy water. Tempos come and supply water. It is Rs.30 a barrel, which lasts a day,” says Damentiben.

Danti is on the coast of south Gujarat, one of the most industrialised areas in the country. It is called the `Golden Corridor’, but has some of the country’s worst polluted spots such as Ankleshwar and Vapi. Dandi, the site of Mahatma Gandhi’s historic Salt March, is 12 km from Danti.

“The fish have gone further into the sea because of [industrial] pollution. And the water has come further in; so we have suffered. We can’t go very far in our tiny boats. We used to get 400 to 600 fish in one night. Now we barely get a hundred,” says Shantibhai Tandel, a small fisherman. He has shifted back six times and is now in his seventh house. “I want my kids to study. The only thing is we can’t afford donations for their education or bribes to get them a job. If they are lucky, they will find a job, otherwise they will have to stay here, continue fishing and face the hardships.” Sandwiched as they are between the sea and the saltpans, there is not much further they can retreat.

Many from the village have moved to other towns or to Dandi in the past eight years. But like Mahesh Hari Tandel, those who moved out for safety reasons still yearn for the sea. “My boat is still in Danti and I feel I have to go there every day,” he says. “When my father was alive, we shifted our house four times. After he died, our house broke twice and then we moved here. After we lost the mangroves in the last 15 to 20 years, many people had to migrate to big port towns like Mumbai, Porbandar or Veraval in search of work. Earlier, we could survive by fishing close to the shore and in the mangroves.”

The villagers along the coast are not sure why the sea is advancing at such a voracious pace. Some fishermen guessed it might be “because there are more storms in the sea”. One of the reasons could be a rise in sea level owing to global warming. They don’t know what global warming means, but have become “environmental refugees”.

Although they are barely surviving, the fisherfolk are facing the brunt of reckless consumption in more affluent places. Ironically, most of these villages have not been provided electric metres. People tap electricity from the power cables that run above their homes.

A house ravaged by the sea at New Kaladra in Bharuch district.

Geologists from M.S. University, Vadodara, are studying the Gujarat coastline as part of an all-India study by the Space Application Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). “Our preliminary observations reveal that the seawater has shifted in by 10-15 metres in 10 years, and at places it has moved around 80 metres horizontally,” says Dr. Nikhil Desai, who is heading the survey of the Gujarat coast. They are comparing recent satellite images with Survey of India maps prepared in the 1960s, and have observed that the contours of Gujarat’s coast are changing.

Several places along India’s 7,500 km-long coastline are experiencing similar erosion. In the Sunderbans, two islands have already vanished from the map, displacing 7,000 people. Twelve more islands are likely to go under owing to an annual 3.14 mm sea level rise, which will make 70,000 people refugees. Five villages in Orissa’s Bhitarkanika National Park, famous for the mass nesting of Olive Ridley turtles, have been submerged, and 18 others are likely to go under. India is one of 27 countries identified by the United Nations as the most vulnerable to the impact of global warming-related sea level rise.

Rising sea level

“Observations suggest that the sea level has risen at a rate of 2.5 mm a year along the Indian coastline since the 1950s. A mean sea level rise of between 15 cm and 38 cm is projected by the middle of the century along India’s coast. Added to this, a 15 per cent projected increase in intensity of tropical cyclones would significantly enhance the vulnerability of populations in cyclone-prone coastal regions,” according to Dr. Murari Lal, a renowned climatologist engaged in research related to climate change vulnerability analysis in India. Lal has been one of the lead authors of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports for over 15 years, which collates research about climate change from scientific work across the world.

Jayantibhai Rathod repairs his fishing net at New Kaladra, where he resettled after the fishing colony at Kaladra was submerged 15 years ago.

“No local studies have been done in India to measure the precise impact of global warming. But, in the last decade, several factors contributed to the loss of coastal land due to sea level rise,” says Murari Lal. “Arctic ice has melted three times faster than predicted by the IPCC in 2001. The sea level has risen twice more than projected by the climate models. Stronger surface winds and storms have resulted in higher waves, which reach further inland. Human interventions, such as the removal of mangroves, reclamation and construction along the coast, have also led to faster erosion of the coast.”

“Sea rise due to global warming could be just one of the reasons for the erosion along the Gujarat coast,” says Desai. “Local factors could also be responsible. Neo-tectonic activity – shifts in the level of the seabed – could also cause the sea level to rise. If there are disturbances in sediment budgeting along the coast, the amount of deposits from rivers, it could also affect the water level.” Their study will determine which of these reasons is driving the changes along the coast.

Further north, at the estuary of the river Narmada, Kaladra village in Bharuch district is also being nibbled away by the sea. Several houses are broken and hanging on the edge of a cliff of sand that threatens to cave in at any point. A sea wall built 20 years ago is now a relic of the past. A road constructed two years ago (at a cost of Rs.30 lakh) has been cut like a cake by the lashing waves. “The poorest are the most directly affected by this. Most families here are in a dilemma. They can’t afford to shift but they cannot stay here either,” said Desai.

Children help in raising the level of Govindbhai Tandel’s house in Danti as the family braces itself for the onslaught of the monsoon.

Kaladra too has been almost abandoned. The Rathod fishing colony here was washed away some 20 years ago. The fisherfolk resettled in “New Kaladra”, a little higher up the estuary, but their houses are still temporary. Here too, there is no escape from the advancing water. “For around six days every monsoon, the water is waist deep. Then, we bring our boats to the doorstep and fill all our stuff in it,” says Jayantibhai Rathod, a fisherman.

When fishermen are forced to run away from the sea and they do not want their sons to continue their trade, it is time to start worrying. “This is a land of sand so you can never tell when it will shift,” says Shantibhai Tandel.

A view of an eroded road in Kaladra.

“We will keep moving back as far as we can. Then, it’s in the hands of destiny.” It is total surrender to the forces of nature. But how much of Nature’s fury has been because of the recklessness of other people? The residents of Danti and Kaladra are too busy surviving the onslaught of the sea to dwell on the actions of others. It is the last thing on their minds as they sit on their rooftops in the pouring rain.

Frontline, Jul. 14-27, 2007

 

 

Farmers are killing themselves in Gujarat. 

DIONNE BUNSHA

Amreli, Gujarat

“Gujarat’s farmers aren’t like those in other states. Our farmers drive Maruti cars,” chief minister Narendra Modi declares in his speeches at public meetings. If he met the widows of farmers in Gujarat who have committed suicide, he would probably choke on his words.

Prabhaben Pungalpara was at her sister’s house when her husband Ramesh hung himself from a noose and ended his misery. He probably sent her there to soften the blow. Ramesh’s relatives rushed him to Rajkot hospital but it was too late. Now, Prabhaben’s nightmare was about to begin. “I have two girls and a boy. We will have to manage somehow. I sold off our two buffaloes after he died. My son has gone to Surat to work in a diamond polishing workshop. Ramesh’s brothers have taken care of us,” says Prabhaben from Sarapdar village.

Ramesh and his four brothers have a 20–acre farm. “Our cotton and jeera crop failed for two years, so he was very tense,” said his brother Amarsibhai. But the police report says that he killed himself because of a family dispute. “The first police report said that he died because his crop failed, but later the police changed the story,” says Prabhaben. “They told me ‘you have such a big house, there must be some other reason for the suicide. If we give compensation in one case, people will start killing themselves and we will have to give them all’. The police just want to suppress the case.”

“If the government can help Maharashtra’s widows, then why can’t they help women in Gujarat?” asks Prabhaben. Maybe because it would shatter the chief minister’s delusions? Across Gujarat farmers’ suicides are either unreported or wrongly reported.

 

Pahubhai Dakhada, 35, preferred death to a life of debt. His suicide didn’t make it to the government’s records. Photo: Dionne Bunsha

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By uprooting Bt rice trials in Tamil Nadu, farm activists and Greenpeace have stirred up the debate on GM food testing. And they have support from unlikely quarters – rice exporters.

DIONNE BUNSHA

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Organic farming is not the only solution to the problems contributing to the farm crisis. However, it is the only one within the farmer’s control.

DIONNE BUNSHA

in Wardha, Maharashtra

 WITHIN THEIR CONTROL: Farmers can get the same or a better yield without spending on pesticide and fertilizer. Photo: Dionne Bunsha Read more

Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had a rather unusual bunch of visitors last week – Greenpeace protesters dressed up as sheep and cattle, who camped outside his office. The “animals” were asking for an investigation into the death of 1,600 head of cattle and sheep in Andhra Pradesh in April 2006. The deaths were closely linked to prolonged consumption of Bt cotton stalks and leaves that were left in fields after the harvest.
Bt cotton is the only genetically modified (GM) seed sold in India. In the four years since it has been in use, not only has it failed to live up to its claim of being a `miracle seed’, but it has also had harmful effects on biosafety.

At a time when the safety of Bt cotton is highly suspect, the government’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) is considering clearance of large-scale field trials of Bt Brinjal. It is the first time that GM Brinjal is being released for an advanced stage of field trials in open conditions anywhere in the world. It is also the closest India has got to sanctioning GM food crops.

If cleared, it will be the first time that the GEAC allows large-scale field trials for GM food crops. Such field trials could lead to the uncontrolled release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, which could contaminate normal varieties of the crop. Japan and several European countries have banned cultivation of GM food crops. But India is allowing it entry without taking adequate precautions.
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