Cover up in Meghalaya?

East and West Garo Hills in Meghalaya.
Image via Wikipedia

The joint director (TFI) at the Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun has moved an application before the Supreme Court appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) against an alleged “near complete” destruction of reserved forest in Garo Hills in Meghalaya around 2004-06 and grossly incorrect and exaggerated assessment of forest cover” done by the FSI during the same period.

The issue had come up for hearing in CEC on January 10, 2012, the court treated the case as one of priority. The Bench also observed that the destruction pointed by the petitioner is part of a larger issue of saw mill operations going on in Meghalaya. The Bench said that it is contemplating Contempt proceedings against the Chief Secretary of Meghalaya for his failure to control saw mill operations in the state. The respondents included the director general of FSI and officers from Meghalaya government and Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), New Delhi.

The complainant Ranjit Singh Gill from Assam-Meghalaya cadre of IFS had joined the FSI on deputation in 2010 after serving two decades in the Meghalaya forest department. He has connected the assessment of forest cover of Meghalaya prepared by the FSI with his own field observations to challenge the FSI findings. He has also elaborated a dark conspiracy involving senior officers in Meghalaya to destroy reserved forest in the state and had questioned the failure of FSI to detect the destruction during its forest assessment exercise. It is a story filled with all the components of deceit, crime and cover-up.

To have the FSI and a gang timber smugglers in Meghalaya presented as accomplices would leave the purists horrified.

In Novemebr 2010, Gill informed the director general of FSI that forest cover of Meghalaya reported in Sate of Forest Report (SFR) in 2009 did not match what he had seen in the field. The FSI report based on satellite imagery collected in October 2006 mentioned that forest cover made up 77.23% of the geographical area of Meghalaya. The SFR attributed the forest cover to plantations raised in the state and the regeneration in the lands abandoned after shifting cultivation.

Gill has claimed that the plantations raised in several areas in the state were a “fiction” and regeneration in abandoned shifting cultivation areas was nothing more than stray bamboo and wild grass. Bamboo is a part of forest cover as per the definition adopted by the FSI, but grasses and shrubs are not. Gill has argued that there had been blunders in interpreting the satellite imageries.

Following Gill’s letter, the director general of FSI sent a team of four officers including Gill to Meghalaya in May 2011 to verify the ground reality. The team inspected Dibru Hills reserved forest and Holloidonga Beat in the West Garo Hills districts. As Gill mentioned in his application before the CEC, the FSI team found the Dibru Hills reserved forest “littered with huge stumps”. Fresh generation of sal and teak arose amid stumps. The local beat officer had told the team that the tree felling took place in 2005-06. The Dibru Hills reserved forest lies on the two sides of Tura-Goalpara highway, making it impossible for anyone moving on the highway to have missed the destruction.

Gill wrote to the principal chief conservator of forest of Meghalaya two months back under the RTI seeking details about the scale of tree felling, but is waiting reply.

From Dibru hills the team had travelled east and had found another reserved forest – Rangreggiri in the adjoining East Garo hills district, similarly ravaged. In his report to the Director General after returning to Dehradun, Gill pointed out that almost of the tree felling took place between 2004 and 2006, which was precisely the interval of two years covered by SFR-2009. Although two government forests had been devastated in that period, the SFR 2009 recorded an increase in the forest cover over two years not only for Meghalaya as a whole but even the districts of West Garo hills and East Garo hills in which these forests were situated. Gill argued that the forest cover assessment by the FSI was a camouflage: rural forests destroyed had been made up with wild bamboo arising in areas abandoned after shifting cultivation leading to a bogus increase in the forest cover off Meghalaya.

Gill also wondered why none from the FSI had gone to verify the change in the two forests while compiling the figures for FSR-2009 when every significant change in forest cover noticed in satellite imageries is required to be confirmed by ground verifications.

When the forest cover mapping staff argued that the LISS-III images for Dibru Hills reserved forest in 2004 and 2006 did not differ significantly, Gill had images of the forest taken from the American Satellite system LANDSAT downloaded from the global land cover facility and interpreted by his own staff. The results showed that in 2006 as much as 10 square kilometer of Dibru hills was flat with no trees and no vegetation except ground flora. It was sound evidence that the destructions had been captured in satellite images taken in 2006. The ground flora that LANDSAT showed was apparently tender regeneration that had grown into trees by the time the FSI team arrived in Dibru hills in May 2011.

Based on the area of the forest wiped out and the size of the stumps he had seen in the field, Gill estimated that 12 million cubic feet of timber valued in thousands of crores of Rupees had been taken out of the Dibru hills reserved forest.

In his application to the CEC, Gill has pointed out that timber in such volume simply could not have been consumed in a tiny state like Meghalaya. The bulk of the timber must have been exported to major markets like Kolkata and Delhi, an operation that would have involved the issue of thousands of fraudulent transit passes to cross the forest check gates along the way. It would not be possible to carry out something so big without involvement of senior forest officers in Meghalaya and other states, and perhaps even militants. Gill wants an investigation by the CBI to uncover the truth.

To add FSI’s discomfort, the Government of Meghalaya did conduct an inquiry in 2008 into the destruction of the reserved forests but apparently decided to pull back due to intense lobbying. 

In that report the inquiry officer had observed that during the period, the massive felling took place the officer was holding the post of Divisional Forest Officer, Garo hills division and the managing director of Forest Development Corporation of Meghalaya. The inquiry officer concluded that there was something inherently wrong in this appointment since the same person could order cutting of trees from the reserved forest to provide timber to the FDCM. Allotment of timber from the Garo hills division to the FDCM is supposed to be done by the government, but according to the inquiry officer the MD of FDCM in his avatar as divisional forest officer Garo hills division allotted timber to the FDCM without government’s permission.

The FDCM was legally trading illegally trading in timber, sending its trucks into the adjoining state of Assam. Worse, the son of the MD was participating in timber trade using his father’s influence in the FDCM. A thousand cubic feet of teak belonging to the FDCM was allotted to the son at a laughable price of Rs 110 for a cubic foot through a process the FDCM described as :”negotiation”. The Meghalaya government probably found the leads in the inquiry report too explosive to handle.

Were the FSI, the FDCM and the mafia working towards the common end? Gill wants all the agencies to be covered in the criminal investigation. Meanwhile, A K Wahal, the DG of FSI, has submitted his application for the post of director, Indira Gandhi Forest Academy that will fall vacant in two months.

Note: Those wishing to do a follow-up on the issue may contact journeybasket[at]gmail[dot]com

Capital mess

Hauz Khas lake. Image via Wikipedia

A Class 1 student of a reputed Delhi school recently won the first prize in a weekend painting competition. She drew a lake and painted the sky grey. One of the judges called her aside and congratulated her. The judge, a weekend social worker, wanted to know why the child thought grey should represent the colour of the sky. The girl did not reply. She smiled briefly and ran away to hold her mother’s hand.

If a child thinks a blue sky is an accident while grey is natural, something must be wrong in the urban environment wherein she dwells. Despite its vast green cover — there are parks at almost every locality in the Capital to make somebody from Mumbai green with envy — Delhi has a smallness of purpose when it comes to appreciating the good luck it finds itself in.

For example, the Okhla Bird Sanctuary has been rotting for years. More people know the way to Okhla Industrial Estate than the bird sanctuary, which is a boundary wall away from the industrial estate. Perhaps because there are more number of money-minting offices in the industrial estate than the 'boring' sanctuary.
Hauz Khas lake, the much-hyped destination where every foreign tourist must visit at least once if they want to feel homesick, has more plastic bottles floating on the surface than a recycling plant. The discerning people of Delhi have a keen interest in knowing the menus of restaurants that have sprung up like magic on the periphery of Hauz Khas lake than inquiring the lake’s condition.

A few kilometres away, the hallowed Lodhi Gardens may boast of being the Capital’s best landscape nestled among some well-known landmarks where a few people frequently enjoy high tea. But the existence of this lush green patch in the middle of the city looks more like an anomaly. Lodhi Gardens, like a mall, has turned into a brand. The businesses and the people that dot this landscape try to keep out ‘unwashed’ visitors.

In Delhi, if you threw a seed into the ground, it will grow into a mall or a luxury four-bedroom builder flat but not a plant. The Sheila Dikshit-led government, apart from placing potted flowers by the roadside before the Commonwealth Games in 2010, has done little to encourage people to be more environment-friendly – as against being aware of environment issues. People have awareness, all right, but there is no action. The attitude is just not right.

Despite a court order banning the use of plastic bags in the city, people still use plastics to carry their food items and cosmetics. In some temples in south Delhi, devotees refuse to buy offerings unless given in comfortable-to-carry plastic pouches.

Those who refuse to use plastics in their daily life are made to look as if they are doing something wrong in insisting that they be given their items in paper bags. Reputed stores have switched to paper bags not because they genuinely care but to avoid being marked as targets by activists since these stores are the most visible faces of their respective trades. The situation is hopeless in the street level as even reasonably educated people never say no to plastics.

All these show that underneath the whole gamut of Delhi’s professed love for preserving the urban environment, there exists a severely stunted mentality that puts comfort-at-all-cost above caring for the ‘little’ things.

Data made available in the public domain by independent social organisations clearly show that air pollution would have been reduced in the long run with the introduction of CNG-run autorickshaws and buses some years ago, but a concurrent rise in the number of fuel-guzzling private cars and SUVs killed whatever little chance was left to make the city breathable. It is time to accept that the efforts of the Delhi Transport Corporation – arguably the world’s largest CNG-run bus operator – have been cancelled out by greed for more and more cars.
For some reasons encouraging people to use public transport doesn’t seem to work in the Capital. One uses it when there is no choice, while the norm should be that one should make the choice.

Unless strict, non-negotiable rules come into force that can deter people from depending on machines and services that create pollution, such as reduced availability of civic amenities to a family that owns more than one four-wheeler, this consumers’ paradise we call Delhi will remain indifferent to the issue.

In a city where an SUV is considered a cultural icon, it was no surprise that a child thought the default colour of the sky was grey.

This opinion was published in Deccan Herald on Feb. 23, 2012

Some changes

 

Nearly 450 posts since 2008 have been removed to give the blog a new direction. It will now feature more topical issues. Some posts in the archive may still be on Google Search, while some links may not work.