GUJA RAT

Vibrant
Gujarat?
Your coast
is not clear,
CURRENT AFFAIRS

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

MUNDRA
GULF OF KUTCH
HTL in original CRZ map, 1991
HTL in CRZ map of WFDP, 2007
HTL in CRZ map of Mundra SEZ, 2010
• Drawing the line The Adani Group has redrawn
maps to show the coastline 10 km from where it is
K
HAMISA ALI Mohammad squints
against the glare of the sea, inspect-
ing his fishing net. For the third
time this season, ships sailing down
the Kutch coast to India’s largest private
port at Mundra have damaged his fishing
net. His earnings are down by more than
45,000 per season while industrialist Gau-
tam Adani, who operates the port, has been
ranked the seventh richest Indian on the
Forbes list of billionaires — the only one
from Ahmedabad.
The battle-weary fisherman, one among
the 10,000 who contribute 66 crore every
year to Mundra’s economy, is more sar-
donic than angry. “These companies will
bring us development? These beggars who
steal from us?” he asks.
There is a similar scorn among 400
Wagher Muslim fisher families here on
Randh Bander, a 20-km mudflat on the
northern shore of the Gulf of Kutch that
has been used for fishing since the past
four centuries. It is part of an 80-km stretch
on the Mundra coast where the Gujarat
government gave permits in 2005 to the
Adani Group to set up a Special Economic
Zone (SEZ) of heavy industry and power
plants. At the Vibrant Gujarat summit last
month, Adani, who was the chief guest,
announced 80,000 crore of investment
in ports, infrastructure and power plants.
On 11 February, responding to a pIl by
Mundra’s farmers, the Gujarat High Court
served a notice to Adani’s SEZ and the Gu-
jarat government for illegally taking 231
acres of Navinal village pastures for the
Mundra SEZ. Navinal is just one of 23 vil-

12 TEHELKA 26 FEBR UARY 20 11


• SEZ who? Gautam Adani and Narendra Modi in vibrant mode
pH OTOS: TRU PTI PATEL (TOP), A NUMEHA YADAV (ABOV E)
DEVE LOP MEN T CON FLICTS
lages whose sarpanches sold off grazing
land keeping the Gram Sabha in the dark.
“Our sarpanch was a plumber; he now
has a 6 crore company. First they sent
guards to stop us from using our land, now
they send the police and BSF. When we
approach the company for a job, they turn
us away,” says Ibrahim Turk, a high school
graduate of Dhrab village.
Investors are flocking to Gujarat, but
the struggle of farmers and fishing families
in Kutch reveals the state’s growth para-
dox. Kutch district constitutes over a quar-
ter of Gujarat’s area, its coast making up
half of the state’s 1,600-km coastline. What
is going on is central to understanding
what is happening to Gujarat’s land, coasts
and resources — and how state policy
Reserved mangrove
forests were cut
indiscriminately for
CURRENT AFFAIRS
industrial projects
yet to be sanctioned
weighs in against the poor.
During the Vibrant Gujarat summit in
January 2009, the Narendra Modi
government signed Mous allowing the
Adani group a 15,000-crore expansion of
its SEZ over the next 15 years. public hear-
ings to consult those affected were held
• New skyline Destroyed Kutch mangrove
in Mundra on 5 October 2010, five years
after the Adani group started building
roads 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 for
their fishing nets. If creeks and our access
to the sea are blocked, what use are the
nets?” asks Anwar Wagher, a fisherman
from Navinal. Farmers from Zarpara
display photographs of reserved mangrove
forests indiscriminately cut by the Adani
Group. “The local people seem to have
awareness about the industrial project but
not the analytical impact of the project,”
noted G Vaghela, a Kutch district official
after the meeting.
Two months later, on 15 December, a
team from the Ministry of Environment
26 FEBRUARY 2011 TEHELKA 13
 GUJA RAT
and Forests (MoEF) inspected Mundra port
and SEZ and found the Adanis blocking
flow of water in creeks and choking man-
grove forests. It had illegally built a pipeline
to 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 on
the heels of the ministry’s scrutiny of two
other large projects — pOSCO and lavasa
— brought the spotlight on the SEZ.
But MoEF notices touched only the tip
of the brazen illegalities labelled economic
development on the Kutch coast. Bharat
patel of Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh San-
gathan (MASS), a labour union of 10,000
fisherfolk, has maps submitted by Adani
Group since 2004 to get environment
clearances. They show the high tide line
(HTl) 10 km south of its actual position. Ac-
cording to government maps of 1991, the
SEZ actually falls in Coastal Regulation
Zone I (CRZ-I). In the maps submitted by
the Adani Group for clearance of its Water
Front Development project in 2008, the
CURRENT AFFAIRS
HTl is 3 km south of what it is in state maps
of 1991, and then in maps submitted last
year for clearance of its SEZ, the HTl shifts
again, this time by 7 km. “The SEZ and pow-
er plants the government has permitted
are illegal in this coastal zone,” says
Ahmedabad-based lawyer Anand Yagnik.
EPLYING TO T EHElKA ’s queries, Adani
R Group spokesman Devendra Amin said,
“We used EIA maps prepared by the Na-
tional Institute of Oceanography (NIO ).
There is no illegal reclamation. In fact, we
reclaimed only one-fourth of what we have
approvals for.” He declined to share the
year and extent of these permissions.
NIO, one of 38 laboratories under the
Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, does not take any responsibility.
Scientist SN Gajbhiye, who prepared 17 of
21 EIA reports submitted by the Adani
group, said he could not explain the map
anomaly. “Adani’s port and reclamation
started years back. The government had
already authorised the project; my job was
not to see what is legal or illegal. I used
the maps Adani Group gave assuming these
were as approved by the state,” he said.
CRZ-I zones are ecologically so sensitive
that only traditional fishing, saltpans and
essential port-based activities are permit-
ted. Yet, locals say since 2005, over 1,000
hectares of mangrove forests have been
14 TEHELKA 26 FEBR UARY 20 11
destroyed, exposing Mundra to disasters
like the 1998 Kutch cyclone in which 3,000
died. A 2007 study ‘Valuation of Coastal
Resources’ by economist Indira Hirway
puts the value of Kutch’s mangroves as
fodder, fuel and fish breeding grounds at
over 300 crore. Maps and satellite images
accessed by MASS confirm that the Adani
Group is still illegally reclaiming land for
its SEZ. Documents accessed by TEHElKA
show the brazen land grab had started in
1992 when Adani asked for coast land to
• Grounded A fisherman at Randh Bander
The illegal land grab
started in 1992 on
the pretext of
making salt. Now an
SEZ is being mooted
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 filling
up creeks, reveal letters of 2001 written
by officials as well as commercial fishing
vessel associations using Kandla port.
The coastal stretch between Mandvi
and Mundra is one that the govern -
ment’s Department of Ocean Development
(DOD) identified as “a relatively rich fallow
land, with Mundra having the maximum
vegetation in the area”. The DOD study
recommends two stretches without any
mangroves, corals and mudflats for future
development, 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, the
Modi government had notified that for
every 100 animals, a village is entitled to
40 acres of gauchar or pastures. But con-
tradicting its own rules, it passed 23 orders
in one day to allot 6,582 acres of 23 villages’
pastures to the Adanis in July 2005. For
all this land Gautam Adani, the owner of
a 25,000-crore company and two private
jets, paid an average rate of 10 per sq m.
Mundra, with its deep groves of co-
conuts, mango and chikoo and fertile land
was 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 2005
forbidding diversion of pasture land.
The Adanis gave land taken on lease at
1-4 per sq metre for 600 per sq m to pub-
lic sector units Indian Oil Corporation and
Hindustan petroleum Corporation ltd.
In 2004, the Centre had asked all states to
notify rules to restrict SEZ promoters from
selling acquired land to others. “Modi de-
layed the amendment for three years till
2007, 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, land
was being sold at up to 2,000 per sq m.
The Modi government topped off its
largesse of land to the Adani Group with
five-year tax breaks of over 3,200 crore,
almost four times what it had marked for
redeveloping 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 jobs
created. That comes to an astonishing fig-
ure of 3.38 crore for creating one job —
exposing the whole development lie that
Gujarat is always spinning out.
anumeha@tehelka.com
pHOTO: ANUM EHA YA DAV