DISPLACED IN INDIA: CLIMATE REFUGEES

MEET A NEW COMMUNITY OF THE DISPLACED IN INDIA: CLIMATE REFUGEES

Swept up India’s poor have contributed the least to climate change, but suffer most from it Photo: AP

AS YOU drive west from Baroda — Gujarat’s cultural capital — towards the coast, it is hard not to marvel at the smooth, fourlane Vadodara-Bharuch National Highway Number 8, which gets you there. The only signs that suggest one is not on cruise control in an SUV somewhere on an expressway in America are occasional roadside dhabas with Indian names and poor passers-by, clad in saris or dhotis. Dwarfed by towering toll booths and expansive road tracks signalling human accomplishment, they seem to be walking slowly in the opposite direction – away from progress. Or perhaps it’s the illusion created as the cars zip past, leaving them behind in a haze of dust.
Three hours on this road from Baroda and you arrive at Danti – a fishing village just 12 km away from where Mahatma Gandhi led his famous Dandi Salt March. The car meanders through a dirt path into the village. And then, the unmistakable signs of climate change — nature’s unforgiving backlash to human progress — start to show. Between the sea and a row of sea-flanked houses, which ends abruptly, there stands an 8-10 feet wall erected by the government. In the near distance, one can spot wells in the sea, brick-layered walls embedded deep in the sand; the flagpole of a temple.
These are remnants of a village called Moti Danti, now mostly drowned in the Arabian Sea. Hundreds of fishing families from this village have permanently migrated inland. They are among the swelling ranks of global “environmental migrants” or “climate exiles” – people who have to leave their habitats because of sudden or gradual alterations related to one of three impacts of climate change: sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and drought and water scarcity. The quintessential non-combatants in the climate war, they are the ones who have contributed least to global warming, but whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by it.
Ganpat Bhai Tandel, who moved to Dandi with his family, is among them. Before moving, he says he rebuilt his house further inland five times. “I lost my boat, my income has reduced but at least there is satisfaction that the sea won’t enter our home here.” Still others have moved to the neighbouring areas of Billimora, Dungri, Kosamba and Lilapur. Further south along Gujarat’s 1,600 km coastline, in Kaladra village, sea-level rise has eroded an entire road stretch and forced hundreds of villagers to rebuild their homes further inland.
The number of such climate migrants are not apocalyptic yet, but as a Greenpeace International Report from March 2008 warned, “If left unchecked, climate change could lead to global temperature increases of between 4-5°C, unleashing a barrage of impacts that will drive mass migration in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” In such a scenario, the number of environmental migrants could be as high as a catastrophic 125 million by the end of this century. But if global and local policy interventions contain global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius limit, the number of migrants would be 5 million.
India has long argued that it cannot accept binding cuts on emissions because western nations are the biggest contributors and it cannot “compromise” its economic development and the aspirations of its poor people for a better standard of living. Yet, we are neither assisting nor protecting the millions of poor already vulnerable to climate change. The Government of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), released more than a year ago, made no mention of environmental migrants or a plan to help them adapt to climate change. Meanwhile, there are early but sure signs of the doomsday scenario unfolding across India.
IN WEST Bengal’s ecological wonderland — the Sundarbans — devastating cyclones have pushed the Lohachara Island into the sea, displacing 7,000- 10,000 people permanently. In Orissa, which has experienced some of the worst coastal erosion in the country, entire villages have been swept away in a storm surge. In the Himalayas, where “glaciers are receding at the fastest rate in the world,” according to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, flash floods are wiping out villages in Ladakh and droughts are causing crippling water scarcity in Uttarakhand. In the monsoondependent Bundhelkhand area, successive droughts are similarly forcing full families to head to the cities for work. “Villages are there but there’s no life, land is there but there’s no productivity,” says SN Pandey, a natural resource management expert who works in Bundelkhand’s Tikamgarh district. “When people come back, they have mobile phones but no drinking water.”
Vandana Shiva, noted environmentalist, attributes the Indian government’s “denial” to two things. “One, it feels that if it takes domestic responsibility it will weaken its international negotiating position. This is not true. Second, if it acknowledges the impact of a fossil fuel-based growth, it will have to give it up and there are too many powerful corporate interests linked to the nonsustainable trajectory”.

Climate change is displacing thousands from their homes and habitats in South Asia. By 2100, they will be 125 million

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, two climate experts Sudhir Chella Rajan and Sujatha Bryvan, argued that the highest carbon-emitting nations, including China and India, should start accepting environmental migrants each year. In a post-9/11world, where immigration has tightened up all across Europe and in the US, the plan seems almost foolhardy. India itself is erecting barbed-wire fences along its porous border with Bangladesh – estimated to have 75 million climate migrants by the end of the century, the bulk of which will most likely migrate to India, say climate experts.
Nor can India afford options such as sea walls and dykes, which countries such as Netherlands have put in place. “We don’t have the luxury of doing such things and nor is it a permanent solution,” says Rajan, who authored the Greenpeace report. The cost of protecting against a one-meter sea level rise, the reports estimates, would be $ 500,000 per km. It’s an untenable proposition for protecting India’s 5,700-7,500 km-long coastline.
A few weeks ago, the environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, made a bold and unexpected attempt to move India’s climate policy into a more honest, sustainable, independent and responsible direction. It met with swift and predictable political opposition. But few are fooled by our hide-behind-the-poor hypocrisy anymore and millions are hurting. The West may have, and still continues to, contribute the most to global warming, but India and China have long since been playing catch-up. For our own greater good, the Indian contingent should do some serious soul-searching before it boards those high carbonemitting flights to Copenhagen.

Power of Reddy: is not ok... IF Shrama, Joshi,sastry, is ok

 Reddy Republic
The mining baron-brothers flex their muscles in Bellary, forcing a red-faced BJP to its knees, reports SANJANA

Flying high Janardhan Reddy is piloting the revolt against CM Yeddyurappa Photo: GAGANDEEP

BELLARY, A dusty town 270 km from Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru, has over the years transformed into a power centre of the rich and powerful. Famous for its iron ore mines and mining barons, a meeting called in the town may yet result in a change of guard in the state. On October 25, at a meeting called by Gali Janardhan Reddy, a mining baron and Karnataka’s Minister for Tourism and Infrastructure, mine owners rejected a decision taken by the chief minister of the state, BS Yeddyurappa. He had gone too far, they resolved. Within three days of that meeting, the Bharatiya Janata Party rushed its senior leader and in charge for Karnataka, Arun Jaitley, to the state. The BJP’s first ever government in Karnataka was in trouble 18 months after it took charge.
In an effort to raise money for the flood victims in the state, the chief minister decided to impose a cess of Rs 1,000 on every lorry transporting iron ore – a decision that was vociferously condemned by Janardhan Reddy and his brothers as the cess would adversely affect their mining empire. Unwilling to withdraw the cess (and bow down to the Reddys’ demands), Yeddyurappa pressed and obtained the required Cabinet approval. Hours after the cabinet decision, Janardhan Reddy and his brothers announced a decision of their own. Rallying all the mine owners of Bellary, they announced a Rs 500 crore housing project for the flood-hit victims in north Karnataka – independent of the government’s own rehabilitation plans for the flood affected. Two days later, as the crises worsened, the Reddys rounded up BJP legislators close to them and shifted them to posh resorts in Hyderabad and Goa – out of the Chief Minister’s and Jaitley’s reach. Even as discussions to resolve the crisis continue with the BJP’s central leadership in New Delhi, the question being asked is who are the Reddy brothers? And how did Janardhan Reddy come to occupy such a central position in the state’s politics?
There are a lot of stories one can tell about 42-year-old Gali Janardhan Reddy and his family. A man who owed debtors Rs 200 crore when his finance company collapsed in 1998. Ten years later, in 2008, the same man admitted that he and his wife alone have assets worth Rs 115 crore; with business turnovers of over Rs 2,000 crore. At last count, he and his brothers owned four helicopters besides an undisclosed number of aeroplanes. A number of luxury cars line the Reddy homes. In May 2009, the family spent an estimated Rs 20 crore on a wedding. The helicopters owned by the family ferried over 10,000 guests to the wedding even as 500 airconditioners helped them forget outside temperatures of 42 degree Celsius. A month later, the brothers donated a Rs 42 crore diamond-studded crown to a temple deity.

Power pack Janaradhan and Karunakar greet their brother Somashekhar Photo: KPN

But it would be limiting to sketch Janardhan as a protagonist in a rags-to-riches story. If the last week alone is any indication, Janardhan Reddy has emerged to be a shrewd political strategist who is well on his way to establishing a Reddy Republic.
The second of three brothers, Janardhan Reddy is a member of the Karnataka Legislative Council – a position he has held since June 2006. His eldest brother Karunakar Reddy and the younger one Somashekhar are both members of the Legislative Assembly. B Sriramulu, another legislator from the area is very close to the family and is considered to be a Reddy brother. Of the four Reddy brothers then, three hold key portfolios in the current Yeddyurappa government while the fourth, Somashekhar is the chairman of a powerful statewide milk federation. Add to the family’s kitty, a Member of Parliament (Sriramulu’s sister J Shantha was elected to the Lok Sabha from Bellary), and two other members of Legislative Assembly. Impressive political growth for a family that first shot into the limelight for its trysts with senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj during her election campaign against Sonia Gandhi in Bellary in 1999. Within the family, there is easy acknowledgement of the fact that two people responsible for this growth are Janardhan and Sriramulu.

REDDY MOUNTED A REVOLT AGAINST THE CM, LEADING THE MINING LOBBY TO REJECT THE NEW CESS ON TRANSPORTATION OF IRON ORE

As a political strategist, there is no doubting Janardhan’s abilities. Months after the BJP formed its first government in the South with the support of independent legislators, the party launched Operation Lotus to wean away legislators from other political parties into the BJP. The legislators were offered cash incentives, offers of ministerial berths and key positions in various government corporations. In a conversation with TEHELKA at the time, Janardhan did not dispute the allegation that the Reddy brothers were behind Operation Lotus – “We asked them and they answered positively. And God had has given us enough. We are only sharing what we have,” said Janardhan. Rumours at the time pegged the amount paid to legislators who walked over to the BJP at a few crore rupees each. Today as internal power struggles grip the party, three of the eight entrants under the BJP’s Operation Lotus have thrown their lot with the Reddy brothers. An investment that has paid off at the time of crisis.
It isn’t the idea of entrenched political influence in Karnataka alone that strengthens the idea of a Reddy fiefdom. It also emerges from the casual disregard the Reddys have displayed for nationally established boundaries between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Anantapur, the droughtprone Andhra Pradesh district that borders the Reddys’ home district of Bellary in Karnataka is stamped heavily by the Reddys’ presence. Their mining corporation, Obalapuram Mining Company (OMC) holds iron ore mining leases in Anantapur. In the past two weeks alone, the Divisional Forest Officer in Anantapur has issued five notices to the Reddy brothers for illegally mining across the border in Karnataka despite holding leases in Andhra Pradesh. The notices talk in detail of how the Reddys shifted the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh state border by destroying the boundary markers — an observation upheld by the Karnataka and Andhra High Courts as well. In the latest notice issued on November 1 the liabilities are clearly mentioned. If convicted, Janardhan Reddy alone is liable to pay a penalty of Rs 1,000 crore for mining without a valid permit and an imprisonment term of six months. The Reddys have never responded to any of the notices sent to them on the issue.

IN 2006 REDDY DECLARED BELLARY OUT OF BOUNDS TO THE THEN CHIEF MINISTER. ‘BELLARY BELONGS TO US,’ IS HIS PROCLAMATION IN 2009

AN AIDE of the family, Kanti Reddy, told TEHELKA that the courts should consider the concern the brothers have for the people of Anantapur before indicting them for illegal activities. The brothers have provided employment to thousands of families there even as they spend all their money and energy for the upliftment of people in Karnataka, he said. It seems a simple logic – how do boundaries drawn years ago matter if there was no injustice done to people across them? Ask Janardhan about the illegality of mining across states, or of encroaching on someone else’s property and the response is a clipped no. It is a matter for the courts, says Janardhan. The only other comment he will offer is that the Reddys have been unfairly targeted by people blinded by jealousy.
Besides mining corporations, the Reddys also own the Rs 25,000 crore Brahmani Steel plant in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh. Amidst much controversy, late chief minister YS Rajashekhar Reddy had alloted 10,675 acres to the Reddy brothers to set up the steel corporation apart from the 3,500 acres for building a second airport in the district.
Perhaps what clinches the idea of a Reddy Republic are the stories about Janardhan’s public declarations on Bellary. A month after he was elected a member of the Karnataka Legislative Council he declared the district out of bounds for the then chief minister. Three years later in 2009, the council heard another declaration – Bellary belongs to us.
The ongoing discussions in Delhi between the Reddy brothers and the central BJP leadership then has many implications – it will determine the price a state has to pay for its Cabinet deciding to impose cess in Bellary without the Reddys’ consent.