The Observer Volume 19 Issue 10

facebook.com/ twoiijnm/

The Observer An IIJNM publication

Contractors refuse to buy dried and dead bamboo of Cubbon Park, say it is not of good quality | P 2

Vol 19, Issue 10

@theweeklyobserver Epaper:https://issuu.com/ theweeklyobserver/docs Website: http://www. theweeklyobserver.in

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Absence of barriers, poor maintenance of skywalks lead to jaywalking on Outer Ring Road | P 3

Untreated sewage is slowly killing Puttenahalli lake Tamanna Yasmin

U

ntreated sewage is being released into Puttenahalli lake in JP Nagar 7th phase. Residents say that despite several complaints, BBMP has done nothing to stop it.

Poorna Chandra, a resident of Bank of Baroda Layout which is near the lake, informed The Observer: “Puttenahalli lake is dying despite us complaining to BBMP several times. Untreated sewage is being released directly into the lake which is harmful. Fish are dying because of this.

There is a foul smell. The lake is a perfect spot for mosquito breeding, resulting in dengue and malaria.”

Shruti Bharadwaj, another resident of the layout, said: “The water is filthy. A

Non-cooperation by people of a slum near the Puttenahalli lake has blocked replacement of pipelines, say PNLIT and BBMP | Courtesy: Poorna Chandra

layer has formed on the surface which is causing bad smell. When we asked one of the persons who is in charge of the park surrounding the lake, he said people who live nearby have their drainage pipes connected to the lake. When it rains, all the garbage in the surrounding area reaches the lake. I don’t think there are any fish alive in the lake.”

The website of the Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT) says: “In May 2011, the BBMP formally handed over the maintenance of Puttenahalli Lake to PNLIT, the first instance of a lake being given to a citizens’ group. BBMP gives no financial assistance, and PNLIT meets the expenses through public donations.”

Continued on page 3

Indifferent service at B1 centres causes citizens inconvenience They complain of Net outages, long queues and crowded centres Shoby Krishna G

B

angaloreOne centres, established 15 years ago for electronic delivery of citizen services such as bills payments and Aadhaar services, are not citizen-friendly. Bengalureans The Observer interviewed complained of problems such as frequent Internet server failures, lack of enough space to accommodate people, and long queues.

H.N. Pai, a retired senior citizen, said: “I have been using the services of the Kengeri B1 centre for a long time. The place is usually crowded on holidays and weekends. So people form a queue on the street. Sometimes the wait in the queue is up to half an hour during which people have to stand in scorching sun or rain.”

Shanmukhagowda, another resident of Kengeri, said: “Since this centre is close to my house, I come here regularly for bill payments. But for Aadhaar card services, I have to go to the Kengeri BBMP office.”

Kengeri has a mini B1 centre

The mini BangaloreOne Centre at Kengeri does not offer services other than bill payment | Credit: Shoby Krishna with only two counters. It does not provide services other than bill payments. The Observer found that only one person can sit in the centre, forcing people to form a queue on the street. Since there is no parking space, people park on the street.

Srinivasamurthy is another citizen affected by poor service at the RR Nagar B1 centre. “It is a long queue for Aadhaar card services. Tokens are issued on a per-day basis. People have to arrive early in the morning to re-

ceive tokens. Sometimes the staff turn up late, and sometimes the Internet server is down. So we have to come another day for our work. All these cause waste of time and inconvenience.”

The RR Nagar centre has better seating facilities and infrastructure than the Kengeri centre. But The Observer found mothers with young babies standing for more than 20 minutes as the place was crowded.

Veena N, the person in charge of the B1 centre in Hegganahalli,

northwest Bengaluru, said: “We have ensured dual connections of BSNL and Airtel in our systems to ensure that people are not affected by server connectivity problems. There are also other facilities like CCTV cameras and UPS facility which would help to serve without disruption.”

A senior official from the directorate of electronic delivery of citizen services who did not want to be named said that the size of centres and the number of services offered depends on the population of the area. “Some of these centres are run by franchisees; we do not have control over them. We do not have control over inconsistent Internet connectivity or queues building up. But we are constantly expanding the number of centres… and try to accommodate citizen interests to the maximum extent as these centres accept payment through online wallets like Paytm.”

The Karnataka government website shows that B1 centres offer more than 200 governmentto-citizen (G2C) and business-tocitizen (B2C) services. The ability of the centres to offer a wide array of services is compromised due to lack of resources, both human and infrastructure. The Observer found in several B1 centres placards announcing vacancies for data operators.

Continued on page 3

News briefs Ayodhya hearings conclude The Supreme Court on Wednesday concluded its hearings on the 2010 verdict of the Allahabad High Court which ordered a three-way division of the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya. The court-appointed mediation team presented a proposal to the Constitution Bench detailing contours of a “settlement” agreed upon by “some parties”.

PMC to hasten assessment Crisis-ridden Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank on Wednesday said it would expedite the processes of assessment of the realisability of the securities available with the bank, forensic audit and recasting of the balance sheet at the earliest.

Mantri director detained Snehal Mantri, a director of real estate group Mantri Developers, was detained at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi after a lookout notice was issued by the Union home ministry against him. In July, eight FIRs were registered against Mantri Developers after a few home buyers lodged a cheating complaint with the police against the company’s management.

Turkish onslaught Syrian forces on Wednesday night rolled into the strategic border town of Kobani in Northern Syria, blocking one path for the Turkish military to establish a “safe zone” free of Syrian Kurdish fighters along the frontier as part of its week-old offensive.

CITY

2

The Observer Thursday, October 17, 2019

E-vehicle owners unhappy over non-standardization of devices Two-wheelers’ plugs don’t fit Bescom sockets Nissim Jacob

T

he absence of standardization for plugs and sockets at electric vehicle charging stations is causing inconvenience to owners of electric vehicles.

Ayan Ahmed Hussein, who owns an electric scooter, informed The Observer that he couldn’t make effective use of the Bescom charging station because the plugs were different. “I couldn’t charge my vehicle at the station because the plug did not fit in the socket. What Bescom uses is different from mine. There is a need for standardization so that electric vehicle owners are not inconvenienced. Right now, vehicles of different companies use different charging connectors, making it difficult for electric vehicle owners to charge their vehicles at these charging stations.”

Asked about the problem, Vishal S, assistant executive engineer from the Smart Grid and Electric Vehicle Cell of Bescom, explained: “This problem is limited to two-wheelers and does not extend to four-wheelers. There are industrial standards for fourwheel electric vehicles which all companies adhere to. Bescom charging stations are also designed according to these industrial standards.”

Vishal shifted the onus to manufacturers. “It is not mandatory for manufacturers of two-wheeler electric vehicles to follow the in-

The Bescom charging station has fast chargers (left) and slow chargers (right) | Credit: Nissim Jacob dustrial standards in their design of charging connectors. Several companies use ‘domestic plugs’.

They are perhaps trying to suit the market demand, and make it affordable and accessible to the consumers. While some companies like Ather use proprietary plugs, others like Mahindra use the standard that we follow.”

Government regulations would make electric vehicle charging infrastructure more accessible to consumers, he said.

According to documents provided by the Bescom official, the company has launched fast and slow chargers at its charging stations. The slow chargers are Bharat DC chargers which are standardized under Bureau of

India standards, while the fast chargers are AC chargers using European and Japanese standards which, Vishal said, are more expensive.

The absence of standardization is not the only problem affecting Bescom’s charging stations. The slow rollout of these charging stations has also caused inconvenience to users of electric vehicles.

Raju, who drives an electric cab, informed The Observer: “It would be better if they could work on increasing the number of charging stations as cab drivers need to commute long distances.

Having more stations from Bescom would be helpful.”

Bescom had announced it would launch 100 electric charg-

ing stations in Bengaluru under the Faster Adoption and Manufacture of Hybrid and Electric Vehicle (FAME) scheme. According to the Guidelines for Charging Infrastructure of Electric Vehicles, since most electric vehicles use international standards such as CCS (European) and Chademo (Japanese), it is mandatory for state-run charging stations to install charger models of all types.

Also, there should be at least two charging stations at a distance of every 3 kilometres and one charging station every 25 kilomertres on both sides of a highway.

Sandeep Anirudhan, an expert in renewable energy, said that a more detailed government policy is necessary for electric vehicle charging infrastructure. “A better researched policy proposal would have included the standardization of all vehicles, including twowheelers. This can only be done if the government brings all private players together and draws a framework for them to cooperate and arrive at a standardized type,” he explained.

Anirudhan disagrees with the idea of expanding charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. He believes that providing charging infrastructure for electric vehicles will become unfeasible in the coming years and that replaceable batteries are the future.

“As the number of electric vehicles grows, it will be difficult for the charging infrastructure to keep up. Instead, manufacturers should provide charged batteries that can be removed and replaced easily. An industry should be built around this as this would be more economical.” nissim.j@iijnm.org

Citizen’s voice Tackle, don’t deny, slowdown of economy

The downward revision of India’s economic growth forecast by the IMF and World Bank has again raised fears of a prolonged slowdown. Serious and concerted efforts are needed to tackle this.

Irresponsible statements denying the existence of the problem, and using the box-office collections of movies as evidence, is not in anybody’s best interest.

Niket Nishant

Common mobility card

The common mobility card for Namma Metro and bus services is an excellent initiative by BMRCL. The pilot project will be initiated at Baiyappanahalli and Majestic from January 1, 2020.

How well the BMTC implements the plan will be watched eagerly.

Hope they won’t have issues with by the Intelligent Transport System smart card that they faced in 2017.

Arghyadeep Dutta

Badly maintained toilets

Public and private pay and use toilets near KR Market are not well maintained by the government. The person who sits outside the toilets collects Rs 10, double of what he is supposed to collect. There is no proper sanitation facility, and the toilets don’t seem to be cleaned, making it quite inconvenient for people to use them which also leads to hygiene issues.

Neetu Saini

Jio users are unhappy

Jio has started to charge users for calls to other networks at 6 paise per minute. Unless TRAI reduces the IUC to zero, customers will have to pay for calling people on other networks. This has caused dissatisfaction among Jio users, who hitherto enjoyed free calls.

Savyata Mishra

Dead bamboo poses fire hazard in Cubbon Park Contractors not interested in purchasing it

Meghna Das Chowdhury

T

he Karnataka horticulture department, which takes care of Cubbon Park, is unable to find contractors to buy dried bamboo, which can easily catch fire.

The department has taken upon itself the job of cutting and clearing out the bamboo trees. An official from the department informed The Observer: “We have started clearing the dead plants and bamboo. The work is going on fast. Soon, we will get rid of it.”

The Observer found workers cutting dead bamboo into pieces to be transported out. The department plans to plant bamboo saplings after the dead trees are cleared out.

Cubbon Park, covering an area

The dried up bamboos have been lying in the park for months; now the contractors have started to cut them | Credit: Meghna Das Chowdhury of 120 hectares, has a lot of dead flora. Some of the dried bamboo is in areas frequented by visitors, and poses a fire hazard.

Anil Kumar, a contractor who has been given the task of cutting bamboo trees, said: “We have been asked to cut and collect the bamboo and take it to the office and dispose it of there. From

there, they are sending it to various places for building ladders.

We have been working here for a month now. Within two weeks, our job will be done.”

Abbas Zafar, a tourist, shared: “I see a huge number of dry and dead bamboo trees here. I have come here for the first time and am surprised. Dry leaves catch

fire very easily. The park authorities should do something about it immediately.”

Sombrita Dutta, a visitor to the park, said: “I visit Cubbon Park often to take a walk. I have seen these huge bamboos standing here for months now.”

The Observer visited Bamboo Bazaar in Shivajinagar to find out why there are no takers for the dead bamboo trees. Salman Ameen, a bamboo trader, said: “The bamboo in Cubbon Park is of very bad quality and of no use.

My family has been in this business from my grandfather’s time.

We never bought bamboo from Cubbon Park. In fact, one will hardly find any trader here who will be ready to buy it.”

Environmentalist Sandeep Anirudhan said: “There has to be something wrong with the bamboo. I don’t see any reason why such a large number of bamboo trees are not getting any contactors. There are traders who are willing to buy bamboo for their business. I think the park is not

getting a contractor that can pay the amount the department wants. If this bamboo catches fire, there will be nothing less than a forest fire.Therefore, the matter should be looked after.”

A report in the Bangalore Mirror said: “The department officials expected to generate some revenue from these bamboo stems and engaged a contractor six months ago but the contractor has failed to complete the job and the bamboo stems still remain in the park.”

According to a report in The Times of India, a fire broke out in Cubbon Park after flames from a nearby nursery spread to dry bamboo trees which were stacked nearby after being cleared from the park.

According to the Indian Forest (Amendment) Bill, 2017, “...the definition of tree includes palms, bamboos, stumps, brush-wood, and canes. The Bill amends this definition of tree to remove the word bamboos. meghna.c@iijnm.org

CITY

The Observer Thursday, October 17, 2019

Jaywalking is a menace on ORR Road barriers, better skywalks are the solution Nissim Jacob

J

aywalking, or illegal crossing of roads, is a huge problem on Outer Ring Road (ORR) in Bengaluru. Pedestrians cross the road dangerously, putting in danger their lives and those of people travelling on the road.

Jaywalking is common on ORR, especially near the Hebbal and Nagawara junctions.

“Often people are seen crossing the road where vehicles move at a high speed, risking their lives.

BBMP needs to put barriers between the roads to discourage people from crossing the road,” Raju Zacharia, a Kammanahalli resident who often travels on ORR, informed The Observer.

Vibhav Pamidi, who works for an IT firm near Nagawara, said that “lack of adequate skywalks is one of the reasons why people cross the roads illegally when fast-moving vehicles are passing”.

Abhinandan Dixit, an IT professional who commutes on ORR, agrees with Pamidi. “When I was travelling on ORR, a person tried illegally crossing the road and escaped being hit by my car. I feel they should put barriers on roads to discourage people from jaywalking,” he said.

According to a report by the Footpath Initiative, an organiza-

Around the city l Acetech 2019 Bangalore at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre on Friday – Sunday, 18-20 October l International Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering and Technology (ICRTET) at Hotel Bangalore Gate on Sun, 27 Oct. l Student Conference on Conservation Science – Bengaluru at Indian Institute of Science on Tue, 15 – Sat, 19 Oct. l Deep Learning with PyTorch: Zero to GANs - Workshop (Beginner) at HSR Layout, Bengaluru on Sat, 19 Oct, 3 – 6 pm. l Method Acting workshop by Jeff Goldberg at Alliance Francaise Bengaluru on October 19, 2019 from 3 pm to 6 pm. l Public speaking workshop

by Speakers’ Club at Dialogues Cafe, Koramangala on November 10 from 6 pm. l Palette knife painting workshop by Rathish Ramakrishnan on October 19 at 11 am. l Creative writing workshop for beginners at Dialogues cafe, Bengaluru on November 16. l 15th Gen KS Thimayya Memorial Lecture to be held on 09 Nov 2019 at 0945 hrs at Gen KS Thimayya Memorial Trust (Regd.), Cunningham Crescent road by Dilip Jajodia.

Photo: People trying to cross the road illegally despite heavy traffic on Outer Ring Road | Credit: Nissim Jacob tion that seeks to spread public awareness on pedestrian safety, 44 % of those who died on Bengaluru’s roads were pedestrians.

Jaywalkers are booked under Section 92(G) of the Karnataka Police Act which imposes penalty for “causing obstruction on any foot-way, or drives, rides or leaves any animal or drives, drags or pushes any vehicle thereupon’’.

Asked what Bengaluru traffic police are doing to prevent jay-

walking, assistant sub-inspector M.S. Prakash said they have a ‘Traffic Training and Road Safety Initiative’ where they educate citizens on road safety norms. This includes educating them on drunken driving, speeding for vehicle users as well as illegal crossing of roads for pedestrians.

“We also use social media to reach out to citizens. Ichangemycity is a platform for citizens to report any traffic violations they see

around them. Citizens are encouraged to upload photographs documenting the traffic violations. Action is taken on the same,” Prakash added.

A BBMP assistant executive engineer who did not wish to be named admitted that there are not enough skywalks on ORR, but said BBMP is working towards increasing their number. Barriers are being put on roads to prevent people from crossing carelessly.

M.N. Sreehari, an adviser to the Karnataka government on traffic, transportation and infrastructure, believes the problem is due to the absence of userfriendly skywalks on ORR. The construction of these skywalks is assigned to contractors who are more interested in getting back money through advertisements.

“That’s why they construct these skywalks at places where advertisements are more likely to be seen than at points where the pedestrians are easily and conveniently able to access them.”

“Skywalks ought to be made more accessible to senior citizens, disabled and injured by providing elevators,” Sreehari said. BBMP should install barriers on median and at the edge of pavements to discourage pedestrians from crossing illegally. Traffic lights and zebra crossings have not been effective in dense and congested roads of Bengaluru.

“The time for crossing at traffic junctions is only 10 seconds, and that is a tough job for the senior citizens,” Sreehari noted. nissim.j@iijnm.org

Officials blame slum-dwellers Continued from page 1 NLIT chairperson Usha Rajagopalan said, “Sewage has been flowing into the lake from neighbouring Nataraja Layout since June 3. The underground drainage pipes were overflowing. Before BWSSB could take any step, the residents took the matter into their hands and opened the drains, releasing sewage into the lake.

“We were in touch with BWSSB for repair of the overflowing pipes. They said the pipelines needed replacement with bigger size. They also began work but had to stop when eight or nine houses built right above the UGD

P

Lake Pollution (underground drainage) refused to shift temporarily to facilitate completion of the work,” Rajagopalan said.

On March 7, 2019, the Karnataka High Court disposed of a writ petition filed by the slumdwellers in which they asked for plots of land, and not temporary sheds built for them by the Slum Clearance Board.

Jagannath Rao, deputy conservator of forests and lakes, BBMP, agreed with Rajagopalan. “We are requesting the slum-dwellers to temporarily vacate the place and

shift to the houses built for them, so that BWSSB can continue with their work of stretching the underground pipeline. But they are refusing to do so. So the sewage has no other way and is entering the lake. This is more of a social problem that the authorities should address.

Untreated sewage entering the lake | Courtesy- Poorna Chandra “We are trying our best to coordinate with the local corporators to resolve this. But even after everything if they do not vacate the place, the last resort that we are left is to demolish the houses to continue with the work. Only about 30 metres of pipeline work is pending because of this; the rest is complete.”

Usha, the assistant engineer who is looking after the lake project, said: “We have funds but the problem is with the houses built over the UGD. We are trying our best to convince the dwellers. The high court has given them 14 months to vacate the place. So

right now we cannot think of demolition. It will take some time till the problem is solved.”

Sandeep Anirudhan, an environmentalist, said: “Under anycircumstance,sewage sshould never reach the lake. Due to inflow of sewage, the quality of water is degraded, and oxygen supply to the lake has gone down.

This is very harmful for organism in the lake.They might die if the situation is not up seriously” It is a serious issue that can adversely affect the ecological balance.

BWSSB and other government agencies should try to solve the problem at the earliest, Anirudhan added.

According to PLIT website, in 2008, Puttenahalli lake was at the verge of drying up. The water level had receded to a significant extent because of water inlet dysfunction, groundwater depletion, and encroachment.

Moved by the condition of the lake, some citizens started a campaign to save the water body.

They got BBMP to revive the lake. PNLIT trust was registered in 2010. To attract the water birds back to the lake and make the situation better, the trust, along with BBMP, planted around 125 saplings around the Puttenahalli lake. tamanna.y@iijnm.org

3 B1 centres are deficient in delivery of e-services Continued from page 1 n June 2015, a Deccan Herald report spoke about inefficient delivery of services by B1 centres. Over time, services such as payment of property tax and issuance of birth and death certificates have been disabled.

Sreenivasa Rao, a volunteer of civic organization Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB) said: “Slowly, many centres are closing down and reducing their working hours. Initially, these centres functioned well, but have slowly lost their sheen as people do transactions online and don’t want to waste their time in queues.”

E-governance initiatives meant to help people are dying a slow death as there was no maintenance and follow-up mechanism after the centres were set up, Rao noted. Outsourcing work to private players can fix some of the problems.

BangaloreOne centres were launched in 2005 under Sevasindhu (e-district) project and implemented by the e-governance department of Karnataka.

These centres were meant to pass on the benefits of e-governance to the people. Later, the government started KarnatakaOne centres in 2010 in nine other cities to replicate the e-governance model. All KarnatakaOne and B1 centres work on public-private partnership model. Though the vision is in line with national policy of ‘Minimum government, Maximum governance’, it is affected by challenges in implementation. shoby.k@iijnm.org

I

Weather Maximum temperature- 26 degrees Celsius Minimum temperature-20 degrees Celsius Forecast-Generally cloudy sky with one or two spells of rain or thundershowers Humidity- 80% Wind- 7 km/h

Team Obsever Editor- Tamanna Yasmin.

Reporters- Shoby Krishna G, Meghna Das Chowdhury, Tamanna Yasmin, Nissim Jacob Copy Editors-Nissim Jacob, Tamanna Yasmin, Shoby Krishna G, Meghna Das Chowdhury Page Layout- Meghna Das Chowdhury, Tamanna Yasmin, Nissim Jacob, Shoby Krishna Photo Editor- Aman Bhardwaj.

Supplements- Aarthi N, Adilin Beatrice C

4

Development

The Observer Thursday, October 17, 2019

SUPPLEMENT

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Chennai doesn’t lack water, it just doesn’t know what to do with it, says Aarthi N

I

f it weren’t for the recent rains, Chennai could well have shared the fate of Cape Town in South Africa which, in early 2018, came close to becoming the world’s first major city to run out of water. The reason?

Chennai doesn’t have adequate reservoirs to store the water it receives or a system to intelligently manage its use.

The city faced unprecedented floods in 2015 when all its major reservoirs overflowed. In the following year, Cyclone Vardah inundated the city. But by early 2019, Chennai’s reservoirs had run dry.Reckless land reclamation and encroachment on waterbodies coupled with patchy efforts at conservation and management of water resources have all played their part in this cycle of feast or famine.

With a population of about 10 million,Chennai is India’s first major city to turn to desalination to provide drinking water. Today, 2.5 million of the city’s residents receive 100 million litres of potable water a day from two desalination plants and a third one, with a capacity of 150 MLD, was

Residents depend on water tankers for their daily use and pay a heavy price | Courtesy: KPN recently commissioned at Nemmeli.

But, as environmentalists point out, Chennai doesn’t need expensive desalination plants as it receives average rainfall of about 1,400 mm a year. These reverseosmosis plants not only consume a lot of energy but also affect marine life by discharging harmful effluents into the ocean.

Every time Chennai has faced a water crisis, it has sought help

from neighbouring towns and states. In March 2019, on the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s request, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh released 8 billion cubic feet of water from the Krishna River.

When even that proved insufficient, the government organised a special train to transport 2.5 million litres of water a day from Mettur Dam at a cost of around Rs.65 crore, and at the expense of

rice farmers downstream who depend on the waters of the Cauvery River.

However, in the last three months the city received some rain which has increased ground water levels and filled local lakes and reservoirs. The government has long made rain water harvesting compulsory for city dwellings and over 9,000 properties were recently fined for not complying.

A study by Anna University found that Chennai has lost 33% of its wetlands in the last decade.

During the same period, the city also lost 24% of its agricultural land, which is just as crucial for maintaining the water table.

Chennai, Thiruvallur and Kanchipuram have seen a 85% drop in groundwater levels since 2008, according to the news reports. Though ground water levels have improved, water quality from borewells is poor. In a few interior areas like Poonamalle and Ashok Nagar, residents complain of high salinity.

The Centre for Climate Change in Chennai blames road construction including highways and fly-

overs, building airports and highrises for depleting water resources in the city. These projects have in several cases been built on reclaimed water bodies and are largely to blame for the situation in the city.

W

ater management experts in the city blame bad planning for the city’s extremes of water shortages and floods. They say the city need not run out of water if urban planning engages more critically with the city’s terrain, by increasing public awareness of the role of lakes and democratising ownership of local waterbodies.

Prof. Christoph Woiwode,senior lecturer in human geography at Bath Spa University in the UK who studied the December 2015 floods in Chennai, says the deluge was partially due to the change in land use plans approved by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority.

More ominously, he believes that with the current level of urban planning, the city will not be able to adapt or prepare for the floods and droughts of the future.

A House Built on Sand Illegal sand mining is destroying the Cauvery River and its environs, writes Adilin Beatrice C

T

he Cauvery River is a lifeline for farmers across its 80,000 sq. km basin stretching from Kodagu in Karnataka to its delta on the Bay of Bengal. Unfortunately, the river bed is also a rich source of material for the region’s construction industry, which rates its sand as the best available. The consequences for the river and its environs have been disastrous.

Illegal and uncontrolled sand mining has caused the riverbed to fall by as much as 8-10 metres at points. That has caused severe erosion of the river bank, led to the widening of the river, damaged civil structures like bridges and affected irrigation projects.

Last year, the 100-year-old Kollidam Bridge in Trichy district of Tamil Nadu collapsed, allegedly on account of extensive mining at its base.

The areas worst affected by sand mining are the Karur and Trichy districts in Tamil Nadu.

Kulithalai is a small village located in Karur. The village has a place called Akhanda Cauvery, where the river banks are 1.5 km apart. When the water flow di-

minishes during the summer months, sand miners have easy access to the exposed bed and bring trucks to carry away sand.

The people of Pugalur, a village situated 20 km from Karur city, have dug huge trenches every 100 metres on the river bank to ensure that vehicles don’t enter the river bed and steal sand.

Says Sandhya Ramakrishnan, a journalist who exposed illegal beach sand mining in Tamil Nadu, “Wherever sand mining takes place, the local police and politicians are involved in it.Even police officers who try to put an end to it are murdered.”

Unlike other states, in Tamil Nadu sand mining projects are undertaken by government to make sure that sand quarries come under the direct control of Public Works Department (PWD). In 2003, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, J. Jayalalitha, banned sand mining by private contractors. The rule came after the expert committee formed in 2002, consisting of ecologists and geologists, which found that the sand mined by private contractors caused hazards. It in-

fresh contracts were awarded to private companies. In 2016, the Madras High Court asked the PWD to suspend all sand mining along Cauvery River in Trichy and Karur. But this September, an expert appraisal committee of the union Ministry of Environment recommended a 3-year extension of theenvironmental clearance for river sand mining on the Cauvery bed in Trichy and Karur, projected to mine 30 lakh cubic metres of river sand.

I

Karur and Trichy are the worst affected areas due to sand mining in Cauvery river basin | Courtesy: Trichy News tended to improve the ecology and provide sand to people at a reasonable price.

The rules state that sand shouldn’t be excavated below 1 metre of the surface, mining can only be conducted between 7 am to 5 pm, a truck should carry only 2 units of sand per trip, roads

connecting to riverbeds should be constructed with sugarcane leaves and biodegradable material, all quarries must be monitored by an assistant PWD engineer and only 2 machines should be used in each quarry.

But when the government’s agencies couldn’t meet demand,

llegally mined sand is transported to Kerala and Karnataka, especially to Bengaluru, where 1 unit of sand is sold for between Rs.1 lakh and Rs.1.5 lakh. Since the Kerala government banned sand mining in the six rivers that flow in the state, the demand is high there as well. The alternative, manufactured sand, doesn’t seem to have caught on. Says M. Christi, a construction-materials retailer in Trichy, “MSand is not as good as river sand, buildings constructed using it are comparatively weak.

So people prefer buying river sand, despite its high cost.”