The Rediff Special /Bittu Sahgal

Over the next decade the arena of violence will shift from Punjab, J&K and Assam, to coastal India

Bittu Sahgal reflects on the state of the Indian environment on World Environment Day

The United Nations has declared June 5, of each year as World Environment Day. This is when politicians plant trees. Kids get a chance to express their love for the earth. And writers like me are cast between optimism (thanks to the kids I interact with) and pessimism (thanks to the over-40s).

My darkest pessimism is, of course, reserved for that new breed of environmentalists who believe they can sup with the devil and dine with angels. I refer to the multitude of World Bank NGO consultants who want us to believe that taking money from the Colombian drug mafia (or the World Bank) to start drug rehab clinics (or environmental actions) is not just possible but actually advisable.

This lot is bent on destroying the very fabric of India's environmental ethic. Ranged against them are the Medha Patkars, Sunderlal Bahugunas and Baba Amtes of the world.

But hang on. There is this notion that people on the Net are not interested in serious issues... Only fluff. I don't buy that. I think that people who have a choice will make thinking decisions and there is almost no fraternity that exercises choice more fully and frequently than surfers. So, here goes. If you are looking for "entertainment" stop right here. What follows is the farthest thing from escape you ever imagined.

My work revolves around trying to make a renegade system accountable. Accountable to us today and to a new crop of people who are waiting in the wings to take charge. Between scams and manipulations, frankly, all of us have had the stuffing knocked out of our optimism. Forgive me, therefore, if I desist from "celebrating" World Environment Day:

I know enough about the fall of nations to understand that a house divided is a soft target. This is what India is fast becoming -- a house divided. Not because of our different religions, colours, castes and creeds, but because some of us have begun to corner the resources of the majority. In the race to seek more and ever more comforts, around 100 million of us have begun to affect the stability, security and livelihoods of more than 900 million compatriots whose resources have become the raw materials for our lifestyles.

The ecological stability of our subcontinent is on the brink. Neither water nor food supplies are any longer secure for millions of Indian citizens. These have not vanished on their own. They have been snatched in what would have been considered an act of war had the transaction been across an international border. The affected rural communities are understandably angry and sullen, dry tinder for anyone wishing to destabilise India.

Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, the central Naxal belt. All these were once relatively peaceful parts of our nation. A contributory cause for their descent to violence has been the erosion of the life-support system of communities -- clean water, fertile soil, forest supplies such as fuel, fibre and fodder... And, of course, food.

Not the food in the public distribution system, but rather that which was available from village ponds, rivers, pastures, forest fruit-trees and marginal fields. Who took away these community resources? Militants in the guise of economists and planners who believed that social and human rights can and should be subjugated to the `imperatives' of their brand of development.

I predict that over the next decade the arena of violence will shift from Punjab, J&K and Assam, to coastal India. Here, millions of once-self-sufficient communities are rapidly becoming marginalised with neither food, jobs, nor livelihoods at their disposal. Caught in a pincer between injustice and deprivation their young men and women flirt with RDX and smuggled contraband. As we foolishly create violent ribbons of instability along our 6,000-km coastline we must decide whether we are really prepared to 'do battle' against scores of communities upon whom we foist intrusions such as the Enron project?

Rich coastal habitats in Kutch, Maharashtra, Dakshin Kannada, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal, which once supported millions have been taken over or degraded by a lethal cocktail of petroleum complexes, copper smelters, highways, ports, thermal plants, mines, urban complexes, prawn farms and five star hotels. While degrading the lives of fisherfolk, these profit a tiny fragment and throw a few jobs to a slightly wider circle.

For the vast millions, however, hunger and displacement is the almost immediate result. Pushed beyond any limits of endurance the affected coastal communities drift to urban slums. Not in search of the good life, but of life itself. Since they do not talk like us, look like us, or even think like us, we actively seem to hate them! Why else would we demolish their huts, make them pay 100 times more for water than we do and routinely deny them the benefits of our police and our justice systems?

Thus do we create the tinder for all kinds of social unrest. Trapped in air-conditioned homes, cars and offices, we miss or pretend not to recognise this recipe for the destabilisation of Indian society. The evidence has been there for us to see for quite some time, but the politicisation of the bureaucracy and the criminalisation of politics has conspired to cloud it.

Like a cancer, the double barrels of ecological degradation and injustice have set us against ourselves. India is consuming India. This is the true message that the environmental movement seeks to communicate to planners and citizens at large. Can we alter this dark destiny? Yes. But not by denying the existence of the problem.

Consider that on June 5, 1997... World Environment Day.

Bittu Sahgal edits Sanctuary magazine and is one of India's bestknown writers on environmental issues.

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