Nayachara island fights man and nature

"We are stuck inside our raised huts by water up to the waist every time it rains and the outside is filled with swimming snakes and swarming insects," complains the caretaker of the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) property on the Nayachara island.

The time is 11 in the morning and we have just about managed to land on the island.

It is clear that nature may prove to be the most formidable adversary at Nayachara, the 10,000-acre island proposed by the West Bengal government as the site of its proposed "chemical hub" under the Centre's PCPIR (Petroleum, Chemicals & Petrochemical Industrial Region) scheme.

Between heavy silting and flooding, the island is in a deceptively hostile environment. The river around it will have to be constantly dredged to keep it open for ships, while any construction will have to be preceded by extensive piling to raise structures and equipment above the line of floodwaters.

While it is not an insurmountable engineering problem, it means the project cost will shoot up sharply because of pre-project civil works and constant dredging expenses.

The nature of the land on the island itself is being explored and analysed by teams from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and their report is yet to come in. The state government's writ runs all over the island, except for the 1,000-odd acres under the KoPT at the northern tip.

One unexpected finding is the huge degree of silting, which is constantly growing but also making it difficult to approach and use. One KoPT jetty on the western coast, facing the mainland, has had to be abandoned "" the riverine jetty is now marooned many metres behind the waterline, thanks to heavy silting.

The second KoPT jetty we used to land is already silting up and may perhaps have to be abandoned soon, as it is already getting cut off from the river at low tide. A guide wall which was built to save it is fighting a losing battle. The culprit, once again, is silting.

The fact that even small motorised launches are finding it hard to berth at low tide means big trouble for the large vessels that normally carry petroleum products or naphtha, the two essential raw materials of any PCPIR.

Nayachara is shaped like a bowl, with a high earth wall keeping out the waters from the slightly depressed interior. This has led to the growth of a staggeringly luxuriant tropical rain forest in the interior, rich in orchids, trees and shrubs as well as birds, snakes, insects and bats.

On the negative side, this topography means floods after every shower. To drain the area, the KoPT has dredged several ponds and a network of drainage canals linked through sluice gates.

The interior attracts poachers and encroachers. A few months ago, the KoPT brought along a body of West Bengal police and coast guard to evict a small colony of encroachers from its area.

The drive failed because the colony had already received prior information and obtained a stay order from the district court at Kanthi to save their homes and structures.

This colony still survives in the KoPT area and is too hostile to be approached, say KoPT officers.