For twelve long years, the proposal to declare Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) has been invoked to kindle anguish in the hearts of the farmers who till the soil of the Western Ghats, earn their livelihood through hard work, and live with dignity. The reactions and anguished cries that followed the one-sided report of environmental activist Madhav Gadgil and the Kasturirangan Report, prepared by selectively altering the former to accommodate pressure from politically powerful vested interests, cannot be forgotten, for these reports destabilised the lives of our farmers and shattered their dreams for the future. History has already inscribed, in tears, sweat and blood, upon the walls of the conscience of our times the unscientific and unethical character of an approach that fails to view environmental protection holistically, discards its essential principles, protects the interests of those who can rewrite anything behind closed doors and secure decisions in their favour, and confines environmental protection to only 123/131 villages in Kerala.
When the Central Government issued the first draft notification in 2014, the UPA was in power at the Centre and the UDF in Kerala. As the authorities and political parties ignored the grave threat facing the people of the hilly regions, the Church initiated a protest that soon grew into a people’s movement. Despite temporary assurances and evasive measures, successive governments and political parties failed to pursue environmental protection without jeopardizing the interests of Kerala’s people. They also failed to submit the required maps excluding settlements, agricultural lands and plantations and designating only forests, rocky terrain and grasslands as Ecologically Sensitive Areas. Consequently, even after the publication of the seventh draft notification in 2026, Kerala has made little meaningful progress in protecting its people living in the hilly regions. The present UDF Government must now correct the failure of 2014 by acting immediately on their longstanding demands, rather than waiting for the final notification and resorting to political rhetoric. Environmental protection is everyone’s duty; therefore, political parties and elected representatives must take this issue seriously, at least as an act of atonement for isolating 123/131 villages while allowing quarries and industries to devastate nature elsewhere.
Whenever a landslip or landslide occurs, pseudo-environmentalists seek to deflect the issue by blaming the farmers and the Church, accusing the latter of organising the farmers’ expressions of anguish in a manner that unsettles the administrative machinery. Such pseudo-environmentalists must no longer be allowed to dominate this discourse. No one should any longer be complicit in deceiving and reducing to destitution the highland farmers who, for decades, have cultivated the land in their possession and sustained generations through it. This is a time for vigilant action. To ensure that not a single settlement, agricultural holding or plantation in Kerala is branded with the unjust label of ESA, the residents of the hilly regions, farmers’ organisations and eparchial structures must assist the Government and exert the necessary pressure upon it. The people living in the hilly areas must not be deceived again!
