Cyril Radcliffe drew India's border without ever visiting it. Turns out our environmental clearance system learned the same trick -- and the Western Ghats are paying for it, points out Binu Alex.
Key Points
- The Gadgil Committee recommended stronger ecological protection and greater decision-making powers for gram sabhas, but many proposals were diluted.
- Disasters such as the Wayanad landslides expose the shortcomings of current environmental clearance practices.
- Nature does not follow administrative boundaries, making scientific, community-led conservation essential for reducing disaster risks.
Naam to suna hoga. Sir Cyril Radcliffe.
The British lawyer who split India and Pakistan in five weeks flat. He never set foot on the land he was cutting up. Just sat in a room with old maps and population numbers, and drew a line. Rivers, villages, someone's ancestral home, all sliced by a pen that had never touched the soil.
I used to think that was a horror story from history class. Something we'd never repeat.
Then Wayanad happened. Then the Himalayan states. Then the rest of the Western Ghats started sliding downhill every monsoon like clockwork. And I started wondering if we've just swapped the lawyer for a laptop.
Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud. Our environmental clearance system runs on the exact same logic as Radcliffe's map table.
The Gadgil Committee looked at the Western Ghats and said, most of this is fragile, protect most of it. State governments took one look and said, no thank you. So we got the Kasturirangan Committee instead, which did its version of Radcliffe's job. Sat somewhere far away, looked at satellite photos, and drew lines. Except this time the lines went straight through villages. One side of a road could be 'ecologically sensitive'. The other side, twenty feet away, open season for quarrying.
Mountains Don't Follow Maps
A mountain does not know the difference. Nobody told the slope which side of the line it's supposed to collapse on.
That's the whole problem in one sentence. You cannot manage a hillside like a spreadsheet. When someone blasts a tunnel through the 'permitted' side, the vibrations don't stop for paperwork. The whole slope loosens, safe zone and sensitive zone together, and then the rain finishes the job. It buries everything downhill without checking anyone's file number first.
And just like 1947, the people who actually live there were barely asked.
Gadgil's report wanted gram sabhas, the local village councils, to have the final say on their own land. Simple idea. The people who will bury their dead should get to decide what happens to the hill above their house.
Instead that power went straight back to committees in Delhi and state capitals, signing off on projects in air-conditioned rooms, several hundred kilometres from the nearest landslide.
Radcliffe drew his line and left the country within days. Never saw what it cost.
Our modern Radcliffes don't even have that excuse. They can watch the news. They can see Wayanad, count the bodies, and still hand out the next clearance the following week. The line on the map hasn't moved an inch. Neither has the arrogance behind it.
Nature, unlike our paperwork, doesn't recognise borders. It just enforces its own, one monsoon at a time.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
