Fisherfolk walk of out public hearing on Bhadbhut project, say it would adversely affect their livelihood

Officials at the public hearing

Gujarat government-sponsored environmental public hearing for the proposed Rs 4,000 crore Bharbhut barrage project on river Narmada’s mouth in Bharuch district has proved to a non-starter. While as many as 1,500 farmers and fisherfolk turned up to attend the hearing on July 19, they all walked out, en mass, soon after sharply registering their protest against the proposed project as “anti-people”. The walkout took place immediately after Pravin Tandel, the fisherfolks’ local leader, spoke saying the project would “adversely affect the fish catch, especially Hisla, once the it is implemented.”
Much against the official view that the Hisla catch was on decline, and one need not worry on this score, as found reflected in the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, prepared by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, a Government of India undertaking, the fishermen said this was an incorrect assessment based on efforts to undermine fishery activities on the mouth of the river and beyond. “Currently, Hisla fetches Rs 1,200 per kg, and is our main source of livelihood. To say that fishing is a side activity is a misnomer”, said Tandel.
In fact, the fishermen said, there is even “underestimation on the number of the families dependent on fishing activities.” While the EIA report – on which the public hearing took place – spoke of very few fishing boats, hence there was nothing to worry, the fishermen told the officials present on the occasion that they could well come and see how many fishing boats were there to find out the number of people involved in fish catch. “The officials or the NEERI experts have never cared to interact with the fishermen. They are telling a lie that they have”, said Tandel.
Demanding that NEERI should be “barred” from preparing such “false reports”, the fishermen walked out of the pandal, where the public hearing was taking place, no sooner NEERI officials, backed by Gujarat government officials, stood up to speak. The popular mood was strong – that the barrage was being built to help industry. The NEERI report says, of the 500 million cubic metres (MCM) of water to be made available once the barrage is built, 200 MCM would go to the industries in Dahej and other nearby areas, while 60 MCM for drinking water and merely 10 MCM for irrigation.

Environmentalists wonder why is Bhadbhut not part of Kalpasar project

Meanwhile, two top environmental organizations, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) and Paryavaran Mitra have come down heavily on NEERI’s EIA report, saying its objectives are unclear. In fact, both the organizations have particularly stressed that the NEERI report quietly ignores the Bhadbhut project’s links with the Kalpasar project, which is proposed as a huge sweet water lake by damming the Gulf of Khambhat.

Nowhere does the report state that its main aim is to provide water, through a canal, to supply water to the lake. “NEERI should have also questioned as to why is this small part of the larger Kalpsar project is applying for such piecemeal clearances, which is actually in violation of Supreme Court orders”, says Himanshu Thakkar of SANDRP in a report.

Based on this, Paryavaran Mitra said, Bhadbhut should be cleared as part of Kalpasar, and a separate clearance should not be allowed. A few days back, in a strongly-worded letter to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board, under whose auspices the hearing took place at Bhadbhut, Paryavaran Mitra drew attention to the fact that the organization’s volunteers went to the region where the project was sought to be implemented.

During their interaction the NGOs’ volunteers got the impression that “the affected people in the project impact area were surveyed rather than consulted. In fact, local people said the state government officials did not have any direct meeting with them, nor was any public announcement made for holding such meetings. Clearly, small fishermen were ignored during consultation, and this is a massive complaint about the project.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog