Thursday, October 4, 2007

Setusamudram Ship Canal Project



Hello all.
If you remember, sir talked about the viability of the Setu Samudram project in terms of reducing the time of navigation in the last class. I think this makes a good case study for IPM course!
Here is my understanding of the project.

  • The project does not serve the very purpose it is being done! It will reduce the travel distance by only 120 nautical miles. And usually the ships travel at 12-13 knot speed. But when it enters setu samudram waters, they have to slow down to half of the speed. This ultimately means saving of only around 1 hr 30 mins of travel time, if the same ship had gone via normal route around Sri Lanka. Now the question is, is it worth spending Rs. 2400 crores on this project just to save 1.5 hrs? and remember, no ship will pay a huge toll and use this shipping canal. The project, if realized, will be an economic disaster.
  • Next worst thing is the effect on the marine ecology. The coral reef will be completely destroyed by dredging of the sea bed. These are the coral reefs that slowed down the Tsunami waves and lessened the effect of it on to the other side of Indian coast. Not only that. The water surrounding the island nation of Sri Lanka is the habitat for very rare species of whale which is on the verge of extinction. Their habitat will be severely affected by this project.
  • Now onto the social impact of the project. Thousands of fishermen have to quit fishing and also the place, which is their habitat for hundreds of years. There is absolutely no rehabilitation plan so far being thought of for them. And the govt is hardly listening to their woes.
  • There is also zero planning on the part of the parties involved in the dredging as to where to dump the excavated soil. The contract document says, it will be dumped in some safe place. But what is that place? where it is? how to transport the soil to that place? what are the aftermaths of dumping those thousands of tonnes of soil from sea bed on to the land? No answer what so ever.
  • In terms of strategic gains, India is gaining only 1 out of 10 or even less. The Setusamudram area on to the Lanka side has a lethal sea-bourne marine unit of LTTE. The consequence of any friction with LTTE - I need not tell it!
    • In fact, an issue like this shows how poorly we are managing our strategies. China has already built naval control points all around India. Pakistan has been of great support and help to China. China is building an ultra modern naval point off the Karachi shore, to control West part of India. It already has one such base in one of the Myanmar islands, and is closely watching the activities at Chandipur, the missile karma-bhoomi of India. And it is no secret many of the LTTE weapons are China made!!
  • It is a nonsense argument that the project will bring economic prosperity to Tamil Nadu. It will only bring disasters!
  • one China friendly 'National Newspaper of India' along with its buddy blind politicians of Tamil Nadu is supporting the project so much as if without this there wont be any progress in Tamil Nadu! how to stop this misguidance?
  • where are the NGOs, Arundhati Roy and Medha Pathkar?!
  • why are the govts silent on these aspects? what are the possible solutions to the socio - economic - environmental issues?

10 comments:

Srikanth-LOLA-Viswanathan said...

Nice article thejas! i like the breakwater funda(second one) and the first one the most!

Srikanth-LOLA-Viswanathan said...

Adding to thejas post is the following:
The project is no doubt futile for India, it is however damaging for srilanka for umpteen number of reasons.

some basic questions that needs attention is
0.The maintenance costs are very high!who will bear this?

1.Who will provid compensation for the people displaced, the fishermen in particular ?

2.The impetus for the project is that the canal can be used for military operations. Will the warships be subjected to all these rules in emergencies? Will there be a ban on nuclear vessels?

3. What if there is a damage to the vessel during a tussle? Who shall respond to it on the Indian and SriLankan sides? What penalties will ensue if there is an oil spill?

The following link i found on the web raises several such issues and comments on them
http://iri.columbia.edu/~mahaweli/climate.lk_mirror/sethu/index.html

P.S:The link has several sub links that are very interesting too.

Thejas said...

yep yep! Srilanka has expressed serious concerns over the project. It is in the social, economic, political and military interests of both India and Srilanka that the project be scraped.

Mash said...

Thejas and Srikanth,
Good discussion. I wanted to re-highlight what Satya said at the end of the big-fight yesterday. The IPM class, the big-fight and this post bring out the fact that engineering infrastructure cannot be considered in isolation - we have to take into account social, environmental, political and other factors - so we cannot afford to purely be "tech-geeks". Overall - once again I think we see how process matters Most of the opposition stems from the fact that there has been a lack of transparency in the execution of the project

Thejas said...

Thats true Sir. The promoters do not have any rehabilitation plans neither any contingency plan for oil spillages. Every number of profit they are showing on paper has been well disproved by experts in those areas. Navy and Coastal Guards have not been consulted on the project till date. And there are many more such specific issues, but then what is seen on the outset is what you have rightly pointed out, lack of transparency in the process

Sachi Nekkanti said...

I'm going to comment right after I finish brushing up my age old Hydraulic Engg. notes.

Thejas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Thejas said...

http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/jul/19inter.htm

sushma said...

hey i remember my otech prof discussing about the sethu- samudram project and one of the issues he raised was regarding the toll price the ships have to pay @ the port of srilanka for their ships to harbour there, it means that if the ships actually took a direct route without travelling all around , they dont have to pay @ srilanka port and hence the profit making at the port of srilanka might suffer, now the question is does this toll price at sri lanka port offset the "price" tejas was speaking in point one, toll for using the channel , can we think in terms of the which way could be more beneficial for the ships in terms of prices to be paid (apart from travel time benefits )and also an issue of how much revenue loss will srilanka port make if the ships actually dont take srilanka port route ? how much revenue will the tamilnadu govt make from the project in case the ships actually use the route; also there could be cases where the ships would like to take the old route for whatever reasons , so the estimate of the profits to tamil nadu govt cud actually vary and might be even bad , who knows ? may be all these considerations need to be taken before the project goes ahead , after all a project once done must serve the purpose and must not be merely be granted because of political pressures ; it can be quite a failure

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