In 2011, the Gadgil Committee led by Padmashri environmentalist Madhav Gadgil repeatedly warned the Kerala government to take immediate actions against gross violations of environmental laws in many parts of the state. The ruling party, as well as the opposition, had then refuted his recommendations and completely ignored his reports. Today, while Kerala reels under a disastrous flood, Prof Gadgil points out that the areas mentioned in his report are the worst-affected. He has also recently predicted a similar situation awaiting Goa and parts of Maharashtra. In an exclusive conversation with The Logical Indian, he reveals how an extensive network of power-hungry politicians and industrialists are operating hand in hand to destroy the ecological balance and inviting more disasters.

What were the states covered in the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Reports in 2011?

We surveyed the entire stretch of the Western Ghats range, so, it included small parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and parts of Tamil Nadu.

What were some of the major recommendations of your report?

The recommendations were mainly two-fold. Firstly, Western Ghats is a very ecologically sensitive and biodiversity-rich area. We have a series of good environmental protection laws which were uniformly being violated.

We also have a series of measures for empowering the local community (gram panchayat onwards) to make decisions about the natural resource management place that also should have been duly implemented.

Then we had also analysed the level of sensitivity in different parts of the Western Ghats including Kerala, where we demarcated three zones – more sensitive, moderately sensitive and less sensitive.

We proposed the suspension of quarrying and mining activities in the highly sensitive areas, like rainfall rich and steep-slope areas. We had suggested that most of the unchecked mining must be discontinued completely and others could be allowed on a very small scale.

Now one of the primary contributory causes of the devastating Kerala floods is stone quarrying which has widely proliferated in Kerala. They have led to landslides, blocking of streams and shallowing of rivers.

Had our recommendations been enacted in time, this environmental damage could have been prevented.

There was a lot of false propaganda against our report. To fuel their own unscrupulous agenda, the political powers created all sorts of wrong impressions about our report among the general public, especially in Idukki district, where common people severely protested our report. Now Idukki has faced the maximum number of landslides, mainly the places near quarries suffered extensive damage. Now everyone is beginning to feel that they have made a gross mistake by opposing the implementation of our report.

The second aspect that exacerbated the flood was probably the unnecessary construction of dams and poor management of water release from these dams. Our report had talked about water resource management in detail.

We were asked to examine the Athirappilly Hydel Power Project. The analysis by a River Research Centre revealed that the dam project was economically and technically flawed as well. In addition, the project would have stopped the water flow in the scenic Athirappilly Falls – a popular tourist attraction. In fact, the Athirappilly Gram Panchayat had also rejected the dam proposal as it would have submerged the habitations of the Kadars, a primitive tribal group. Our Forest Rights Act specifically disapproves dislocation of any aboriginal community without their explicit consent. However, the dam project was continued almost illegally flouting all these laws.

Our survey found that water management in the reservoirs was being practised in a very unscientific way. If water release has been done in a proper timely manner, the dams would not have overflowed only halfway through monsoon as happened in Kerala.

If transparent water management had been started in all reservoirs according to our report, it would have lessened the impact of this calamity, if not completely averted.

At that time, how did the Government and other political parties respond to your report?

Unfortunately, everywhere governments are controlled by the insatiable greed of some power-hungry individuals. In fact, I can say that all political parties were hand in gloves with the people who were carrying out the illegal stone quarrying. In India, today there is a huge criminalized segment of the economy involved in these kinds of activities.

For example, in Goa, the Justice Shah Commission has officially estimated that the mine operators have made illegal profits worth Rs 35,000 crores. Today Kerala has suffered damage worth Rs 26,000 crores but not a single paisa is going from the pockets of these people involved in the illegal mining towards supporting the flood relief, neither has any fine being imposed over them. They are walking scot-free. If the…