Blood of The Red Earth

It was about eight in the morning, when we began climbing Shivgiri hill, almost immediately entering a dense wood of wet deciduous trees.  Our host led the way, turning back frequently to signal that we’d need to maintain silence, for our group was a chatty one.  Walking in the Western Ghats is always a bewildering experience, for there are so many species of plants and trees that you cannot even begin to place in your memory and some that make you stare in wonderment: a thick creeper with thorns big enough to rip your skin through, a flourescent plant and trees with trunks thick enough (possibly belonging to the ficus family) to need a jog-around to see the other side.  This is hill with priceless wildlife as well: small and large carnivore, deer and bear.

The previous evening, driving up to our host’s place – located about halfway up the hill - I had wondered aloud if he had cut the road through the hillside to his property.  “Iron ore miners,” he replied briefly.  There was no need to say more for the curse that the mineral heaps upon its environment is well known.

The evidence of iron in the mud and stone was everywhere on the hill, the distinctive red-rust colour in the rock and the rich red colour of the soil.  When a friend fished out a magnet, he was amazed to discover that a stone that he picked up at random stuck fast to it. 

The hill originally had a coffee estate on it, and a couple of small farms.  As the state of the coffee plantation worsened, someone discovered the ore deposits all over the area.  The price of land shot up as one speculator after another sought to make a quick kill, the result being the usual demonstration of avarice all around; even the priest of the local temple that had given the hill its name, was not immune to the disease.

If the miners had their way, this hill would have been history.  So what had prevented this destruction?  Some local stakeholders have fought a battle in the court and won a reprieve for Nature, yet the war is not over.  The week prior to our trip, a machine had apparently come lumbering up to test the ore at a particular spot, so the threat is omnipresent, yet the few brave men who have come thus far to protect the hill remain committed to their goal. 

To many – in India’s cities, in senior roles in large companies, in the media and in critical decision-making roles in public policy – the stalemate at Shivgiri would only be representative of ‘India’s policy paralysis’.  Democracy, they intone, is our bane, for the inclusiveness that the system and the Courts allow prevents economic growth.  Look at China, they then continue, for an example of quick, firm action.  Quick action towards what? I ask.  Higher standard of living at a permanent cost to our water, soil and air?

Do we need to decimate this beautiful landscape, and the flora and fauna within it, to export ore (again, to China) to enrich their economy and to further empower the thugs who run mining businesses in India?  Do we need to wipe out countless species to make even more vehicles, in which we will continue to evaluate our windshield view of the World, from airconditioned comfort?

Much of this ‘growth-at-any-cost’ opinion is from people who have no idea whatsoever of what we will lose, for they canter from airplane to conference to meeting to airplane, seeking solace in the comfort of numbers such as GDP and growth rate percentages, and are as isolated from the real World as the Sultan of Brunei; these are folks so convinced of their perspective that they see any system of checks and balances as obstructionist. If this is not living in an ivory tower, pray what is?  Sadly, this  includes the highest leadership in the country today – business and political leadership - who, while they speak in the English of the elite, use the language of the ignorant.  This is the leadership that has rejected the Gadgil report’s intelligent, reasoned plea to protect the Western Ghats from further mining, dams, polluting industry, such as refining and deforestation.   ..…and they will justify all of this with

“Citizens, for you

It’s this we do

For power is a Nation’s legs

Ignore the carnage

The collateral damage

An omelette needs broken eggs.”

As we reached the top of the hill, the mist engulfed us in one rapturous moment and cleared as quickly as it had come.  The view of Kemmangundi on a bright December morning, above the mist-and-clouds, was magnificient and my mood lit up in sync as well.

Nature can overwhelm like nothing else.  After some chatter and excitement, we settled down to the view, each lost in thought, even as Chief Seattle’s words came back to me, again and again: Rich men, he said wisely, know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

If Shivgiri has a tale to tell, it is that fighting for what one believes in is the only way.