The authorities have failed to protect the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) from progressive denudation, and the latest report of the National Green Tribunal is bound to cause further alarm. Specifically, what they call “sewage farms” and agricultural land are increasingly being converted into residential plots. Much as the city needs to accommodate its burgeoning population, the damage to ecology, fisheries and the flight path of birds has been considerable.
Highrises in Alipore for instance have, for the past several years, blocked the path of migratory birds to the zoo during winter. A not dissimilar impediment has emerged across the waterbodies of East Kolkata, and the latest projections of the NGT reaffirm the extensive loss of wetlands. The trend had set in during the Left dispensation; the real estate lobby was then almost a front unit of the CPI-M.
It is now virtually institutionalised under the Trinamul Congress with the emergence of syndicates which, as often as not, have been involved in intra-party confrontation. Dramatic has been the change in the character of the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) if the satellite maps of 2002 and 2016 are compared. To the extent that the existence of the internationally acknowledged Ramsar sites is under threat.
Fears that Ramsar might withdraw the prestigous label that EKW now enjoys are not wholly unfounded. The environmental degradation alongside the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass has been so acute indeed that large stretches scarcely resemble a wetland. Bricks and mortar and hectic real estate activity have supplanted what was once Nature’s bounty.
In the net, Kolkata showcases environmental degradation at its worst ~ both in terms of Nature’s decline and sound pollution. By and large, the rampant encroachment has happened in salt marshes, meadows, sewage farms and “settling ponds”. Despite the filing of 350 complaints and FIRs, the East Kolkata Wetland Management Authority has been fighting a losing battle in the courts.
The fineprint of the NGT’s report must be that the scenario, thanks to political patronage from one dispensation to another, is beyond hope, beyond despair. The “Murder of the Maidan”, to recall this newspaper’s editorial in the early 1970s, has acquired a new and more disastrous dimension on either side of the Eastern Bypass. The shades of grey and brown in the maps of 2016 have replaced the shades of green in the maps of 2002.
The cartographical change is significant. Small wonder that a committee, formed by NGT, has recommended the immediate constitution of a task force to address the cases of violation, whose number must now be forbidding. The other critical suggestion is what they call “deep intervention” to preserve and retain the ecological balance of the wetlands.
The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, which till a few weeks back was headed by a prominent real estate operator, has also been blamed for the progressive degradation. The previous Trinamul Mayor has now switched over to the BJP. And thereby hangs a tale.