Voices of Sundarbans: groups rally against power plant

A man fishes in the river between the Joymuni village and Sundarbans mangrove forest. Getty Images / Getty Images

Protesters run for safety as the policemen shoot tear shells to disperse them during a protest against the Rampal coal-fired power plant, near Shahbag, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 26 January 2017. EPA

Members of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports attend a rally protesting the police attacks on them during the strike in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 28 January 2017. EPA

Protesters rally against the proposed Rampal power plant, which will be just a few kilometres away from the Sundarbans. According to the Unesco, the project threatens the mangroves’ endangered tigers and dolphin species. Anik Rahman Getty Images

Bangladeshi activists hold placards and march in a protest demanding the scrapping of the proposed Rampal power plant, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, January 7, 2017. AP

Bangladeshi social activist made a protest in Dhaka, on August 10, 2016, against the controversial proposal to build a power plant in Rampal, near the Sundarbans mangrove forest. Mehedi Hasan / NurPhoto

The Bangladesh government’s plan to build a massive 1,320 megawatt coal-fired power plant within kilometres of the Sundarbans, a Unesco world heritage site, has been facing stiff resistance from local residents, environmental activists and international organisations. But it is cultural groups and activists who have been instrumental in getting thousands of citizens to the streets rallying to save the world’s largest mangrove forest and biodiversity hotspot.

Since 2011, when the project was announced, these groups have taken the “Save the Sundar­bans” message to universities and public spaces, ensuring the struggle did not stay limited to the narrow geographical confines of the proposed plant site or experts who are critical of it.

“These cultural groups have been crucial in countering continuous government propaganda on and around the proposed plant,” says Anu Muhammed, a professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University and member secretary of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Natural Resources, Power and Ports. “The mainstream media here refuses to carry any news critical of the plant owing to government pressure, if not outright allegiance to the ruling dispensation,” he says. “In such a scenario, cultural groups have undertaken the important work of reaching out to people with the truth, thus broadening and strengthening the struggle.”

Protests erupted among locals in Khulna, the area of the proposed plant, soon after the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) signed an agreement with India’s state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in 2010. According to it, the two entities will implement the project on a 50:50 equity basis, with NTPC being responsible for building and operating the plant.

The Bangladesh government maintains that the plant will not adversely affect the world’s largest mangrove forest or the four million people dependent on it. It has also said the import of high-quality coal to run the plant, a 275-meter-high chimney and state-of-the art technology will ensure the impact on the environment is “negligible”.

But environmental groups and activists are not buying that claim. Sharif Jamil, joint secretary of the environment group Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon, says the government has hired experts and consultants to talk in favour of the Rampal power plant. Others, such as Sultana Kamal, convener of the National Committee for Saving the Sundarbans and an environmental activist, says those speaking in favour of the plant are “driven by their own interests”.

The project has run into trouble with the courts and international organisations, too. In 2011, a bench of Bangladesh High Court asked the government “why the construction of the plant should not be declared illegal”. In August 2016, Unesco called on the Bangladesh government to halt the project. It asked the power development board to submit a revised environmental impact assessment (EIA) report since the one submitted earlier to secure approval violated EIA guidelines.

"These are things we tell the people via songs and other cultural forms, even as the government spends crores on propaganda to mislead them," says Muhammad, who has himself written a song, Amra Boli Shorbojon, Tomra Balo Unnayan (We say everyone, you say development).

Some of the leftist cultural groups and bands that are part of the team working on the Sundarban issue, such as Samageet, Sohojia, Madal and Leela, have sung and performed in support of various movements against land grab, coal plants, oil exploration and exploitation. Many of them have also been associated with the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Natural Resources, Power and Ports for several years.

Samageet (songs of/ for equality) is one of the groups that started working on the Sundarbans issue as soon as the National Committee decided in 2011, after analysing the proposed bilateral venture and consulting experts, that it would join and broaden the local resistance against the plant.

Four independent units of Samageet – in Dhaka, Narayanganj, Chattagram, and Rajshahi University in Chattagram – started bringing up the threat to the Sundarbans in their concerts, performances, art works and installations.

The fifth unit, a band-like group, took on India’s big-brotherly interference in Bangladesh’s affairs. In performances at universities and civil-society gatherings, they dismissed India’s claim of helping a poor neighbouring country set up a much needed power plant. Instead, economic and political interests were behind the deal, they said, singing “Go back India, Get out India” to chanting crowds.

Amal Akash, central president, singer and songwriter of Sama­geet, who has visited Khulna along with other members of the group, says the government has managed to intimidate the local resistance. “People there are wary of saying anything in opposition to the plant openly, as there are hired goons roaming the streets freely, watching for trouble,” he says.

Given such a scenario, the presence of cultural groups in the broad alliance fighting the proposed plant on the ground was a boon, says Muhammad. “It’s not just about reaching more people in other areas and making it a major national issue. That’s only part of the story. The presence of cultural groups, their work on the Sundarbans, has drawn in several new people into the movement. Many new cultural groups have been formed in the last three years, of which some will mature and carry on the work.”

The new groups Muhammad refers to were formed after activists and citizens in Bangladesh went on a long march from Dhaka to the Sundarbans in 2013. The march, and media coverage about it, helped draw many people into the struggle who may not have been concerned with Bangladesh’s development model, but were touchy about the Sundarbans. Some of them are musicians, artists and filmmakers. In all, in the last three years, they have produced more than 20 songs and 25 documentary films on the threat facing the Sundarbans.

“Many of the people and groups who have come in now do not share our understanding of culture and politics,” says Sham Sagor Mankin from the Chittagong-based cultural group Madal. Madal refers to a percussion instrument used by several tribal communities in India and Bangladesh. In its songs, Madal, comprising members from various indigenous communities in Bangladesh, sings about tribal life; of beauty and valour; of tribal martyrs who have given their lives fighting oppression.

Farzana Wahid Shayan, a Dhaka-­based singer-songwriter does not agree with all the National Committee ’s positions. But that does not stop her from singing and speaking in support of the Sundarbans struggle from the committee’s platform. “I don’t understand capitalism and imperialism, but I love Sundarbans, its people and forests. I speak and sing from that position – not as someone who wants to be boxed as left or right, communist or feminist, but as a concerned citizen who has studied the facts,” says Shayan.

Anusheh Anadil, one of Bangladesh's most popular singers who kept away from singing overtly political songs, made an exception for the Sundarbans when she decided to sing Amra Boli Shorbojon written by Muhammad. The song decries the West-driven development model, also attacking India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi for meddling in the neighbouring country's affairs.

"I did make a conscious decision to speak about things openly with Amra Boli, but also with another forthcoming album of my own songs … Such are the times we live in that I feel if I don't speak out openly, I can't call myself an artist. Sundarbans is a small issue compared with the disastrous model of development being pushed down our throats from the West, even as a reactionary, right-wing politics gains ascendancy in the subcontinent and other parts of the world," says Anadil.

Mankin from Madal rues that mainstream, popular-cultural icons have still not spoken out in support of the movement. “Their presence would be important to reach out to far wider audiences and talk to them about the issues at the core of the Sundarbans power plant: land grab, corporate aggression and exploitation,” says Mankin.

This was one of the chief goals behind the recent formation of Sorbopran, a cultural organisation with a broad platform to take forward the fight to save the Sundarbans. The activists, singers and songwriters hope the platform will help them do what the resistance on the ground has not managed to up until now: get the Indian and Bangladeshi governments to back off from the project, and thus save the Sundarbans.

Aritra Bhattacharya is chief reporter for The Statesman (Mumbai).