Eco-Watch's Heblikar: At the helm of a grassroots fight

BANGALORE
May 24, 2006

A fortnight later, one can still hear the rumblings on the 20-acre Central Power Research Institute (CPRI) campus in Bangalore. On May 8, Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde landed on the verdant campus to inaugurate CPRI's Centre for Industrial Waste Utilisation and Centre for Collaborative and Advanced Research, and instead of patting the state's power sector officials on their backs, he left them with a stern warning: The state had to take a decision soon on the ambitious Rs 15,000-crore, 4,000-mw Tadadi thermal power project or risk losing it. "We've received a memorandum from environmentalists about the ill-effects of this project, and the state government will have to respond to it if it is to keep competing states at bay," Shinde told reporters after the inauguration.

Losing a big-ticket power project such as this one is something Karnataka can ill afford. A near-perennial shortfall of 1,500 mw routinely plunges capital Bangalore and the rest of Karnataka into darkness. While successive politicians and administrators have promised to fill this gap with an assortment of mega projects and invited a succession of private players to set up shop in the state, uninterrupted power supply has continued to be a bugbear for the state government. Losing Tadadi, then, would be a big blow to the state's efforts.

But why isn't Karnataka able to go ahead with the seven-year-old Tadadi project? Blame it on local environmentalists, rival politicians, fisherfolks and coastal villagers. "There is a raft of issues that has to be addressed about this project and no one seems to have addressed those issues," says Suresh Heblikar, Head of Eco-Watch, a Bangalore-based environmental agency. The challenges facing the Central government-owned Power Finance Corporation (PFC), the nodal agency for this and four other large-scale thermal projects, range from the location of the project (bang in an ecological hotspot) to disposal of fly ash to potential violation of the coastal regulation zone to destruction of local paddy and shellfish industries to displacement of some 20,000 families. "This project is going to be set up on the fertile Gajini land (created by the ebb and flow of the nearby Aghanashini river) and it will destroy the local paddy, besides ending the indigenous shellfish industry dominated by local women who specialise in shallow diving," says Heblikar.

People power: A March protest rally drew a large crowd

These alarming statistics seem to have caught the public eye. The first large-scale protest organised by Heblikar's Eco-Watch in March this year ended up blocking the Mangalore-Goa highway for four hours, with the traffic snaking back 2 km. "Turnout at the second protest in early May was even larger and more visible," boasts Heblikar. "We have the support of the people and we believe that we can halt this project in its tracks," adds Sadananda Harikantra, Convener of the Anti-Tadadi Thermal Power Project Committee.

Meanwhile, Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaaraswaamy has set up a team to look into the claims of the green lobby, and power minister H.D. Revanna says the state is "committed to improving the power scenario". On its part, PFC hasn't yet decided on the final vendor for the Tadadi project (although over 20 companies had evinced interest initially), but a company official says that they are confident of clearing all hurdles.

Reaching out: Heblikar (centre) listens to an aggrieved local

Worryingly enough for Karnataka, Tadadi is hardly the only power project under fire. The Kaiga Atomic Power plant, which is already working (units III and IV are under construction at a cost of over Rs 3,200 crore), is also under attack from Harikantra and local villagers; Nagarjuna Power's decade-long project in Udupi has been held up by one group or another, including Hassan-based Jana Jagruti Samithi, which has appealed to the Karnataka High Court for the withdrawal of Nagarjuna's environmental clearances. The fact that some NGOs are going over the top is evident even to Heblikar. "The Nagarjuna project has addressed some issues and the so-called environmentalists opposing this project have no idea about the advances in technology," he says.

No doubt ecology and livelihoods have to be protected, but agreeing on alternative locations or technologies are important too. After all, nobody's in doubt that Karnataka needs additional power-quickly.