India’s Dying Beaches

I almost feel as though I am in Pondicherry.  The vicarious excitement and stress of trying to keep up with the sudden barrage of media stories and activities initiated by NDTV’s coverage of “The Death of India’s Beaches” has my adrenelin pumping as I try and support our colleagues at PondyCAN.

On 28 May, 2009, Probir Banerjee, PondyCAN’s President, was interviewed by Prannoy Roy of NDTV, fulfilling a promise Roy made months before to take up the issue of coastal erosion.  Realizing the magnitude of the problem, Roy initiated a state-by-state coverage of the issue in a series called “India’s Dying Beaches.”

Bahour Lake, Pondicherry

 
Bahour Lake 

Bahour Lake is a seasonal (it is generally dry for 5-6 months) freshwater wetland located about 20 miles south of Pondicherry town, near the village of Bahour.  It is the second largest lake in Pondicherry, with a storage capacity of 6.3 million cubic meters.

Toddy pots

Bahour is one of two Important Bird Areas of India in Pondicherry for the number of birds sighted (over 25,000 waterfowl counted in 1995 and 1998) and for having more than 1% of the biogeographic population of several species of waterfowl including Eurasian Wigeon Anas penelope and Little Grebe Tachybaptus ruficollis.

Planting paddy 

Farming is still the primary activity in Bahour commune.  Water intensive paddy and sugarcane are the major crops, with some coconut plantations and toddy palms.

Harvesting sugarcane

Loading sugarcane for transport

Local transport of sugarcane

All the irrigation for the crops grown around Bahour is done using groundwater.  According to a farmer we met on the road, the government does not allow the farmers to use the water from the lake.  As in Ousteri, the government lets out fishing contracts, draining the lake 5 months after fingerlings have been introduced into Bahour to make the catch easier.

Local farmer 

And here too, as in Ousteri, the government has plans to build a boat house and initiate tourism with motor boat rides on the lake.

Now, how is this going to work, you ask, since the lake is dry for much of the year?  Why spend all this money for a three-year project to build the infrastructure to allow boating?  According to a local Councilor and her son, the plan is to sink a borewell in the middle of the lake to pump groundwater to fill the lake when it is dry.  !?! This way, you get to catch your fish and have boating too.

Either way, the local farmers lose.  They have no access to surface water for irrigation, they are prohibited from fishing the lake, and their groundwater has turned saline.  The departments of Agriculture and Ground Water have had to install new wells up to 225 meters deep in Bahour since salt water has intruded into the second aquifer in the region.  An incredible mismanagement of ground water recharge mechanisms.  Hello people – you have a large lake right here!

“What will you do when your ground water turns saline? ” we ask the Councilor, who is a sugarcane farmer.  “We’ll sell the land for plots.”

Advertisement for residential plots in Bahour commune

Indeed, the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Bahour, who is also the Social Welfare Minister for the Union Territory of Pondicherry, is putting pressure on the farmers to sell their land.  Real estate speculators are preying on farmers who are in debt to acquire their land for Rs. 30 lakhs (close to US$ 77,000) an acre. They then divide the acre into 20′X60′ plots, which they sell for Rs. 3 lakhs each, for a total of Rs. 108 lakhs, turning a tidy profit of Rs. 78 lakhs.

Pondicherry Ministerial Staff Arrested; Lt. Governor Resigns

12 March 2008

A friend of ours, who shall remain nameless, was arrested yesterday, along with up to 150 of his co-workers, for demonstrating without prior permission in front of the Department of Accounts and Treasuries. This friend, who is a clerk in the Chief Secretary’s office, is a member of the “Pondicherry State Unified Ministerial Staff Action Committee.” This group has been on strike since last Thursday – for what I don’t yet know. I hope to be able to communicate with him soon.

While the ministerial staff members were being arrested, opposition party leaders called for the Lt. Governor to intervene in calling the Legislative Assembly into a budget session. The internecine conflicts between the Chief Minister (CM) and the Council of Ministers has led to a power play, with the 5 Ministers refusing to agree to a date set by the CM for the budget session before being apprised of the details of the new budget allocations by department and a report of projects and proposals discussed at the last Cabinet meeting. The appropriations bill passed during the last budget session will expire on 31 March 2008.

Today, the Lt. Governor of Pondicherry, Mukut Mithi, resigned after less than two years in office. (He was sworn in on 19 July 2006.)