The Hindu Business Line : Need for calm, cool reflection

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Need for calm, cool reflection

The concatenation of events since the free-for-all erupted over the Sethusamudram project following the filing and subsequent withdrawal of the affidavits on behalf of the Government before the Supreme Court is threatening to descend into depths not seen in living memory.

The public discourse on this topic has been marked by intemperate, below-the-belt attacks, resulting in confusion being worse confounded. It will not be surprising if the sane, silent majority in the country is crying in anguish, ‘Enough is enough’.

Right from the beginning of the controversy, a technical project has been subjected to a treatment which is anything but technical. In spite of all the sound and fury it has generated so far, there are no clear-cut answers to questions that are the most pertinent from the standpoint of its suitability and viability.

The first is: Is it true, as is categorically asserted by technical experts of undoubted credentials, that the canal will not be useful to non-coastal ships of dead weight tons (DWT) of 20,000 or above, which constitute two-thirds of the traffic?

The answer has a direct bearing on the economic viability.

If the canal is going to be used by only one-third of the number of ships, the entire investment may well go down the drain.

Second, is it true that, even the limited number of coastal ships using it will need to have pilots provided and be forced to navigate the canal at greatly reduced speed, thereby eating into both the time and earnings assumed to result from the distance saved?

Third, what are the findings of any comprehensive exercise undertaken to assess the precise nature and extent of ecological and environmental damage, and what is its impact on the cost-benefit ratio and internal rate of return?

Fourth, why is it that an alignment ruled out by the Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar Committee has been chosen and why was its recommendation for an alternative alignment not followed up?

Regardless of which Government — NDA or UPA — bears the primary responsibility for giving clearance to the project, these questions are of cardinal importance.

Unfortunately, however, there are no pointed and convincing answers in either the Website of the project or that of the Shipping Ministry, or, indeed, all the millions of words and sound-bytes expended on it by professionals or the media.

Sorry figure

Sanction first, and think later, seems to have been the course adopted in this case. The sorry figure cut by the Government before the Supreme Court at the latest hearing and its request for three months’ time to re-examine the entire project in all its bearings, including a possible change of alignment, cannot be explained otherwise. It was a somewhat unedifying spectacle to watch the Government, in respect of a project whose ultimate cost is put at more than Rs 4000 crore, fumbling, instead of being instantly ready with all the answers to clinch the case.

What has happened afterwards is even more inexplicable.

The public is left wondering how the UPA constituents in Tamil Nadu gave a call for a ‘bandh’, going by whatever name, knowing full well that the Supreme Court had, in a forthright judgment in 1998, barred political parties from resorting to bandhs as they interfere with the rights and convenience of the larger public and cause hundreds of crores of rupees of loss in terms of production and hit the livelihoods of those marginally subsisting in the unorganised sector.

Viewed from this perspective, there is enough reason for the aam aadmi to feel elated by the firmness shown by the Supreme Court in speaking up for him.

B. S. RAGHAVAN