BATHED in a halo of neon and sodium lights, Port Blair
looks very attractive at night. For a few undiscerning
moments, you are impressed by the fruits of development. But
it's not long before the effect wears off, revealing the sordid
picture underneath.
The entire town draws its electric fuel from diesel generators, much of which is used up in lighting the bungalows of vips and pleasure spots such as the water sports complex: The public, in the meantime, has to willy-nilly put up with power rationing.
The picture assumes an even more ridiculous angle when
one reckons the economics of generating this power: it costs
the government about Rs 6 per unit, but is sold at a mere Re I
per unit. And cheap electricity is just one of many subsidies the
government pampers the public with. Going by one guestimate by Samir Acharya, founder of the NGO called Society for
Andaman & Nicobar Ecology (SANE), the total subsidy per
capita in the islands couldn't be less than Rs 15,000 (compared
to the per capita income of India which is only Rs 6,000).
The Andaman archipelago hides many such absurdities.
And perhaps nothing illustrates this propensity for
procrastination and inefficiency more forcefully than the
story of the decline of the Island Development Authority
(IDA). Set up in 1986 at the behest of the former prime
minister, Rajiv Gandhi, IDA was supposed to come up with an
integrated environmentally sound development strategy
for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Am).
In all fairness to IDA, It did come up with such a strategy in
1986 under the chairmanship of M G K Menon. But whatever
became of the report? Uhat tangible contribution has IDA
made to the development process of the islands and what is its
relevance today? To seek answers to these questions, probably
the best thing would be to compare IDA's 1986 development
strategy for the ANi with the changing contours of AM's development scenario.
In the area of agriculture, the island more or less remains
where it was a decade ago. The archipelago is still dependent
on the mainland for all its food requirements - rice, potatoes,
onions, tomatoes, chillies, you name it. And with rising prices,
the food subsidy per capita has also gone up substantially.
Furthermore, the state of agriculture remains way behind
the times. The local farmers clear the forests to plant crops,
which makes the soil less fertile and less firmly bonded to the
earth. So with more forests being cleared for cultivation, soil
erosion is as rampant as before. To make matters worse, the
soil conservation scheme of the agricultural department has
had little effect.
The problem is further compounded by excessive use of
pesticides and fertilisers. As a result, when the rains arrive, the
clayey topsoil mingles with the rainwater and drains into the
sea, carrying along toxic fertilisers and pesticides. As a consequence, the surrounding sea gets choked with sand and the
marine life poisoned with fertilisers and pesticides. The surrounding colonies of dead corals underline the gravity of the situation. Yet, there is little effort to popularise organic farming using manure or earthworms or blue green algae.
The government's fascination for monoculture is intriguing, considering that it is slowly destroying the fertility of the
soil. The Port Blair-based Central Agricultural Research
Institute (CARI), for instance, has found that in all typeg of
monoculture, such as palm oil plantations, the calcium carbonate content has decreased at an alarming rate. The severe
erosion has also resulted in preferential removal of organic
matter and clay. Says A K Bandopadhyay, director Of CARI,
"The soils under natural regeneration, lost 0.74 per cent
organic carbon whereas in a similar watershed but under a
monoculture, the loss was 1.7 per cent for groundmit and
2.18 per cent for paddy. The micronutrients, such as manganese, have also gone below critical limits."
Unfortunately, in ANI, a lot of problems faced by
farmers are not taken up as priorities for research. Says
Bandopadhyay, "A case in point is the viability of irrigation
ponds and their real impact on the expansion of area under
irrigation and productivity of land. Another case is the impact
of soil conservation works on controlling soil and water erosion and improvement of productivity. Often the research
conducted in these areas may not be relevant to
the local needs and problems."
The government has also made little effort
to involve local communities, credit marketing
societies and banks to persuade farmers to
adopt innovative technologies, such as water-shed technology. As a consequence, says Bandopadhyay, more and more area is being
brought under traditional agriculture in a
manner detrimental to the environment.
Lack of sensible policies is also hindering the
growth of healthy agriculture. For instance, all
the allotted hilly lands have not been utilised by
the settlers. Presently, they have only non-occupancy rights on them. They can get occupancy
rights only after they develop the land allotted to
them. But to develop these lands needs a lot of
money - first they have to clear the forest and'
then plant fruits and other plantation crops.
Explains Bandopadhyay, " As long as credit is not available
to the landowners, they will not be able to develop these lands
scientifically. And credit will not be available to the settlers as
long as they are not in a position to mortgage their hilly lands.
Because credit is not easily available, these lands are being cultivated in an environment-unfriendly manner."
The persistence of these problems only displays the brilliance and wisdom with which the Andaman administration
and IDA have sought to resolve the complex problems of
Andaman's development.
Despite government strictures on clearing of forests, deforestation continues unabated, often at the connivance of and in
collusion with forest officials. Besides, given the strength of the
forest department, it is well-nigh impossible to check intruders from felling trees. In fact, all along the Andaman Trunk
Road, which cuts through the dense forests of middle and
southern Andaman islapds, one is impressed to
see dense tree cover on either side of the road.
"But," says Samir Achar)@, "go a little inside the
forest and you will discover large pockets of
land cleared of vegetation 'by the settlers."
"So long as the forest department is expected to earn revenue from the forests and not looked upon as their protectors, deforestation
will not stop nor will the nexus between timber
merchants and forest rangers," warns John
Lobo, a retired deputy conservator of forests.
Lobo has even made a controversial
estimate that the forest cover in ANI may have gone down
from 86 ppr cent to about 75 per cent. If one looks at the
pattern of rainfall decadewise, Lobo's figures may not
look so implausible. For instance, at Mayabunder in
Middle Andaman the average for 1981-90 is 2376.3 mm
compared to 2902.7 mm in 1951-60. At Car Nicobar it is
2804.7 min in 1951-60 compared to 2634.6 mm in 1981-90.
This decline, says Lobo, could be attributed to the fast decreasing green cover.
Furthermore, rainforests continue to be cleared for agricultural purposes. Bandopadhyay believes it is nothing short
of an ecological disaster for the established system. The ultimate effect of deforestation is the degradation of soil which is
the "soul of the humid tropical ecosystem." Degradation in
certain areas is so severe that the soils have become completely barren, says the cARi director.
Here again, the AM administration and iDA have cut a sorry figure.
Tourism is perhaps the only industry that can earn the ANI
administration some revenue. But it is also a subject of heated
controversy because of its impact on the islands' ecology. The
two actors in this debate are the environmentalists and the ANI
administration. While the latter, it appears, wants to develop
the islands modelled on Phuket (in Thailand) and Barbados,
the former is totally opposed to it. The government, however,
is going ahead with its plans of promoting island tourism in a
big way - regattas, five-star hotels, golf courses, beach resorts,
and so on. This, argue the environmentalists, is bound to put
pressure on the d1ready strained resources of these islands.
This brings us to the vexed question of the
carrying capacity of the islands. Carrying capacity
is defined in terms of that population whose
living does not lead to irreparable environmental
damage. This figure for the islands varies from
0.3 million to 0.85 million based on different formula of calculation. The latter figure, however, is a
widely accepted value.
The islands had already crossed the critical figure of 0.3 million in 1986. IDA had then urged the
government to check the invasion of settlers in the
islands, but apparently people from the mainland
continue to stream into ANI without much hassle.
Says Acharya, "These figures are at best
guesstimates. Nobody has really calculated the
ecological cost of sustaining such large human m8
numbers. What's even more irritating is that
government still hasn't come up with a plan to @12
check the immigration to the islands."
The population stress is already beginning to tell on
the resources of the islands. For example, over the past bne
year, 32,000 il@etric tonnes of foodgrains and 3,000 metric
tormes of sugar was brought from the mainland and almost
the entire population is covered under the Public Distribution
System.
Furthermore, over the past few years, the traffic between
Port Blair and the mainland has increased manifold due to
unchecked migration of people from the mainland, commercial activities and tourists. And the existing transport facilities
are just not enough to take this load. So there is always a shortage of tickets, both maritime and airlines.
Population increase has also put tremendous pressure
on water and power resources. The entire power requirement
of these islands is met by 30 diesel-based power houses,
which generate electricity upto 30 mw. And of late, there have
been power cuts for at least an hour every night. Likewise, a
few months before the monsoon, Port Blair is plunged into a
water crisis! - households get water for half an hour every
alternate day.
The use of Polythene bags has increased tremendously in
recent years. Since there is no industry for recycling such waste
materials, plastics are going to pose a serious threat to marine
ecosystems.
Another environmental hazard posed by population pressure is building construction. The largescale removal of sand
from different beaches for construction purposes has resulted
in the disappearance of goo4 beaches and the destruction of
traditional nesting sites of sea turtles and many other marine
animals such as the dugong, or sea cow.
Ironically, an analysis of 'the past 10 years' data indicates
that there was no substantial Ocrease in foreign tourists until
1993 and out of 40,000 touri4s only 2,500 were foreigners,
which the ANi administration says are their major target. This
only exposes the shortsightedness of government policies.
Going by IDA's projections maae in 1986, ANi should have had
15,000 tourists by 1991.
These are some of the mo?e glaring failures of the government policies. There are several others that only bolster the
inefficient image of the administration. For example, government departments still complain of paucity of staff. The forest
department is certainly very poorly staffed and equipped to
guard over the scattered forests of the islands. Likewise, the
Tourism: the cure that could kill
Zoological Survey of India has just two scientists for surveying
the entire archipelago. The 'Botanical Survey of India, the
Geological Survey of India, and the Anthropological Survey of
India (ASI) all face the same problem.
The result: you can only guess as to how many endemic
species, both flora and fauna, are surviving and how many are
extinct on the islands today. There is very little attempt to preserve and catalogue the traditional knowledge, skills, language,
and customs of the various ANI tribes.
Yet another instance of the government's stupid
ways is the inept handling of the settler-tribe
conflict. By allowing people to settle along the
Andaman Trunk road, which cuts through territory belonging to the Jarawas, a fierce Andaman tribe, the government has unleashed
a never-ending war between them and the
Jarawas. And the constant confrontation
with the settlers has changed the Jarawa lifestyle
for the worse - they now raid the settler camps
for liquor and tobacco.
Furthermore, despite anthropologists'
advice to leave these tribes
alone, the government has continued its
policy of "civilising" the primAive tribes., In a recent tourism
fair held in Port Blair, the ASj displayed a photograph of an Onge
(another tribe) couple proudly displaying a medley of modem consumer products, implying, quite insensibly, that these people have been "civilised".
One can endlessly stretch this litany of
charges against
the governmenf.-The actions of IDA and the AM
administration leaves a lot to be desired in areas like
education, employment, industry and preservation of
dlife. It's at once comic and tragic - comic
because one can't help laughing at the humpty-
dumpty style of government functioning
and tragic because it
might ruin one of the
world's last surviving pristine rainforests.
But what do IDA officials have to say about
these, accusations? Not
much, unfortunately-
For one, most the old members of this body
have gone elsewhere and the new ones are
reluctant to talk about it.
They even refused to divulge the various studies conducted by IDA
during the past decade, saying they were confidential.
Nevertheless, many confided that IDA
was now a more or less defunct body, especially
after the death of Rajiv
Gandhi, who took a personal interest in these islands.
Says N G Nair, deputy advisor with IDA,
IDA's role in the develdpment of
these islands has been largely advisory. We carried out studies
and based on thestudies we made certain recommendations to the
various central ministries. Our job ended:there. After this, it
was between the ministriesand the ANI administration to implement
those recommendations.
What has changed between.now and then is
That earlier our counsel was taken seriously, now
Nobody cares."
Nair's statement is borne out by the actions
of the AM
administration. For instance, last
year it cleared a project to
culture European
fishes in Andaman waters, despite a ministry
of environment and forests' injunction not to
do it. Likewise, it
recently allowed some developers to build resorts right on the
beach, thus violating the coastal zone regulations. The
administration has also been organising regattas for the past two
years, indiscriminately giving permission to the participants to
dive around several islands. Says Acharya, "What'
is irksome is that
none of the actions of any
of these groups are monitored for any
illegal activity."
It seems not a little intriguing why IDA is still
there. Either give it more teeth or scrap it.
But that's not how
the government works. As
in Kafka's novels, it will one day
disappear of
its own. Till that happens, it will keep reminding us
that islands in the sun are also the
most fragile.
12jav.net12jav.net
We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.