The protest against the Neduvasal hydrocarbon project in Tamil Nadu deserves our support. For the locals, protecting their agricultural lands is a matter of life-or-death. Specific and legitimate concerns, especially about protecting the environment and the livelihoods of farmers, cannot be ignored. Extraction of oil, methane, lignite, shale gas and other natural reserves cannot be at the cost of cultivation of paddy, banana, coconut and other crops. To say that the farmers must be ‘patriotic enough’ to make sacrifices for the larger interest of the nation is to allow and legitimise depredation to the benefit of plutocrats.
The interest of the farmers living with nature in the vast
expanses of the Cauvery Delta must come first and not those of the big miners and big contractors. No task is more important than protecting our land, our air and our water from greed and gratification for ourselves and posterity.