Echoes in Silent Valley

Protest echoes in Silent Valley

The rare rainforest is threatened once more by the noise of development. Max Martin reports

nature’s last post: the Kunthi flows on near the proposed dam site
The lion-tailed macaque and the Malabar hornbill — two rare species living in the pristine Silent Valley rainforests which are mascots of the 1970s’ conservation posters and stickers — are back in the news. Their pristine habitat is threatened once again by a dam project. The Kerala State Electricity Board (kseb) wants to build a dam right in the protective buffer forest barely a kilometre outside the Silent Valley National Park, a core area of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a biodiversity hotspot recognised by unesco.

“It is turning back the clock of history,” says Dr B. Ekbal, former vice chancellor of Kerala University and a neurosurgeon, who was part of the late 1970s’ Save Silent Valley movement spearheaded by writers, thinkers and social activists.

The Pathrakkadavu project is rather minimalist, as reported: “A small installed capacity of 70 megawatts (mw) in the first phase (105 mw eventually) and an energy generation of 214 million units (mu) from a 64.5-metre high dam with a minimal gross storage of 0.872 million cubic metres and a negligible submergence of 4.10 ha.” But greens say the Rs 247 crore project, tagged as an eco-friendly run-of-the-river dam, poses a threat to the sensitive eco-system. They raise three points. First, breaching the buffer would be lethal. Second, the project would block the Kunthi (Kunthipuzha in Malayalam), a key tributary to Kerala’s second-largest river Bharatapuzha (Nila), which is already drying up. Third, the dam would deny water to downstream village clusters and tribal hamlets.

On the other hand, power shortage is a clear and present danger in Kerala. At a recent southern region states’ meeting in Bangalore, the state representative declared that Kerala needs to add installed capacity and should revive at least three mega projects. Currently, the Kerala power grid has an energy availability of 13,976 mu/ 2907mw, including central allocation, a kseb-commissioned study says. “At present there is a shortage of 3974 mu/452mw warranting power cuts,” the Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment report of the new project notes. “We have to explore new possibilities,” says Chandramohan, the kseb chief engineer who studied the Pathrakkadavu project. As for locating the plant in such a lush forest, he says, “We can find a (river) head suitable to generate electricity only in a forest area.”

Green dream
In 1976-77 the proposed dam on the Kunthi sparked a noisy debate. Proponents saw the dam as panacea for north Kerala’s underdevelopment. Scientists said Silent Valley was a rare rainforest. New studies by eminent environmentalists SC Nair and VS Vijayan gave Silent Valley broader relevance. A group of environmentalists, academics, researchers and schoolteachers, many of them part of a leftist popular science movement called the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad, spread awareness. Leading Malayalam literary figures joined in. Litigations delayed the project. The Kerala Assembly supported the project. The Save Silent Valley Committee, chaired by ornithologist Salim Ali, was formed in Mumbai. The committee met Indira Gandhi. The wwf and the International Union for Conservation of Nature backed the protestors. In 1980, Mrs Gandhi set up the MGK Menon committee. Protect invaluable natural heritage, it said. Rajiv Gandhi inaugurated the Silent Valley National Park in 1984.
Greens call it sheer arrogance. “I could never imagine someone planning a dam project right in Silent Valley so boldly,” says Sugathakumari, a celebrity Malayalam poet who wrote and fought against the 1970s’ dam. “I cannot believe they talk in the same outdated language of 25 years ago.” Dr Ekbal gives it a long-shot view. “Soon after Stockholm, Kerala gave the world hope; now after Rio and Jo’berg we are back to square one.” The Stockholm Conference on Human Environment (1972) put environmentalism on the global agenda, the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit (1992) linked it with development and the Johannesburg meet (2002) was all about sustainable development in tune with nature. Scientists celebrate Silent Valley. “Certainly these Western Ghats’ evergreen forests are among the most biodiverse spots,” says Prof Madhav Gadgil, environmental scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. “They harbour a number of species that are found only in India and Sri Lanka,” he adds.

Thiruvananthapuram-based environmental scientist SSC Nair says the proposed project is located such that its implementation will totally severe the most constricted part of the buffer. Besides, the Kunthi, which originates in Silent Valley and splashes down the Western Ghats, is a rarity among the dozen-odd tributaries of the Nila, along the banks of which Kerala’s culture and literature flourished. It is live even in high summer when the scorching heat of Palakkad, coupled with a cluster of dams, dries up all other tributaries.

The Kunthi also feeds 16 panchayats and several tribal hamlets downstream. Earlier tribal people living in 44 hamlets around Attappadi protested when a private firm attempted to divert Bhavani, another local river, ostensibly to supply water to Manarkad, a flourishing hill town built by settler farmers and spice traders.

“It is state-sponsored robbery of resources,” says Sunder Raj, an activist based in Manarkad. This time panchayat heads held a protest meet even as a mandatory public hearing in May was hijacked by local settlers, who supported the dam and drowned voices of dissent.

Land value is supposed to go up once the dam comes up in three to five years. Access to denser parts of the forest will increase with its 7.4 km approach road. Otherwise it’s a trek that takes about three hours to the project area. Local people dread the prospect of opening up of the forest. “Already huge forest tracts in the buffer area are threatened by loggers, settlers and cannabis cultivators,” says Tony Thomas, a local farmer. “Attappadi hills are already denuded, tribal people are driven away.”
The current protests here, though with the support of Kerala’s elite, are a grassroots affair. It’s part of a larger debate than the mere protection of a monkey and a hornbill.
October 02, 2004