India is hungry for energy. Over 173 power plants, all of them coal-fired, will be built to power the nation’s high-tech industries and booming cities.
This is accelerating an ongoing “coal rush” which has put our dirtiest fossil fuel at the heart of India’s breakneck growth, and could soon make a single state, Andhra Pradesh, one of the world’s top 20 carbon emitters.
On 101 East, filmmaker Orlando de Guzman takes a dark journey through the coal belt of Jharkhand and West Bengal, to look at the winners and losers of this booming industry.
Tamil Nadu government started “operation Koodankulam “on Monday 19 March, arresting 203 protesters and blocking all entry points to the coastal villages surrounding the nuclear power plant. Police arrested 185 men including parish priest Father Suseelan at Kottupuli village where they were protesting against the deployment of police forces. They were taken to Tirunelveli Armed Reserve Camp. Later police arrested 18 men from Koodankulam on charges of staging protests and violating Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code.
Police started the crackdown on anti-nuclear plant protesters early on Monday arresting nine people including People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) legal advisor Sivasubramanian and Rajalingam. They are being charged with sedition including Sections 121, 121A and 153A. They were taken to Tirunelveli. Around 4000 state police and 400 central police officials have been deployed in the area. Police have set up seven more police pickets around Koodankulam nuclear plant and blocked entry points.
According to Dr SP Udaykumar, convener, People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy, who is on a indefinite hunger strike along with Pusparayan, his associate at Idinthakarai, around 5000 people assembled at the St Lourdes Church ground since Monday. “We, eight men and seven women, are on an indefinite hunger strike. The green signal for Koodankulam is a red signal for our lives. We will continue our protest till we die,” said Udayakumar.
To beat the police blockade, protesters were seen using fishing boats to ferry people to the protest grounds. “We were able to bring our people to Idinthakarai On Monday. But this morning (Tuesday) onwards, the Coast Guard and Navy used helicopters for surveillance in the area,” said Udayakumar.
Police have also intensified patrolling in the area and are waiting for orders from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha to enter Idinthakarai. Additional Director General of Police S George is camping in the area and overseeing the Koodankulam operation.
According to a senior police official, the state government wanted a ‘silent clearance operation’ in Koodankulam. “We have requested media to vacate the premises and sealed all entry points. We will use force only as a last resort,” said the police official who wished to remain anonymous. According to sources, the police have cut power supply to Idinthakarai and are planning to delink the water supply to the village.
“We are protesting peacefully. We will continue our protests till our demands are met,” said Pushparayan. According to him, the protesters want an immediate release of people arrested and the withdrawal of Tamil Nadu cabinet resolution. “We have been ditched by the Tamil Nadu government, they will pay for the betrayal and treachery,” Udayakumar told TEHELKA.
Udayakumar asked why the state government was not ready to conduct the safety drill around the 30 kilometer radius of the power plant which is mandatory before commissioning a nuclear plant. “The government is violating basic safety requirements before commissioning the plant. In such a situation we have no other option,” said Udayakumar. He warned of public health problems and food shortage at Idinthakarai and appealed to the people of Tamil Nadu to be aware of “this assault on the Tamil community”.
“They [government] are preparing to load uranium fuel rods into the reactor without conducting safety or evacuation drills. This kind of Fascist development is taking our country to another round of New East India Companies and Neo-colonialism,” said Udayakumar. Dr V Suresh, National Secretary, PUCL, Tamil Nadu-Puducherry condemned the police action by the Tamil Nadu State Government against peaceful demonstrators.
“The police action against Idinthakarai villagers resembles the Jalianwalabagh incident and raises concerns about the state government’s intention. This action comes immediately after the Sankarankovil by-elections.” said Dr Suresh. The PUCL has demanded an immediate and unconditional release of all arrested villagers and withdrawal of police force from the area.
In Jharia, in the federal state of Jharkhand, around 600,000 people live in the middle of one of India’s biggest coal mining areas. There’s nothing in it for most of them. Quite the opposite: the soil, the water and the air are now contaminated, of all things in an area that was previously rich in woodland.
The story of Jharia is the story of how the greed for profit, vested interests and the thirst for power have prevailed and led to one of the areas richest in minerals in India remaining so economically backward. For the mining marginalises the poor and deepens social inequality in the name of economic development, from which mostly only metropolises like Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai profit.
Shortly after 1971, the coal mines were nationalized. Since then, their operator is the BCCL (Bharat Coking Coal Limited) which thus controls one of the biggest coal deposits in India and one of the biggest in the whole of Asia. BCCL conducts mainly opencast mining. Mostly illegally, since in 97 percent of the cases no license has been granted. Opencast mining is more profitable than deep mining. The productivity and extracted quantities are significantly higher than in deep mining and cost less. In Jharia, coal is mined in the villages, next to the houses, in short, on people’s doorsteps. Even on the streets, on railway lines, in the station itself, which is not a station any more, coal is mined.
Really, the mined area should be filled with sand and water afterwards, so it can be cultivated again. For cost reasons, however, this never happens, which leads to the coal seams coming into contact with oxygen and catching fire. India has the most coal blazes worldwide. BCCL representatives estimate there are 67 fires in Jharia alone.
The opencast mining areas are densely populated. Forty percent of Jharia’s inhabitants live in the burning, fire spewing countryside. The ground is subsiding, houses are collapsing. In addition, the smoke and vapours contain poisons, amongst others carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, but also soot, methane and arsenic. The damage to health is enormous. Lung and skin diseases, cancer and stomach disorders are only some of the illnesses with which the people in Jharia have to fight with.
The blazes are in fact controllable, contrary to the BCCL representatives’ opinion. They could be extinguished with the application of water, clay and sand. But nothing happens. Because there is no political interest in extinguishing these blazes at all. Rather, it is in the operator’s interest that even more land catches fire – and thus becomes uninhabitable. BCCL needs still more land on which coal can be mined in order to achieve the extracted quantities planned for the current and coming business years. And underneath Jharia lie more than 1,000 million tons of coal.
The interests and influence of the operator are too strong, so the mines stay and the mining will still be carried on. In addition, the Mafia has the area around Jharia firmly in its hands and makes a not inconsiderable profit through blackmail, bribery and other criminal activities.
Instead of doing something against the fires, one of the biggest resettlement plans worldwide is to be carried out: Jharia Action Plan (JAP). The inhabitants of the areas on fire are supposed to be resettled in Belgaria, a new town in the middle of the jungle. There is no school there, no medical care, no shops, and, worst of all, no jobs at all. So many decide to stay in Jharia. On the fire. In spite of the blazes. In spite of the perpetual grey veil that lies over the town. In spite of the air pollution, which makes breathing almost impossible on a bad day. And in spite of the coal dust, which settles like a second skin on the body.
A major river in India’s northeast that originates in Tibet has suddenly dried up, triggering speculation that China might be responsible, a local official told AFP on Thursday.
The Brahmaputra has its source in China’s southwestern Tibet region where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and it enters India in the mountainous, remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where it it is called the Siang.
The 1,800-mile (2,900 kilometre) river then descends into the plains of adjoining Assam state, where it is vital for agriculture, and ends in Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.
“It was shocking to find the Siang river drying up and patches of sand visible on its bed in a very large stretch close to Pasighat town,” local state lawmaker Tako Dabi told AFP by telephone, referring to a town in East Siang district.
“We suspect the sudden drying up of the Siang could be a result of China either diverting the river water on their side or due to some artificial blockades somewhere in the upper reaches,” added Dabi, an advisor to the state’s chief minister.
He estimated the flow was about 40 percent of its normal strength.
Video footage from the scene shows the Siang — which is normally a gushing torrent several kilometres (miles) wide at Pasighat, according to Dabi — reduced to flowing in narrow channels in the large sandy riverbed.
“Locals are worried as the river is a source of livelihood,” Dabi added.
The problem with the river came on the day the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jeichi held talks in New Delhi with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna.
India is extremely nervous about the danger of its giant northern neighbour diverting rivers that originate in Tibet and flow into India, or disrupting their flow with hydroelectric plants.
The two countries have held frequent talks about the issue at the highest level and Indian Premier Manmohanh Singh assured as recently as last August that there was no danger.
“We have been assured that nothing will be done which affects India’s interests adversely,” Singh told the upper house of parliament.
Energy-hungry and water-deficient China is building a hydroelectric plant on the Yarlung Tsangpo, but the Indian government says it has been assured this is a “run-of-the-river” project rather than a dam which would disrupt the flow.
In a bid to fast-track industrial projects, India’s Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is opening up 25 percent of forests that were previously listed as “no-go” areas, reports the Hindustan Times. The designation will allow between 30 and 50 new industrial projects to go ahead rapidly, including road construction and coal mining.
Reportedly the changes came after industry representatives met with the Prime Minister’s Office, headed by Manmohan Singh, to complain that projects were being held up by environmental regulations, in some cases taking six years for approval. The industrial group was led by Ratan Tata, head of Tata Group, a massive conglomerate that works in steel, chemicals, solar power, energy transmission vehicles, and food products like tea and coffee among other industries. In response, the PMO not only removed protection for forest lands, but also promised approval for projects would be done in 60 days and forests would be cleared within 180 days.
“Based on the limited information we have, this is a very alarming development,” tropical ecologist William Laurance with James Cook University, who has recently spent time in India, told mongabay.com. “Infrastructure expansion—such as new roads, hydroelectric dams and mines—can have huge environmental impacts. They cause direct forest degradation and can also open up a Pandora’s Box of further problems—such as illegal land colonization and land speculation.”
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), around 19 percent of India is covered in natural forests, excluding monoculture plantations. Many of the remaining forests are degraded and fragmented. Since 2009 India has lost 36,700 hectares according to a recent assessment. The state of Andhra Pradesh saw the largest loss in forest, which government officials blamed on logging by the communist-Maoist group, the Naxals.
India has recently pledged to expand forest cover to around 33 percent of the country, however the Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, recently said such a target was “unrealistic.”
“India has already lost over 80 percent of its native forests and further forest loss and degradation are still advancing rapidly,” Laurace says. “The fast-tracking of big infrastructure projects can easily become a rubber stamp for bad development practices. Such ill-advised projects can have far greater environmental and human costs than the economic benefits they provide.”
India’s remaining forests are home to a wide variety of species, including Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris), Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), golden langurs (Trachypithecus geei), and the dhole (Cuon alpinus), each of which is listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List. India is one of 17 countries in the world that is considered “megadiverse” for its spectacular wealth of biodiversity.
