The Rs 2,315 crore Hubballi-Ankola rail project looks as good as dead following the report of a Supreme Court panel that the line, passing through reserve forests in the Western Ghats, would cause irreparable damage to the environment and the damage caused would outweigh the benefits. The 168-km line is being pursued to transport iron ore from Bellary-Hospet mines. Hopes of the project seeing the light of day were raised when Railways Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, a senior BJP leader from Karnataka, claimed he had broached the subject with Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar. The SC panel report has estimated that this line will require 727 hectares of forest land which would cost Rs 7,462 crore on account of the high ecological and economic value of the 2.5 lakh trees to be felled. The project was rejected by the Union Environment Ministry in 2004 but revived after a revised plan was prepared. Ironically, the foundation stone for the project was laid in 2000 by then prime minister A B Vajpayee.
The arguments against the project seem a lot more saner than the rush to build it. In 2002, the Karnataka government had rightly stated out that there was no point in building the rail link as the alternatives “ Hubballi to Vasco, Hospet-Chennai and Hospet-Vizag, were not fully tapped due to low volumes of iron ore. It further reasoned that the ore reserves in the Bellary-Hospet region were limited and would last another 20 years. Another valid reason put forth was the animal-human conflict that would arise as the line would cut through tiger and elephant corridors.
The Western Ghats are under threat from industrial expansion and unless protected, a day might come when this stretch of bio-diversity rich forests, which stretch from Gujarat to Kerala, will be crisscrossed by roads, railway lines and pockmarked by industrial enclaves. Environmentalists, led by Madhav Gadgil are fighting an uphill battle against hostile state governments which tend to put development ahead of environmental protection.
While the pressure to open up new areas to economic development is mounting, the need to preserve virgin forests is equally pressing. The world's tropical forests support about one billion people and are home to about 50 per cent of species. Roughly 100 million hectares of tropical forests were turned into farmlands between 1980 to 2012 and the loss in terms of carbon dioxide pulling capacity is unmitigated. Forests suck carbon dioxide, but when cut release it back into the atmosphere thereby fueling climate change.
The rail line, 45 km of which is already complete, was planned with a rail head at the proposed Todadi port, which is to be constructed on a PPP basis at the the Aghanashini estuary. People in the area have raised objection to its construction and allege that they were kept in the dark. The simple question raised by them is, why build a new port when the neighbouring ports of Karwar and Belikeri could be expanded. It would seem that the rail line and related projects have not been carefully planned and with iron ore prices literally crashing in the international market the viability of the project is in greater doubt than it ever was in the past.
