This Day That Age

This morning, while scanning The Hindu, my attention was drawn to a column I often ignore: “This Day That Age” which carries snippets from The Hindu edition fifty years ago, to the day.

The news item from The Hindu dated July 30^th, 1963 was titled ‘Forest Land for Rayon Firm’.  The text read: 

‘The Government of Kerala have given permission to Gwalior Rayon Silk Manufacturing Company Limited (wood pulp division) at Mavoor to purchase 25,000 acres of private forest land in Malabar area.  This will help the company in the production of rayon pulp and for starting new industries based on timber.  It is also stated that these lands would not be acquired by the Government in pursuance of any legislation regarding nationalising forests in Malabar area for a period of 32 years.’

I read the little note again, its language betraying the hope of the ‘60s, the relative innocence of a Government bent on pursuing industrialisation as the only means of development for a young nation.  It was startling to have seen this, for this was no accidental glance at a column one rarely read; it was meant to be.  Retrieving an old file from the loft, I turned the pages, with clippings stuck to them, until I came to the one on Mavoor.  It was a moment of reflection, some déjà vu as I read the story.

In the early 1990s, after I had graduated from Business School, I was, much as any other B-School grad would be then, caught up by the promise of the era of liberalisation and the stock market boom.  Gwalior Rayon – now Grasim – was a punter’s delight and its relatively young management, represented by Mr. Aditya Birla, was seen as ambitious, global and representative of the New India. 

Mavoor was the hitch in this grand scheme.  For, there was a battle going on at Mavoor, a battle that caught my attention and played the decisive role in changing my career.

One day in the early 90s, the story in the papers caught my attention – it was poignant and well-written.  Gwalior Rayon’s pulp factory, which was located by the Chaliyar river, had, in the thirty years of its existence – from the early 1960s to the early 1990s – sucked its water out and pumped back toxic discharge, destroying the river.  The factory had polluted the air and water with mercury, cadmium and sulphides and consumed almost the entire bamboo wealth of the Wayanad area, a large part of it supplied by a compliant Government at a ridiculous price of Re 1 per tonne (when craftsmen in the surrounding villages were charged many times this price for producing handicraft products from bamboo).  I read that the village folk along the river paid a heavy price for this outrage: malformed babies, hundreds of cancer deaths, severe debilitating bronchial ailments and kidney failures (650 at last count).  I read, with awe, of the courage of K.A. Rehman, who had chosen to fight the company all the way (succumbing to cancer from the emissions, but asking his people, from his death bed, to continue the fight) and of a journalist, Surendranath, who put his career and personal safety on the limb to expose the devil.  I read that, in 1985, Gwalior Rayon had strategically shut the plant down, to put pressure on the Government to be on their side – their argument was that they provided employment to 3,000 people – and that when they re-started operations, it was on even more advantageous terms to them.  I read that every political party had taken the company’s side and used the old argument: when you make an omelette, you break a few eggs.  And I read that the company had rejected the idea of setting up a pollution treatment plant, on the grounds that it would endanger the overall return on investment.

I had no idea why this battle engaged me as much as it did; there were other environmental disasters around to study as well.  Yet it did, perhaps because it was a Kerala story and not far away from Bangalore, perhaps because it was a people vs corporation debate with a high-profile company involved, perhaps, at a larger level, because it was a development question that I had always wanted to ask.

…and I asked one question to myself: Whose side was I on?  My qualification had aligned me to the side of business, yet my heart wasn’t there.  The more I read about the issue, the more I believed that I was on the wrong side.  Along my career as a private equity analyst, I would have to look at profits, possibly as the sole indicator of success and the thought was far from pleasant.  Perhaps, unwittingly, my initial effort at funding a corporation would create a future Gwalior Rayon; to most fund managers, this would be a dream come true.  To me, this was chilling to contemplate.

The 1990s was when I began to learn about the environment – thanks almost entirely to the Mavoor issue -  intent on making up for a lost education.  It was also the time when the Courts in India were becoming aware of their role as possibly the only authority with an environmental conscience and the days of the plant at Mavoor were now numbered.  When, in 2001, the pulp factory was shut down for good, I was ready to make a change away from the World that I never belonged to.

Five years ago, a blog posted on the issue spoke of a comeback that the river, and its people, had made.  Reading it was as motivating as it was heartening. 

I have cut this little note out from today’s newspaper and have pasted it alongside the older cuttings on Mavoor in my file, for no story has a real ending. 
And to everyone who reads it, there is one message – never, ever, lose hope.