Cong-DMK route canal

Cong-DMK route canal

SAM RAJAPPA

28 Sep 2013

[The  effort  of  the  Congress  to  revive such   an  uneconomic  and  ecologically disastrous  project  affecting  the security, safety and livelihood of the coastal people near the fragile Gulf of Mannar is  not  going  to  improve  the  party’s  electoral  prospects  with  or without an alliance with the DMK, for the people have seen through the game]
The Congress is desperate to revive its electoral alliance with the DMK in Tamil Nadu before the 2014 Lok Sabha election lest it face its 1996 fate when all its candidates in the State lost their security deposits. 

The affidavit the UPA government filed in the Supreme Court on 16 September saying it wanted to implement theSethusamundaram Ship Channel Project, cutting across Ram Sethu, also known as Adam’s Bridge, which neither the shipping industry nor the AIADMK government of Jayalalitha want, is a case in point. It was a pet project of the DMK president, M Karunanidhi, on which the UPA government had reportedly spent Rs. 766.82 crore with nothing tangible to show for it. The estimated cost of the project has shot up to Rs 25,000 crore.

The Supreme Court had stayed execution of the project and the government appointed an expert committee headed by Dr. RK Pachauri which, after a two-year study, came to the conclusion that the project was not in public interest as it was not ecologically feasible and economically viable. The government chose to reject the recommendations of the expert committee saying, “Though the data did not support blocking of the project, and the evidence showed benefits from the project, the committee arbitrarily has concluded that the project is not viable. The recommendation of the committee is not tenable and is not supported by scientific data and by environmental studies commissioned by the committee itself.”

As far as shipping canal projects are concerned, the Suez Canal in Egypt and the Panama Canal in Panama are well known examples.These water routes have given tangible and intangible, real and pecuniary, and direct and indirect benefits of various kinds to these countries in particular and the world at large. The same cannot be said of the SSCP to link the Gulf of Mannar with the Palk Strait by dredging the shallow sea to enable ships from the Arabian Sea on the west coast of the Indian peninsula to reach the Bay of Bengal on the east coast and vice-versa without having to circumnavigate Sri Lanka. India does not have a contiguous navigable sea route around the peninsula within its own territorial waters due to the partially submerged Ram Sethu near Rameswaram between the south-eastern coast of India and Talaimannar in Sri Lanka.

The average depth of the sea in this area is only three meters which compels ships to go around Sri Lanka, increasing the sailing time of ships from one coast to the other by about 25 hours. Practically speaking, there will not be any saving of sailing time as a ship will take 16 to 20 hours to navigate the channel, besides paying a toll of Rs. 5 to 6 lakh for using it.

The quest for a direct sea link between the two coasts was first examined by Commander AD Taylor of the Indian Marines in 1860. But the scheme was not considered seriously by the colonial British government. Since then seven more proposals were made, the last one being that of Sir Robert Bristo, harbour engineer to the Government of India, in 1922. All these proposals were rejected because of their questionable economic viability. None of these proposals involved cutting the Ram Sethu, considered sacred by the Hindus.

After independence, the government appointed a committee headed by Sir A Ramaswamy Mudaliar to examine the feasibility and desirability of the SSCP in 1956, the CV Venkateswaran Committee in 1967, and the Lakshminarayanan Committee in 1983. All their reports were shelved in government archives. In 1994, the AIADMK government of Jayalalitha, who has now taken a firm stand against the project, directed the State’s Pallavan Transport Consultancy Service to reappraise the Lakshminarayanan report. In all these proposals, economic viability remained the stumbling block. Eventually, the DMK, by joining the BJP-led NDA government, succeeded in persuading Prime Minister Vajpayee to take up the SSCP in principle. In 2004, the DMK jumped sides and forced the UPA government take up this unviable project which the shipping industry had voted against.

The Gulf of Mannar is considered to be one of world’s richest marine biological resources. It had been chosen as a biosphere reserve because of its biological and ecological uniqueness. The region has a distinctive socio-economic and cultural profile shaped by its geography. It has an ancient maritime history and was famous for the production of pearls. Pearl was an important item of trade with Rome from the first century AD. Rameswaram, with its links in the Ramayana legend, has been an important pilgrim centre.

The Gulf of Mannar biosphere reserve has 3,600 species of plants and mammals and 17 different mangrove species. It constitutes a live scientific laboratory of national and international importance. The Gulf is 160 km long and 130 to 275 km wide. Geologists have reported the region is a fragile marine reserve subject to volcanic and tectonic activity. In the waterlogged land, eight series of strand lines, besides sea cliffs and caves can be observed.

Ram Sethu is a chain of shoal and parallel ledges of conglomerate sand dunes accumulated by the influence of current at the change of the monsoons. Globally famous tsunami expert TAD Murthy had cautioned that cutting of Ram Sethu would cause devastation of the coastline from Nagapattinam on the Bay of Bengal to Kollam on the Arabian Sea in the event of tsumani. According to a geological survey, Miocene era limestone beds are under Ram Sethu which connects Rameswaram and Jaffna peninsula. Legends as well as archaeological studies reveal that the first stages of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back 1,750,000 years and the bridge’s age is almost same.

In this biologically rich and rated among the highly productive seas of the world, dredging will have to be carried out to a depth of 12.8 meters and width of 300 meters for two-way traffic in the ship channel. The sea is known for heavy wind currents alternating between dock-wise and anti-dock-wise. If you keep on dredging the seabed, shifting sands will keep filling up the dredged areas.

If a fully laden ship gets grounded in a sandbank, the entire geography will change. Apart from regular maintenance of depth, continuous dredging of the channel will be required. Handysize ships with deadweight of 15,000 to 35,000 tonnes only can navigate the Sethusamudram ship channel. There are not more than 2,000 ships of this category in active service in the world. Closer home, the LTTE had the largest fleet of Handysize ships transporting arms, fuel and victuals to Sri Lanka, and would have been the main user of the channel. With the eclipse of the LTTE, the channel would be hard put to find the expected traffic to justify its construction and would have turned into a white elephant from the start.

The UPA government has already sunk Rs. 766.82 crore of the tax-payer’s money in the ocean on this venture which, in the words of Capt. H.(R) Balakrishnan, who commanded the frigate Trishul of the Indian Navy, “does not make nautical sense.” The SSCP was clearly crafted to line the pockets of politicians and foreign dredging companies. The effort of the Congress to revive such an uneconomic and ecologically disastrous project affecting the security, safety and livelihood of the coastal people near the fragile Gulf of Mannar is not going to improve the party’s electoral prospects with or without an alliance with the DMK, for the people have seen through the game. 
The writer is a veteran journalist  and former Director of The Statesman Print Journalism School