Tribute | Gadgil, most misunderstood man in Kerala

In the middle of 2012, almost Gandhi-like in his barebones frame and spirited walk, Prof Madhav Gadgil hiked up the Kottoor hills on the western fringe of Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram district to meet a group of Kani tribals.

The report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) was by then published and his name summoned up in many, especially those living in the high ranges and forest fringes of Kerala, the image of a fearsome entity that only an exorcist can chase away.

Prof Gadgil, in a brown striped kurta that hung loose on him, stood before the mike in the classroom of a tribal school looking outside, as if lost. The tribal men and women who had gathered to hear him seemed a bit amused by his seemingly tentative manner.   

Then, as if willing himself to speak, Prof Gadgil quickly turned to his audience and said: "There is nothing to fear in my report. What we said in the report is only the beginning, not the end," he said.

The translator converted this into a terse one-liner. "Gadgil reportil pedikkanonnumilla." (There is nothing to fear in the Gadgil report).

The ecologist looked offended. "That's not enough. I want you to tell them that everything in the report is not to be implemented right away but only after discussing with them and taking their inputs," Prof Gadgil said.

There was silence in the room and as subsequent events testify, Prof Gadgil's appeal for a better and deeper understanding of his report was lost on Kerala. The categorisation of ecologically sensitive zones (ESZs) in the WGEEP report, better known as the Gadgil report, turned Kerala against Gadgil.

Survival instinct
The anger, in a sense, was understandable.

Among the places the Gadgil report had included in the ESZ1 (ecologically sensitive zone one) -- for which it had proposed the most rigorous environmental safeguards like no change in land use or no polluting industries or no new major roads -- are booming prosperous towns. Vythiri, Mananthavadi and Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad, Irinjalakkuda in Thrissur, Mannarkkad and Chittur in Palakkad, Thodupuzha, Udumbanchola, Devikulam and Peerumedu in Idukki, Ranni in Pathanamthitta, Punalur in Kollam, and Nedumangad in Thiruvananthapuram.

"The cry to implement the Gadgil report in full justifiably scared the people. They feared that their livelihoods will be threatened, they feared for their survival," a senior UDF MLA said on condition of anonymity.

Quarry connection
However, T V Sajeev, the chief scientist at Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), said that such reasoning was misleading. "The anti-Gadgil movement was instigated by the quarry lobby. It is they who mobilised the political parties against the Gadgil report," Sajeev said.

He said that it was quarry money that watered political parties. "This is why the regulatory distance between quarries and residential areas in Kerala has shrunk at intervals from 200 metres to 50 metres now. The quarry owners feared that the Gadgil report would threaten their existence, and they alerted the political parties," Sajeev said.

The fact is, there was no outright ban on quarrying and sand mining in the Gadgil report. In ESZ1, rather than a ban, it called for the downsizing of existing quarries but prohibited new licences. In ESZ2, it recommended just a social audit for existing ones and wanted a ban on new licences. And in ESZ3, it even allowed new ones.

By the people, for the people
But even what were widely considered extreme provisions in the Gadgil Committee report were sought to be implemented through a consultative, people-centric approach. What the report laid down were broad guidelines that had to be fine-tuned through a participatory process.

If more proof was required, here is what the report says: "WGEEP advocates a graded or layered approach, with regulatory as well as promotional measures appropriately fine-tuned to local ecological and social contexts within the broad framework of ESZ1, ESZ2 and ESZ3. While we advocate this fine-tuning through a participatory process going down to gram sabhas, it is appropriate to provide a broad set of guidelines as a starting point."

Prof Gadgil just wanted to play the mentor but Kerala gave him fangs.

This was, in a way, both ironic and tragic, as Gadgil was particularly hopeful that Kerala, with its robust decentralisation mechanism, could discuss and debate the WGEEP proposals and eventually implement policies that would imbibe the progressive spirit of his report.

"Gadgil had the highest regard for Kerala's decentralised politics. He felt that Kerala could be developed as a model state in implementing the report, as it had a vibrant culture of local-level planning," Sajeev said.

War against Gadgil
Instead, there emerged a political consensus against Gadgil.

In November 2012, a few months after Prof Gadgil went up the Kottoor hills and requested understanding, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy indulged in scare-mongering: "The committee's findings are so far-fetched that if accepted, the main centres of Idukki district will have to be considered as a forest."

The CM even made a false claim. "Even an urban centre like Vattiyoorkavu near the capital has been identified as an ecologically sensitive zone," Chandy said when Nedumangad was the only area proposed as an ecologically sensitive zone in Thiruvananthapuram district.

Chandy had the support of the LDF. He readily agreed to the CPM demand to constitute an expert panel to counter the Gadgil recommendations.

There was no need, as the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre formed the High Level Working Group (HLWG) under space scientist K Kasturirangan to review the Gadgil report.

Kasturi lynches Gadgil
Kasturirangan's HLWG report dismantled the Gadgil edifice. It said that the WGEEP report had taken the human element out of its considerations while identifying ecologically sensitive zones.

The HLWG report said that the Gadgil Committee was blind to the "human-cultural component" in Western Ghats, which it said was part of biodiversity, livelihood and developmental needs of human populations. It recommended a drastic reduction of areas under ecologically sensitive zones.

If Gadgil had branded nearly 25,000sqkm of Kerala's total geographic area as ecologically sensitive, the Kasturirangan panel chiselled it down to 13,000sqkm. If the Gadgil Committee had included 633 villages in Kerala under ecologically sensitive zones, the Kasturirangan panel had brought it down to 123.

The Kasturirangan panel said the Gadgil committee employed a "coarse grid size" for zonation. For instance, Gadgil branded a sprawling 81sqkm as a single ESZ grid. This approach to zonation, it said, was so all-encompassing that even busy and thriving towns like Irinjalakkuda, Punalur, Thalassery, Ranni, Sulthan Bathery and Nedumangad fell within ESZ1.

But what everyone missed was Gadgil's call for a comprehensive and dynamic local-level consultation process that would precede the restoration of the Western Ghats.