Vizag - Super City or super B******t?

The wise, discuss weighty regional issues

Last month I attended a meeting organised by “Gravity 2.0”. No it was not a new computer game. It was an organisation meeting to deliberate weighty matters. The “Vizag Bay Regional Economic Summit 2012” was discussing how to “develop” the entire region stretching from Srikakulam to Vijayawada into a super city cluster crammed with industry.

Speakers from industry and the business world trumpeted their achievements. The main speaker talked of how Vizag Port was serving industry and society. A COO of an automobile dealership told us how rapidly they were expanding.  Everyone waxed eloquent about their vision for Vizag. The dream was to build several ports and miles and miles of industries all along the coast and inland too.  Some wanted to put up more tourist attractions on our beaches. The key speaker also went on to say that farmers should give up farming as the remuneration was too low and they should work in industry where they could earn more. He did not mention where the food would come from if there were no farmers.

Chilling vision

Hearing the captains of industry, I got a chilling mental picture of a vast industrial empire; thousands of factory smoke stacks belching out smoke all the way from Srikakulam to Kakinada to Vijayawada. I imagined industries with huge pipes going deep into the sea to suck in sea water to cool their machinery; I saw massive fields, where paddy once grew, now covered with fly ash from thermal plants. I envisioned endless compound walls and electrified barbed wire fences cutting off fishermen, farmers and the general public from our beaches.

The road system is taken over

I envisaged endless lines of 20 ton trucks, driving bumper to bumper, kicking up tons of dust, through what were once our roads. These trucks were bringing in raw material like Iron Ore, Coal and Bauxite from ravaged forests and hills and carrying away manufactured goods to some even bigger super cluster city somewhere in the world.

Slums bred by industry

I saw horrible slums where labourers who had sold their farm lands to the industry earlier and came to build these factories now lived in squalor, defecating in the open and trying to live off 50 litters of water a day for cooking, bathing, washing and drinking. They had sold their farms to industry with promise of jobs and a rosy future and now lived in subhuman conditions. The smoke and dust had settled everywhere, on the skin, on clothes, in the lungs and in their water and their subsidised food.  With every drink of the polluted water and contaminated food they died a little.

Living Hell

In my mind’s eye I saw thousands of gaunt working men and women, in uniform, trudging like robots– tramp – tramp – tramp - into these factory gates every morning and slouching out every evening as the next shift of khaki clad human robots trudged in. Their housing was 80 kilometres away from the industry and consequently they had to travel 6 hours a day to get to work and back. Many were severely malnourished and ill. All the electricity was taken up by the industries, so there was no power at home. The residents slept poorly due to the heat and mosquitoes. With farms gone, food was imported from far off places and only the rich could afford a decent meal. Deep depression was rampant – many considered suicide as a better option than living in this industrial world.

Water

Every industry needed water, so under severe pressure and the lure of big bucks, the government diverted the water meant for the people to the industry. To supplement their water requirements industries tapped and sucked up any water from the earth. Then, like they do in Parwada and Mindi now, they went on to discharge their waste water into the nearest field. “Oops” they said, we missed the affluent treatment unit. The stuff they discharged seeped into the earth killing off existing wells for ever. So the people purchased water at higher and higher prices thereby indirectly subsidising the industry.

Air

Vizag’s shining example of progress and development and its biggest polluter, the port, had already made 30% of the city unlivable. Every house, every wall, ceiling and floor, every street, every shop, every school and every human being’s lungs surrounding the port was lined with coal and iron ore dust. Now it got worse. Proper storage and handling facility was costly. It was easier to let people die slowly of dust poisoning rather than make dust free ports.

Our Sea

Meanwhile, with all the ports and industries merrily discharging their waste into the sea, it lost 80% of its fish stock. Now even the fish had to be imported. The fishermen all left for the city slums and took jobs as industry labour. The fishing companies sold their boats for scrap and left. “Aha” said the port authorities “we can now take over the fishing harbour as well” and so they did. With each day our beautiful sea became even more filthy and polluted. Then the port expanded to Bheemunipatnam and proceeded to choke that beautiful old and quaint town and the sea before it.

Back to the present – quips and negative comments

Someone nudged me! I came back with a start! It was audience reaction time. “Say something about this madness” someone whispered urgently in my ear. The mike came before me. The Master of Ceremonies warned that he would not allow negative comments and only wanted a “quips”, (defined in the dictionary as a witty or funny observation or response usually made on the spur of the moment”). 

I stood up and said

“I also have a vision for Vizag”.

1. With respects to the automobile dealer – “I would like fewer cars, less automobile pollution and a better mass transit system in Vizag. (The MC on the stage started getting restless)

2. With respect to the ports, I said – “Stop polluting our air with coal dust” (The MC was saying something like “quip only, quip only!”

3. With respect to those who wanted to fill every square foot of our beautiful landscape with factories I said “I envisage hundreds of parks and play grounds for our citizens” (Several industrialists turned around and glowered at me)

4. With respect to the wise men who wanted hordes of tourists in Vizag, I said “Tourism is fine but let us get fewer tourists who spend more if we want to save our environment” (By this time the MC was quite agitated. He said “no negatives…no negatives”, someone moved towards me to take my mike away)

5. “And sirs, my final point … a positive point” I lied, holding on to the mike for dear life. “My vision is to see a great big agricultural zone between Vizag and Kakinada, diaries, fisheries, farms, food processing and canning” I thought to myself “at least my grandson will have food and water when we run out of oil and coal in 20 years.” The MC appeared apprehensive of offending the speakers. I stopped abruptly. I had spoken for exactly 2 minutes and 33 seconds with four interruptions, timed by the recorder on my phone.

Then fortunately they announced lunch. A few of us quietly slunk away hungry. We had lost our appetite.