Will Sparrows Ever Return

E.A.S.Sarma Will the sparrow ever return? www.salimalifoundation.org “O Troupe of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words” “Stray Birds” by Rabindranath Tagore E.A.S.Sarma 1 E.A.S.Sarma I dedicate this book to my granddaughter, Tara and her generation, hoping that what we collectively think and do today, will ensure for them a future that is benign 2 E.A.S.Sarma About the author Dr. E.A.S.Sarma was a member of the Indian Administrative Service from 1965 to 2000. He opted for voluntary retirement from the government in 2000. He was Principal, Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad from 2001 to 2004. He has settled down at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh (AP). He is presently the Convener of Forum for Better Visakha (FBV), an unregistered civil society forum set up in 2004. The Forum is engaged in promoting Right to Information Act, 2005 in the State. It is also involved in an election watch campaign and promotion of good governance in the offices of the State Government and the local authorities. FBV has been active in articulating the interests of the tribals, the fishing communities and the disadvantaged sections of the people living in the rural and the urban areas. For the last seven years, FBV has been associated closely with civil society movements in AP and elsewhere against projects that deprive the people's livelihoods, violate the laws and damage the environment. 3 E.A.S.Sarma Contents No. Chapter Page Preface 5 Acknowledgements 9 1 Where has the sparrow disappeared? 10 2 The urban contagion: The case of Vizag 15 3. The impending water crisis 34 4 Ecology under threat, livelihoods in peril 48 5 Assault on the commons: The saga of 64 Sompeta 6 More ash, more pollution, more livelihoods 74 lost 7 Nuclear power; unclear risks 89 8 Is India’s environment safe? 109 9 Environment vs. Development: The debate 119 10 Will the sparrow ever return? 128 Picture 1: Sambhuvanipalem Reservoir; A satellite image 131 Picture 2: Sambhuvanipalem Reservoir prior to damage 132 Picture 3: Sambhuvanipalem reservoir after damage 133 Picture4: A thermal power project site in Kakarapalli 134 Wetland References 135 Abbreviations 136 Glossary 138 4 E.A.S.Sarma Preface When my granddaughter found me giving final touches to the manuscript of this book, she rightly thought that I was writing about one of her favourite birds, the sparrow. Being fond of poetry, she quickly scribbled the following lines to express her genuine feeling for the sparrow. I am happy So I can sing My eyes are bright Like a diamond ring “A sparrow's words” by Tara Sarma Tara even drew the following picture of the singing sparrow, hoping it will continue to feel happy and sing for ever. The “sparrow” in this book symbolises the ecology and the environment of India. Like the sparrow which is fast disappearing, the environment too faces a serious threat in India today. The sparrow may not remain happy for long, nor is it going to sing for ever, considering the wanton destruction that we, the human beings, have already inflicted on the nature in most parts of our country. 5 E.A.S.Sarma The development policy in India is heavily tilted in favour of the urban elite. The divide between the rural and the urban societies is widening rapidly. In search of livelihoods, thousands of the rural poor are constantly migrating to the towns and the cities. Though they contribute significantly to the building of the towns and the cities, they are condemned to lead marginal lives in the slums that offer them no shelter, no sanitation and no basic human rights. In the recent times, in the name of development, tilted once again in favour of the urban elite, the rulers have started displacing thousands of farmers, agricultural workers and fishermen to accommodate several ill conceived industrial projects in the rural areas. This has worsened the plight of the villagers and compounded the already acute problem of migration of people to the urban areas. While these industrial projects have caused displacement of the people, they have also robbed them of their community lands and polluted their environment beyond any repair. On the other hand, the urban explosion that is taking place is simultaneously destroying the natural assets all around. It is like a carcinogenic disease that seems to have no ready cure. This book, based on real life stories, describes the growing threat to the environment in India from many directions, the human trauma that envelops it and the apathy with which the government has so far dealt with it. If this state of affairs is allowed to continue any longer, we will surely be robbing our grandchildren of their basic right to breathe clean air, drink unpolluted water and live in a clean environment. We will be destroying the delicately poised biodiversity of the planet, spelling a certain disaster for the human race itself. To reverse these trends, we need to revisit the paradigm of development we have adopted, learn to respect the way the local communities visualise what development should mean and appreciate the close relationship that binds the people to the environment that surrounds them. I have chosen to place this book in the public domain through my own personal website, rather than through any established publishing house, for a specific reason. Publishing houses seem to act as filters, adding their own tint to the work of the author, taking away to some extent, the originality and the spontaneity of the text. I have had hilarious experiences with the publishers with whom I have initially tried my luck. One publishing house rejected my manuscript straight 6 E.A.S.Sarma away saying that, as a matter of policy; it would not publish any work on medicine! The readers will soon realise that this book addresses anything but medicine. I suppose that this particular publisher had far too many manuscripts on hand to be able to distinguish between medicine and environment! Another publisher said that the manuscript was too short in length, less than 55,000 words, to deserve its grand appearance in the form of a published book. I never thought that the length or the size of the book should really matter. Another publisher took my breath away by describing my book as “fiction”! I wish that some of the human trauma I have described in this book proved to be truly fictitious! These entertaining brushes I had with the publishing houses made me look for an easier alternative as this one of placing it on my website. While I was about to finalise the manuscript, several new developments took place that had a bearing on what I wrote. Some of these developments have further reinforced the apprehensions I had expressed in the first draft. The State deployed coercive action at Kakarapalli in Andhra Pradesh to quell the local community's protests against a coal-based power plant. Two lives were lost in the incident which the State could have readily avoided had it heeded to the people's entreaties. While the rulers of India were aggressively pushing forward their grandiose scheme of nuclear development, against the fears and apprehensions voiced by the local communities at the receiving end, a severe quake followed by a devastating tsunami hit Japan, causing a nuclear emergency that was widely witnessed by millions of TV watchers in India. As the events in Japan are slowly unfolding, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the technology associated with the nuclear power plants is so risk prone that such accidents could have taken place even in the absence of a quake or a tsunami. The history of nuclear accidents in Japan and elsewhere bears ample testimony to this. I sincerely hope that aggression will soon yield place to circumspection in the minds of those that seem to be dead set on littering the Indian landscape with nuclear power plants. It is high time that we realise that technologies should not be allowed to drive the nations and their people. It is the people that should dictate the terms to the technologists. The State should stand on the side of its people, not on the side of the private interests. 7 E.A.S.Sarma I have tried to update the book with whatever that has happened in the recent past. I hope that several people, all over the world, will wade through these pages. I hope that what I have stated in these pages will trigger a collective effort within the civil society to mobilise the public opinion against the monoculture of “development” that our rulers have unleashed on us, without much public consultation and thought. I hope that this book will facilitate, in its own modest way, a thought process that will persuade our rulers to revisit the definition of development so as to render it more people friendly and environmentally benign. I hope that the sparrow will finally return, as a result of such a collective effort on the part of the civil society! E.A.S.Sarma [email protected] [email protected] Website: http://eassarma.in Visakhapatnam April 6th 2011 8 E.A.S.Sarma Acknowledgements I wish to thank the thousands of the people who have been a part of this real life story on how they resisted the policies that tend to destroy the country's environment and deprive the people's livelihoods. But for their active involvement, this process of environmental degradation would have continued unabated.

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