November 2, 2001	Friday	Shaba’an 15, 1422

TEHRI GARHWAL (India): The remote Himalayan forest of Advani recently took on a festive mood here as colourfully dressed villagers marched into the forests, singing songs and chanting slogans. Women tied sacred threads around trees, symbolizing their determination to protect them. With this gesture, they hope to save the forest from destruction, like the earlier struggles by the Indian Chipko movement had achieved in the 1980s.

The name of the village-level movement comes from a word meaning “embrace”. The women practised non-violent resistance and put their bodies between the trees and the contractors’ axes. Many years ago a large number of trees in the same forest of Advani, located in this district of Uttranchal in Uttar Pradesh had been auctioned for commercial felling.

When the contractors’ workers came to fell trees along with an armed police team, village women hugged trees to prevent them from being cut. The forest was saved. Now more than two decades later, the threat to this forest as well as a large number of other trees of this region has come from an entirely different source: the giant Tehri dam project coming up near Tehri town.

Though highly controversial because of its adverse impact on the environment, work on the project has begun and the government looks determined to complete it. In order to transmit the electricity to be generated from this project to other parts of the country, the Power Grid Corp has been given the responsibility of laying 800-KV transmission line from Tehri in Uttranchal to Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.

In this approximately 200km stretch, nearly 50km are in the hilly region. The proposed path of transmission lines in the Himalayan area, would cut into the forest of Advani, earlier saved by the Chipko movement, threatening about a hundred thousand trees. Kunwar Prasun, a senior activist of the Chipko movement, says: “There was such a big and determined struggle over two decades back when only some hundred trees were threatened. How can we remain silent when thousands and thousands of trees are threatened. We are determined to save trees.”

Dhum Singh Negi, who is a mentor of the younger Chipko activists, asks: “Had they really taken permission for cutting all these trees when the dam project was cleared? I doubt that the permission to fell so many trees would have been given.”

This in fact is the heart of the debate over the project, activists say, accusing government agencies involved in the project of deliberately keeping any information about its environmental impact from public discussions. Shekhar Singh, who was one of the experts on a committee appointed by the government to examine this project, says with anguish: “This important matter of the loss of Himalayan forests was never brought up before our committee. The committee never got a chance to discuss this.”

Another senior committee member, Ramaswamy Iyer, says: “The loss of such a large number of trees on Himalayan slopes is actually one of the most important aspects of the Tehri dam project and yet this was not even considered.” Environmental impact is just one of the concerns the project has spawned. Earlier, there were worries about its safety.

The Environment Appraisal Committee which examined all important aspects of the Tehri Dam Project opined that safety factors alone are important enough to stop the clearance of this project. Although the government has shown no signs yet of accepting this demand and revising the Tehri dam project, it has at least responded to some extent to the growing demand for sparing Himalayan trees coming in the way of the power grid’s electricitylines. —Dawn/InterPress Service.