Shambhavi
- Jean Paul Richter (German novelist & humorist, 1763-1825)
Or because the blood flows under scales or shells, or life lives under bark and leaves?
I’m asking this because the Dhamra Port is being allowed to come up. This just shows how we as humans disregard all other creatures who may be at risk, while we’re greedily chasing a good life.
There’s no reason why TATA and L&T should be hell-bent on that particular site, especially when they (as well as the ministries concerned) were well aware that the port’s location is within the 20km limit stipulated as out of bounds for mining/constructing activity in the Forest Conservation Act. In fact, it is about only 15 km away from the Gahirmata Sanctuary, a complete violation of the Act!
Anyone who paid the slightest attention to geography or physics lessons in primary school, could tell you that industrial effluents, oil spills and wastes from the port will easily flow down to the sanctuary and immediately cause the turtles and other marine life, a major problem.
A school student like me shouldn’t have to mention these rather obvious facts about soil and water contamination and air pollution going hand in hand with building factories and ports (judging by our very poor waste and infrastructure management system), but since most of these obvious issues were outright ignored, (by the adults who claim to have our future as top priority) I thought I ought to point these out to you.
Considering the potential ecological damage, these big companies should have pulled out immediately. And the Ministries concerned should have forced them to, if they didn’t. Instead, they appear to have plotted together greedily to let the damage happen!
India can manage very well with one less port, but I hate to think what the loss of another 1000 turtles will do to an already very fragile ecosystem (we are very much a part of ). Of course, even a million dead turtles would be a mere statistic for the industrialists and the ministries. The focus for them is some pseudo-notion of development, for humans only; and mind you, for just a few greedy, rich ones. How could they possibly be concerned about some slow moving, shelled creatures that could never make ‘proper’ use of land like we the ‘almighty humans’ can?
Now, all this sickens a whole lot of people including me. Of course we’re still a small fraction, so our voices get stamped out just like the poor innocent turtles. What’s worse is how Tata claims to be taking a green turn, when in fact, he really doesn’t care two hoots whose blood is smeared across his port, be it that of a turtle or the Irrawaddy dolphins or flamingos or crocodiles or even future generations of humans. As if the poor shelled creatures don’t have it bad already, what with tourists attempting joy rides on defenseless turtle-mothers while they’re laying their eggs! And here comes the big industry jing bang ready to make matters worse.
It’s a special kind of arrogance that comes with being human, the feeling that you can dictate terms to all other life forms regardless of how unreasonable or cruel those terms are. The main justification: “Animals can’t reason, can’t talk, they don’t matter.” A rather foolish thing to say since they do both, but more significantly, they can, and do suffer, like you and me.
I don’t suppose an industrialist would’ve stayed quiet for very long if his or her home was being destroyed and his or her children/family were being threatened. Unfortunately, the human justice system does a very shabby job of keeping the animals and plants safe.
That’s why all the people who have the sense to be worried about these creatures and the planet’s future, need to join together, step up and speak up, and more importantly, ACT – while we still have the time.
- Shambhavi
