Mumbai: Few public projects have achieved what the Rs2,600 crore Sethusamudram ship channel project has: it has unified opponents as varied as scientists and politicians, Christian missionaries and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, fishermen and conservationists. None of them wants the project that seeks to cut through Adam’s Bridge (or Ram Sethu, to countless Indians who believe this bridge was built by Ram), a physical underwater chain of coral islets linking India and Sri Lanka, to go through.
The Union shipping ministry claims the channel thus created, which will link the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Munnar, will save a day’s journey for ships circumnavigating India and benefit the shipping industry as well as those dependent on the cargo these ships ferry. However, scientists, ecologists and economists say the government has begun work on the project without enough research.
Meanwhile, Hindu organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its South Indian counterpart, Hindu Munnani, are protesting “the deliberate designs to destroy the most ancient relic of Hindu history.”
At the heart of this emotionally charged issue is a first-of-its-kind project to create a channel that the shipping ministry likes to calls ‘the Suez of the East’. But unlike the Panama and Suez canals, which are land-based canals, this is a channel that will be created not by hacking land but by dredging and deepening the shallow ocean bed. Unlike the Suez, which allow ships with a displacement of 150,000 tonnes to pass, the maximum displacement for this channel will be 30,000 tonnes. And unlike the Panama and the Suez that cut sea voyages of ships by almost half, the government claims that this channel may save ships 24 hours.
Local fishermen walk on the visible stretch of the Ram Sethu or Adam’s Bridge
Anywhere between Rs300 crore and Rs650 crore has already been spent with little work done, and as the controversy about its economic and ecological viability has deepened, protests have become louder, court cases have increased and the project’s estimated cost has spiralled from Rs2,600 crore to Rs3,500 crore.
These figures could not be independently verified because shipping minister T.R. Baalu has placed a gag order on all employees connected with the project.
Bogged down in sand
Experts blame a lack of research for the project’s woes. “There are two elements to this project. One is deepening the shallow ocean bed to 12m by dredging the sand. The second is to cut the Ram Sethu so ships can pass,” explained S. Kalyanaraman, chief scientist at the Sarasvati Research Centre, an independent research organization in Chennai, who has been studying this project since its inception.