Findings on the administrative state of the Pallikaranai marshlands

Chennai’s garbage woes have taken a turn for the worse in light of multiple violations by the new contractors, Ramky Enviro Engineers, responsible for cleaning up the city. Ranging from lack of adherence to the basic terms of the contract it signed with the Corporation of Chennai (CoC) to worsening the city’s rich biodiversity, Ramky has exacerbated the problems it was chosen to remove.

The government of Tamil Nadu and the CoC are also to blame for not taking Ramky to task even though it has been three months since the contractors were brought on board to clean the areas of Kodambakkam (Zone XIII),  Mylapore (Zone X) and Adyar (Zone V). Moreover, the state government’s lack of foresight in judging the value of the Pallikaranai marshlands that lies outside the city and commissioning it as a dump-yard has given rise to large concentrations of lead and manganese in the soil, causing severe poisoning of groundwater supply to the neighbourhood.

In fact, in its annual budget for the year 2012-2013, the Corporation of Chennai announced that Rs 70 crore would be spent on solid waste management in the city, with an additional Rs 5 crore going to be spent on the restoration of the marshlands. These are big numbers, considering the allocation for upgrading of electrical infrastructure in the city is Rs 45 crore, and of education, Rs 15 crore.

Mismanaging the marsh

Dr Indumathi Nambi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering at IIT-Madras, profiled the soil sediments around the marshlands in a year-long study in 2010. She said, “The dump-yard is not even a landfill. Landfills have a proper basement three or four layers thick that prevent the sedimentation of heavy metals or surface runoffs into the drains.” She added that because of these shortcomings, the surrounding areas such as Mylai Balaji Nagar receive groundwater of very poor quality.

The fate of the marsh is linked closely with Ramky’s activities inside the city. Its contractors took charge after the Neel Metal Fanalca (NMF) fiasco that saw that contract being terminated four years before its expiry, leading to Ramky’s contract being more full-fledged, inclusive of many little considerations such as the presence of garbage bins on street corners, and valued more.

In the three years that NMF was in service, it was paid Rs 600-700 per tonne of waste post-segregation. However, Ramky is being paid Rs 1,469 per tonne of waste post-segregation. This is where the problems begin.

Negligence of duty

The contract stipulates that the commissionaires – in this case, Ramky Enviro Engineers – will be compensated only after the waste has been segregated at the source and then weighed at a designated weighment station. To supervise these activities, a Project Officer has been appointed by the CoC. However, that the waste has been segregated into recyclables, non-recyclables and non-recyclable non-biodegradables was brought under doubt after rag-pickers were spotted in and around the dump-yard at Pallikaranai.

Thirumurthy, a rag-picker off the Pallikaranai 100-feet road, said, “There are a lot of plastic items and metal items in the waste. There is no saying which part of the dump has what.” However, he said pickings become easier after corporation officials throw the plastic and metallic objects aside to burn the rest illegally.

Because waste is being dumped unsegregated, Ramky is being paid for a weight greater than what it should be. In comparison with NMF’s contractual rate, the compensation is likely to be almost twice as much.

This points to the Project Officer’s negligence of his duty. There are also other violations, minor in comparison, but important nonetheless because they concern the day-to-day operations of Ramky’s commissioners in the city.

For example, sweeping of the roads has to be carried out at least twice everyday according to the contract. However, residents of South Mada Street, Thiruvallur Nagar, Eldams Road and Sastri Nagar have been complaining that streets are being swept only once a day and that, too, with low efficiency. Other common complaints include lack of cleanliness around bins, irregular clearance of bins, and lack of service on the toll-free complaint line that Ramky is contractually obliged to set up.

Administration over the years

The Pallikaranai marshlands were brought under government agenda in 2002, when a study was conducted by the state to assess the land quality of the area. The then Collector, Abdul Salam, dismissed all land allotments on the marsh on the basis of them encroaching on environmentally sensitive areas. However, subsequently, the land was reallotted to the buyers after it was found that survey numbers attached to plots had been meddled with.

Mrs Jayshree Vencatesan of Care Earth, an organisation that has been advocating the conservation of the marshlands, said, “Invisible groups have been trying to derail the government’s attempts to protect the marshland repeatedly. On the basis of wrong survey numbers, land was returned to those it was taken from and under these circumstances, the Centre for Wind Energy Technology came up.”

In 2003, the Save Pallikaranai Marsh Forum (SPMF) was constituted to protest against the dumping and burning of waste in the area. In the same year, the Perungudi sewage treatment plant (STP) became defunct in 1996, which was also targeted by the SPMF. In response, the Dr Vijayan Committee was set up by T R Baalu, then the minister for environment and forests. The committee, in turn, recommended the setting up of a 54 MLD (millions of litres per day) STP in place of the old one. For this purpose, the Corporation set aside Rs 300 crore.

Broken promises

Today, the plant, finally commissioned in 2006, is in a similar condition to its predecessor when it was decommissioned. The absence of a collection tank, provided to absorb loads exceeding the expected amount, has ensured that any excess waste flows directly into the marsh without being treated. This fate is not much different from that of a lot of the solid waste that enters the plant, which floats around untreated in the marsh.

During the renovation in 2006, Metrowater had reassured the residents that after upgrading, there would be no foul smell and that the treated sewage would be of a higher quality. There was also a promise made of Rs 83 lakh to upgrade the Taramani link road pumping station to improve the movement of wastes within the marshlands and prevent stagnation. To assist this, the CoC had also announced for the new plant to discharge effluents into the Buckingham canal.

None of these promises have been met. S Kumararaja of the Federation of Velachery Residents’ Welfare Associations, said, “Repeated representations have been made to upgrade the sewage pumping stations, but authorities are yet to take action. As the station often ceases functioning during monsoon, the sewer network gets affected.”

In 2005, S Malathi, then Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu, brought 378 hectares of the marshland under the protection of the Forest Act of 1882. This effectively removed it from the jurisdiction of the CoC and placed it in the hands of the Forest Department, a central body, no longer letting the area be subject to indiscriminate pollution. Though this may seem like a cause to celebrate, Mrs Vencatesan says that “a careful perusal of the Department’s plans reveals that they plan to drain the marshlands and build a gated community for their officials.” (See inset)

Caught between centre and state politics

Between 2001 and 2006, conflicts between the Congress-dominated government at the Centre and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-ruled (AIADMK) state prevented any quick action to be taken concerning the marshlands. In 2006, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) came to power at the state as well as the centre, and began to push for the setting up of an integrated waste management plant at the Pallikaranai marshlands and in Perungudi.

In 2009, the High Court Expert Committee Report, ordered by Judge A P Shah and headed by Ms Sheela Rani, that had looked into the DMK’s proposal was released. It pointed at the various illegal activities already being carried out on the marshlands and ways to tackle them. The most important conclusion of this report was that the “proposed municipal solid waste handling violates … the rules especially on source segregation, recycle, reuse and siting criteria.” This violation is with respect to the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2000 framed under the Environment Protection Act.

However, these were only recommendations and were not enforced by authorities. Soon, clearance was received by the CoC from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) to set up an STP at the desired location after a controversial public hearing. It was at this time that a member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), V Srinivasan, filed a petition with the National Environmental Appellate Authority (NEAA) in 2010, arguing that the plant was going to be situated within 10 km of a national park (at Guindy).

However, in 2011, the NEAA was dissolved and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) set up. The NGT opened up in Tamil Nadu on February 24, 2012, and turned down the DMK-led proposal to set up the integrated plant on the basis of its being within 6 km of the Guindy national park. Now, the proposal awaits clearance from the Centre, which they might not get because of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971).

There is one other violation of a Central legislation in terms of the National Wetland Law. Under the Draft Regulatory Framework for Wetlands Conservation, compiled by the Indira Gandhi Centre for Development Research and issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests on May 24, 2010, solid waste dumping and discharge of untreated effluents on wetlands is prohibited. In extension to this, the Centre asked state governments to constitute a State Wetland Appraisal Committee to monitor the situation and shut down any illegal dumping on wetlands. Tamil Nadu is yet to set up such a committee.

We, not the people.

Displacement versus development is a problem particularly difficult to explore because, beyond the initial recognition of the government's role as being "villainous", there is not much that has been said or done to establish a line beyond which displacement, with rehabilitation, becomes simply necessary. The pursuit of developmental goals by the Indian government has resulted in over 21.3 million being displaced internally according to a 1998 report by the Indian Social Institute, and almost 5.8 per cent, or 1.25 million, of them have been displaced by the establishment of industrial estates.

On the one hand, development seems like a two-faced engine that, whilst making possible a future wherein important resources may be purchased, consumes important resources required for its sustenance that the nation may not be in a position to provide. The proposed installation of two nuclear reactors at Kudankulam, for instance, will generate 2,000 MW of power, which is over and above Tamil Nadu's shortage (659 MW). Apart from this, another 11,540 MW is to be added with the proposed installation of 17 power plants around the state, eight of them having already been sanctioned.

Now, as environmentalists and others in the area protest against constructing a plant that poses significant risks to the livelihoods of residents, a question that goes under-attended is that of necessity: which are the quarters that require this 12,881 MW of energy? What has been done, either by private parties or the government, to determine if such demands are legitimate?

Further, in order for the government to be in a position to define future growth in any sector, it must first be in a position to produce the necessary resources indigenously. In an increasingly urbanized context, however, those displaced are usually from the countryside - especially farmers, who are reliant on natural resources directly for their sustenance - and, therefore, upon displacing them, the government is only displacing the nation's principle conservationists. In light of such seeming discrimination, the problem statements are two instead of one.

1. Why is the government intent on displacing those peoples who are poised to benefit the least from the projects that displace them? (It is also that these people are invariably of a particular caste and/or profession, which makes the problem seem motivated)


2. Can development become necessary under any conditions and, therefore, assume precedence over displacement and the problems therewith? (This question includes issues of necessity, too)

In India, I believe that the problem has never purely been one of displacement v. development, even though the conflict between those who champion either cause is what birthed it. According to Dr. Prabhat Patnaik, one of India's leading economists, the central government's adoption of a capitalist economic model will produce problems unique to the country because capitalism is being superimposed on an "old order" that hasn't fully been dismantled. Whether or not it merits dismantlement is another question, but it is definitely unfair to systematically target a certain section of the population.

Subsequently, even before we are in a position to centre a debate around the safeguards against a reactor meltdown at Kudankulam, we must ask why Kudankulam and why not the outskirts of Chennai, whose population actually stands to benefit from the operation of the reactors. We must ask what else is being done to whittle down unnecessary "losses" that have resulted in such huge power shortages.

Considering that the previous argument did not concern itself with the mining of natural resources: when it comes to the displacement of adivasis, a symbolic cap is necessary to discourage the government from favouring one section of the population more than the other, in the process expanding a gap that it has been elected to work against! Since government accountability for state-instituted displacement, especially as a consequence of land acquisition, is virtually absent, there is nothing to prevent the problem from worsening except an undertaking on the state's part: that it will frame its growth rate in consultation with representatives from all industries without exception.

(In the absence of rehabilitation, those displaced from their lands become akin to refugees, such as those displaced by armed conflict, despite the granting of refugee status being at the discretion of political authorities. Post-displacement, projects aimed at rejuvenating the adivasi communities have only been on an ad hoc basis.

Even in the latest Draft National Rehabilitation Policy (NRP) 2006, those affected by the acquisition of their land do not have the right to be consulted before their property is chosen for acquisition. While there are landowners who have indeed agreed to hand over their land to the government, they are reluctant to do so until the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act is passed. Unfortunately, the corresponding bill is not listed among the 31 priority bills of the Parliament's winter session in 2011.)

If, at the policy level, a framework can be brought into existence that mandates a process through which, say, the rights of the Dongria Kondh are prioritized over the demand for bauxite mined from the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, what are the processes on the other side of the wall that will determine how much we reduce our consumption of aluminium by? Because we cannot plug a hole at one end of the pipe and expect the water levels at the other end to not rise up.

[caption id="attachment_20760" align="aligncenter" width="325" caption="Bauxite mining (top); Vedanta Alumina, a subsidiary of Sterlite Industries, Ltd., which received the controversial clearance from the SC to proceed with bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills"][/caption]

Yes, someone must suffer a loss of some kind for the sake of development, but instead of sustaining growth rates at precarious costs, why isn't there any faith in the aspirations of the adivasis themselves? Why is it that adivasis are being targeted again and again instead of inculcating a program that will successfully reintegrate them into modern society, moderate growth rates to reasonable levels, and ensure that the notion of progress is no longer mired in controversy?

I am not against nuclear power or bauxite mining but for it; what I am against is the government's tendency to define "public interests" without the real interests of the "public" in mind. India needs some amount of aluminium and some amount of energy to realize some of its projected growth rates; what it doesn't need is the dousing of such important issues in a socio-political quagmire. Displacement v. development is, uniquely, a human rights issue, and it is an environmental issue as well, and while we are debating it, it is important to be aware of the human rights and environmental factors that influence the parameters whose traits we take for granted.

On Nativity And Belonging

I undertook a wild trip of Chennai today – I know it sounds grandiloquent when I say that, but I took a trip that was definitely wild on my own terms. My first discovery was that not only had I seen just half the city, but was also under the false impression that there was nothing more to it. My blatantly wrong assumption was quashed fully when I went past Chennai Central (as we know the Central Railway Station) and arrived in that part of the city called, simply, the North. The peoples in other parts of the city – the parts familiar to me – were all immigrants, and had been naturalized over the course of three centuries to make up everything that was cosmopolitan about the state capital. The natives were in the North, unconsciously preserving as well as relishing all that was and is Tamil – the language, the food, the sunrise, the sunset and everything in between.

As we (me and my magnanimous friend, known only as V) drove hither and thither, him pointing out to me all that had changed in the last four years, forgetting that I had known quite nothing of Chennai so much as two years ago, while I told him of all the quaint remnants of the British occupation that I had noticed and researched. V was the quintessential free spirit, the praxis of freedom, while I preferred the sequestered and sound-proofed confines of a room with a view. We each had known Chennai as two distinctly different entities for the last few years: I had known it for the city it was, the residue of its history and no more, while he knew it was a living, breathing being. He would tell me about his experiences with the people he had met, their sufferings they had recounted to him, and the struggles they faced on a daily basis that, in his mind, seemed to define the state of being Tamil. You only had to listen to him speak, and you knew it was true.

That V could find so much nativity in him would sometimes put me to shame. Let alone being a free spirit, I have never even appreciated the outdoors; call it selfish, call it what you will, but my interests have always been with facts, with the physics and the mathematics of this world, and anything under their purview would soon come to be under my purview. All that I have ever known about this city, this beautiful city, is, sadly, only a result of such observations; then again, I have only observed, I have never surrendered my expectations to the promises of the city and seen. What I write today about the Marina beach may seem original because I have been there – but I know, even if you can’t discern it, that there is nothing that prevents me from substituting the word ‘Marina’ with the name of some other beach in some other continent and still be left with a sensible description. There is no qualitative content that I am capable of contributing with, and that is what leaves me ashamed.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The Marina"][/caption]

At the same time, my logical faculties – faithful as they always are – tell me that all is not lost, that there is still something left in me to give to the city, something it might unfortunately lack, something it might circumstantially need. It is true that this world has always vacillated from states of imperfection to perfection, and it is also true that it can never peacefully exist in the same state. I may not know the pulse of the city, but that only means I am endowed with the unfortunate capability to know and, moreover, understand what is perfect and what is not. In other words, I am the logical faculty of the city. Note that I speak only in singular and first-person terms: I am only contextualizing my role in terms of my emotions. Even in all this shame and defacement, there is an urgent need in me to contribute to an entity I have always only indirectly known, an entity, when not an area on the map, that is the port I set my bearings toward when I am lost in the stormy seas of identity and individuality. I am not trying to get rid of my guilt – I know that only because as soon as the guilt is gone, I will still be its humble servant.