A 262-km road through the Great Rann of Kutch that Amitabh Bachchan promotes in the slick Gujarat Tourism ads is threatening the subcontinent’s only nesting and breeding place for flamingos. The road, rejected twice before by the National Board for Wildlife, was hurriedly cleared by the reconstituted board after the new government took over at the Centre. It was stayed by the Supreme Court because the BJP government was yet to nominate the mandatory quota of non-official members. Once the formality was completed, the government again approached the apex court, which removed the stay, paving the way for another road project.
The official explanation is that the road is required for the Border Security Force. But there is already an existing road, a good one at that, which the BSF uses through the saline desert. The new road, which will cut through the Kutch wildlife sanctuary, is unofficially to promote tourism in the area. It’s one of the pet projects of PM Narendra Modi, which explains why the reconstituted nwb cleared the project on priority.
India’s best-known ‘bird man’, the late Dr Salim Ali, gave the flamingo breeding site its popular name, ‘Flamingo City’, in 1945 after he counted no less than half-a-million of the “crimson water nymphs”. The ‘city’ is the source from where the flamingos fly off across the subcontinent, to come back here to nest and breed, raise and ready their young.
There is a reason why flamingos favour this particular part of the Rann. The peculiar conditions of this saline desert, inundated by rains to form a shallow, salty lagoon, make conditions ideal for them to breed, usually in September-October. Successful nesting is essentially a consequence of the dynamic flow of water. An influx of fresh water that flows in from the Luni river in Rajasthan, and also from north Gujarat and Pakistan, mingles with the saline water providing a rich flow of nutrients in which microorganisms, crustaceans, algae and fish thrive—making a perfect meal, and breeding ground, for flamingos, rosy pelicans, avocets and a host of other birds.
The construction of the Gaduli-Santalpur road will impound the area, upsetting this cocktail of fresh and salty water; this will negatively affect the foodchain, thus threatening the fragile ecosystem. A MoEF-appointed expert committee report spelt out the impending disaster: “If the proposed road is allowed to be constructed, it will in all probability result in the abandonment of this breeding site, and India will thus lose the only breeding site of the flamingos, which could spell doom to the population of these birds in the Indian subcontinent.”
The Rann also harbours other unique wildlife such as wild ass, desert fox, desert cat, Great Indian Bustard, Indian wolf, caracal, Houbara Bustard etc, and is a critical passage way for migratory birds from across the globe in to the Indian subcontinent. The road also skirts the ‘Shravan Kavadia’, a unique mangrove system found nowhere else in the world—entirely cut off from the sea and over a 100 km inland of it.
The proposal “coincides” with the government’s effort to sell the White Rann as a major tourism attraction, and runs through ‘sites’ like Dhordo, Kala Dungar and the Harappan site of Dholavira, where an airport is on the anvil.
So was there no other way out? The expert committee reports did approve an alternative feasible route “which is cost-effective, easy to build and would serve a greater use” and “would not have a significant impact”. This new road does not make economic sense either. The region remains inundated for about six months, and hence would be inaccessible. For the rest of the year, the entire flat expanse of the Rann is a road, and you could drive a sturdy vehicle anywhere.
