Wet and watch

Kolkatans want to ensure the survival of the wetlands

With West Bengal notifying the East Calcutta Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Ordinance in November 2005, the green lobby in Kolkata "" led by citizens group PUBLIC (People United for Better Living in Calcutta) "" has won an important battle.

The ordinance makes all the right noises ""contraventions are a cognizable and non-bailable offence, there is to be an East Calcutta Wetlands Management Authority to protect the area, and so on.

Earlier, a 1992 judgement of the Calcutta High Court's green bench had fixed land use in the wetlands. Sadly, the law was not enough to prevent encroachments. Measures to police the 12,500 hectare area and a map laying down prevailing land use were required.

The war hotted up further with the Calcutta High Court ordering two large housing projects in the area "" Sanjeevani Town and Green Valley Towers "" to be demolished by May 1, 2006 and the land restored to its original condition.

The promoters had filled in around 60 acres of waterbodies for the construction, for which they had got permission from the local gram panchayat but not the environment department under the 1992 judgement.

If promoters now see the wetlands in terms of its real estate potential, they can hardly be blamed. In the sixties and seventies, the government had much the same attitude. Salt Lake, the much-sought-after address in Kolkata, is land reclaimed from the wetlands in the sixties, as is the Science City complex.

The tide changed only when PUBLIC mobilised large-scale citizens protests over a state-supported proposal to build a World Trade Centre on 227 acres in the heart of the wetlands, went to court and managed to get a favourable verdict.

Says Bonani Kakkar, founder-member of PUBLIC, "We've even had to go to the Supreme Court against a WBIDC-funded aqua park, for which nine departments of the state government had given permission. The problem is that in the government, very often, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Also, the wetlands is one of three wards in Calcutta that does not have a land use and development control plan. This makes it easy to alter land use."

In the wake of the ordinance, the Institute of Wetlands Management and Ecological Design (IWMED), which falls under the state government's environment department, is in the process of determining changes in land use by comparing satellite pictures of 1992 with recent ones. The exercise will be completed in the next two months, says its director, Nitai Kundu.

But even that exercise, says Kakkar, is meaningless since the map of the wetlands, the area that falls under the purview of the ordinance, is just the waste-recycle district. Beyond this designated area, there were a smattering of small and big waterbodies as well as paddy fields that are seasonal wetlands.

Not only that, there are a number of big buildings in the immediate vicinity such as the proposed leather complex where an IT park is to come up now, and the Manikanchand special economic zone, to name two, that disregard the need to maintain a buffer zone for as delicate an ecosystem as the wetlands.

In fact, New Town, Rajarhat abuts the wetlands on the north and north-east. Given the proximity of the area to the city, Kundu does not envisage a buffer zone wider than 500 metres.

Despite these problems, a start has been made. With due vigilance, we should be able to hold on to the wetlands for future generations.