Officials at Sethusamudram Corp.—the company executing the project which seeks to build a canal through the Palk Straits thereby reducing the time taken by ships to circumnavigate India—have continued dredging work in the area, where the 54km channel begins. According to unofficial estimates, Rs610 crore has been spent on dredging a channel that may never be used. Jesu Rethinam, convener of Coastal Action Network, an action group based in Tamil Nadu says it is impossible to get any kind of information. It does not help to file questions under the Right to Information Act, either.
“We have filed several questions under the Act, asked them to send us satellite images of the channel that they claim they have already dredged in Palk Straits and the area north of the Adam’s Bridge. We have not received any response so far,” Rethinam said.
Ossie Fernandes, co-convener of the Coastal Action Network, says officials claim “they dump sand in the high sea.” He said: “Well, if you dump several hundred million cubic tonnes of sand somewhere in the ocean, then it’s bound to show up as a mound in satellite images. But they will not even give us the latitude and longitude where they supposedly dump all this sand.”
Rethinam says that her group wanted satellite images of the channel because “till today there is no proof that a channel has been dug.”
Coastal Action Network has filed four appeals against the ministry for not honouring the terms of the RTI Act to Central information officer and requested intervention.
Fishermen in the region say the ocean current is too strong for divers to go in and verify the channel’s dept. But, other local fishermen such as F. Xavier say they have reason to believe that little has been done. “I have spent all my life fishing in the sea around Adam’s Bridge. What was done is probably filled up with sand again,” said Xavier referring to the sedimentation caused by the ocean currents.
“According to my sources, unless maintenance dredging is done in the seas here, the ocean currents will fill up whatever is dredged,” says V. Sundaram, an officer formerly with the Indian Administrative Service who served as the first chairman and managing director of Tuticorin port in Tamil Nadu. Until September, the Sethusamudram website said that 25% of the work was done. About a fortnight later, shipping minister T.R. Baalu told reporters that “most of the work on the channel is done.”
So what is the truth? How much work has really been completed? According to S. Murli, a national committee member in Rameshwaram of the Bharatiya Janata Party, “nothing has been accomplished.”
“Of course, for accounting purposes they may even say all work is over,” he said.
Murli says because the government is not forthcoming with images or any other data and if anecdotal evidence of local fishermen is true, then it is natural to ask, “Where has the money gone?”
Dredging is known to be one of the most corrupt industries in the world. Sundaram says that as the chairman of the Tuticorin port, he had to oversee dredging work all the time. “There are two basic ways people can cheat on dredging. First is to say there is hard rock surface below, where there is none. As dredging hard rock needs more work, you have to pay more. Or, (they can) cheat on the actual measurement,” he said.
“As you are not showing people where you are dumping the sand you are dredging, there is no one to verify. Either way, the contractor and the officials share the spoils.”