Vivek Menezes
Take the time to visit the Mhadei Collective website (mhadeicollective.com) to view the gorgeous, lyrical and sorrowing documentary fil Maa Dei – Mother Goddess (it was directed and edited by Gasper D’Souza with cinematographer Shrinivas Ananathanarayanan, and stunning drone footage from Ethan D’Souza). Very soon, at the same Internet address, we will be able to access an extensive database of related research, along with companion essays by a huge range of professionals and passionate defenders of the environment, as part of an overarching project entitled The River Mhadei: The Science and Politics of Diversion. Earlier this week, those findings were launched in book form (from Goa 1556), edited by the academics Peter Ronald deSouza, Solano da Silva and Lakshmi Subramanian.
All this is part of a massive international project funded by The British Academy, whose Keri Facer (of the University of Bristol) explains in her Foreword that ‘The Times of a Just Transition’ was set up to examine “the intersection between questions of time, sustainability and justice.” She says “this programme owes its existence, in large part, to Peter de Souza’s willingness to enthusiastically support and encourage the idea at its earliest stages – responding generously to hurried emails sent in the run-up to urgent funding deadline application deadlines. It is fitting then that Peter’s project and this book that he has shepherded into existence over the past three years should demonstrate so clearly the utility and importance of working with time and justice as the twin concerns in environmental and sustainability debates.” At the start of Maa Dei – for which he is credited as Producer – deSouza explains “when we were thinking about how we could enter the project of the British Academy on the Times of a Just Transition, the idea of a river offered itself…so we looked for river disputes, and we thought we would study the River Mhadei.
We thought we must begin to understand the source of this dispute between the three states of Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra. But as we delved deeper into our understanding of the river, we realized that we had to go beyond just a dispute of a diversion to a resource, to a watershed, to a commons, and now something that we holistically would like to think about in intergenerational terms. So, the river for us meets multiple time zones. Geological time, ecological time, cultural time, political time.” As you might expect, such an expansive – indeed epochal – approach has resulted in widely varying angles of approach, and the book it has produced is decidedly uneven. Not every effort is successful, but there are several gems to balance them out: Rajendra Kerkar’s magisterial Conserving the Mahadayi: Biodiversity, Water and Cultural Resources, Lakshmi Subramanian’s incisive The Many Pasts and Contested Present of the Mhadei, plus useful surveys of lesser-known biodiversity by Nirmal Kulkarni, and freshwater fish diversity by Vidyadhar Atkore and Nandini Velho. I especially loved and appreciated Panjim-based advocate Aurobindo Gomes Pereira’s powerful, unblinking The Privatization of Community Property and Gambling with the Future of Goa, which makes the forceful argument that for “the people of Goa, the majority of whom worship Mahamaya and her sisters as representations of Shakti, or Mother Earth, the MWDT [Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal] award is not just a death sentence for the Mandovi and the entire riverine region but effectively also for the primordial Mandovi River Civilization or Gomantak – the land fed by the river.
The MWDT ignored ecological concerns and overlooked the lack of reliable data and the socio-cultural traditions and customs and instead treated the Mandovi as a commodity, ordering a distribution of river water using a regressive hydrological model of damming and diversion. This regressive approach is contrary to the Public Trust Doctrine, a foundational principle of jurisprudence according to which our natural heritage is not a mere possession but rather is to be held in a sacred trust by the government for the collective welfare of the present and future generations.” Gomes Pereira outlies Goan perspectives related to Public Trust Doctrine, then focuses laserlike on “the casino conundrum.” He writes that “most of Panjim port and the riverfront, including prime public property like the ferry wharfs, jetties and buildings of the Captain of Ports and Fisheries Department of the Government of Goa, have been converted into front offices of the seven “offshore” casinos currently operating in the mouth of the Mandovi. In fact, what pretends to be “offshore” is a cause for concern on both banks of the river. The casino cartels have managed to capture most of the riverbank, and most of the navigable waters of Panjim port are blocked by large vessels permanently anchored and blocking the natural flow of the river. Through a combination of political intrigue, interim arrangements, and the power of money, the casino cartels have managed to take control of almost all of Panjim’s 2.8km stretch of riverfront from Patto to the Bhagwan Mahavir Children’s Park in Campal, virtually hijacking the entire coastline.” If there is one essay to read above all in this compilation, check out From the River to the Sea: The Mhadei River Continuum and the Impact of Interventions by Helga do Rosario Gomes, the Columbia University research scientist who usually studies and writes about large-scale climatic questions, but in this instance has brought her formidable analytical and descriptive skills to bear on her beloved ancestral homeland.
Along with useful illustrations by Divya Ribeiro, this invaluable intervention “challenges the notion – widely held by water resource developers in India – that a river f lowing to the sea is a “waste,” a perspective that has been repeatedly voiced by the Karnataka government in their submission before the Mhadei Water Dispute Tribunal [and] seeks to broaden the discussion beyond the irrigation and drinking water arguments to include aspects of sustainable ecosystems and, most importantly, the various valuable ecological services that a river provides for the economy, society, and the sustainability of the region in which it flows.” Here is her hopeful conclusion: “Protecting the Mhadei Mandovi continuum requires a paradigm shift: one that values rivers as living systems, not just resources to be exploited. Future policies must embrace integrated watershed management, long-term ecological monitoring, and cross border cooperation to ensure that the river continues to sustain both human and natural commodities from source to sea. The time is now to build these protections while the river has not yet faced the irreparable damage that threatens it.