Letters

Chilika lures

Uday Shankar's article (Down To Earth, August 31, 1992) highlights the problems confronting Chilika, the country's largest brackish-water lake. Though there appears to be a greater degree of awareness of environmental concerns, many have jumped on the bandwagon to make a quick buck.

Fish exports to Calcutta commenced around the 1930s and gained momentum during the Second World War. Even in those days, concern was expressed at the steadily declining fish catch, attributed to unscientific fishing practices, inadequate processing and transport facilities and exploitation of fisherfolk by traders. Cooperatives were organised but many fisherfolk undermined these efforts by selling their catch on the lake and away from designated landing centres, to unscrupulous traders.

Around this time, a refrigerated railway van was run to Calcutta but this, too, led to corrupt practices: baskets half-filled with ice at Chilika would reach Calcutta full of fish, obviously pilfered from other baskets by attendants whose palms were greased.

Even without the Ramsar convention and the Chilika Development Authority, the fragility of the lake's ecosystem was apparent decades ago. The article states WAPCOS does not have the expertise to clear the Tata prawn farming project. Was this not known before the job was entrusted to WAPCOS?

Chilika's reported connection to the sea by the Palur Canal is at variance with the IRS-1A satellite photo. The link closed up long ago, but there is talk of reopening it. Certainly there is an opening at Magarmukh, but this also keeps shifting and its width keeps varying. Nalbano was not an island then; it was a shallow portion of the lake used extensively for fish and prawn trapping. Kalijai was an island that was home to migratory birds.

The grouse of Magarmukh villagers against motorised boats goes back three decades when the only boat with an outboard motor would operate for just one week each month. On one occasion the villagers cut the engine's fuel line and left a warning note under a stone along with a piece of ginger, implying they would crush anyone who brought in a motorised boat just as the ginger had been crushed. This led to an amusing incident once. A complaint was registered at the nearest police station, Brahmagiri, and a police posse descended on the village. Naturally, they had to be feasted on chicken and illicit liquor. From then on, the villagers tolerated the outboard motor, realising it was a lesser evil and much less expensive!

The price of tiger prawn has shot up in the last 35 years. India started discovering the lucrative seafood export market in the late 1950s and traders slowly established themselves on the Chilika. The rest is history.

S RAJAN, Thapar Corporate Research & Development Centre, Patiala ...

Source of inspiration

We at the Indonesian Forum for Environment look forward to information, unique insights and valuable analyses with each issue of Down To Earth. Your magazine is a source of inspiration to us. Congratulations on your success.

SANDRA MONIAGA, Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia, Jakarta ...

Misplaced credit

I would like to clarify two points regarding the article "Liberalisation whets shopper's appetite" by N Bhaskara Rao (Down To Earth, January 15, 1993).

All data in the article about the consumer product market are from studies carried out by Operations Research Group. You refer to Rao as the founder of ORG; the fact is Rao joined ORG when it was more than a decade old.

C RADHAKRISHNAN, Operations Research Group, Baroda ...

Women's needs neglected

The article "Scarred by violence and fundamentalism" (Down To Earth, January 31, 1993) necessarily addresses the women-as-targets approach in family planning. However, it neglects the contraceptive needs of women as individuals.

I also oppose its contention that contraceptives such as Norplant have been introduced using women as guinea pigs. All contraceptives have side-effects, some of them admittedly severe. The problem with hormone substitution is that it may cause menstrual patterns to change. However, this is reversible and, therefore, not dangerous.

JOHANNE SUNDBY, Directorate of Health/NORAD, Oslo ...

Cost of liberalisation

Wanting to test the effects of the new economic policy, Voluntary Agency for Social Action undertook a case study in Thirupathipalem village in Andhra Pradesh's Srikakulam district. Almost all the farms there are less than one hectare and agricultural labourers earn about Rs 13 a day.

In 1991, the farmers paid Rs 185 for a 45-kg bag of phosphate and Rs 120 for a bag of nitrate, potash or urea. They sold whatever paddy they could spare at Rs 240 a bag.

By the 1992 rabi season, the liberalisation policy had been instituted and the cost of phosphate rose to Rs 350 per bag; nitrate and potash, to Rs 200 per bag, and urea, to Rs 160. But the farmers could sell their paddy in February 1993 for just Rs 235 per bag. In other words, the cost of fertilisers rose by upto 100 per cent, but the price of paddy dropped by about 2 per cent. Liberalisation may have benefitted buyers of luxury goods, but none of them is from Thirupathipalem, for not one of its 3,000 residents owns a refrigerator or an air conditioner.

JACOB RAO, VASA, Vishakhapatnam ...

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