A Green Revolt

What haunts the authorities are visions of Japanese tourists with a yen for golf swooping down on the virgin islands with wads of foreign currency. Agitated greenies at the Andaman-based Save Andaman and Nico-bar Ecology (SANE) say that apart from inviting destruction of the island's pristine rain-forests, the golf course will also put unbearable pressure on the island's water reserves.

Says Samir Acharya, a SANE activist based in Port Blair: "Water is supplied to Port Blair-ians for half-an-hour every day when it is available. During the dry season, as the water level in the islands' reservoirs recede, the supply is curtailed to four or five days a week, and in extreme cases to alternate days or even every third day, for just half an hour." An 18-hole golf course will consume 5 million litres of water every day. "This," says Acharya, "is enough to meet the daily requirement of water for 2,000 families."

Environmentalists also insist that high-quality grass would have to be imported from Europe and nurtured with fertilisers and pesticides. Given the heavy rainfall in the islands, these toxic materials are bound to get washed into the sea, destroying its exotic marine life.

Similarly, high grade soil would have to be brought in to level the rocky surface of the islands. Soil hardening agents, used to prevent large-scale erosion, are known to contain carcinogenic substances. Their deposition in the sea could cause turbidity in the waters near the coastal areas besides poisoning the fish, the staple diet of the islands' inhabitants.

The strident criticism seemed to amuse Puroshott-aman. "People who have no other work become environmentalists here," he says dismissively when contacted on telephone at the Raj Niwas in Port Blair.

"This is the tourist destination of tomorrow. The Andamans is beautiful, but there is no other way to develop it except tourism."

Asked how he proposed to arrange for water, the lt-governor seemed astounded: "What's the problem with water? There is a lot of water in the sea. All we need is a desalination plant for which we have already floated a tender." Confirming that offers have indeed been invited for such a plant, environmentalists point out that the plant's capacity is only 20,000 litres per day, well below the requirement of the golf course, and certainly not enough to alleviate Port Blair's perennial water crisis.

Port Blair's distance from Delhi seems tohave enabled the lt-governor to pursue his grandiose schemes without any checks. Environment Ministry officials expressed surprise upon learning of Puroshottaman's plans. The Environment Impact Assessment Division (EIAD) of the ministry disclaimed all knowledge regarding the proposal. Says a startled K.K. Joshi, additional secretary, EIAD and chairman of the committee on the Coastal Regulation Zone Management Plan: "Frankly, I don't know anything about this tender having been floated, although I should. The Andamans is a very sensitive area and all development projects have to be carefully scrutinised by the ministry."

Adds environmentalist Ashish Kothari, dismayed at the officials' indifference to the impending crisis: "Unfortunately, concern for the environment is limited to trees being cut. The larger issue of ecological balance is rarely understood. When a huge golf course is built in a fragile environment, there are serious ramifications. Hotels and roads are built, cars are introduced to cater to tourists, fertilisers and pesticides are sprayed damaging marine life and large-scale disruption of local life takes place."

Pratibha Pandey, one of the editors of Directories of National Parks and Sanctuaries of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, agrees. "The Andamans provide a fabulous laboratory for gene documentation. It is possible to identify rare herbs and microbes here that can be used for medicinal purposes. Instead all they think of doing is promote tourism, build golf courses and hotels and destroy the islands' biodiversity."

 The lt-governor's vision of converting the Andamans into a tourist paradise and creating a viable export economy has drawn flak even from the tourism industry. Writing in Hotel and Food Service Review , journal-ist Pankaj Sekhsaria says that the proposal to make the Andamans into an alternative to Thailand's Phuket would have unimaginable consequences, including the inevitable arrival of sex tourism and child prostitution.

The comparison with Phuket is unavoidable since a regatta across the Bay of Bengal from the Thai resort to Port Blair was organ-ised last year, evidently with the Andaman authorities' consent. Years of commercial exploitation have caused extensive damage to Phuket's rainforests and the once-virgin resort is now becoming a concrete jungle swarming with raucous tourists. Tomorrow that could be the Andamans' fate too