Birds chirp again as mining takes a break in Cavrem - ToI

Birds chirp again as mining takes a break in Cavrem Gauree Malkarnekar, TNN | Oct 12, 2012, 04.43AM IST CAVREM: Voices of chirpy little students fill the four-room functional structure that serves as the government primary school in the serene interior village of Cavrem, as the headteacher Reshmi Phaldessai assists individual children with their lessons. Class I students match rhythm with songs of forest birds nesting in trees surrounding the school while reciting a poem. Minutes later, a preprimary student abandons her slate and chalk with her teacher's permission and hops across the road-less than ten inches from the school-to fetch something from her home. This was on Thursday. Less than five months ago, the scene was very different. Leave aside enjoying the birds' calls, the teacher's voice was barely audible to students over the constant drone of mining trucks, moving with less than an inch's space between two vehicles, from 8.30am to 5pm. The teachers could not dream of allowing a student to step out of the school unattended. "Of course it is a much better teaching atmosphere without the noise of the mining trucks passing by. Earlier, during recess, the teachers sat around the space outside the school to see that students do not wander on to the road amidst the heavy traffic," Phaldessai said. A little further, a middle-aged village woman is on her way to tend to her small chili plantation on one of the hills towering over the tribal village. "What do we get out of mining other than dust? Last year, thanks to mining, we could not earn anything from growing chilies. As soon as the plant flowered, the dust would settle and the flowers would rot. With mining stopped, I can hope to make profits by growing chilies again this year," Sita Velip said. The thick green forest that shelters the village is interrupted by mines every few meters. With the state and central government agencies cracking down on uncontrolled mining activity and the Supreme Court tightening the screws on illegalities in the industry, mines in the area lie dormant till further orders. The silence of the motionless trucks parked within the premises of terraced flaming red dust of the mines seem to fill in the gaps in an untold story. An elderly villager Paik Velip, pointing to the green around him, said, "These cashew plantations are our livelihood. The produce has come down drastically with mining dust settling on the flowers year after year. If mining was on now, all the red dust coating the plantations that was washed away during the monsoon would have been replaced by now as the mining season starts around this time of the year usually. Now, look at the green," he said. Villagers said the produce of the paddy fields in the village fell by 70%, especially as mining grew more and more rampant with mechanization over the last decade. The web of streams flowing through the village is back to its translucent self, villagers said. It is when miners violated the sanctity of these streams, which are the lifeline of the village, that Cavrem residents upped the ante against the all powerful mine owners rampaging through the village's wealth. "Four of our major streams turned red at source last January. These streams provide the water to irrigate our fields and farming is our main occupation. We would have been finished if our streams, on which we have been depending for generations, were dead. This is when we decided we had had enough," a member of the Cavrem Bachao Samitti said. The struggle of Cavrem is nearly iconic in illegal-mining affected Goa, where the tribals marked the beginning of aggressive anti-mining activism, even spending a night on the village roads to block mining traffic running in violation of rules in the wee hours of the morning. "Around 20 village boys were operating mining trucks and I was one of them. That was before the mines crossed their limits. Let the bank, where I have my vehicle loan, tow my vehicle, but we will continue our agitation against the illegalities. Farming continues to be our main occupation. We are not dependent on mines. If mining stops, we will at least get farm produce like we did earlier," one tribal truck owner said. tnn http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Birds-chirp-again-as-mining-takes-a-break-in-Cavrem/articleshow/16776683.cms