A Walk up the Hill

Title: A Walk up the Hill – Living with People and Nature
Author: Madhav Gadgil
Publisher: Allen Lane, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780670097043
Pages: 424

In Kerala, Madhav Gadgil’s fame is similar to the character of Mr. Frankland in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ – he is ‘either carried in triumph down the village street or burnt in effigy’. The report of the Western Ghats expert panel which he chaired recommended stringent rules on human habitation in the ecologically sensitive spots and as a consequence became a harbinger of bad times for the settler community in these zones who have been carrying on agriculture for a living for decades. Meanwhile, he is a hero of the environmental activists and the Left-leaning science awareness body called Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP). Madhav Gadgil is a scientist well-versed in theory and quantitative methods and is an excellent field ecologist-cum-field anthropologist fascinated by the natural world and people and culture. I had initially thought that this book was an autobiography but this is only a memoir and that too, practically devoid of any kind of personal facts. In fact, this is a summary of the projects undertaken by the author – effectually a curriculum vitae. The book is graced with a foreword by M S Swaminathan.

The first few chapters of the book are biographical and tells about the author’s education in India and the US. On return, he joined the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, as a faculty along with his wife. This association (with IISc, of course!) lasted for 33 years till his retirement. Gadgil was very keen in field work unlike most of our established scientists. He initiated his career as a field anthropologist-cum-ecologist working on the sacred groves of Ambi Valley in Pune district, his home town. His greatest contributions came while working as a faculty at IISc, which the author says remains to this day the only place conducive to the serious pursuit of science in a free atmosphere and in the company of many bright and committed scientists. Gadgil developed contacts with the tallest political leaders soon after. He was a member of the small group of people invited by Indira Gandhi to discuss the modalities in setting up a new department of environment in her cabinet. What made the author controversial was his association with conservation of ecology in the Western Ghats. He chaired an expert panel to examine the status of the Western Ghats and recommend appropriate conservation and governance mechanisms in 2010. Unlike the other projects of the author, this book is silent on the recommendations of this committee. But we know that the panel submitted its report containing severe restrictions on economic life in the sensitive areas. Jairam Ramesh, who was more militant than a street activist as far as environment was concerned, was the minister who constituted the panel. But he found himself too big for his boots and was shunted out of the ministry. When the final report was submitted, the climate ‘changed’ and the government refused to accept its findings. Then it constituted another high-level committee headed by Kasturirangan to re-examine its findings. The new committee watered down the recommendations and the author alleges methodological faults in its working.

The author is wary of forest departments of all states in India. He is pessimistic about the officials, their policies and functioning. The book claims that village communities in the pre-British times maintained village woodlots and grazing lands in good condition. Britain had the distinction of wiping out its own forests and wildlife and abolishing community-based management well before any other country in the world. After 1857, the need of forest management was felt and the British half-heartedly copied some European methods. The powers of the forest department to subjugate the common people of India were enhanced by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. This act criminalized hunting, which surprisingly Gadgil opposes, claiming that hunting for meat was very much a part of human evolution. However, this act criminalized the livelihood of many hunter-gatherer tribes. The human-wildlife conflict in the form of wild animals raiding human habitats is precipitated by this act. At this point, the author notes with relish that Kerala’s forest officials are much more upright and spoke to their superiors somewhat as equals. This was recorded in 1975 and says that he instantly fell in love with God’s own country (p.82)!

This book consistently argues that we have been implementing a system of passing on the benefits of development to those already well off and costs of development to the weak and the poor. This forms the basis of the author’s quite openly visible tendency to oppose and create obstacles to every developmental project on environmental lines. He even objected to the EIA study of the Konkan Railway alignment in Goa. The reason cited for this resistance was that the project would ‘merely protect vested interests, damage the environment, hurt the poor and divide the society’ (p.172). Did it? After several decades of the Railway’s successful operations and the revolution in transportation it had brought to India’s western coast, we can conclude with certainty that the author’s observations were wide off the mark. For some other projects, the role of Gadgil was to act as part of an arbitration on the desirability of a project which he usually used to scuttle. He served in the advisory committee set up by Indira Gandhi to scrutinize the Silent Valley hydel project in Kerala. The committee promptly decided to shelve it. The book includes a chapter on the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad and its early leader M K Prasad, who were dead against the Silent Valley project. The author had a long and fruitful association with both. The author’s staunch objection is most vociferously directed against mining projects in the Deccan. However, his reasons for opposition to mining is laughable. He claims that mineral resources are non-renewable and cannot be replenished once they are exhausted. The value of these ores will only increase in future with mounting worldwide shortages of mineral resources and we lose nothing by not exploiting them in a great hurry (p.177).

Even though informative and providing guidance, it is to be suspected that the book might serve to radicalise young, impressionable minds on hard-line environmental activism. It addresses pollution in a big way and demands stringent rules. The logic is that if pollution is allowed to go unabated, the industry would make undue profits but remain inefficient in the global market. However, this legitimate concern turns very sensitive and intolerant even to minor offenses. Sound pollution from running trucks when they carry mined produce on the road and formation of waves in water bodies due to barge movements (p.309) are raised as big concerns the administration should address immediately. As an alternative, he suggests mining rights to be given to the local community with government’s financial support that should also be labour intensive. Can such ventures compete effectively in the market? As usual, economic viability is not a concern for the author. In the 1970s, the author and his wife Sulochana Phatak were among the very few Indian students at Harvard and MIT choosing to return to India. The reason he gives is a bit funny though: they did not want to further strengthen the white-supremacist American government by helping enhance its scientific abilities! There are some peculiar aspects of the author’s food habits which would surely amuse the readers. He was always willing to consume whatever his hosts ate. This was sometimes extended to strange preferences. Gadgil’s mother was raised on donkey’s milk as an infant because her six elder siblings had died within a week of birth. The author took inspiration from this and went to a donkey bazar near Pune and tasted fresh donkey’s milk. He claims that it was pretty good (p.344). On some other subjects, the book demands unnecessary secrecy in what should have been open knowledge. Government rules on People’s Biodiversity Register stipulate that the knowledge be made public. This is opposed on the flimsy pretence that ‘the communities may not wish to make public the knowledge of the medicinal use and properties of biological resources’ (p.230). His real concern is that pharma companies may utilize them.

The harsh wildlife protection act is causing animal numbers to go up considerably, leading to attacks on human habitats on the fringes of forests. The stringency of the act was conceptualized by urban nature conservationists who are alienated from the common villager and having an elite mindset. The author notes that even Salim Ali shared this prejudice. The system criminalizing activities in wildlife parks was set in place by Ali and some maharajas of erstwhile native states who were entrusted by Nehru to formulate rules on wildlife in the 1950s. Mainly because hunting is banned for almost half a century and animal numbers have greatly increased which lead to raids on farmland and conflict with people, Gadgil boldly suggests legalization of hunting on a limited scale as in Sweden where wildlife is deemed a renewable resource that should be managed through regulated systematic hunting while consuming the meat and utilizing other products of economic value such as hides or antlers. No country other than India bans hunting outside national parks or wildlife sanctuaries except for endangered species. Since the author is much interested in anthropology, we get to know some interesting facts as well. A study under the well-known Harvard leader of human population genetics Cavalli-Sforza found that there was a large overlap of genetic makeup of two groups from Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka, namely the Brahmin Haviks and Dalit Mukris (p.47). The study found that it is impossible to assign any particular individual with certainty to one or the other group. All talk of any one caste group in India being genetically different or superior to others is just nonsense.

Each chapter in the book begins with a short poem of four or five rhyming lines, related to the topic which is discussed in that chapter. Nothing is mentioned about their authorship, but it’s possible that Gadgil himself has penned these lines. The book is somewhat large with around 400 pages that focuses on technical aspects on ecological conservation that demands readers’ unwavering attention. It includes long explanations involving technical terms about the projects coordinated or assisted by the author while at IISc. This becomes a trying experience for ordinary readers after some time. In one such instance, the book lists out 21 problems specific to the Chilika lake in Odisha along with solutions proposed by the local people. Such elaborations are frequent and tiresome for the readers.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Heavy Metal

Title: Heavy Metal – How A Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal

Author: Ameer Shahul

Publisher: MacMillan, 2023 (First)

ISBN: 9789390742660

Pages: 396

 

Those who have visited the small hill station of Kodaikanal would not fail to appreciate its pristine beauty and the calm, misty mornings. This jewel of a town is the favourite destination of thousands of tourists and a number of older people wishing to stay there for an extended period of time to rest or recuperate. The peace of this idyllic spot was shattered in 2001 when it was revealed that a clinical thermometer manufacturing facility owned by the multinational company Unilever was dumping glass waste containing traces of the deadly metal mercury in the ground without any treatment and disposing it to scrap dealers who reused it for various purposes, putting the town’s ecology and the health of its inhabitants in jeopardy. A loud public outcry ensued and the factory was immediately closed down. Demands to remedy the occurred damage through painstaking soil correction procedures and provide compensation to the workers and society in the vicinity of the factory dented the public image of Unilever which was riding on the marketing pitch of an environmentally responsible company. Militant environmental groups such as Greenpeace and local activists fought against the company both in India and abroad, till finally Unilever caved in and accepted every demand. This book is written by one such activist who was in the forefront of the agitation against the company. Ameer Shahul is a journalist-cum-activist focusing on green policies and intellectual property rights.

 

One important characteristic of the factory was that it was not a brand new one. The cosmetics major Chesebrough–Pond’s had set up a thermometer plant in the US and was operating it profitably till the late 1970s. Following the tightening of environmental regulations in the US and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the corporation found it unable to provide for the increased surveillance and control measures newly incorporated in the rule books. It was also exactly the time India was reeling with the failure of its much vaunted socialist model of industrial development and literally scouring the West with the begging bowl of foreign investment. Tamil Nadu provided a very suitable land at Kodaikanal for the thermometer factory. This was very essential as mercury can vapourize at typical room temperatures in India and it was desirable to find a location which is cooler than the plains. The factory was set up and became operational in 1983 directly employing about 200 people. There were ample safety measures in place at first, but they were slowly relaxed one after the other in a matter of months. Even inexpensive protocols like mandatory bath for workers handling mercury before they went home were also abandoned. As part of corporate rearrangement, Unilever took over the plant in 1988.

 

Shahul claims that a veteran environmental activist named Navroz Mody, who had taken up residence at Kodaikanal, accidentally stumbled upon glass waste at a scrap dealer’s shop in 2001. Mody observed traces of a black liquid in them which he deduced to be mercury. Environmental groups stung into action and about 5.3 tons of glass waste was found in the custody of the trader. A public protest soon took place that accused the company of irresponsibly disposing mercury-laden waste to traders and dumping it in remote areas. The very next day, Unilever suspended operations at the factory, admitting the existence of ‘a remote possibility that contaminated waste may have left the factory due to a small human error’. Statutory agencies ordered closure of the works and the company had no stomach to fight as the factory was not much profitable any way. Streamlining business and setting focus only on the FMCG sector, Unilever withdrew from ancillary sectors like agricultural feeds, specialty chemicals, nickel catalyst and also from manufacturing thermometers in the mid-2010s. The factory never reopened.

 

Every line in this book is specially tuned for propaganda against Unilever and exaggerating the implications of mercury poisoning. Several anecdotes are given in which many good knights in shining armour ‘accidentally’ arrive on the scene and get shocked at the contamination caused by mercury. One such story is the ‘Pathar ke Phool’ ingredient in biryani which was studied by two scientists at the National Centre for Compositional Characterization of Materials (NCCCM) at Hyderabad. Out of ‘curiosity’, they subjected the material to tests on the ultra-sophisticated cold-vapour atomic absorption spectrometer and got alarmed at the high concentration of mercury in it. Pathar ke phool is lichen which absorbs metals and minerals from its surroundings and deposits them in its cells. It is a bio-monitor for measuring air quality. They then traced the origin of the material to Kodaikanal and visited the site to access other contaminated material. It is alleged that air samples taken from the factory premises showed mercury levels 2640 times higher than normal.

 

The author observes that effectiveness of campaigns depends on the amount of media coverage and the public interest it generates. True to this dictum, the environmentalists tried every trick up their sleeve. Hindustan Unilever’s annual general body meetings were routinely interrupted by activists posing questions and sloganeering. The fight extended to all fronts – statutory agencies, social pressure, judicial, legal and even political as the last resort. Jairam Ramesh, who was a union minister at that time and was called ‘India’s Big Green Wrecking Machine’ by the Wall Street Journal for his excessive activism, many a time intervened at the crucial moment in favour of the activists turning government machinery against the company. They set up an Indian People’s Tribunal (IPT) as a pseudo-judicial forum in 1993 to address the issues of environment and human rights. Retired judges took part in it and they ‘summoned’ company executives to depose before them which they refused to do. However, the Pollution Control Board of Tamil Nadu actually attended this stage-managed program. Activists also forced the company to send 290 tons of mercury waste back to the US in 2003 for recycling. Finally, Unilever agreed to pay compensation to workers even though the ill effects of mercury poisoning could not be convincingly proved. However, the constant fight of company officials with environmentalists took their toll in other ways as well. Manvinder Singh Bagga, the CEO of Hindustan Unilever in 2000, suffered the double fiasco of Kodaikanal and the failure to turn around another subsidiary. This cost him the top job of Unilever at the international level in 2010.

 

Studies suggest that mercury, even in low concentrations, can cause a spree of serious medical disorders including cardiovascular, reproductive and developmental problems. The US stopped the production of mercury in 1992. After that year, the metal is only recovered from various end-use products and processes there. However, mercury was, and is continued to be, used as a medicine in traditional practices such as Ayurveda. Potions containing mercury were believed to heal a host of ailments and its use was ubiquitous as a household cure. It remained the drug of choice to treat sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. ‘A night with Venus leads to a life with Mercury’ was the moral one-liner elders once gave to young men. It was used as ointment, in vapour baths and taken orally. When the presence of mercury at even trace levels of a few ppm (parts per million) is dangerous, what would be the repercussions of ingesting some of the traditional medicines in which mercury is deliberately added as an ingredient? Even though the author discusses about Tibetan medicine, he remains tightlipped on Ayurveda’s connection to mercury.

 

The book points to the serious health issues of ex-workers of the factory and the illnesses among them and the local people were studied in detail. But these were unable to draw conclusions to link the workers’ diseases to mercury exposure. This difficulty is bypassed by dubbing the studies ‘poorly designed and unsophisticated’. It also gives a glimpse of the militant and intimidating tactics of environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace. We read about the pollution control authorities of Tamil Nadu requesting Greenpeace to recommend a consultant to advise it on the health impact of mercury pollution (p.268). The result of such a study is not hard to guess. The author also maligns all experts who differed in their opinion with the activists. The activists’ demands also appear to be endless. After the requirements of recycling the waste and remediation of soil, the next demand was on assessing the risk to ecosystem integrity and not limiting it to risk to human health.

 

Corporations that pollute their surroundings must be taken to task. There is absolutely no going back on this crucial requirement. Sometimes they spend some money on local community development and through their CSR initiatives. The idea is to spend a small sum on enhancing livelihoods, water conservation, waste management and on health and well-being of communities around the factories and gain some peace in return. Also, corporations usually fail to acknowledge their mistakes and negligence when confronted with an ethical dilemma regarding human lives. These are all valid concerns which any company should address and be accountable for. However, they are the lifeline of the country’s economy and should not be needlessly pestered with. The open attack by intransigent environmental activists mostly funded by foreign NGOs must be reined in.

 

This book is a fine example of excellent diction and the entire topic is well structured and planned sequentially in such a way that even peripheral occurrences happen to fall line at the appropriate time. Scientific terms are lucidly explained. The way this book is planned is a model for aspiring authors. The mercury issue of Kodaikanal alone would not have justified the size of the book and hence a lot of side issues are also included. One full part of seven chapters is devoted to the origin and growth of Unilever and its Indian operations. The history of Greenpeace is interspersed with the biography of all leading characters. If you always keep in mind that this book is an expertly crafted piece of propaganda, reading this would be enjoyable while keeping you balanced in your outlook.

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Water Kingdom

Title: The Water Kingdom – A Secret History of China

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: Vintage, 2017 (First published 2016)

ISBN: 9781784701543

Pages: 341

China is a huge nation with the geographical features of a continent. It houses the largest homogeneous community of people within its borders, but is also compensated by nature with mighty rivers and abundant natural resources. The country’s social, political, literary, artistic and economic milieus were closely aligned historically with proper management of its rivers and lakes. Water thus quite literally forms a significant undercurrent in every aspect of Chinese life. Negligence or incompetence of water control produced a punishing outcome in the form of floods that breached man-made dykes and dams. In the old times, bungling with water management was a sure recipe for a ruler to lose his kingdom as it was construed by his subjects as an indicator of the loss of heaven’s mandate. As China modernized in the last century, widespread application of scientific techniques has somewhat put the rivers under check. There has been no flooding on the Yellow River since 1949. But the other side of excessive control of hydraulic resources is now becoming painfully apparent. The Three Gorges and other gargantuan projects are wreaking havoc with the ecosystem. Added to this is the issue of pollution caused by lax rules and the state’s thrust to produce more and more whatever be the cost. All major rivers in China are afflicted with the scourge of contamination with industrial waste products. Philip Ball examines water as a major factor that influences Chinese society and culture over the ages. Ball’s obsession with water is amply showcased by his other work ‘H₂O – A Biography of Water’, reviewed earlier in this blog. The author writes regularly in scientific and popular media and had worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences in the magazine ‘Nature’. This history of China from a watery perspective is a labour of love the author feels for the country, but it is not very obvious how the word ‘Secret’ in the subtitle is relevant.

This book claims to be a grand journey through China past and present and opens a window through which one can begin to grasp the potentially overwhelming complexity and teeming energy of the country and its people (p.5). The worst nightmare for a ruler of China – from the dawn of history to its current administrator in the person of Xi Jinping – is about losing control of the people and a descent into chaos and eventual dissolution. Water was always seen as a potent symbol that demarcates a ruler’s merit. The administrators were greatly helped in this venture by philosophical works which professed a practical concern with the business of daily life and the structure of society. Unlike their Greek counterparts, Chinese philosophers didn’t dwell on abstract metaphysical questions. China has a long history and an equally long list of dynasties which make it troublesome for readers to keep track of which is which. The Qin dynasty, from which the appellation ‘China’ evolved, was surprisingly short-lived, but its first emperor Shi Huangdi is well known to us as the man who built the Great Wall. It is the Han dynasty which followed the Qin that appeals more to Chinese national sentiment, as its society is often called the ‘People of Han’. In all these dynasties such as Song, Tang, Yuan, Ming and Qing, water shaped the political organization of the state. Management of water was also the key to maintaining social order. Large hydraulic engineering projects such as the Grand Canal were conceived and implemented without deference to cost in terms of material and labour. This serves as the backdrop to the origin of the disparaging epithet ‘oriental despotism’. Property rights were secondary to communal interests and a mercantile class was slow to evolve.

Mastery over water was not confined to the control of inland river dykes, but to the vast blue ocean as well. Ball takes great care to describe the series of Chinese naval expeditions in the Ming period under its able admiral Zheng He. Chinese ships dwarfed Vasco da Gama’s vessels which appeared in the Indian Ocean nearly a century later. Some of the larger trading vessels of Chinese merchants weighed 1500 tons against Sao Gabriel’s meager 300 tons! They overstepped the European ships in technique too. Sails of Chinese boats were usually made not of cloth, but of woven bamboo matting. A slew of technological innovations put Chinese navigation in the forefront. Magnetic Compass was invented in China and the Mercator projection for map-making was used almost five centuries before it was developed in Europe in 1569. Zheng He made a total of seven voyages starting in 1405 CE. There are claims that he reached the Americas, but a vigorous naval activity up to Africa is historically attested to. These voyages were not interspersed with imperialist overtones, but when the need arose, Zheng He didn’t hesitate to fight. Vira Alakeswara, the ruler of Sri Lanka, refused to pay tribute. The Chinese fleet fought with him in 1405 and the Lankan king was captured and taken to the Ming capital in chains. Isn’t this a prescient pointer to Xi Jinping’s vision of a maritime silk road in the twenty-first century, especially in view of the debt trap in which Sri Lanka finds itself in related to the Chinese development of Hambantota port? Only time can tell. The Ming adventures suddenly ended with the eighth visit in 1434. This created a power vacuum in the Indian Ocean, which was filled by the Portuguese seven decades later. Many reasons are attributed to the sudden demise of maritime ambition, but power struggles and intrigues between the court eunuchs and Confucian officials in the Ming court are the most plausible.

A large portion of the book is dedicated to an analysis of the large-scale hydraulic programs initiated by the Communist regime which took over in 1949. Between 1950 and 1990, about 80,000 dams and reservoirs were built on China’s rivers. The Three Gorges dam is the largest of its kind in the world with a reservoir that is 600 km long which can be seen even from outer space. The electricity generated from the site is enough to cater to 10 per cent of China’s total power demand. Another grandiose scheme of North-South Water Transport that envisages carrying water of the Yangtze to Beijing is on the drawing board. However, environmental concerns don’t bother the Chinese policymakers much. Silting, pollution, damming, overuse, land reclamation and climate change issues go unnoticed. Ball makes it a point to present the problem of polluting factories on riverbanks. Ancient temples in the reservoir of Three Gorges were relocated brick by brick to higher elevations, but this was mostly done with commercial interests in mind in the form of tourist revenue.

China had the good fortune not to fall under the imperial yoke of a foreign power like what happened in India. It had suffered crippling defeat in the Opium Wars against the British, but sovereignty over the territory was not lost. It was only for a brief time that the Japanese could impose their rule on China around World War II. However, barbarian neighbours had overrun China many times in the past. The Yuan dynasty of the Mongol hordes and the Qing dynasty of Manchurians reigned for centuries in the mainland. The Qing Empire, which was the last in the long line of ruling houses and was dislodged only in 1911, was especially humiliating for the people. They insisted that all male citizens adopt the Manchurian shaven head and long pigtail as a sign of allegiance to the Qing state. This was considered unmanly, but refusal to comply carried the death penalty. Seldom do oppressive regimes intervene in personal attire, especially of men. The Taliban’s insistence on men mandatorily growing beards is a case in point.

The book is somewhat difficult to read and the small typeface has not at all helped matters. Readers who are not familiar with Chinese names of persons and places find it difficult to follow the author in the long narrative. A lot of sketches and pictures are included which helps to lessen monotony. Ball is an expert in depicting art and explaining it smoothly. A chapter is reserved for the influence of water on China’s painting style. The author’s predilection to art is understandable as was eminently noticed in his other book titled ‘Bright Earth – Art and the Invention of Colour’, which was also reviewed earlier in this blog. So, it is not surprising that he gives a decent summary of Chinese art as well. In the earlier part of the book, Bell quotes other scholars and offers oblique criticism of authors like Jared Diamond and Karl Wittfogel.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Islands in Flux

Title: Islands in Flux – The Andaman and Nicobar Story

Author: Pankaj Sekhsaria

Publisher: Harper Litmus, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9789352643981

Pages: 268

The Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands are the largest archipelago system in the Bay of Bengal, consisting of about 500 islands with a total area of approximately 8200 sq.km. Only 38 of these islands are inhabited and the archipelago is separated from mainland India by 1200 km of open sea. The nearest landmass from the island chain is Sumatra, located at a distance of 145 km. All these factors make them unique and extremely important in the case of social and strategic implications. This book is a selection of articles published by the author between 1998 and 2016, which are related to conservation of the fragile ecology, rights and changing nature of the tribal communities, tourism development and questions on development planning and policy in the islands. This book builds upon what the author’s ‘Troubled Islands’ offered in 2003. Pankaj Sekhsaria is a researcher, writer, photographer, campaigner and academic. He has worked extensively in the fields of environment and wildlife conservation with a particular focus on the A&N Islands. His debut novel was also based in the Andamans.

A&N Islands retain most of the original names given by the British. Many of them commemorate administrators and military leaders. Hugh Rose cornered Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi and his name is given to Rose Island. Demands are afoot to rename the island as Lakshmi Bai Dweep. Similarly, Havelock Island is named after the general who retook Lucknow from the mutineers, which could be renamed as Nana Sahib Dweep. In addition to these, the local names used by the indigenous tribes can also be used. The book contains an interesting list of local names. We must not lose sight of an important fact in this renaming spree. These islands were never a part of the political and social milieu of the mainland, and the annexation of the island chain to India was a gift of the British. Without their colonizing it first, it is highly likely that those islands would now have become the naval base of some of the prominent maritime powers like what came about in Diego Garcia.

Sekhsaria paints the picture of a very successful intervention by environmental groups on the economic life of the islanders. They were instrumental in bringing out a verdict from India’s Supreme Court in 2002 which ordered a stop to felling of trees from the island’s evergreen forests, closure of the wood-processing industry, banning traffic on the Andaman Trunk Road and a host of other far reaching observations. Timber extraction had peaked in 1980-81, which then tapered down and went totally blank in 2002-03 after the judgment. The book targets tourism as the single activity that can wreak havoc with the ecology of the islands. He attacks former President A P J Abdul Kalam for proposing the idea of using tourism as a plank in development. He even asks how a person with such good education can become so little informed on environmental concerns! Sekhsaria criticizes the government order to allow airfare as part of LTC (Leave Travel Concession) scheme of government employees. This was designed to increase arrival of tourists in the aftermath of the killer tsunami of 2004. It is estimated that one per cent of the total population of the islands perished in the tsunami. However, the subsidized tourism – also disparagingly called LTC tourism on account of the meager spending of such tourists – has been a bone of contention of the local tourism industry as well. As the number of tourists goes up, the carrying capacity of the islands get filled up. Port Blair is now witnessing rationing of water in summer.

A number of indigenous tribal communities still inhabit the islands, outside the reach of civilization and modern amenities. The earliest aborigines are thought to have colonized the islands 40,000 years ago. On such a vast time scale, the British period is hardly a page and India could only be a paragraph in the book of the human habitation of Andaman. Some of the tribes are said to be cannibals but the author doesn’t make a mention of this. The Jarawas are a prominent tribe that is now showing symptoms of becoming adapted to modern civilization. The Sentinelese are still hostile, but the author argues that on this hostility ‘stands the tribe’s best chance of surviving as an independent human community for some more time’ (p.24). The author elevates the ethno-medical knowledge of the tribes even greater than contemporary scientific practice and is apprehensive of the bio-prospectors and pharmaceutical multinationals ‘stealing’ that information. Most of the islands are out of reach of foreigners.

Sekhsaria and other environmentalists of the lot treat the local tribals as little more than an endangered animal species which needs to be protected from poachers rather than as fellow human beings. Mind you, these aborigines are roaming the steamy, disease-ridden tropical jungles stark naked – men, women, children and all. They don’t have recourse to education, medical facilities or any other convenience which technology has gifted to us and which we take for granted. Interaction and intermixing with the external society is strongly protested by these environmental fundamentalists. In fact, this is the only option to save them from sexual and physical exploitation as evidenced in a 2012 video shot by a tourist which pictured Jarawa women dancing around a tourist vehicle, begging for ‘exotic’ food. The head count of the tribes has come down drastically over the decades. The population of the Onge tribe is only about 100 and the Jarawas number around 500. It is a well known genetic fact that as the number of people in an endogamous society declines, inbreeding takes place and this leads to serious congenital disorders for future generations that are also usually lethal. Commonsense dictates that it is high time for the tribals to mix with the outside world – including marital relationships – and live a happier and more prosperous life. This will definitely cause them lose their ethnic purity, no doubt, but the days of racial purity and eugenics are long gone. Education is the primary requirement and right of such a society, to prepare its children to the vagaries and pitfalls of modernity. But the author and his fellow hard-line environmentalists want to hold them down to their jungle fastnesses and are content with tossing coconuts, bananas and packets of biscuits over to the tribals when they venture out of the forest in search of greener pastures.

The book is a collection of items that appeared in newspapers and journals over a span of nearly two decades. Naturally, repetitions abound in the 25 chapters arranged over six broadly defined fields ranging from the environment, tribal communities, military significance and the dreaded tsunami which devastated the Nicobar group of islands in 2004. The earthquake which caused the tsunami had made some startling tectonic shifts on the islands. The northern part of the island had experienced an up-shift of 1.5 m, while the southern part had subsided by as much as 4.5 m. Such scope for change in the geological foundations of the islands justifies the title of the book. A very nice collection of colour photographs add much value to the book. As no credits are expressed for the photographs, we may suspect that the author has taken these pictures himself. The book includes a good index and a very informative historical timeline.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star