Land development,
beautification, self financing, participatory pension...there is a spate of
terminology pertaining directly to environment or people that appear healthy if
our looks are demented enough. Land development involves altering the whole
topography of our surrounding, not in scales since agriculture embedded into
human ecology, but in unprecedented scales from instant to instant, as
irrational as breaking news; for further alterations by way of water body
fillings or hill levelling. The midlands and low lands with fertile alluvium of
relatively recent geological origin are getting fast depleted through earth
mowing and bull dozing. This is so even with the laterite dominated hills with
consequences for existing aquifers and water tables. The red and white earth
dredged out from great depth at construction sites, bereft of life supporting
ingredients as well as concrete rubble are sine qua non of developers.
Beautification is the cosmetic layering done over altered and injured
ecosystems after mass tree cuttings and subsequent concretisations, often with
the help of powerful and toxic pesticides that aid the growth of alien
ecologies. Self financing is when states move furthest from people, not in
terms of policing, but in terms of welfare; when survival becomes a game of
bidding and knowledge comes, not with the strength of critique, but with the
license to perpetuate human woes. There is a repertoire of unguarded or even,
bare beings out there for grabs. And participatory pension, a more specific and
recent addition, refers precisely to least participation in our future lives
and least right of protection, when people get pegged to market winds in one
way or the other, and ever more unfortunate beings get hooked to stock market
economics and GDP gimmicks; in the process adding flesh to corporate bones.
Yes, there is participation, but as slaves to the leviathan that grows on
theirs and their children’s right to freedom, in exchange of predatory hopes
incarnate as market bulls.
As we do not simply have the
luxury or breathing space to be demented, we better leave such toxic and
nonsense wordplays after offering the contempt and caution they deserve. There
are ever more of these, even more overhanging and everyday, popping up like
catarrh in every discussion group that enforces people to dig their own graves
faster and faster, with or without consent; taking quick breaks into fenced in
fantasy parks and dream shops, engaged in flaneur’s reveries. We better get
into the more blatant and gross indicators of violations that stare straight
into our faces today, but with catastrophes and distress we may not even have
the language for.
Here, we walk around and
across, where we live. We regret that the fears and shocks should have come a
lot before this. There is the river Periyar, perhaps most important for life as
we and our earlier generations lived here. The river forked into a Y- shape
somewhere in history enfolding our living quarters and enriching the springs
underneath as well as the soil above. The paddy fields once overlay the
terrestrial curves this river carved near Mangalapuzha, all the way through
Veliyathunaad, well into the Paravur region. A similar stretch from the other
arm of the Y- flow facilitated a smaller agrarian region. The alluvium of geologically
recent timescale, overlay the land, that later got waterlogged for agriculture.
But beyond agriculture and even towards the time when people have increasingly
moved away from food production, the erstwhile paddy fields and associated
stream and canal dendrites, maintained groundwater at levels with safe buffers
towards the time when sand got massively dredged away from Periyar. In the last
fifteen years when dementia got the upper hand and forgetting started to win
over memory, GDP figures and heights of haunted apartments presented themselves
as investments for our children, mud replaced sand all under Periyar and salt
water started to flow in. The river that survived damning, agriculture, and
even toxic industrial effluents from all around, started to choke. Water
instead of flowing get pulled ever more, into the mud base and then out with
rising mercury. Leaving a visual impression called river a major share gets
extracted into massive tanks around high rises that block our river from her
people. Thousands of gallons flow into the bore wells dug for bottling plants,
with tropical evergreen names. With all such violations our wells still get
water and soil still has some dampness because of the presence of paddy lands
that act as massive sponges. Now right before our eyes, even these are
vanishing, under such thin arguments as ‘after all it is our private right’.
But even by the logic of private rights over ecology, have we thought how life
is sustained by innumerable ground streams and underwater aquifers thanks to
such land sponges, the little we left untraded in real estate markets and for
waste dumps? And if life gets sustained elsewhere, do we have the right to do
whatever with what appears on the surface layer as private property. We are
talking about times when even the last hopes of fresh water and healthy life
are getting undermined by official calls for the liquidations of Kerala
Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2008. Not that the act, till date
has protected our ecosystems, but it is true that the act is the only official
ecological guarantee for the right to healthy living.
A few kilometres as the crow
flies, corporate media under popular claim present ‘fertile lands around Kadambrayaar’ alongside ‘fertile fields’
for IT cum tourism. All of a sudden the
‘pollution’ of a river becomes issue number one of these new entrepreneurs.
Discussions of revival plans (punarudharanam
in Malayalam) follow and they follow the tenets of tourism as the conduit of
action. The plan is to de-waste the river and to prevent the discharge from
reaching river through rivulets. The entrepreneurs one fine morning, through metro Manorama supplement, got shell
shocked to see the dismal state of this small feeder rivulet, taken to such a
dismal state through massive construction works and over-exploitation of this
once small green and healthy tract, that even supported inland commerce off
late. The same corporate media are free to lament and blame the next day for
the delay in the arrival of Dubai based capital to churn profit out of this
‘fertile land’ by whatever means. They lament in high pitched tones allegedly
for a people who are presented as desperate to pawn the last bit of live earth.
They shamelessly present fertile lands around the river as fertile zones of
investment, as if hotels and high-rises that get planted there are granaries
for generations to survive with smiles. Suddenly to add more plums to the cakes
to sell, we have to spruce up the cadaver that we have made out of the river.
We have to make walk ways for jolly good fellas who will come to savour
ethnicities.
Similarly Willingdon island of
Kochi has to ‘attract’ more and more luxury liners. So a lot needs to be done
to entice them in from open seas. There have to be ‘facilitation centres’ that
make everything easier for potential arrivals. The existing infrastructure is deemed
difficult for luxury tourists, when while the bare infrastructural facilities
and ecological beddings that people need is liquidated. Suddenly it appears that
governments are becoming equity management teams. Thus model festivals of ‘pooram’ were conducted in accessible
places like Palluruthy- probably a temporary arrangement for tourists before
some private party gets sanction to run an airport near Thrissur temple, to help
them avoid traffic clots. Airports near every potential tourism zone, we should
be afraid, is a real plan. Do not even think that whatever remains green and is
about natural beauty in this part of the peninsula is going to be spared. Back to Willingdon, in future the island and
that which surrounds could be a tourism district with walkways along lakes and
along the Willingdon-Kundannoor road. As a first step and to great rejoice, we
are told, ‘the interfering bushes’ (kayalorathe
kaadukal as per the metro supplement) were cleared. In real what involved
was the cutting away of vegetation, mangroves or the rest, that are necessary
elements, not only for human beings, but for breeding fishes and aquatic health
which is already threatened. Take a bit of time to go to one of the villages or
small towns stretching from Cherai to Fort Kochi, and ask the local fishermen.
They will inform you about the catch, counting by their fingers. The walkway
surely is a first step towards realising the dream of having a better view of
lake while walking and stopping by rain shelters and having multi cuisine
traditional dishes. But for human and non human life that has to inhabit or
cohabit a live or at least functioning ecology, this is nightmare marketed as cool
vista in front page real estate advertisements. The south east of Willingdon
gets depicted as waiting for magic of future. At first one can wonder why south
east. But this is a conclusion of media surveys that show, every other zone in
the Google map as marked, leaving the unmarked south east as vacant and by
extension unprized and thus waste. A whole array of infrastructure for
strollers, joggers, laughing clubs and tourists with different backgrounds,
membership based clubs for rollers skating and other sport facilities all could
fill this ‘unused’ space if freed of interferences like the mangroves. But yes
we are told that we are not left without any perk. If tourist amenities grow,
residents on the nearby islands where environment goes wreak, could put up
galleries and hotels to attract luxury tourists. Youth could become potential
guides. The crumbs that fall off the table become the dream we destroy
ourselves and all the rest for.
There is no complaining about
the way media is, after all this is how media as corporate arms are. But it can
be disturbing when everyday thinking and interaction, get totally outsourced.
In one instance a group was discussing ‘the Edapally issue’. It turned out that
there was a promise that the public works department minister recently made to
one of the media groups that suddenly started discussing Edapally. This
particular meet was titled in Malayalam as ‘uyaratte
paalangal kuthikkatte kochi’ (let bridges arise, let Kochi gallop) - a
decision on how to solve the burgeoning traffic crisis at Edapally-Vyttila
junction mainly in the light of a huge malls arrival. Within two months a
countdown on the public delivery of either a huge flyover or over bridge
started. There was no confusion and the choices were clear. The group was inertly
taking over the media manufacture to the extent that Edapally or traffic jams are
post-mall phenomena. Yes this is the time to get totally lost in countdowns,
breaking news, and SMS surveys. In many similar conversations that matter,
‘issues’ that media once discussed and settled become taken for granted. So
there is neither space nor any scope of dialogue on whether a metro rail should
come. The only issue to be settled is whether a certain DMRC should do it or
someone else. While potential spaces for a functioning public sphere take up
discussions as finished products and engage themselves in disconnected events,
even the once healthy middle class is fast losing ground and are becoming ever
more service providers of market intrusions facilitated by state and
rationalised in ad-maintained media games.
Apart from the plans afoot to
scuttle existing provisions for ecological health like the wetlands act, gross
violations of Coastal Regulation Zone norms in real estate business happen every
day- the Chilavannur case being the
recent brought out by The Hindu
through Information Act. The Kochi corporation clearances for apartments
between 2003 and 2008 accordingly are among the nearly 50000 such violations- a
rough estimate of such violations in the State, according to a member of the
Kerala State Coastal Zone Management Authority. There are more shocking reports
like ‘No Food no Water in Lush Kerala’ by G K Nair in the same newspaper (The
Hindu perhaps being the only media that has a sustained coverage of the
findings of such governmental organs like Ground Water Department and
Geological Survey) or Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation reports
for the year that Kerala has the most contaminated water system in addition to
fast drying wetlands. Alarming is the presence of fatal toxins like arsenic
mercury and lead in addition to colic bacteria through sustained over burdening
of rivers when more and more depend on a faltering infrastructure, especially by
ways of real estate induced explosions. Hillocks that are tannir kudangal (water reservoirs) and not dead earth mounts for sale
get razed out, like the ones that dotted all of Kakkanad. We hear tankers that
supply drinking water in places that were once lush paddy fields. The earth is
rushed away to the remaining wetlands, in tipper Lorries that have also become
the all pervasive accident agents across Kerala. Sand gets legally and
illegally dredged out destroying the flow of rivers and resulting in
salination. The legal- illegal polarities have no ecological implication also
when one realises the fact that the illegal sand caught, instead of returning
to river get auctioned off!
The Ahluwalias and planning
board economists go for pre-emptive strikes when even state bodies like Kerala
State Land Use Board says the food security in the state is in jeopardy and
that the state has become a ‘Statutory Ration State’ with over 90 per cent need
of food grain met by imports. They say there is absolutely no need to produce
food, everything will arrive. Things are shocking even when one turns a blind
eye to everyday destructions like in the case of hillocks, water bodies and
streams or waste disposals and focus only on more highlighted ones like the
shrinkage of a Ramsar[1]
site like Vembanad Lake by 37 percent through land reclamations. If we have to
exchange even our lakes and rivers for some private building firm or glorified
shopping centres and if we even manage to be proud of the act, we have to admit
complicity in systematic genocides.
Amendments even to the last
existing provisions like with the industrial departments calls on the Kerala
Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2008, threatens even the last
guarantees of healthy life. In addition to maintaining or buffering off paddy cultivation
that remains, the act has ever more consequences in protecting the already
threatened water table. The fact that the state structure is all for such
amendments calls for immediate attention and SOS alarms. The revenue record
classifications under Section 3 and 11 respectively of the Act accordingly,
‘shall not be applicable to area zoned for other purposes in the Industrial
Zone and Town Planning Scheme and for land notified as industrial land.’ In
addition the widening of definitions of ‘industrial land’ to include tourism,
health care projects, logistics parks, free trade, and warehousing zones, and
service-sector projects; not only threatens life, but also is a provision to
help large capital that seeks to reap profit at any cost to society using the
aforesaid language of employment and development. Study shows that nearly 5.54
crore square feet of built area has come up by way of high-rises villas and
commercial establishment dominated by malls. This is often shown as sign of
growth, with no botheration about what, who and how. The kind of pressure that
high end consumers put, the increasing dependence on ailing water resources,
sickened by real estate induced processes, as well as the incalculable and
irreversible damages done to ecosystem; like blocking underground streams and
lowering water beds (some of the huge malls have up to two levels of
underground parking facilities that take water table further down) remains unabated,
inviting disastrous consequences for life worlds. Walk around with eyes
sensitive to life as they unfurl to feel and understand. And there are always
more like quarrying, dry allergy producing sand winds, heat related health
issues, plastic waste, privatisation of natural resources...water and
electricity being the shocking new additions.
Off late a huge private retail
venture usurping large quantities of public as well as natural resources like
electricity and water in exchange of immense heat release from its centrally
air conditioned atriums into overcrowded towns and roads, got inaugurated by
people’s representatives. The gala got represented as a giant leap in social
welfare. The irony is that events like this unravel when plans are afoot to slice
and sell the state electricity board as companies and while efforts are under
way to float a new private public partnership firm modelled after Cochin
International Airport Ltd. (CIAL) and distribute drinking water at a price of
25 paise a litre. The rationale is that water and electricity are not
generating the profit it can for private entrepreneurs. The state has to become
a great mall; classifying and selling earth, trees, water, and electricity, in
attractive packages. This is seriously lethal process, going right for our
jugular. We can opt to spend the rest of our lives getting awestruck window
shopping at retailing gimmicks that thrive on commons. We can savour private
spectacles put up to absorb whatever liquidity we are left with. We can even manage
to keep dumb, thinking that these are signs of freedom and welfare. Or else we
can decide to love our kind a little more.
There is a threat of continuing
our schooling from the ‘merits and demerits of British colonialism’ kind of
nonsense into ‘finding both sides’ type coffee table conclusions as well as ‘yes
and no voting games’ via SMS. There is
an impending need to get ourselves de-schooled. Because there are no two sides
or multiple choices to whether we want to breathe, drink, and live free as participants
of the great living whole.
[1]
The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, called the Ramsar
Convention, is an intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for
national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use
of wetlands and their resources.
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