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By Nilanjan Dutta Clearance for a huge chemical hub on the barren island of Nayachar, West Bengal, has come just weeks before the polls in the state. But this time around, there is no opposition. While the hazardous project will not displace people, an expert committee of civil society organisations says it will have serious and far-reaching consequences for fishing, marine ecology and the Sunderban biosphere reserve
 Eastern flank of Nayachar island showing soil composition of horizontal interbanded clay and silt | On April 7, 2009, the West Bengal government announced that doubts about New Delhi’s clearance for its proposed chemical hub project at Nayachar had finally been laid to rest. “We have received the letter of approval from the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers. Earlier, it was cleared by the union cabinet,” state industry secretary Sabyasachi Sen told the media. The announcement came just three weeks before the Lok Sabha elections in the state. But interestingly, it did not immediately generate the kind of political heat that it did even two months ago, when the news of the earlier union cabinet approval had come, on February 4, 2009. At that time, it had sparked off a statement war between the ruling CPI (M) and its major parliamentary opposition, the Trinamul Congress. While opposition leader Mamata Banerjee said her party would oppose the setting up of a chemical hub anywhere in the state on environmental grounds, the ruling Left Front argued that her opposition was a move to obstruct industrialisation in the state. Last year, in May 2008, the Trinamul Congress had boycotted an all-party meeting on Nayachar called by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The Left Front as well as political observers had also doubted whether the Centre would accede before the election the state government’s plea for the clearance, which was concrete proof that it was pursuing its dream of ‘development’ even after the departure of Tata’s Nano small car project to Gujarat. With the April award there were no more uncertainties. There seemed to be a clear consensus that the chemical hub was a necessary milestone in the path of ‘development’. No one in official circles was even talking about environmental clearance this time. What is cutely labelled a ‘chemical hub’ is actually a ‘Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR)’. According to the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation website, “The PCPIR will consist of 108.42 sq km (27,104 acres) of processing area and…141.78 sq km (35,444 acres) of non-processing area. The targeted investment for PCPIR is Rs 93,180 crore, of which Rs 48,180 crore is committed.”  Nayachar is an island, or rather a sandy bar, at the confluence of the rivers Hooghly and Haldi where they meet the sea, off Haldia in East Midnapore district. The dolphin-shaped landmass stretches about 15.7 km at its longest and about 4.5 km at its broadest. Possibly on the basis of an understanding that nobody would oppose a project on a barren island, preparations had been going ahead even without waiting for the formal clearance. The New Kolkata International Development (NKID), the biggest investor in the joint-sector project, is said to have already put in Rs 150 crore for infrastructure development in the area. The NKID is made up of NRI businessman Prasun Mukherjee’s Universal Success, Bengal Unitech, and of course, the Salim group from Indonesia.
The chemical hub was to be built three years ago in Nandigram. But there was a hue and cry as the ‘public’ issue of human displacement triggered resistance to the project. The people of an entire block and beyond were supposed to lose their fertile land and even their homesteads. So, there was mass resistance, the participation of political parties, a massacre sponsored by the ruling party and the state, and subsequent withdrawal of the project. Now that it has shifted to Nayachar, there is at least no danger of many people protesting the loss of their land, as the place is hardly populated. An agreement will soon be signed between the state and the central governments to join hands for providing more infrastructural support. According to industry secretary Sabyasachi Sen, the Centre will develop airport, rail and road connectivity, while the state will pay attention to the sewerage system, drinking water, power, bridge and river jetty. This huge project is not possible within the boundaries of Nayachar alone. It will cover a total area of about 250 sq km, whereas the area of Nayachar is only about 49 sq km. So, where is the rest of the land to be found? Obviously, in the adjacent port township of Haldia and its surrounding villages. And remember, this is going to be 80% of the land required. Will there be no human displacement in this well-populated region? Will there be no taking away of agricultural fields, as in Nandigram? Talking only about industrialisation in the “virgin land” of Nayachar without spelling out the plans for the total area, raises suspicions that uncomfortable questions are being deliberately kept aside before the elections. As for Nayachar, the core of the project, the objections being raised on environmental grounds are too serious to be dismissed by official assertions. According to scientists, the island came to the surface only in the mid-1930s and can still be partially submerged under tidal waters. It is located in a dynamic zone and it is difficult to predict what may happen to the island in future. West Bengal industry minister Nirupam Sen has asserted, “The technology to consolidate the soil on such islands is available. They have done it on an island in Singapore.” The reference is to the Jurong Island. However, geologists have expressed their reservations, saying there is little similarity between the two islands in terms of rock formation, stability and location. On the other hand, there is the instance of Ghoramara island, close to Nayachar, which has clearly shrunk in recent years. A ‘Citizens Expert Committee on Nayachar and Chemical Hub’ was set up some time ago by a number of civil society organisations. It included geologists, chemical technologists, river scientists, doctors, economists, and fishing and agriculture experts. The committee has recently come out with a report that summarises the concerns over the chemical hub. The experts contend that any major structural intervention in estuarine shoals would “imperil the delicate hydro-morphology of the estuary”. It points out that “such areas are the major sources of nutrients to various aquatic life forms”. The island is also close to the Sunderban biosphere reserve. The gigantic project in the coastal area threatens a marine fishing population of more than 250,000, as well as the already dwindling fish stocks. The scientists strongly oppose the West Bengal government’s recommendation for the “reduction and dilution” of the coastal regulation zone status of the island. The highly polluting chemical industries with their toxic effluents could cause “irreversible damage” to air, soil and water and pose serious threat to public health, the report says. There are well-documented instances of similar multinational production zones destroying local marine ecology in various parts of the world. The damages in this case are not likely to be localised but might affect the entire densely populated area up to the northern limits of tidal intrusion and large parts of the Sundarbans in the south. It is still not known what sort of production activities will take place in the chemical hub and what precautions will be taken against a possible disaster. “With utter disregard for public opinion and democratic principles, the government has withheld information regarding the PCPIR and transparency has been conspicuous by its absence. Some information was made available to us by the Centre six months after applying for it under the Right to Information Act. The three-page document had the barest information possible,” says Prof Bhaskar Gupta, secretary of Teachers And Scientists Against Maldevelopment, one of the constituents of the citizens’ initiative. Subrata Sinha, former deputy director-general of the Geological Survey of India, also reacted sharply to the government’s hint that the place had been selected because a natural hazard control mechanism existed there. “From the document we have received, the PCPIR proposal itself describes petrochem industries as hazardous. It says the water around Nayachar will act as a buffer in case of any accident, protecting the population of the mainland. The description of the life-sustaining Hooghly as a buffer, a kind of toxic shock absorber, ranks as one of the most notorious instances of environment insensitivity,” he said. Questioning the economic logic of the proposed chemical hub, the report observes that “the technology is not ours, the raw material is not ours and the investments will be made by the foreign multinational and transnational corporations. Our country will only provide cheap labour, land free of cost and lax environmental regulations. Hence the hub would, in effect, lead to net drainage of national wealth… “It is now known that the chemical giants, particularly after the adoption of REACH (registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals) in Europe and similar stringent laws of EPA in USA, have been trying to shift their production units to low cost countries (LCC) to take the advantage of their lax environmental laws and ineffective regulations.” One of the major arguments of the Left Front government in favour of the chemical hub is that it would generate employment for at least 100,000 people. This has also been a constant theme in its current election campaign. The citizens’ panel has countered this claim, saying, “Chemical industry is a highly automated knowledge-based industry and the employment-generation cannot exceed few thousands. In the case of Jurong Island, the most commonly cited example, it is expected that the entire hub will generate a sum of 15,000 employments in the year 2010 when a total of 150 units will operate.” Are the planners and investors of the project not aware that it may never be able to fulfil its declared promises of ‘development’, and that it is located in such a fragile zone that its very existence may become uncertain in the future, not to speak of the dangers it poses to marine and human ecology? Perhaps they are. There is no reason why the facts available to the citizens’ panel should not be available to them. So, is this project part of a long-term ‘development’ strategy, or is it just another short-term game of hot money looking to pick up a little profit on the run during the time of a worldwide capitalist crisis? (Nilanjan Dutta is a freelance journalist) InfoChange News & Features, April 2009
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