"Save RAMSETU" versus "SETHU SAMUDRAM Canal Project"
It?s not ?like a bridge on the troubled water?, rather it?s like a troubled ?bridge? under water, the mythical ?RAMSETU? or ?Adam?s Bridge? that is obstructing the Govt of India?s and DMK?s or DMK supremo and Tamilnadu Chief Ministers Karunanidhi?s dream project of Sethu Samudram Canal, the canal that will, as they claim, join India?s East Coast with West Coast, save time for vessels from Europe and Africa to reach eastern and south eastern ports of India, particularly Tuticorin and then Chennai, business around Tuticorin and overall in TN will thrive? and will harvest good revenue that will cover the construction and maintenance [mainly dredging] costs, yield profits? etc. But neither DMK nor the Congress can claim to be the first to conceptualise that project ? almost two centuries ago, in the early 19th century, some British naval ensigns and officers started thinking about this probable passage-way to avoid sailing around Sri Lanka [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama%27s_Bridge]; and in the recent most phase, the BJP led NDA govt masterminded the project in 2001 and in the same year that project was there in the list of ?pledges? in election manifesto of the now-opposition party of TN, the ADMK led by Mrs Jayalalitha. Surprisingly BJP & ADMK made volte-face and opposing the project; though it is not at all a ?surprising? behaviour as far as all the Indian Parliamentary Parties are concerned: they somersault easily to opposite positions when in ?power? and when out of it. But some things that happened in this process and regarding this project are very interesting, and noteworthy too for the revolutionary proletariat. Let us go straight to the points.
When the project went for a judicial ?review? to the Supreme Court, suddenly many things sprang up in the media. Some arch-Hindu, or one may incline to use adjectives like ?cunning, fraud, pseudo-scientific imperialist-sponsored Hindu fundamentalist? Internet media who always try to put a quasi-scientific label to all religious mythological puranas and epics stepped up a propaganda: the RAMSETU of Hindu legends or Adam?s Bridge of [linguistically] Semitic legends is actually a non-natural bridge made about 1.75 million years ago that purportedly coincides with the era of Ram?s reign and that?s conclusively proven by some NASA photographs from their orbiting satellites. It ignited the minds of all fundamentalist Hindu organisations who in turn intensified their media hypes against the governmental intention to break apart some metres of the bridge built by the monkey-fighters by blessings of Lord Ram, a bridge bearing his name, and what an audacity it is that the govt in its affidavit to the supreme court dared to write that there is no historical proof regarding that structure was built by Ram?s military!! So, though in the meantime NASA spokesperson denied that they share the opinion allegedly bearing their organisation?s name though the picture was definitely theirs, and even clarified that no such opinion regarding how the underwater structure was built or created can at all be formed from a satellite picture taken from a distance of hundreds of miles; though many historians, geographers, geologists declared that structure to be a naturally-formed one, that there is no scientific proof of human civilisation in that part of the world before that supposed 1.75 million years ? the govt of India rushed to ?repair? the ?damage? caused by ?hurting sentiments of Hindu people? and totally withdrew its own affidavit from the supreme court praying some time to produce another. In the past too we saw many such fabrications from many Indian sources and also some foreigners to put ?scientific? tag on all Hindu Myths, who can forget the great fraud Eric von Daniken and his notorious book ?Chariot of Gods?? ? we also saw strong rebuttal of all these rubbishes by many scientists including eminent ones like late Prof Meghnad Saha and among the contemporaries Prof J B Narlikar etc. But anyway, in India, the so-called fifth largest scientists-and-technologists hub of he world, those rubbishes fill the bookshelves of libraries and stores and really scientific refutations of those rubbishes sell too little! And why not: you?ll find astrologer?s stone-ring clad fingers keying sophisticated computer programs, Idols regularly visiting temples, some space scientists too were caught red-handed by reporters while praying at Tirupathi temple for successful launch of rockets ? and matrimonial columns full with proud announcement of ?caste?s of ?foreign? trained or ?foreign? dwelling professionals? etc. And so the Govt of India, at this 21st century, while planning for a ?lunar voyage? by 2010, vaunting atom-bomb bursts as back as in 1974 and then again in 1998, and always boasting of scientific achievements, couldn?t stand by the side of science, couldn?t dare to show a scientific, rational outlook, let alone the two centuries old radical French temperament!! The BJP and all of Sangh Parivar became full of glee, again they could come in the forefront in Media, perhaps they will get some extra points more in the next snap election then? etc! It shows how much ?mass base? still Ram and his today?s followers holds in India, how much muck has accumulated through ages in the minds of the toiling people, and also how much load of the almost unfinished democratic revolution in India, in the cultural-ideological field too, is to be borne by the revolutionary proletariat to lead the masses towards a thorough radical change of this unjust, prejudiced, oppressive society.
However, subsequently, entered the arena our Hero Mr Karunanidhi brandishing seemingly a Dravidian sword, almost reminiscing iconoclast leader and ideologue of DK movement late Periyar. He not only asserted loudly enough that Ram was only a mythical character, not at all a historical one, and Ramsethu and whole of the Ramayana are nothing but Aryan Hindu fable; but also he made ?ignoble? comments about Ram which he got, as he said, from the original Balmiki version, even questioned Ram?s educational qualification!! And all these infuriated the Arch Hindu fundamentalist Ram Bhaktas to the extent that the Ayodhya Monks Assembly issued a FATWA ? any person who?ll get the cut-off head of the Ram abuser will get Gold equal to his body weight!!! So now the Hindu Fundamentalists, who until now did hate-campaigns against Fatwa issuing Muslim Fundamentalists, are themselves issuing death warrant Fatwas with lucrative prize for the killer!!! But this is India, the own land of Ram, and so those monks can remain unpunished, even not booked by the state police-administration led by Mayavati! But by now the old Dravid passion, the old bitter memories of being maltreated by north India, by Hindi-Hindu domination, by the Caucasian Aryans? etc all came back igniting vengeance, and DMK supporters ransacked some BJP offices in TN. The BJP being a parliamentary, i.e., a vote-calculating party, apprehend trouble. Vote-Pundits started making a new TN model with ADMK and BJP in slippery grounds of going against Tamil national feeling and Dravidian sentiment. On the other hand, some members of intelligentsia, emboldened by Karunanidhi?s Ram-blasting even started dreaming and declaring TN to be the secular answer to Modi?s Gujarat? and what not. [For example see ?Chak De Tamilnadu!? By Arasu Balraj at http://www.countercurrents.org/balraj260907.htm.] How easily these people forget quite recent antecedents of DMK and Karunanidhi, that this party, this same fellow, were partners of BJP led coalition!! DMK and its archrival ADMK almost alternatively become one an ally of BJP and other an ally of Congress! Further, in this period of imperialist led and blessed WTO-globalisation-liberalisation-etc, these two parties are nothing but Twedeldee-and-Tweedeldum, it is well nigh impossible to find any remnant of anti-Brahminical or anti-Manuvadi ideology inside them that may debar them from allying themselves with BJP. The Periyar-ite reincarnation of Karunanidhi is devoid of any ?essence? within, it is only in appearance; his anti-Ram tirade or fracas is just a deceptive ploy to pull TN people with nostalgia of the old DK movement. Moreover, revolutionary proletariat of TN and India as a whole cannot forget or neglect another fact: the old anti-Brahmin-hegemony Tamil movement under its elite leadership could not reach even the first step of its logical culmination, i.e., towards ?abolition of caste system altogether?; and so we see that Dalits in TN do not fare better than their counterparts in Kerala and also in Maharashtra even in dry statistical counts. But anyway, TN is in still in the ripples: a bandh call by DMK, Supreme Court?s banning of the bandh, withdrawal of bandh call by Karunanidhi but protest fast by DMK leaders and virtual bandh, ADMK indication violation of SC ruling by DMK govt? ? and on the national scene Congress is trying to get through with the SSCP managing ?Ram-sentiment? ? etc.
Nevertheless, despite Karunanidhi?s battle against Hindu myth and for the canal project, the Sethusamudram Canal Project [SSCP in short] is not flawless; rather the SSCP raised many doubts. From financial angle, this SSCP was proved to be unviable: as the projected construction cost plus maintenance cost cannot be covered form expected revenues as calculated by Jacob John in his article that appeared in Economic and Political Weekly July 21, 2007, pages 2993-2996. According to him, ?If ? the company charges the total savings made by the ship (around $ 4,000), the pre-tax internal rate of return (IRR) of the project falls to just 4.5 per cent. On the other hand, if the SSCP charges 50 per cent of the amount saved by these ships, the pre-tax IRR falls to just 2.6 per cent!? Jacob also cited the fact that no big name in shipping has shown any interest in the canal. He showed that a better way, or viable way, of attracting ships to Tuticorin or Chennai would be to give away some subsidies to the Shipping companies, which will certainly be less costlier than the project. Then, the SSCP is designed for ships of dead-weights less than or equal to 20,000 tons only, whereas famous and big names among ocean liners are continuously moving to bigger ships and already perhaps most of them exceeds that tonnage. Apart from financial aspect there is the environmental issues too. Jacob didn?t mention those in his essay, as his colleagues in the forthcoming book on this subject, of which Jacob?s article is only a chapter, will cover those parts. But many questions arose: What will happen if the marine biosphere of the region around that place, including the coral reef, is destroyed first by the making of the Canal and then by movement of ships even if we disregard phenomena like oil-spills for now? What will be the changes in the behaviour of Bay of Bengal currents and winds, say during east moving low-pressure formations, or during a Tsunami like incident, when the Bay gets connected to the Arabian Sea through the Palk Strait and Gulf of Mannar by a narrow and shallow channel? And Indian Govt had not at all tried to study impacts on the Sri Lankan side! Though we are not environmental experts or geographers, from writings of several environmentalists, hydrologists etc it is obvious that there are points of serious concerns and consequences. [Interested readers may see, for example, ?Sethusamudram Technical Issues? at http://manisanga.blogspot.com/.] Bourgeois liberal economist columnist like Mr Swaminathan Ankeleshwaran Aiyer [Times Of India] also raised objections referring to Jacob?s article, objections that are on financial and environmental grounds. And if the govt makes such an economic and environmental mess, it will surely put more pressure on the economy and Nature, and that will, in the ultimate analysis, hurt the toiling people. So, there is no question of supporting the SSCP even if standing at poles apart from BJP like oppositions to the SSCP.
But a question remains: why the BJP led govt in the past and the Congress led govt of today are so keen in constructing a white-elephant like economic-waste-project SSCP? What is their real intention? Is there something related to some non-economic calculations or designs? Many Indian war-ships, perhaps most of them except aircraft carriers, fit in the less-than-or-equal-to 20,000 DWT category. Does the Govt of India have any military plan in which taking navy vessels quickly from east coast to west coast and vice versa, and that too not around Sri Lanka but all through running well inside Indian sea-borders? And is that the Real Intention behind SSCP? This question too needs serious probe, because this angle perhaps got no attention from any quarters. It is all the more important that the Indian ruling class, sponsored by Imperialists, are trying to emerge as the ?Guardian Angel? [plainly speaking the regional super power] of this part of the world including the vast open of Indian Ocean, and of course the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal ? the ?golden field? of oil & gas that is evoking more and more Corporate greed and capital. Imperialists are worried about future terrorist naval attacks. They want India to police Indian Ocean including commercially crucial Malacca Straits. Companies will have so pay for the ?security? they get for their oil rigs and fields in the Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal, marine transport, etc ? already declared an Indian govt official!
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