Deaths by Water - and Environmental Degradation

Date : 281204
Source : Malaysia Today
Title : Deaths by Water - and Environmental Degradation

By J. Sri Raman
t r u t h o u t

Chennai, India - Selvaraj, 38, sturdy and ebony-dark, set out on the catamaran, the ancient Tamil raft of tied logs, a little past six in the morning. He did not return. Some eight hours later, rescuers found his body washed ashore, like the bodies of scores of other fishermen. Kannan, 14, went out a little later that Sunday morning to the Marina Beach, the pride of this South Indian city, its little piece of paradise. He carried his cricket bat, with a sticker of Sachin Tendulkar, the star of the game, on it. He, too, did not return home. His frail, little body was also found hours later on the once inviting sands.

Search was still on, though, for the bodies of the other members of his team and their opponents who were to play a weekend match on a field with a backdrop of waves.Krishnamurthy, 67, had driven there for a brisk morning walk along the long beach line, as had been his wont for a couple of years. They found his car, smashed and upturned.Survivors in the fishermen's hamlets close to the Marina count Selvaraj and others like him lucky indeed. Even the bodies of many, many other fishermen, who had gone into the sea for their morning catch, have not been found.

Officials put the number of missing fishermen at no less than 5,000.The best-known public hospital in this capital of the south Indian State of Tamilnadu, one of the worst-hit areas in the widespread Asian tragedy of December 26, has lined up scores of salt-smeared bodies for possible identification by their bereaved kin. Quite a few are still lying unclaimed - an indication that killer waves may have devoured whole families on the fringe of the city and survival.People, especially the poor, are prepared for the worst - but the worst they can imagine.

Down here, they were not prepared for this particular disaster, wrought by quake-generated waves (tsunamis, their Japanese name a household word here already) rising to a tidal height of 15 to 40 feet before crashing to kill. They were not prepared, and not only because they had fished only in a gentle sea and played or walked only on soft sands.True, the balmy Bay of Bengal had held no terrors for them before. There is a more basic reason, however, why the tremors and the resultant sea turbulence (claiming a toll of over 2,500 human lives) have taken Chennai and Tamilnadu totally unawares. The public here has been kept in the dark about a direct environmental threat that has been growing at a great pace over the past decade or so.What holds good for Tamilnadu does so as well for the rest of coastal India to reel from the impact of the calamity - the States of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, and West Bengal.

In the wake of the tragedy, Tamilnadu is witnessing a series of helicopter surveys of the misery in cities, towns and marooned villages by ministers. The opposition and the ruling party are raking up disaster-related issues to fight over. Funds for relief operations can also become an issue between the State and federal governments in the coming days. Official statements and steps reveal no recognition of the role of environmental degradation in the making of the disaster.

The calamity highlights, more than anything else, the callous neglect of environment protection along the entire coastal belt of India, including Tamilnadu. A handful of environmental activists have been crying themselves hoarse over the issue, but the powers-that-be have preferred to dismiss them as cranks. At the core of the issue lies a corporate-political mesh of corruption that seeks to thrive on human misery and lives.India, by law, has a coastal regulation zone (CRZ), where building activities are supposed to be strictly regulated.

In Tamilnadu and elsewhere, as old lawyers would put it, the rules and regulations have been observed more in breach than in observance. The rapacious rich, callous corporates, and a state flush with the 'free market' spirit have indulged in impermissible real-estate activities in the allegedly protected zone.A concrete chain of residential colonies, star hotels and entertainment spots has robbed the land of all coastal protection from the once friendly sea. It is mainly the poor who have paid - with their lives - for this crime against the coastline.

When the dead have been cremated or buried, it will be time to tell the people that environmentalism is not elitism, as self-serving seekers of political power have taught them. At stake in the protection of India's coastal environment are the lives of not merely Olive Ridly turtles but the millions to whom it is not a money-spinning means.