|
Extracted
from The Rediff Special /Bittu Sahgal
Bittu Sahgal edits Sanctuary magazine and is one of
India's bestknown writers on environmental issues.
 Bittu
Sahgal reflects on the state of the Indian environment
on World Environment Day
The United Nations has declared June 5, of each year
as World Environment Day. This is when politicians plant
trees. Kids get a chance to express their love for the
earth. And writers like me are cast between optimism
(thanks to the kids I interact with) and pessimism (thanks
to the over-40s).
My
darkest pessimism is, of course, reserved for that new
breed of environmentalists who believe they can sup
with the devil and dine with angels. I refer to the
multitude of World Bank NGO consultants who want us
to believe that taking money from the Colombian drug
mafia (or the World Bank) to start drug rehab clinics
(or environmental actions) is not just possible but
actually advisable.
This
lot is bent on destroying the very fabric of India's
environmental ethic. Ranged against them are the Medha
Patkars, Sunderlal Bahugunas and Baba Amtes of the world.
But
hang on. There is this notion that people on the Net
are not interested in serious issues... Only fluff.
I don't buy that. I think that people who have a choice
will make thinking decisions and there is almost no
fraternity that exercises choice more fully and frequently
than surfers. So, here goes. If you are looking for
"entertainment" stop right here. What follows
is the farthest thing from escape you ever imagined.
My
work revolves around trying to make a renegade system
accountable. Accountable to us today and to a new crop
of people who are waiting in the wings to take charge.
Between scams and manipulations, frankly, all of us
have had the stuffing knocked out of our optimism. Forgive
me, therefore, if I desist from "celebrating"
World Environment Day:
I
know enough about the fall of nations to understand
that a house divided is a soft target. This is what
India is fast becoming -- a house divided. Not because
of our different religions, colours, castes and creeds,
but because some of us have begun to corner the resources
of the majority. In the race to seek more and ever more
comforts, around 100 million of us have begun to affect
the stability, security and livelihoods of more than
900 million compatriots whose resources have become
the raw materials for our lifestyles.
The
ecological stability of our subcontinent is on the brink.
Neither water nor food supplies are any longer secure
for millions of Indian citizens. These have not vanished
on their own. They have been snatched in what would
have been considered an act of war had the transaction
been across an international border. The affected rural
communities are understandably angry and sullen, dry
tinder for anyone wishing to destabilise India.
Punjab,
Kashmir, Assam, the central Naxal belt. All these were
once relatively peaceful parts of our nation. A contributory
cause for their descent to violence has been the erosion
of the life-support system of communities -- clean water,
fertile soil, forest supplies such as fuel, fibre and
fodder... And, of course, food.
Not
the food in the public distribution system, but rather
that which was available from village ponds, rivers,
pastures, forest fruit-trees and marginal fields. Who
took away these community resources? Militants in the
guise of economists and planners who believed that social
and human rights can and should be subjugated to the
`imperatives' of their brand of development.
I
predict that over the next decade the arena of violence
will shift from Punjab, J&K and Assam, to coastal
India. Here, millions of once-self-sufficient communities
are rapidly becoming marginalised with neither food,
jobs, nor livelihoods at their disposal. Caught in a
pincer between injustice and deprivation their young
men and women flirt with RDX and smuggled contraband.
As we foolishly create violent ribbons of instability
along our 6,000-km coastline we must decide whether
we are really prepared to 'do battle' against scores
of communities upon whom we foist intrusions such as
the Enron project?
Rich
coastal habitats in Kutch, Maharashtra, Dakshin Kannada,
Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West
Bengal, which once supported millions have been taken
over or degraded by a lethal cocktail of petroleum complexes,
copper smelters, highways, ports, thermal plants, mines,
urban complexes, prawn farms and five star hotels. While
degrading the lives of fisherfolk, these profit a tiny
fragment and throw a few jobs to a slightly wider circle.
For
the vast millions, however, hunger and displacement
is the almost immediate result. Pushed beyond any limits
of endurance the affected coastal communities drift
to urban slums. Not in search of the good life, but
of life itself. Since they do not talk like us, look
like us, or even think like us, we actively seem to
hate them! Why else would we demolish their huts, make
them pay 100 times more for water than we do and routinely
deny them the benefits of our police and our justice
systems?
Thus
do we create the tinder for all kinds of social unrest.
Trapped in air-conditioned homes, cars and offices,
we miss or pretend not to recognise this recipe for
the destabilisation of Indian society. The evidence
has been there for us to see for quite some time, but
the politicisation of the bureaucracy and the criminalisation
of politics has conspired to cloud it.
Like
a cancer, the double barrels of ecological degradation
and injustice have set us against ourselves. India is
consuming India. This is the true message that the environmental
movement seeks to communicate to planners and citizens
at large. Can we alter this dark destiny? Yes. But not
by denying the existence of the problem.
 Consider
that on June 5, 1997... World Environment Day.
|
