A week after Gandhi Jayanti, protestors in Mumbai drew the nation’s attention when they turned out in large numbers to physically prevent the city’s municipal corporation from felling 2,500 trees. The police rounded up the protesters and the trees were eventually cut, but then the Supreme Court stepped in to prevent more trees from being felled and ordered the protestors to be released.
Activists in Tamil Nadu are hoping for a similar intervention in the Thadagam valley, an important drainage basin and elephant migratory corridor near Coimbatore. The valley’s ecosystems and biodiversity are under threat from the activities of over 200 brick kilns operating in the area.
‘Thadagam’ is Tamil for ‘tank’; the area was once a reservoir, collecting water from many streams originating in the surrounding hills and draining in the valley. From here, the Sanganur canal carried water to the Singanallur lake and the Noyyal river. According to a 2013 report prepared by the EIA Resource and Response Centre, New Delhi, the Sanganur valley was an important water source for agricultural and domestic use not too long ago. But brick kilns have fractured the land, killed the streams, drained the Sanganur canal and blocked routine migratory paths.
Most of these kilns started off as cottage units in the late 1990s in the predominantly agricultural panchayat unions of Chinna Thadagam, 24 Veerapandi Pirivu, Nanjundapuram, Pannimadai and Somayampalayam. Today, they’re part of a large and organised industry; some of them even employ robotic machinery. According to medical workers in the area, their growth has paralleled increasing incidence of respiratory diseases, cancer and untimely deaths.
Dr R. Ramesh, for example, says he has registered in uptick in the rate of occurrence of conditions ranging from breathing trouble to bronchogenic carcinoma, a cancer of the respiratory system.
“I have been treating patients with breathing problems and chronic cough. They tend to develop haemoptysis – where they spit blood – bronchogenic carcinoma and neurofibroma,” he elaborated. “This is due to the fumes they inhale while burning bricks and also the pollution caused by brick kilns.”
But while so much applies to the resident population, “we really don’t know about the conditions of the floating population of migrants, who earlier came from Theni and Sivagangai districts and now come from the northern and northeastern parts of the country to work in the brick kilns,” Dr Ramesh said. “They return home once they fall sick, and I have heard of deaths of people who went back to their native places.”
Environmentalists have also documented the indiscriminate mining of red sand. Chinna Thadagam, 24 Veerapandi Pirivu, Somayampalayam and Nanjundapuram fall under the Hill Area Conservation Authority (HACA), and form part of the buffer zone where the hill’s slope ends and the forest begins. The Union environment ministry forbids large construction projects in HACA lands; anything smaller needs the HACA’s okay.
Activists in the area allege the brick kilns don’t have such clearance to operate – let alone to expand.
T.M.S. Rajendran and Ganesh, both activists, filed a petition in the Madras high court against the red-sand mining on September 27. “In HACA lands, the only permitted activity is agriculture. For anything else, permissions must be taken from 17 departments, including geology and mining, forest and the pollution control board,” Ganesh said.
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But applications they filed under the RTI Act revealed the brick kilns don’t have the pollution control board’s and the mining and forest departments’ permissions to operate. Ganesh alleged that kilns are owned by “members of all the … major political parties” – the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the All India Anna DMK, the Congress and the Communists – “so there is no one to question them.”
As a result, nearly 2,500 hectares of patta and government lands have been damaged, according to people living around the kilns, who have also reported seeing nearly 600 lorries at work per day.
Further, other RTI applications showed that even though the pollution control board hadn’t okayed the kilns, Ganesh said the electricity board has “given connections to all units, erected transformers and laid separate [power transmission] lines. A total of 61 transformers of 112 kVA, 15 of 64 kVA and one transformer with 339 kVA capacity have been erected by the electricity board.”
But the brick manufacturers deny all allegations. “We follow the rules properly and we pay taxes, too,” P. Dharmaraj, president of the Brick Manufacturers’ Association, told The Wire. “This is a very small industry and we don’t have any knowledge of HACA regulations.”
G.P.N. Joshua, a local activist who works for tribal development in Anaikatti, a town near the valley, said people affiliated with the kilns had threatened and physically assaulted him when he attended a gram sabha meeting in Veerapandi Pirivu on October 2. He has been opposed to the kilns because they ignore the environment ministry’s excavation guidelines.
“According to an order issued by the [ministry] in June 2013, excavation activity can be done only up to a depth of two metres, which is about 6′ 8″,” he said. “But in some areas in Thadagam, excavations have gone up to a depth of 120 feet, which is by no means acceptable by law.”
Ajay Desai, a consultant with the World Wildlife Fund, has publicly blamed brick kilns for elephants entering human settlements. According to him, after farmers sell their land to kiln operators, the latter begin digging the land to extract resources and then abandon them. Grass grows in these lands and attracts elephants, drawing the pachyderms closer and closer to human-occupied areas. Additionally, the kilns need palmyra leaves for fuel. Kiln operators cut the leaves up and stack them in the open, and their smell attracts elephants. An older report Desai had authored reportedly documented over 77 human deaths around Coimbatore between 2011 and 2018 in accidents involving elephants.
The Tamil Nadu forest department has also sent several letters to the district administration complaining about the brick kilns being in the way of elephant paths. D. Venkatesh, the district forest officer also wrote to Coimbatore collector K. Rajamani on January 21 this year, demanding the latter act against the kilns for indiscriminate sand-mining. Venkatesh also said that many of the abandoned pits were 3-8 metres deep and that elephants could fall into them, suffering sometimes fatal injuries.
After many complaints, the district administration organised a meeting of officials from various departments, activists agitating against the kilns and members of the Brick Manufacturers’ Association on September 24. Outcome: the revenue divisional officer agreed that some kilns were operating outside the law, and that a technical team from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board would be invited for an inspection.
This team arrived on October 9, with plans to examine the extent of air pollution in the Thadagam valley. According to sources, the team will measure PM10 concentration and noise levels in the area for eight hours per day for five days using a mobile unit. But activists already doubt the exercise will be useful because kilns have been made aware of the team’s presence and intentions, and have suspended operations. Instead, activists have demanded that the board arrange for a year-long inspection.
Sujatha Sivagnanam is a journalist based out of Coimbatore and writes on industry, civic and social issues.