Noted historian, Gandhi biographer and environmentalist Ramachandra Guha said that Vizhinjam International Seaport Thiruvananthapuram was "economically flawed, socially unjust, environmentally disastrous, and profoundly anti-democratic".
He based his conclusions on the report of the Janakeeya Padana Samithi (JPS). The report, 'Impact of the Vizhinjam International Seaport on the Beaches, Coastal Sea, Biodiversity, and the Livelihoods of Fishing Communities in Thiruvananthapuram District', was released on Tuesday.
The JPS is a seven-member expert group formed by the Janakeeya Samara Samithi, the ‘Latin Church’-led fisherfolk collective that led the 140-day anti-port agitation in 2022. The JPS was constituted after the government refused to include a local expert in the official committee headed by M D Kudale, former additional director, Central water and Power Research Station, Pune.
Guha described the JPS as an example of "the best kind of interdisciplinary research." "It brings together the perspective of ecologists, geologists, climate scientists, sociologists, economists, political theorists and activists," he said.
The historian said that the report comprehensively punctured "the deluded dream of making Vizhinjam the Singapore of India". "It tears apart the dream but it does so in a very careful non-polemical fashion, and with data rather than opinion," Guha said.
He said the report compiled by the "people's commission" was so comprehensive and impressive that "any university in the world would be proud of it".
Guha said the main focus of the report was to examine what the Vizinjam port "will do, what the government claims it will do, and what it will actually do". "And it shows very comprehensively and tellingly how the VISL (Vizhinjam International Seaport Limited), the promoters, suppressed, manipulated, and misrepresented data to get environmental clearance," he said.
Guha went on. "The so-called environmental assessment downplayed the impact of the project on biodiversity, radically underestimated the loss of fishing livelihoods, underestimated the negative consequences for tourism, ignored the coastal erosion the project would cause, disregarded the aesthetic value of crystal beaches, and also the fact that it will be forever lost to humanity."
Based on the JPS report, Guha analysed the Vizhinjam project along four broad dimensions: economics, social justice, ecological sustainability, and political democracy. "Is it economically viable, is it socially just, is it environmentally sustainable, and has it been framed and executed in the spirit of constitutional democracy," he said and deduced that the project fell short on all the four counts.
Is it economically viable?
"If you look at economic viability, you will find time delays, cost overruns, inflated future benefits and above all, the Government of Kerala so massively subsidising a single private firm (Adani Ports)," he said and added: "Economic viability has been shredded to bits. This port is not economically viable."
Is it socially just?
He said the report documents how the project is already displacing fisherfolk much more than the project proponents claim. "It is widening the gap between the rich and the poor. It is increasing the burden on the women of the coastal villages who may be now forced to go elsewhere and look to work as domestic help for survival rather than practising their traditional craft with dignity and honour," Guha said.
Is it ecologically sustainable?
"The project documents in meticulous detail, and again, with on-ground evidence and scientific research and with striking visuals, the destruction of beaches, of marine life, of the very beautiful cliffs, the pollution of water sources and how climate change will intensify all of the above," Guha said.
He said it was important to recognise that the environment and social damage that this project was already causing and would further cause was independent of climate change. "Climate change will make it worse. But it is already happening independent of climate change because of how carelessly and foolishly this project has been planned and executed. These ecological costs will will further hurt the livelihood of the fisherfolk," Guha said.
He said mountain forests and coastal areas were very fragile. "Large infrastructure projects will destroy them irreparably. If you see what Char Dham project is doing to my native Uttarakhand, you will understand what this project will do to the coastal ecosystem of Kerala," he said.
The report estimates that the loss of ecosystem services as a result of the project would be Rs 2,000 crore a year. "Rs 2,000 crore will be lost because of pollution of water sources, erosion and so on and so forth," he said. (The figure given in the report is Rs 2,035 crore. Of this half is considered annual recurrent loss and the other half a rough approximation of a one-time loss.)
This figure includes value foregone in the form of submerged rocky reefs, in the form of lost reef fishing and shore-seine fishing opportunities, in the form of lost sales of fish by women, in the form of lost sport and recreation facilities, in the form of reclaimed beaches meant for drying fish, in the form of tourism land lost, and in the form of beaches lost to erosion.
Is the project execution democratic?
Guha said it had not been transparent. "It is secretive, non-transparent and anti-democratic," he said, based on his study of the report. "Of course, all three major major political parties - the Congress and CPM and the BJP - have pushed the project through secretive and non-transparent means," Guha said.
Guha flags flaw in report
There is one minor flaw in the report, he said. "The report talks of economics, social life, ecology and politics but leaves out the question of national security. National security is also relevant to this project," the historian, and a trenchant critic of the BJP dispensation, said.
He said a single private firm, Adani's, ran 13 seaports and eight airports in India. "It already controls a great amount of traffic on who is coming into the country, who is going out, and what goods can come in. This Vizhinjam project further undermines our national security because it increases the monopoly," he said and added: "Can you imagine any self respecting country, any so-called proud country, handing over to one company almost all its major airports and ports? What does this do to our security?"
In conclusion, Guha said the Vizhinjam project is "antithetical to and opposed to the interests of the citizens of Kerala and of India".
