States: Madhya Pradesh: God of Small Towns

India Today, July 12, 1999
July 12, 1999

MADHYA PRADESH
God of Small Towns

Six years after Arundhati Roy's husband built a house in the protected Pachmarhi area, authorities have slapped a legal notice. But the couple says it's vendetta.

By N K Singh

Arundhati Roy and Krishen feel they are being victimised as they oppose an official plan. When Arundhati (God of Small Things) Roy recently wrote a passionate piece in a magazine decrying the Sardar Sarovar dam, it appeared that the Booker Prize-winning novelist was looking for an environmental plot. Unfortunately, it is her family's plot -- not fictional but land -- which has got mired in an environmental controversy. She and her filmmaker husband Pradip Krishen, of Massey Sahib fame, have been accused of purchasing land illegally in a protected area and building a house without valid permission for land-use change.

The small patch of land, where the couple has a picture-postcard house, is located at Bariaam village, 7 km from Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh. The Pachmarhi Special Area Development Authority (SADA) has served a "stop building" order on Krishen and Roy, who in turn, maintain that they are being targeted for opposing a new development plan for the Pachmarhi area in which hotel-building would be allowed at the cost of despoiling the beauty and sylvan backdrop of the colonial hill station.

Bariaam on the main highway to Pachmarhi falls within SADA's ambit. It is also a part of the Pachmarhi wildlife sanctuary. The Union Forest and Environment Ministry has declared it as part of an eco-sensitive zone under the Environment Protection Act. There was no objection, however, when Krishen bought the land with two others in 1992. He completed construction of the house towards the end of 1993, in time for his wedding with Roy in January 1994. It is a house surrounded by lush green forest and is barely 500 m from the highway.

The SADA notice, served on Krishen on March 12, said that under Section 16 of the state Town and Country Planning Act, 1973, the land use of Pachmarhi and its neighbouring areas had been frozen. It accused Krishen of building his house at Bariaam without valid permission from the Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) and directed him to stop all construction activity. The notice may well be the precursor to a demolition order.

Krishen seems to be under attack from the forest authorities too. Local forest officials insist that Bariaam village has been part of the wildlife sanctuary since 1977. So the plot of land acquired by Krishen violates a provision of the Wildlife Protection Act, amended in 1991, under which no new rights of property can be created in a protected area. Though Krishen has not yet been given a notice under the Act, a former district forest officer of Pachmarhi who had also acquired a plot in Bariaam has got one. Action against Krishen, therefore, is a matter of time. "Bariaam is a revenue village," says Roy. "It is not in the army cantonment or within the boundaries of the sanctuary or the national park."

The SADA notice smacks of Kafkaesque dispensation of justice. If land-use at Bariaam was frozen by a legislation dating back to 1973, how could Krishen and two others -- both of them government officials -- who purchased the land get the transfer registered in 1992 at a land-records office of the state government? Besides, Krishen claims that hundreds of houses built in the areas under SADA have gone unnoticed.

Roy and Krishen feel that the state offensive against them was caused by their opposition to the TCPO's Draft Development Plan for Pachmarhi published in September last year which, they allege, was a "sell-out" to the hotel lobby. The state Government subsequently appointed Krishen a member of the committee to hear public objections to the Draft Plan. He submitted a number of objections, including one by his wife that condemned the plan's authors for conspiring to "convert Pachmarhi into the Las Vegas of Madhya Pradesh". Says Roy: "This infuriated both the hoteliers' lobby as well as its acolytes in the Planning Department. The notice to Pradip (Krishen) of March 12 is a direct outcome of their animosity and vested interests."

The alleged violation of the law in Bariaam, even if technical, by the landowners pales into insignificance when compared with illegal developments on the other side of the Bariaam Lake. Many senior government officials have purchased land in areas falling within the Pachmarhi wildlife sanctuary. "It is highly damaging to the environment of the area," says Subharanjan Sen, director of the Satpura National Park. A Jabalpur businessman, Ashish Agrawal, even started construction on the site last month by clearing a patch of jungle "for agricultural activities".

Last month Agrawal's half-built construction was demolished by the Hoshangabad district administration after Satyanand Mishra, principal secretary of the Housing and Environment Department, visited the site following the controversy over the notice served on Krishen. Obviously there were red faces in Bhopal after protests by an internationally famous literary figure, and the state Government needed to absolve itself of the charge of selectively punishing wrong-doers. Acting upon Mishra's subsequent report, the state Government is planning to crack down on all encroachers. At Bariaam, notices have been served -- though belatedly -- on the Krishens' neighbours, who include novelist Vikram Seth's sister Aradhana Seth.

Roy has said that "whatever our faults, land grabbing and acquisitiveness are not among them". Their house, like Roy's novel, is a finely crafted token of aesthetic values. Perhaps their trouble began when they sought to preserve the environment by opposing the commercialisation of Pachmarhi. But Roy shouldn't lose heart because her battle with the local authorities may witness the genesis of her next novel.

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