TEHELKA 26 FEBRUARY 201112

GUJARAT

KH A M I SA A L I Mohammad squintsagainst the glare of the sea, inspect-ing his fishing net. For the thirdtime this season, ships sailing down

the Kutch coast to India’s largest privateport at Mundra have damaged his fishingnet. His earnings are down by more than

45,000 per season while industrialist Gau-tam Adani, who operates the port, has beenranked the seventh richest Indian on theForbes list of billionaires — the only onefrom Ahmedabad.

The battle-weary fisherman, one amongthe 10,000 who contribute 66 crore everyyear to Mundra’s economy, is more sar-donic than angry. “These companies willbring us development? These beggars whosteal from us?” he asks.

There is a similar scorn among 400

Wagher Muslim fisher families here onRandh Bander, a 20-km mudflat on thenorthern shore of the Gulf of Kutch thathas been used for fishing since the pastfour centuries. It is part of an 80-km stretchon the Mundra coast where the Gujaratgovernment gave permits in 2005 to theAdani Group to set up a Special EconomicZone (SEZ) of heavy industry and powerplants. At the Vibrant Gujarat summit lastmonth, Adani, who was the chief guest,announced 80,000 crore of investmentin ports, infrastructure and power plants.

On 11 February, responding to a pIl byMundra’s farmers, the Gujarat High Courtserved a notice to Adani’s SEZ and the Gu-jarat government for illegally taking 231acres of Navinal village pastures for theMundra SEZ. Navinal is just one of 23 vil-

• Drawing the line The Adani Group has redrawnmaps to show the coastline 10 km from where it is

Even the high court has noticed. Laws are being bent towoo investors. ANUMEHA YADAV reports on the Adani SEZ

VibrantGujarat?Your coast is not clear, Mr Adani C

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GULF OF KUTCH

HTL in original CRZ map, 1991

HTL in CRZ map of WFDP, 2007

HTL in CRZ map of Mundra SEZ, 2010

MUNDRA

lages whose sarpanches sold off grazingland keeping the Gram Sabha in the dark.

“Our sarpanch was a plumber; he nowhas a 6 crore company. First they sentguards to stop us from using our land, nowthey send the police and BSF. When we approach the company for a job, they turnus away,” says Ibrahim Turk, a high schoolgraduate of Dhrab village.

Investors are flocking to Gujarat, butthe struggle of farmers and fishing familiesin Kutch reveals the state’s growth para-dox. Kutch district constitutes over a quar-ter of Gujarat’s area, its coast making uphalf of the state’s 1,600-km coastline. Whatis going on is central to understandingwhat is happening to Gujarat’s land, coastsand resources — and how state policy

weighs in against the poor.During the Vibrant Gujarat summit in

January 2009, the Narendra Modigovernment signed Mous allowing theAdani group a 15,000-crore expansion ofits SEZ over the next 15 years. public hear-ings to consult those affected were heldin Mundra on 5 October 2010, five yearsafter the Adani group started buildingroads and flyovers for the SEZ.

To pacify families protesting at the public meeting, Adani Foundation representatives said they would spend

4 crore on fishing nets. “Since Muharram,they have been asking us to fill forms fortheir fishing nets. If creeks and our accessto the sea are blocked, what use are thenets?” asks Anwar Wagher, a fishermanfrom Navinal. Farmers from Zarpara display photographs of reserved mangroveforests indiscriminately cut by the AdaniGroup. “The local people seem to haveawareness about the industrial project butnot the analytical impact of the project,”noted G Vaghela, a Kutch district officialafter the meeting.

Two months later, on 15 December, ateam from the Ministry of Environment

26 FEBRUARY 2011 TEHELKA

DEVELOPMENT CONFLICTS

13pHOTOS: TRUPTI PATEL (TOP), ANUMEHA YADAV (ABOVE)

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• SEZ who? Gautam Adani and Narendra Modi in vibrant mode • New skyline Destroyed Kutch mangrove

Reserved mangroveforests were cutindiscriminately forindustrial projectsyet to be sanctioned

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pHOTO: ANUMEHA YADAV

GUJARAT

and Forests (MoEF) inspected Mundra portand SEZ and found the Adanis blockingflow of water in creeks and choking man-grove forests. It had illegally built a pipelineto carry dredged material for reclamation,and started building an airport, a township,and a hospital on the coast without clear-ances. These showcause notices, close onthe heels of the ministry’s scrutiny of twoother large projects — pOSCO and lavasa— brought the spotlight on the SEZ.

But MoEF notices touched only the tipof the brazen illegalities labelled economicdevelopment on the Kutch coast. Bharatpatel of Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh San-gathan (MASS), a labour union of 10,000fisherfolk, has maps submitted by AdaniGroup since 2004 to get environmentclearances. They show the high tide line(HTl) 10 km south of its actual position. Ac-cording to government maps of 1991, theSEZ actually falls in Coastal RegulationZone I (CRZ-I). In the maps submitted bythe Adani Group for clearance of its WaterFront Development project in 2008, theHTl is 3 km south of what it is in state mapsof 1991, and then in maps submitted lastyear for clearance of its SEZ, the HTl shiftsagain, this time by 7 km. “The SEZ and pow-er plants the government has permittedare illegal in this coastal zone,” saysAhmedabad-based lawyer Anand Yagnik.

REPLYING TO TEHElKA’s queries, AdaniGroup spokesman Devendra Amin said,

“We used EIA maps prepared by the Na-tional Institute of Oceanography (NIO).There is no illegal reclamation. In fact, wereclaimed only one-fourth of what we haveapprovals for.” He declined to share theyear and extent of these permissions.

NIO, one of 38 laboratories under theCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research, does not take any responsibility.Scientist SN Gajbhiye, who prepared 17 of21 EIA reports submitted by the Adanigroup, said he could not explain the mapanomaly. “Adani’s port and reclamationstarted years back. The government hadalready authorised the project; my job wasnot to see what is legal or illegal. I usedthe maps Adani Group gave assuming thesewere as approved by the state,” he said.

CRZ-I zones are ecologically so sensitivethat only traditional fishing, saltpans andessential port-based activities are permit-ted. Yet, locals say since 2005, over 1,000hectares of mangrove forests have been

destroyed, exposing Mundra to disasterslike the 1998 Kutch cyclone in which 3,000died. A 2007 study ‘Valuation of CoastalResources’ by economist Indira Hirwayputs the value of Kutch’s mangroves asfodder, fuel and fish breeding grounds atover 300 crore. Maps and satellite imagesaccessed by MASS confirm that the AdaniGroup is still illegally reclaiming land forits SEZ. Documents accessed by TEHElKAshow the brazen land grab had started in1992 when Adani asked for coast land to

make salt. But it never did this, reveal let-ters written by Mundra officials in 1997.

A year later, it asked for land for its port,which it now wants converted into an SEZ.It had started dredging the coast and fillingup creeks, reveal letters of 2001 writtenby officials as well as commercial fishingvessel associations using Kandla port.

The coastal stretch between Mandviand Mundra is one that the govern -ment’s Department of Ocean Development(DOD) identified as “a relatively rich fallow

land, with Mundra having the maximumvegetation in the area”. The DOD study recommends two stretches without anymangroves, corals and mudflats for futuredevelopment, between Jakhau and Mand-vi, and between Mundra and Kandla creek.Contradicting this and its own Town plan-ning and Valuation Department, the gov-ernment approved the Adani group’s SEZ.

In 2002, facing criticism from the RSS-supported Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, theModi government had notified that forevery 100 animals, a village is entitled to40 acres of gauchar or pastures. But con-tradicting its own rules, it passed 23 ordersin one day to allot 6,582 acres of 23 villages’pastures to the Adanis in July 2005. Forall this land Gautam Adani, the owner ofa 25,000-crore company and two privatejets, paid an average rate of 10 per sq m.

Mundra, with its deep groves of co-conuts, mango and chikoo and fertile landwas like an oasis on the dry Kutch coast.Farmers grow tomato, moong and sesame.Annual income from dates is 20 crore,records the Date palm Research Station,Mundra. There are a large number of pastoralists and more than 1.5 lakh cattle.Baroi and Mundra panchayats passed successive resolutions in 2004 and 2005forbidding diversion of pasture land.

The Adanis gave land taken on lease at1-4 per sq metre for 600 per sq m to pub-

lic sector units Indian Oil Corporation andHindustan petroleum Corporation ltd. In 2004, the Centre had asked all states tonotify rules to restrict SEZ promoters fromselling acquired land to others. “Modi de-layed the amendment for three years till2007, till Adani illegally sold off this land,”says Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil,who raised this issue in the state Assembly.By the time the law was amended, landwas being sold at up to 2,000 per sq m.

The Modi government topped off itslargesse of land to the Adani Group withfive-year tax breaks of over 3,200 crore,almost four times what it had marked forredeveloping Kutch after the 2001 earth-quake. Government data shows an invest-ment of 1,31,702 crore in the Adani SEZ,port and power plant, but only 38,875 jobscreated. That comes to an astonishing fig-ure of 3.38 crore for creating one job —exposing the whole development lie thatGujarat is always spinning out.

anumeha@tehelka.com

TEHELKA 26 FEBRUARY 201114

The illegal land grabstarted in 1992 onthe pretext ofmaking salt. Now anSEZ is being mooted

• Grounded A fisherman at Randh Bander