The grey clouds grow heavier as we negotiate the bends in the road leading to Yezdi Patel’s chikoo farm in the Dahanu-Gholvad belt of Palghar district, three hours from Mumbai. Two days earlier, the monsoon made a dramatic show of its arrival—it rained relentlessly for an entire day and a little more, we are told. Today, the spells are intermittent. Patel, who greets us at the entrance of his 50-acre orchard, looks up at the sky, and seems unimpressed. It won’t rain heavily, he hints, asking us to join him under the trees, where he has placed a few plastic chairs. “This year, the monsoon is already delayed by 10 days.”
A Dahanu local, Patel joined the family tradition when he became a chikoo farmer in 1983, at the age of 18. It would have been a lucrative career choice, except for the fact that, six years later, the state and Central governments cleared a proposal by the then Bombay Suburban Electricity Supply Company Limited (BSES) for a coal-fired thermal power plant to be set up in Dahanu taluka. At the time, the move was fiercely resisted by environmental activists—leading this fight was Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Group, whose petitions were dismissed by the Supreme Court in 1991, paving the way for the plant. Thirty one years on, Patel, whose farm is barely 12 km from the plant, says that nothing good has come out of that decision. “You know the story of the golden goose?” Patel asks, “Let’s just say that Dahanu has stopped laying its golden eggs.”
He is talking about the chikoo or sapota, a fruit indigenous to the region which this tribal-inhabited belt is most famous for. In 2017, the Dahanu-Gholvad chikoo got a geographical identification (GI) tag from the Centre. Not that it particularly helped. “My yield has dropped by 70 per cent,” Patel says remorsefully.
The downward trend, he says, began somewhere post 2000, four years after the thermal power plant was operational. “It’s hard to put a finger on what went wrong. The plant [Adani-Dahanu Thermal Power Plant] is one of the major causes, because around 6,000 tonnes of coal is burnt daily [to produce electricity]. But climate change is also at play. We’ve seen exceptionally heavy rain, especially post 2007.” In August 2020, Dahanu broke its 75-year August rainfall record after it received 383 mm of rainfall. According to Patel, not all farms have been affected as badly as his. “The plant stands exactly southwest from here [Patel’s farm]. Since the monsoon also comes from the southwest direction, farms that are downwind [in the path in which the wind is blowing] seem to be greatly impacted by it [dust particles and flyash that settle on the leaves].”
For the last three years, Patel has adopted newer organic farming methods in the hope of “changing the micro-climate in the farm”. “We have been practising regenerative farming. For starters, we’ve stopped tilling the soil or using fertilisers from outside [he makes his own vermicompost]. We’ve also brought in cows [to mitigate degraded soils], and have created a basin around the tree [to hold the rain water], so that when it rains heavily, the soil soaks in the water. This prevents important nutrients in the soil from getting washed away. I’ve learnt all of this after taking hard knocks… fatka khaayne,” says the Parsi in trademark Gujarati.
Patel’s concerns are mirrored by a just-released study on Dahanu taluka by Chennai-based Healthy Energy Initiative (India), a global collaboration of health professionals, organisations, and researchers engaging in science-based advocacy. The study revealed that Dahanu suffers from alarmingly high levels of air pollution.
The organisation was invited by the Dahanu Taluka Environment Welfare Association (DTEWA), a group of residents and environmentalists, who’ve been mediating with the authorities to address the environmental tragedy that’s unfolding in the eco-fragile region. “The alarmingly high levels of pollution were not only affecting the horticulture industry, but also affecting the health of local residents. We conducted a small survey with the PHC [primary healthcare centre] which gave us indicative data of new cases of cancer and an increase in respiratory issues among the locals. We felt that something was not right and required investigation,” Rajeev B Lamba, founder of Nest Farms, and chairman of DTEWA says, when mid-day visits his farm. “We wrote to all the government agencies to immediately look into the matter. But, their response was lukewarm,” he says, explaining why they decided to invite an independent body to conduct the study.
Earlier this year, between January 23 and 30, Healthy Energy Initiative conducted a 24-hour air sampling exercise using a low-volume air sampler device at 12 locations in Dahanu—Patel Pada, Masoli, Kainad-Naikpada, Kainad-Morpada, Narpad, Bordi-Borigaon, Shankrpada-Khunavde, Shishupada-Agwan, Pale, Tanashi, Damn Bhat-Chinchani and Vadhavan. The samples were later analysed in Chester LabNet in Oregon, USA, for particulate matter (PM) less than 2.5 micrometres in size and heavy metals. Simultaneously, an interview-based qualitative study was also conducted with 14 farmers, six fishermen and one fisherwoman, six social workers, three health care providers and two chikoo traders from the region.
The results showed PM 2.5 levels between 117.9ug/m3 and 637.9ug/m3 (Patel Pada being worst hit)—a range that is between two and 10.6 times more than the 60ug/m3 threshold prescribed by the National Ambient Air Quality Standard. According to the analysis report, the PM mainly comprised dust, pollen, ash, soot, carbon and heavy metal. Patel Pada showed the highest level of silica (76.4 μg/m3), nickel and manganese. “Long-term, as well as acute high-level exposure to Manganese, is proven to cause neurological damages and result in a condition known as manganism,” it states.
Speaking with mid-day, Dr Vishvaja Sambath, programme lead, Healthy Energy Initiative (India), who has written and compiled the report, says that the data is cause for worry. “When we visited Dahanu for the study, it was with the full knowledge that this is an eco-sensitive zone. So, we had certain expectations about how the environment should be. But our real-time experience and the results of the study have pointed out that the ambient air is polluted, and it’s somewhere between hazardous to very unhealthy levels. Immediate, stringent and continuous action needs to be taken…