The Thirty-Year Long Battle to Save a Wetland in Calcutta

Thirty years is a long fight, by any standards. But, it turns out, a little bit of anger can drive you a long way.

The gentleman from Philadelphia, a non-resident Indian (NRI) with friendly access to the Government of West Bengal, was expansive as he described his plans for a World Trade Centre to the reporter from the Economic Times. The project would be on the outskirts of Calcutta, it would be a part of the WTC network, it would induce foreign investors to come to the state, it would provide incubators for ideational ambience, and to a government starved of new investment from the private sector, it would provide a badly needed boost nationally and even internationally.

All he was asking for was land. A mere 223 acres – after all, there had to be space for offices, residential blocks, shopping and, of course, a golf course. And the land had to be as close to Calcutta airport as possible because the visitors he foresaw arriving bearing investments should not be put off by the “dirty city”.

That’s what fuelled the anger.

None of us had any illusions about Calcutta in 1991. We knew it was an underachiever as would be expected from the stereotype of the work-averse Bengali. We were also aware that it was cosmetically less attractive than other metropolitan cities in India and there was the overhang of Mother Teresa on the city. Nevertheless, we were still proud of our city – its rich reservoir of artistic talent, its readiness to challenge and above all, its willingness to be a city with a heart. We didn’t bulldoze the poor off the streets and squeeze them into unseen chawls. Even so, to read the disparaging reference to the city in a national newspaper, and that too by a businessman claiming to be a harbinger of investment, provoked us to ask: what is this project about?

 

That’s when we discovered the East Calcutta Wetlands – the area where the NRI wanted the 223 acres for the World Trade Centre. On the face of it, the area was a patchwork of waterbodies and paddy fields that stretched from the eastern periphery of the city to a green unending vista leading into the horizon. Somewhere at the end of it, miles away, we were told, was the Bay of Bengal and the Sundarban forest.

This was 1991, just seven years after the Ministry of Environment and Forests had been established by the Government of India. Terms such as environment, ecological balance and biodiversity had barely entered the vocabulary of public discourse, let alone gain acceptance in business and bureaucratic circles in India. And yet, it was based on these very concepts that PUBLIC launched what became its 30-year battle to protect and preserve the wetlands of East Calcutta. And it was two people who were principally responsible for triggering PUBLIC’s entry into the wetlands war.

Dr Asish Ghosh looked every bit a scientist. He was built small but his bubbly demeanour suggested a mind with a large span. As Deputy Director of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) he had started flagging issues relating to biodiversity early in the game and was one of the first senior government officials to appreciate the features and importance of the East Calcutta Wetlands. He and Bonani Kakkar had worked together when the latter was Project and Education Officer for WWF, India – and an expedition to the threatened Neora Valley in North Bengal had resulted. Dr Ghosh was to eventually become the Director of the ZSI, but his position and designation never hampered his forthrightness and courage in speaking out. Quite expectedly, when the World Trade Centre project was announced, Asish Ghosh was ready in his corner with gloves on. It was but natural that the call for conservation of the wetlands should bring him and Bonani together again.

 

 The second person responsible for PUBLIC’s getting into the long battle for the wetlands was Dhrubajyoti Ghosh. Working as a sanitary engineer for the Government of West Bengal, Dhrubajyoti had literally walked the wetlands. He had seen, encouraged and promoted the practice of sewage- fed fish farming that had been adopted by the local people since the early 20th century. Dhrubajyoti was struck by the local community’s creative adaptation that had emerged when the spill basin of the River Bidyadhari and salt marshes to the east of Calcutta underwent drastic changes. The river died and the area lost its salinity but the people realised that something in Calcutta’s waste water that was coming into the area provided nutrient-rich input for fish farming. What the Chief Engineer of Calcutta Corporation had spotted in 1944, and the practice that the state’s Department of Fisheries and State Planning Board had focused on during the 1980s, Dhrubajyoti re-discovered during his tenure in the Sanitation Department. It was he who campaigned against the conversion of fish ponds into agricultural land and it was he who raised the alarm over the threat that the proposed World Trade Centre posed to this community-driven resource recovery system.

Addressing the first meeting of the group that responded to this alarm call, Dr Asish Ghosh explained why the East Calcutta wetlands deserved attention and protection. The principal reason was drainage: the slope of the land on which the city was built was away from the river Hoogly – from west to east – so the city’s storm water and sewage systems could take advantage of gravity and this gradient to use the wetlands for outflow. The wetlands were also important in providing food and livelihoods. Going back to the early 1900s, local fishermen had found the wetlands to be a good source of livelihood with proximity to the city providing easy access to markets.

 

However, as human activity choked the channels and the river (Bidyadhari) feeding the wetland system, fishing was threatened. Dr Asish Ghosh’s next revelation took the group completely by surprise. He said that in the 1930s fishermen discovered that the nutrients in the sewage water flowing from Calcutta into the wetlands seemed to work well for the fish. Thus emerged, what may have been the world’s first, sewage- fed fish production system.

His eyes twinkling as he saw the squeamish expressions on the faces of his audience, Dr Ghosh went on to explain that a cluster of interconnected settling ponds – shallow, no more than four feet deep, allowed sunlight to sanitize the water as well as to produce the algae on which the fish could feed.

Voila! No wonder that years later the East Calcutta Wetlands would be dubbed a “natural resource recovery system” and attract attention as well as visitors from around the world. It was also natural that the land around and between the ponds would be used to grow vegetable and flowers so that incomes were supplemented. It was this network of fish and agricultural farms, and the drainage system of the city that was threatened by the proposed World Trade Centre.

As Ashish Ghosh’s fascinating translation of scientific facts into consequences for the city educated us, Dhrubajyoti’s passion ignited us. And the NRI, Sadhan Dutt, fuelled the fire with his comments on the city. We decided to fight this.

Excerpted with permission from Once Upon a City: Stories of Citizen Action in an Indian Megacity by Bonani Kakkar and Pradeep Kakkar, White Falcon Publishing. Pages 124, Price: 300. Buy it here.

Photo source