Development has been one of the many mantras that
drives the Modi governance. Like quite a few of Modi’s mantras, development has
wreaked its share of decimation in many parts of the country. The latest is a
Rs72,000 crore project in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The latest issue
of Frontline
magazine features on its cover the fatal development that is being exported to
the islands from Indraprastha. All the information in this post has been taken
from Frontline. I have just converted the long articles in the magazine
into capsules for a quick read. For details, please go to the magazine.
Before we look at what is being
planned for Andaman & Nicobar, let us remind ourselves of what has happened
to Joshimath, the threshold to the Abode of Gods. Development killed
that small hill town. Development has extracted similar disastrous prices from
many other places such as the coastal areas, Vizhinjam
being the latest. People like Arundhati Roy have written copiously about the
catastrophes brought about by various development projects. Millions of people
have been displaced by various development projects in India. Before Modi, the
figure was on the wrong side of fifty million. Just absorb that figure. That is
ten times the population of countries like New Zealand. After Modi, no one is
sure of how many millions get displaced from where all? The entire tribal
population of Andaman & Nicobar will be the latest victims. And they won’t
be displaced in all likelihood; they will be decimated.
I promised to give the data in the
form of capsules. Let me stick to that promise. Below are the capsules.
·
Total budget for the development of
Andaman & Nicobar: Rs72,000 crore
·
What’s going to come
up: a trans-shipment
project (like the one in Vizhinjam), an international airport, a power plant, a
greenfield township on 160 square kilometres (of which 130 sqkm are forests now),
industries, resorts, etc.
·
Hilarious irony:
the main project is named ‘Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island’
·
The total area
of the island where the project is coming up: 900 sqkm. Out of that 850 sqkm is
designated as tribal reserve. But development in India has never cared for the
indigenous people. You can imagine what’s going to happen to these tribal
people of the island.
·
The whole island where the project is coming up was declared
a biosphere reserve
in 1989 and included in UNESCO’s Man & Biosphere Programme in 2013. All
that will vanish from the new re-written history of the country.
·
300,000 people will be brought
to the islands for completing the project that will take about 30 years.
·
130.75 sqkm of pristine forests will be decimated. These forests form the
rainforest ecosystem of the region. A million trees will vanish from the face
of the earth in a few days of ‘development’.
·
Many animal
species will be totally endangered if not driven to extinction. The
Galathea Bay area, where the port is to be built, is the habitat of giant
leatherback turtles, world’s largest marine turtle. Many other species like
long-tailed macaque and fiddler crab which are peculiar to Nicobar are likely
to vanish from the face of the earth.
·
Even the tribal
people are likely to disappear. There are just about 1,000 Nicobarese
and 200 Shompen there. The Shompen are already a vulnerable tribe, being
totally dependent on forests as hunter-gatherers. A Shompen [From Frontline]
When will we learn the most vital lessons from
Joshimath and other such places that our craze for development has destroyed? One
of the many emblems of the Modi-type of development is the world’s tallest
statue: Statue of Unity. Kothie is one of the villages that vanished to make
space for the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Had that village existed, the whole of it
could have been accommodated in the big toe of Sardar Patel’s Statue. That is a
memorable metaphor for our development. Let me leave you with that image at the
risk of sounding antinational.
Hari OM
ReplyDelete...and there's a notion in quiet corners of 'developing' the moon... 🫥 YAM xx
Yes, they will develop the outer space too.
DeleteSelf aggrandizement at any cost. Tragic.
ReplyDeleteThis self-aggrandizement is publicised as nationalism.
DeleteShocking!
ReplyDeleteVery few media take up this sort of issues.
DeleteIt is so tragic that people are so greedy about their own growth without caring for environment.
ReplyDeleteEnvironment as well as certain sections of people.
Delete