Steering the Sugayatri
I’m often asked if real change actually comes about by hanging off buildings, barricading offices, cooling heels in jail for a green cause and generally being a troublemaker?
After several arrests and spending some quality time in the most renowned jail in this country, I have to say that while those are the elements of a Greenpeace campaign that make the news (or are blanked out by the media, depending on who you’re taking on!), there is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. The mundane, unsung, ‘unskilled’ things like research, writing letters and position papers, organizing meetings, sending off emails and faxes, building alliances and lobbying politicians. All interspersed with long airport or train station waits, cheap, roach infested hotel rooms and oily roadside food. Not so exciting is it?
But it’s amazing how much good will is out there for our oceans and the creatures they hold. In the last few months, over a dozen national level politicians have lent their support of the turtles, and against the Dhamra port, though the Ministry of Environment and Forest maintains a deafening silence on the project, and the impacts it will have on a Schedule I species – the olive ridley sea turtle. Not very surprising if you follow that near-defunct ministry’s activities.
While Greenpeace’s campaign to stop the Dhamra port has been out of the public limelight for the last few months, together with allies, we have been busy dialoguing with TATA and strengthening the case against the port.
So after several meetings at Bombay House, TATA HQ, the dialogue has progressed to the extent that the TATAs now agree to the need for a fresh, independent and transparent assessment of the environmental impacts of the port. They have also gone on record to say that if such an assessment says that the port poses a threat to the environment, they will withdraw from the project. The flip side though is that TATA staunchly refuses to halt construction while such a study is carried out! Worryingly, there was no turtle nesting at Gahirmatha last year, while the dredging was on.
Now common sense tells me that if you have reason to believe a child’s food might contain poisons, you would have it tested, but would stop feeding it to the child until the tests came back from the lab! This logic however doesn’t seem to apply to the TATAs!
In the last few months, while we have talked to TATA, port construction has progressed, even though this is the turtle season. This cannot go on. We have one more meeting coming up in the next few days, and one more chance for TATA to agree to halt construction. You can add your voice to the growing movement to halt the Dhamra port here, by asking TATA to stop construction while they commission a fresh independent assessment. Let’s hope, for the turtle’s sake, that they listen….
This post is tagged arrest, Dhamra, ministry of environment and forest, olive ridley sea turtle, Tata, turtles
