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| Dusty and sooty landscape of Jaintia Hills.
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Narpuh Reserve Forest (RF), deep inside the Jaintia Hills of
Meghalaya, is among the few good forest patches which has withstood the intense
pressures of growth, development and mindless extraction of natural resources
like coal and limestone. It also forms an important watershed area with many
important rivers originating from the hills. We visited the forest in March and
November last year looking for birds and primates as part of an ecological
study. The 200 km and 9 hour long journey from Shillong to Pasadwar village,
the range headquarters of Narpuh RF block 1, was dominated by large broom-grass
plantations, coal and limestone mines, coal depots and busy, sooty and dusty
towns and villages.
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| ‘Blue’ Lukha – Surreal but dead!
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To reach the denser forests of Narpuh, it was imperative to boat
across the rivers Prang and Myntdu. Thirty odd minutes into our journey, when we
reached the confluence of rivers Prang and Myntdu, we noticed that the hue of
the water turned blue rapidly and signs of life viz. fishes, tadpoles and weeds
slowly disappeared. According to our boatman, Bah Michael, the river used to
teem with life and the fishes from the river used to be an integral part of the
local staple diet. However, since 2007 the river started turning blue and the
fishes soon disappeared, which according
to Bah Michael and other villagers of Pasadwar, due to coal and
limestone mining and cement factories. After a few days as we went to the Block
2 of Narpuh on northern side of the reserve, we saw another bluer and bigger
river, Lukha, in Sonapur on NH 44. We stopped for refreshments at a small way
side ‘dhaba’ which stood right on the bank of the ‘blue’ Lukha. As we were
shooting the river from the window of the ‘dhaba’, its owner, a man in his
early 50’s, started to narrate his own tale of rue and tragedy in eloquent
English. According to him, not long ago Lukha, a lively river full of fishes
and other life forms, used to be the main source of potable water for daily use
and subsistence income for the local fishermen. But all that changed in 2007,
when almost all the fishes and other life forms died overnight destroying the
local fishery industry as well as the various fishing competitions for which
Lukha was locally famous for. The various ‘dhabas’ of Sonapur, including his,
were famous for serving the local fishes of Lukha, without which any wayfarer’s
journey remained incomplete. Sonapur, thus subsisted quite a few such dhabas as
it stands on the busy NH 44, the only all-weather road that connects Barak
Valley of Assam, Mizoram and Tripura to the rest of India. However with the fishes dead, the local
dhabas has also suffered and the villagers in and around Sonapur can’t use the
water even though it is just flowing right in their backyard. Instead they have
to now trek several kilometers to get water for drinking and other domestic
uses like washing, cooking, cleaning etc. Such acute shortage of potable water
is also compounded by the complete absence of reclamation of abandoned mines
resulting in the proliferation of unused mine pits and caves in large areas
which causes the surface water to percolate and disappear in the pits as a
result of which smaller streams and rivers of the area are either dying off or
becoming seasonal. “The ‘reservoir of fish’ has now become its graveyard” said
the elderly owner sarcastically after explaining that the name ‘Lukha’ in the
local Pnar language meant ‘reservoir of fishes’!
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| ‘Brown to Green to Blue’- Transition before death!
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And he too, like villagers of Pasadwar, blamed coal/limestone mining
and cement industries as does the Meghalaya Pollution Control Board (MPCB)’s 2008
report titled: ‘Investigation Report on the contamination of the Lukha River’.
In unambiguous terms it states that
Lukha was polluted ‘blue’ due to its tributary – Lunar as it came into direct
contact with the mixed coal and limestone mine’s leaches and effluents. This concoction was so powerful that it not
only killed the fishes and other lives of Lunar river, but also those in Lukha.
However, there was no mention as to the precise reason behind the bluing. Many
villagers found it hard to believe that coal mining was responsible as they
felt that it was due to the cement factories that their rivers were dying the
blue death! To them this link was quite evident since it was only since 2007
that the cement factories started large scale limestone mining and production
activities the area. And since 2007, according to the villagers and the news
reports, the river water has been religiously turning blue every year during the
month of November and stayed so till monsoons when the high rainfall diluted
the pollutants. Cut back in mining and productions during monsoons, perhaps
also, helped to cut down on the pollutants. But the question was why this
sudden bluing in 2007 whereas mining has been going on since the colonial
times. Earlier too, as a reported by Swer and Singh in 2003 stated, the rivers
of Jaintia Hills were gravely affected by Acid Mines Drainage (AMD) originating
from sulphur rich coal mines through spoils, leaching of heavy metals, organic
enrichment and silting by coal and sand particles and waters of the rivers were
characterized by low pH, high conductivity, high concentration of sulphates,
iron and toxic heavy metals, low dissolved oxygen (DO) and high BOD. The advent
of the cement factories, thus, was like the proverbial ‘final nail in the
coffin’ for the ‘terminally ill’ rivers!
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| Thousands of coal and cement trucks ply across NH 44 daily |
Interestingly, according to the MPCB report, the Lukha turns blue only
after merging with the river Lunar. To corroborate this fact we trekked upto
the confluence point and found out that Lukha was just a narrow stream and the bulk
of the water was drained by Lunar and its numerous streams carrying effluents
from Umshnong and Lumshnong, two upstream hamlets where majority of the cement
plants are operational. The colour of Lunar’s water was brownish red and which
turned blue only after 50-100 meters from the confluence point. Lukha, before
meeting Lunar, is drained by several streams originating from Sutunga, where
the coal mining activities are very high. Thus, what renders the color blue to
the river? Why does it turn blue only after the confluence and what does it
indicate? As of now neither we nor anyone else has convincing and conclusive
answers. However, we would like to
reiterate that irrespective of what renders the blue colour, it is an uncontested
fact that the rivers are poisoned to death, given the death of fishes and other
life forms reported by the people, press and official departments.
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| Cement factory at
Lumshnog near Narpuh |
On our way back to Shillong, after wrapping up our survey, several questions
haunted us: If the mines have caused such havoc to such large number of people,
how come the mines still thrived? What role does and can the environmental
regulating bodies like the PCB and MOEF play? After going through extensive
literature pertaining to mining and the laws regulating it and talking with
various actors holding direct and indirect stakes in mining, what we understood
and learnt was deeply disturbing. Operating at a micro-scale level with
thousands of small mines spread across the length and breadth of the state,
mining has now doubt contributed to the income of many indigenous people. But
this lone silver lining is highly contested today. At its very best, mining activities in
Meghalaya are nestled in vague and ambiguous space operating in a nebulous and
hazy gap lying somewhere between the legitimate and illegitimate. At its worst however, it sustains on
child-labour, exploitation, mafiadom, rampant corruption, administrative
irregularities and indiscriminate flouting of legal and environmental
regulations resulting in damage and disruption of natural and socio-cultural
environment.
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| Coal laden trucks over Lukha in Sonapur |
According to the Indian Coal Mines Act, 1973
(Nationalisation), coal is classified as a major mineral in India, implying
that only a PSU or its associate bodies/sub contractors can mine an area once
it obtains the mandatory license from the Central Government, implying that
practically all coal mines, since they are unregistered, are illegal. Yet the
trade of this illegally extracted coal is under an indirect control of the
Indian state since taxes and royalties are collected both by the central and
the state government! The situation in the limestone mining and cement
industries too are far from better as a leading environmental scientist who was
formerly the chair of the Expert Appraisal Committee, Meghalaya, told us.
According to him, most cement companies prefer to install small but multiple
factories so as to avoid an Environmental impact assessment (EIA). However,
once established, they increase their output capacity which then only required
a clearance from the central government.
EIA’s in Meghalaya, like elsewhere, remains a cruel joke. Apparently a
multi-national cement giant while in the process of setting up a factory in
Jaintia Hills, in its EIA reported the presence of the Glorissa superb although in India, it occurs only in and around the
Western Ghats. Surprisingly enough the company still managed to get the
clearance after a second application after correcting the mistake. The above
example and Lafarge controversy, which was highly publicized due to the PIL
against it in the apex court of India, amply exhibits the culpable nature of
the industrial establishment.
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| Erstwhile perrenial now drying streams of Jaintia Hills |
Numerous civil rights and human rights activists, other NGO’s and
eminent personalities from the state has been highlighting such issues for a
long time but the debates and the dissent are either fragmented, divided over
the various issues within or are just too small to capture either the
imagination of the state or the nation. But the sudden ‘bluing’ of the river
has in some way galvanized a larger audience, at least within the state, to
think and talk about the issue. However, the fate of Lukha, Prang, Myntdu and
numerous other rivers remains grim in the absence of political will or united public
opinion, determined to set the wrongs of mining right. Which is diametrically
opposite in uranium mining issue, where the protest were united, unanimous and
unambiguous, cutting across the state, student bodies, village councils, political establishments, press, local
intelligentsia and the middle class, perhaps because risk of hazards and
possible impacts can be very high. But isn’t it also true that the coal mining
has also wrecked havoc, some irreversible ones too, in terms of issues
concerning health, local economy, cultural traditions, demography, biophysical
environment? The rivers turning ‘blue’, perhaps then, is mother nature’s
righteous indignation at the very people who, in spite of possessing the power
to determine the destiny of the land, sadly, chose to destroy it.
Studies referred in the
text:
Meghalaya State Pollution
Control Board (2007), Investigation Report on Contamination of Lukha River,
Shillong
Sumarlin Swer and O.P.
Singh (2003), Coal mining impacting water quality and aquatic biodiversity in
Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya, Envis Bulletin Vol 11(2): Himalayan
Ecology
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