The devastating flood and landslides in Kerala in 2018 do not seem to have taught the authorities any lessons in environment conservation. Just three months after the water receded, the central government decided to exclude 4,000 square kilometres of land in Kerala from the ambit of a 2013 law that banned quarrying in ecologically sensitive areas. As many as 119 quarries have come up in the state since the worst flood in the century in August, thanks to an earlier appeal made by the state government on May 4.

The danger posed by the quarries was heard loud and clear when dozens were buried under rock and soil debris in Kavalappara in Malappuram district in August 2019. There were 66 quarries operating in the area.

Even after nature let loose its fury on the valleys of Malappuram and Wayanad, the government does not seem to relent in its mindless pursuit of development. The government is all set to allow quarrying in agricultural land granted to private persons by a rule in 1964. Though the cabinet had taken a decision to this effect ahead of the general election and a government order was prepared, it was kept in suspension thanks to the intervention of revenue minister E Chandrasekharan.

The lobbyists, however, are hard at work. An association of quarry owners had raised huge funds from their members on an assurance that the order would be notified soon.

The authorities' special interests in illegal mining is manifested in various ways, including lenient legislation and the victimisation of officers who get uncomfortably close to the quarry mafia. One of the officers even survived an attempt on his life.

Muddy figures

Nobody knows how many quarries operate in Kerala. Even the total count of authorised quarries defer, depending on who you ask. The geology department could count 5,707 granite quarries in nine districts in 2006. In 2016, the same department put out a list of quarries in the same districts and the count had come down to 1,048.

The Comptroller and Auditor General report in 2016 said that the state had 20,281 unauthorised granite and laterite quarries. The report said that 30 percent of the list were made up of granite quarries. That would translate into 6,246. The CAG castigated the outdated measuring system of the geology department that was grossly unequipped to assess the quantity of granite smuggled out of the land.

According to a report prepared by the Kerala Forest Research Institute in 2017, the state has 5,924 quarries, some of them sprawling over 64 hectares. Palakkad district had the most quarries. The border district had 867 quarries covering 1,165.93 hectares. However, Ernakulam district topped when it came to quarry area. The 774 quarries in the district covered 1,261.13 hectares.

Dr T V Sajeev and C J Alex, who prepared the report, said they could not say how many of these quarries were still in operation.

The number of unauthorised quarries along the 458 kilometre stretch of the Western Ghats in Kerala is almost ten times that of authorised quarries, reported a legislative assembly sub committee formed to assess the ecological impact in the state in the aftermath of the 2018 flood.

These quarries have contributed to landslides, cracks and diversion of rivers in the Western Ghats, recorded the report tabled before the assembly on July 4, 2019. The Centre for Earth Science Studies and the Geological Survey of India have listed 13,000 landslide-prone areas and 17,000 areas vulnerable to debris flow.

The report warned that the buildings that have come up in the mountainous areas could be washed out into the Arabian Sea anytime. The unrestricted exploitation of nature on Kerala's mountain ranges could lead to environmental and climatic catastrophe.

The government's track record

The present dispensation's track record in conservation leaves a lot to be desired. The Left Democratic Front's election manifesto contained a tall promise that the quarries would be brought under public ownership and subject to social auditing. The CPM-led alliance also promised to ensure that environment was protected.

What the alliance did since coming to power in 2016 was way off the mark. The government doubled the number of authorised quarries. The number of unauthorised quarries went up ten-fold. Large quarries were granted permission to operate even without going for ecological impact assessments or land inspections.

The mandatory minimum distance from the quarries to reservoirs, rivers, canals, places of worship, burial grounds, village roads and houses was reduced from 100 metres to 50 metres. Quarries could now be set up just one kilometre away from national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. In other forest areas, quarries were not required to keep any distance from the forest borders.

The industries minister even called a meeting of geologists on March 9 and November 21 of 2018 to instruct them to approve applications for setting up quarries on a time-bound manner.

The establishment is lenient towards illegal mining in more ways than one. Quarry owners who have mined more quantities than permitted or encroached on areas adjoining approved quarries are required to pay the market price of the granite mined, according to central guidelines and Supreme Court orders.

Yet the Kerala government amended a rule in 2017 to charge the illegal quarry operators a fine that was three times that of the royalty and the mineral price. This puts only an insignificant financial burden of Rs 222 per ton if the illegal mining was done in government land and just Rs 72 per ton in privately owned land. Obviously, the government does not seem to be interested in imposing a fine that could act as a deterrent.

Political leaders and bureaucrats offer their total support to this abuse of authority whereas they make it a point to put as many hurdles on the way of the common man looking to build a house. This unholy alliance is the result of an extensive system of bribery and shady partnership deals with quarry owners.

Hands in glove

The biggest probe into the quarry mafia in Kerala is about to get a quiet burial in Thiruvananthapuram. Efforts are on to write off a Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) investigation that has put in the dock 35 quarry owners and a former panchayat president, secretary and three other officials.

The case involves illegal mining at Mukkunnimala in Thiruvananthapuram's Pallichal gram panchayat between 2010 and 2014. The VACB sleuths had also uncovered the role of two former district collectors in the scam that cost the government Rs 298.5 crore due to illegal mining. A report submitted before the Kerala High Court also revealed that the accused quarry owners had encroached on 156 acres of government land and dug it up without authorisation. The case also involves 76 land transactions made by forging documents to usurp public land for illegal mining.

The case was investigated by R Rabiyath since it was registered in December 2014. He was transferred out in May 2017 and never replaced. The special investigation unit has no superintendent of police to lead it for six months, effectively barring it from filing a charge sheet in the sensational case. All these only help the powers-that-be who are trying to drop the probe citing a lack of evidence.

The worrisome interest in the case manifested when the investigating officer was transferred to the police academy in Thrissur in 2017. Rabiyath raised hackles when he put political leaders and powerful bureaucrats in the dock along with influential quarry owners.

He said that there was even an attempt on his life. His motorcycle was rammed by a car near Pangode. The people in the car tried again and again to knock the policeman down. They would relent only when passers-by raised a hue and cry. Though Rabiyath lodged a complaint in the police station with the registration number of the car, the policemen said that they could only file a motor accident case. The incident has dented the morale of those who work against illegal quarrying.

Dug-up Kerala

Official estimates put the number of quarries in Kerala at 5,707. The data put out on the geology department's website, however, covers only nine districts. Malappuram had 1,286 quarries while Ernakulam had 926 quarries. Thiruvananthapuram had 654 quarries and Palakkad 825 quarries. Pathanamthitta had 606 quarries and Kollam 460. Idukki had 298, Thrissur 444 and Kannur 208.

According to a report prepared by the Kerala Forest Research Institute in 2017, the state has 5,924 quarries, some of them sprawling over 64 hectares. Palakkad district had the most quarries. The border district had 867 quarries covering 1,165.93 hectares. However, Ernakulam district topped when it came to quarry area. The 774 quarries in the district covered 1,261.13 hectares.

Most of the qurrries were in the central districts of Palakkad, Thrissur, Ernakulam and Idukki. The 2,438 quarries in the four districts cover 3,610 hectares.There were 1,969 quarries sprawling over 1,871.87 hectares in the northern districts of Kasaragod, Kannur, Wayanad, Kozhikode and Malappuram. Alappuzha, Kottayam, Pathanamthitta, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram had 1,571 quarries that exploited 1,675.21 hectares.

The Bharatappuzha River bore most of the brunt when it comes to mining. There were 940 quarries spread over 1,286.86 hectares on the banks of the Bharatappuzha River. The Moovattupuzha River came next with 627 quarries on 1,094.99 hectares of land on its banks.

There were 79 quarries over 85.83 hectares of land just 500 metres away from protected forest areas. As many as 1,378 quarries operated just a kilometre away from reserve forests.

The quarries menacingly stood in ecologically sensitive areas as designated by the Madhav Gadgil committee. There were 1,486 quarries in ecologically sensitive zone 1 and 169 quarries in zone 2 and 1,667 in zone 3. If we were to consider the ecologically sensitive areas demarcated by the Kasturirangan committee report, those areas contained as many as 655 quarries.

The alarming connection between quarrying and earthquake is revealed in the data that reveals the existence of 354 quarries over 612 hectares of land in areas termed as earthquake-prone. There are 78 quarries operating within a kilometre of the epicentres of the earthquakes reported in Kerala.

(Reported by G Vinod, K Jayaprakash Babu, S V Rajesh, A S Ullas, K P Safeena, Jithin Jose and S P Sarath; compiled by Nidheesh Chandran)