Zoological Survey of India

Athirappally Project: Lessons for Kerala from the Silent Valley Movement

Long before India understood the concept of ecology, a group of scientists and intellectuals saved a forest. Here’s how they did it and how it can be done again.

There is a debate raging in Kerala right now over the state government’s no objection certificate to the Athirappally hydel project.

The Pinarayi Vijayan government is at the receiving end of the exchanges on the issue since Kerala has a rich history of environmental movements, beginning with the successful struggle against the construction of a hydel project in Silent Valley.

The environmental impact of hydroelectric projects has been discussed threadbare since that time, resulting in a new environmental consciousness across the state. The story of the Silent Valley movement offers valuable lessons for governments and environmental movements in the country and outside.

The movement against the construction of a dam in the Silent Valley Forests near Palakkad in the late 1970s and the early ’80s was the first of its kind in India. Before that, the general experience had been that movements against big dams and hydroelectric projects were initiated by the affected people of the region, normally the evacuees. But in the case of the Silent Valley Project, there was no need to evacuate even a small population. The prime concern of the people who initiated the movement was the adverse effect the project would have on the environment.

Environmentalism hadn’t become fashionable at the time and the general public was not worried about environmental protection and the preservation of the country’s ecology, whereas big dams and hydroelectric projects were considered inevitable for development. The government of Kerala and the general public had wholeheartedly supported the project and the movement thus started against great odds. That it went on to become a great success is a tribute to the people who masterminded the resistance.

The birth of a movement

In 1974, the construction of the Idukki hydroelectric project was nearing completion and the state government was looking for new hydroelectric projects to meet the state’s power requirement. The Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) submitted a proposal to the Kerala government for the construction of a hydroelectric project at Silent Valley in Palakkad district. In 1977, the government accepted the proposal and decided to go ahead with the project.

In the same year, the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) in Peechi near Thrissur conducted a study on the possible impact of the project on the forests in the area. The study concluded that the project would completely destroy the evergreen rain forests in Silent Valley. V.S. Vijayan, who later became the director of the Salim Ali Center for Ornithology and vice chairman of the Kerala Bio Diversity Board, was a researcher at KFRI and a member of the research team that had conducted the study. He brought it to the notice of professor M.K. Prasad, a botany teacher and an active member of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (Kerala Science and Literary Association – KSSP), an organisation formed to spread scientific knowledge in the state.

Also read: Controversy Returns to Athirappilly as Kerala Reactivates Hydel Project Proposal

Professor Prasad was alarmed at the adverse ecological consequences of the project and brought the issue before the executive committee of the KSSP. The organisation had by then established itself as one with a mission to take science to the people. It had a grassroots level network and many well-known scientists and intellectuals of the state were its members.

In the initial stages, opinions were divided in the executive committee of the KSSP and some of the members argued that stalling the project would be detrimental to the development of the state. In 1978, after conducting adequate research on the feasibility as well as the ecological aspects of the project, the KSSP came to the conclusion that the project would have serious adverse environmental consequences. It was found that the benefit of the project would not be commensurate with the cost involved. So the KSSP decided to start a movement against the Silent Valley Project.

Political repercussions of the movement

In 1978, a government headed by P.K. Vasudevan Nair of the Communist Party of India (CPI) was in power in Kerala. A Congress faction led by A.K. Antony, the Muslim League and the Kerala Congress were the other constituents of the ruling front. The CPI (Marxist) and Congress (Indira) formed separate opposition blocks. All the political parties in the ruling and the opposition dispensations supported the project.

The powerful trade unions, especially the electricity board workers’ unions vehemently supported the project. The CPI (M) stance caused particular problems for the KSSP as a considerable number of its members were active members or sympathisers of the party. Because of this, the KSSP’s first task was to convince its own members of the adverse effects of the project.

The government of Kerala had three main arguments in support of its decision to construct a dam across the river Kunti, a tributary of the Bhratapuzha, and a hydroelectric project in Silent Valley.

It would help meet the growing power demand in the state and solve the acute power shortage in the Malabar region.
The project would bring about development in the two most backward districts of Kerala – Palakkad and Malappuram.
Around 10,000 hectares of land could be irrigated via canals in the Mannarkadu region.

In their bid to counter this development rhetoric, the KSSP faced serious challenges. First, big dams have always been associated with the general notion of development. As ‘environment’ and ‘ecology’ were unfamiliar terms to the general public, the organisation could not advocate its cause in the initial stages on the basis of environmental concerns. Kerala is a highly politicised society and with all major political parties supporting the project, organising a people’s movement was an extremely difficult task.

The KSSP also had to contend with highly influential vested interests in the corridors of power. First and foremost among them was the KSEB. In a rare gesture of unity, all the workers in the KSEB – from the chairman on the top to linesmen at the bottom – had a personal interest in the project because big money was involved.

Also read: Why It’s Time to Reengineer Our Dams

Next among the KSSP’s problems was the Hindustan Construction Corporation, the construction contractors of the dam, and the landed gentry of the region. With all these factors and interest groups working against them, KSSP had to work out a strategy to organise people against the project and advocate their cause in the various organs of government.

The Silent Valley National Park in Palakkad, Kerala. Photo: Prashanth dotcompals/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The struggle

Once KSSP started the movement against the Silent Valley Project, many environmental and other groups such as Friends of Trees, Parisara and Society for Promotion of Environmental Conservation joined the movement. New organisations such as the Save Silent Valley Committee were formed. Though they did not officially form a joint action committee, all these organisations worked together to achieve their goal.

The movement’s first task was to raise public opinion against the project. They produced around 20 pamphlets and other polemic material and distributed it widely among the people to present their case. They were aware that they would not be able to gather public support if they presented their case as a pure and simple environmental issue. Instead, through an incessant campaign, the organisers of the movement changed the focus to a debate between two modes of development. The issue of development was focused with particular stress on the theme of energy production.

Through propaganda materials, the movement exposed the hollowness of the official arguments in favour of the project. The government’s most important claim was that the Silent Valley project would solve the power shortage in the Malabar region and help meet the impending energy crisis in the state. Power shortage in the Malabar region was acute and the people of the region were willing to support any project that would solve the problem. The movement had to convince the people of the Malabar region that the Silent Valley Project was not the best and easiest solution.

Alternatives were proposed to solve the power crisis in the Malabar region. Kerala had surplus electricity at this time and was selling electricity to Karnataka. The incongruity of the government’s claim of having surplus electricity and the existence of a shortage of power supply in the Malabar region was used to expose the insincerity of the government’s approach. The proponents of the movement convincingly argued on the basis of sound scientific data that even if the construction of the project started in 1978, it would not be completed before 1990. So the Silent Valley Project couldn’t be an immediate solution for Malabar’s power problem.

Instead, the movement pointed out, the electricity being sold to Karnataka was more than one and a half times the estimated production capacity of the Silent Valley Project and could be distributed in the Malabar region. The necessary sub stations and electric lines for this could be made within two or three years and the problem could be solved seven or eight years earlier than scheduled.

Also read: Lessons From Kerala Floods Should Pave the Way for a Better Environment Policy

The state government’s argument that the state would be able to meet its power requirements through the construction of hydroelectric projects was also questioned. The movement predicted that Kerala’s power crisis could be solved only by the construction of thermal power plants. The government had to acknowledge this fact later.

Development vs. ecology

The projected development of Palakkad and Malappuram districts was also exposed for what it was – a tall claim. The kind of development that could be achieved through hydroelectric projects was proved to be limited and transitory. The movement argued that only large-scale industrialisation could solve the backwardness of the region. They put forward a suggestion to turn the Shornur-Palakkad-Mannarkat region into an industrial belt of small-scale engineering industries with thousands of units and capital investment of millions of rupees.

This region, they pointed out, is highly fertile for metallurgic industries. Other viable industries that were proposed by the Silent Valley movement included a steel rolling mill, foundries of iron and other materials, pump set production, electric motors and transformers production. They told the government and the people that only this sort of large-scale industrialisation could ensure the development of the region.

The potential of the project to irrigate 10,000 hectares of land, as claimed by the government, was also questioned. The movement argued that the government’s claim was not based on adequate research. As the Mannarkat region is a hilly area, the practicality of water reaching these areas through canals was highly improbable. The easier way to irrigate these areas, it was pointed out, was to install pump sets after digging enough wells and ponds. While Rs 15,000-20,000 would be required to irrigate one hectare of land with canal water, it would cost only Rs 5,000 using wells. The example of Tamil Nadu, where 1,00,000 pump sets had been installed by the government was pointed out to prove the viability of the suggestion.

So from the very beginning, the movement was not projected as a negative and purely environmental one. Alternatives for the projects were convincingly listed. At the same time, the need to preserve the Silent Valley forests was highlighted and concerted attempts were made to make people aware of the rich biodiversity and uniqueness of the area.

The Silent Valley Project would have led to the total destruction of the tropical wet evergreen forests in Silent Valley. The movement stressed the scientific uniqueness of tropical wet evergreen forests. What the rain forests all over the world have in common is the fact that they are the richest biological communities in terms of diversity of species. Silent Valley is one of the few remaining areas of such genetic diversity and the movement argued that it was in the interest of human beings to protect this diversity at all costs.

Also read: The Problem With Mainstream Environmentalism? It Separates Us From Nature.

The other environmental backlash that Silent Valley Project would have caused was the extinction of the lion tailed macaque. The movement argued on the basis of a survey conducted by the KFRI that Silent Valley has the largest population of the lion tailed macaque, in just one last refuge. They stressed the need to preserve this population as these primates form an important link in the study of human evolution. The fragmentation of the habitat of a species or community has tremendous implications that had not been understood earlier. The maintenance of the integrity of the biological community is vital to its preservation. Silent Valley lies at a crucial point in this context between Attappady and Amarambalam reserve forests. Hence a break in the continuity of this biological community would have implications far more serious than the loss of a small proportion of its area.

A Lion Tailed Macaque. Photo: Our Breathing Planet/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Mass mobilisation

Although these arguments had sound scientific base, the scope of taking them to the people through campaign materials was limited in nature. So the movement organised a series of mass mobilisation campaigns. KSSP by this time had a state-wide organisational network that extended to the villages. They started with organising corner meetings. But they faced stiff resistance from trade unions at many places.

At this time, KSSP conceived the idea of organising Sasthra Kala Jathas, processions across the state to highlight the issue. This was a novel way to present issues related to science, arts and environment. The rallies presented these ideas via street plays, dances and songs, visiting most urban and rural centres of Kerala. This was a highly successful move as it had the effect of a direct dialogue with the people. Apart from this, prominent persons from the movement conducted classes all over the state to create environmental awareness among the public.

In the initial stages of the movement, most of the Malayalam newspapers and magazines except Express, published from Thrissur, supported the project. The Hindu opposed the project as a matter of principle. The movement formulated a two-pronged strategy to influence the media. KSSP unofficially formed a media cell to counter the arguments of the supporters of the project. They regularly wrote articles in newspapers and magazines.

As most of these people had established their reputations as eminent scientific personalities, the newspapers and periodicals carried their articles. At later stages, most newspapers tried to give a semblance of neutrality by giving space for both views. This was a major victory for the movement as they could change the mood of the press, albeit to a small extent. They also succeeded in getting the support of eminent media persons such as V.K. Madhavan Kutty of Mathrubhumi.

The second part of the strategy was to get intellectuals, especially litterateurs, involved in the movement. N.V. Krishna Warrier, a noted poet and editor of Mathrubhumi magazine, convened a meeting of literary personalities at his residence. Many prominent literary persons attended the meeting. They extended full support for the movement and formed the Society for the Conservation of Nature.

When the Mathrubhumi newspaper wrote an editorial supporting the project, Mathrubhumi magazine carried an editorial opposing the project. Along with NV, renowned literary figures like Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, S.K. Pottekkad and many others regularly wrote articles stressing the need to preserve the Silent Valley forests. Poets wrote poems supporting the movement that were widely read and appreciated. All this made the reading public environmentally conscious.

Also read: Who Killed the Elephant in Kerala – Someone With Firecrackers or You and Me?

In those days the campuses of the state were very sensitive to new ideas and thoughts. The influence of the intellectuals on the students made them sympathetic to the cause of Silent Valley and many of them became active participants in the movement.

Former Chief Minister of Kerala P. K. Vasudevan Nair. Photo: stateofkerala.in

The involvement of intellectuals helped the movement in two ways. It earned them more space in the media and it gained them public support. After the heyday of the Communist movement in the 1940s and ’50s, this was the first time that intellectuals actively participated in a popular movement in Kerala. The general atmosphere of debate and discussion that prevailed in Kerala at that time also helped the movement to convince the people of the superiority of their arguments.

Many organisations conducted debates on the issue, presenting pro-project and anti-project views. In one of these debates, chief minister P.K. Vasudevan Nair argued that for the development of the state, one has to choose between economy and ecology. Dr V.K. Damodaran, who participated in the debate on behalf of the anti-project movement, refuted the argument by pointing out that ecology and economy are not incompatible concepts that cannot coexist.

Political support

The movement succeeded to a great extent in gaining popular support. Its next target was support within political parties. Though all the political parties officially supported the project, the movement was able to effect a schism within parties. As the movement had contacts within all political parties, it wasn’t very difficult to convince many important leaders. In the CPI (M), KSSP had strong supporters despite the strong trade union lobby that supported the project. As the movement progressed, the CPI (M) stance became more and more flexible and E.M.S. Namboothiripad, the Marxist ideologue, conceded that the opinion of the scientific community was of utmost importance in matters like this.

In the ruling party as well, the movement had strong supporters. The movement regularly sent pamphlets and other polemic materials to the elected representatives and important political leaders. However, their efforts to raise the issue in the legislative assembly didn’t succeed as none of the members was ready to take a stance against the official position of their parties on the floor of the house.

The movement’s next step was to take legal steps against the project. Joseph John, a member of Friends of Trees, filed a case in the Kerala high court, seeking cancellation of the project. Though the high court issued an interim stay for one month, asking the government to stop work at Silent Valley, the court later rejected the petition on the grounds that it was a policy matter on which a decision should be taken by the government and the court could not dictate to the government on such matters.

Also read: In the Wake of Kerala Floods, the Jury Is Still out on the Dams’ Guilt

The movement formed support groups in important cities outside the state, such as Delhi and Mumbai (then Bombay). In Delhi, V.K. Madhavan Kutty and O.V. Vijayan actively campaigned against the project. The movement also benefited from the support of the scientific community of India and abroad, after studies conducted by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Smithsonian Institute of the US supported the movement’s position.

The movement identified the central government departments that would be helpful in pressuring the Union government not to give approvals to the project. The department of environment was the first one. The Biological Survey of India and Zoological Survey of India were also convinced by the movement’s arguments. The scientific research materials the movement had at its disposal helped it present a convincing case before these departments. The report of the Fateh Ali Committee on the uniqueness and rich biodiversity of Silent Valley also helped.

When Indira Gandhi returned as prime minister in 1980, the movement smelled the possibility of a favourable decision as she was the first world leader to raise environmental issues on an international platform way back in 1972. So the movement presented the case before her through various channels. The chairperson of the Silent Valley Protection Committee in Mumbai, Dilnavaz Variava, acted as the main link between the prime minister and the movement.

Gandhi appointed a committee headed by noted scientist M.G.K. Menon to study the feasibility of the project and the environmental backlashes it would cause. Half the battle was already won, as Menon was a known sympathiser of the movement. Still the Menon Committee conducted extensive studies and submitted its report, stating that it would be advisable to refuse the Kerala government permission to construct a hydroelectric project at Silent Valley as it would have serious environmental consequences. But the report said it was up to the political leadership to take a final decision on the matter.

Gandhi accepted the recommendations of the committee and rejected the Kerala government’s applications for permission to construct the project. The Union government suggested that the Silent Valley forest area should be declared a national park. The state government called off the project in November 1983. Rajiv Gandhi, the then prime minister, declared the Silent Valley a national park two years later.

Hanging Bridge across the Kuntipuzha River in the Silent Valley National Park. Photo: /Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Victory of education and science

Thus, the movement which had begun against heavy odds succeeded in achieving its goal. In the final analysis, there were many factors that helped the movement. The first and foremost was the presence of an organisation like KSSP, which had credibility and a grassroots level organisational network.

Also read: Why the Commercial Viability of the Etalin Hydropower Project Is Suspect

The second was the support of intellectuals. Unlike other successful movements, this movement didn’t start from the grassroots. It took shape in the minds of an enlightened few. As they had strong conviction, commitment and credibility, they could take the issue to the people. On the basis of sound scientific material, they could get the support of scientists and bureaucrats all over the country. The movement identified people who would be able to and willing to help in the highest echelons of power.

At the same time, they were able to put pressure on the government through popular support. They could evoke a favourable response from the media with the help of intellectuals and litterateurs. This was possible because of the high level of literacy and the existence of a reading culture in Kerala. Above all these, the presence of a leader like Indira Gandhi, who was aware of environmental issues, helped the movement to become a great success, the first of its kind in India.

Nissam Syed is a commentator based in Kottayam, Kerala.

In Official List of India’s Amphibians, 60% of Species Remain in ‘Grey Zone’

Data about 19% of species has been tagged ‘deficient’ and the conservation status of 39% hasn’t even been assessed.

Bengaluru: New birds and mammals aren’t discovered that often. “But in the last 10 years, more than 100 new frog species have been described from India,” said Kartik Shanker, an associate professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Bengaluru. So it’s “very valuable to revise amphibian lists periodically.”

On January 18, the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) published an updated list with details of the diversity of amphibian species in India, together with their conservation status.

“We have been updating the list every year since 2009,” said Dinesh K.P., of the ZSI’s Western Ghats Regional Centre, which undertook the exercise.

Also read: Frogs, Birds, Lizards: What’s Behind the Spate of New Discoveries in India?

Numerous taxonomic studies, and other research projects, undertaken every year use it to track which populations they need to study more, and why.

In effect, the list is a government-authenticated document that collects all the available info on India’s amphibian taxonomy. And the database used to build it, and which it comes with, is a source of information for researchers, policymakers, herpetologists and students.

It’s also important from an international perspective because global databases consider only the big picture, and aren’t particular about the finer details specific to each country. With new species being found in India at a steady click, local databases are more suited to track local changes.

“Country borders are a dicey subject for global databases,” Dinesh agreed. Sometimes, he said, details about some species come with caveats like ‘species available in China might also be available in India’.

The list draws its nomenclature from the Amphibian Species of the World database. In 2009, it contained 284 species. Today, the number stands at 432 thanks to the concerted efforts of amphibian researchers across multiple biodiversity hotspots in the country to protect these animals.

To Seshadri K.S., research director of the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (in Karnataka), the list is a necessary accompaniment to the study of amphibians in the Internet Age.

He said that a handful of frog species had been described during the colonial period. And in those days, they “were described in journals, the descriptions were short and the specimens were either housed in the Natural History Museum of London or they were lost.”

So until the journals could be digitised, researchers were stuck with old publications and lax identification processes. As a result, “we would see different-looking frogs but would call them all by a [common] name.”

Now, with digitised publications as well as new techniques like DNA analysis and tomography scans, researchers are better equipped to identify distinct amphibian.

According to the new list, about 8% of amphibian species in India are endangered; 5% are vulnerable; 4% are critically endangered; and 2%, near threatened.

But surprisingly, data about 19% of species has been tagged ‘deficient’ and the conservation status of 39% hasn’t even been assessed. That’s 58% of them in a ‘grey zone’ of sorts.

Seshadri pointed out a 2014 study that said these species are very likely to be in one of the three threatened categories. They are, as defined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, ‘vulnerable’, ‘endangered’ or ‘critically endangered’.

“Now that is scary,” he said. “But it’s also a wonderful opportunity to get our act together and focus on ecology, to be able to address important questions useful for conservation.”

One way out is to make the list itself more dynamic than it is. Instead of formally publishing a list once a year, the ZSI could maintain a digital version that is constantly updated based on new studies and nomenclature changes.

Abhijit Das, a scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, said he’d prefer this. “The numbers keep changing and new species are often discovered, making such lists outdated very soon.”

Also read: How Two Songbirds in the Western Ghats Evolved Into Multiple New Species

A more dynamic list would also lend itself to more dynamic studies, with a small attendant risk of becoming outdated themselves. This is all the more important because research in amphibians hasn’t really taken off, according to Seshadri.

For one, frogs are harder to study. For another, it’s hard to obtain research permits to study them because of the dense green areas in which they live and breed.

But most of all, “people” – including from the forest departments – “seem to love large fluffy animals,” he said. They don’t care about frogs being killed in road accidents “but if it’s a tiger or an elephant, they spring out of their cushy chairs. And the same applies to most funding agencies.”

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bengaluru.

Joint Director of Zoological Survey Plagiarised Book, Published False Data

His and his colleagues’ actions imperil coral research within the country, especially in the time of climate change, and leave scientists around the world with data that doesn’t make sense.

Bengaluru: Research on coral reefs published by scientists at the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has been found to have plagiarised content, some of it wrong and misleading.

This was flagged in an email to a mailing list for coral researchers by Douglas Fenner, who has been working on corals around the world for decades.

When Fenner went through a paper on corals in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by a research group from ZSI, he found a long list of 274 coral species. ‘Status of Scleractinian Diversity at Nancowry Group of Islands Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ is authored by Tamal Mondal, C. Raghunathan and K. Venkataraman, and was published in the Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research in 2013. The list, however, included two species, Orbicella annularis (formerly Montastraea annularis) and Siderastrea radians, that are from the Caribbean and not known to be present in the Indo-Pacific region including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Orbicella annularis. Credit: Louiswray/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

“If the authors knew how startling and important a find those were, they would have made a big deal out of it, worth a big paper in a major journal,” Fenner wrote in his email. An earlier paper (‘An Observation on the Coral Bleaching in Andaman Islands’, published in the International Journal of Environmental Sciences in 2011) by two of the same three authors – Mondal and Raghunathan – listed 293 species of corals, of which nine, Fenner noted, were Caribbean.

He then looked up a book, ‘New Records of Scleractinian Corals in Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ by Mondal and Raghunathan, along with three other authors – Ramakrishna, R. Raghuraman and C. Sivaperuman – at the ZSI. He found more of the same, along with outright plagiarism.

This plagiarism manifested in multiple ways. The introductory section in the ZSI book is identical to text from various sources, chiefly ‘Reefs at Risk: A Programme of Action‘, published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. This source is not cited at all, even in the references section. Moreover, a Google search using any sentence picked at random from the ZSI book turns up matches from various other sources that have not been cited. Even a typo in the book, “1O mm” instead of “10 mm” (the uppercase letter O instead of the digit 0) has been carried over from the original source.

The norm in academic work is to use quotation marks and to cite the source from which one is quoting. Neither of these have been done in the ZSI book. What’s more, many of the citations that do appear were present in the original source.

Fenner didn’t stop there. He compared the descriptions of many of the corals in the ZSI book to that found in ‘Corals of the World’ by J.E.N. Veron, published in 2000. “Lo and behold, the wording was exactly the same, every single word,” wrote Fenner in the mailing list email.

Veron’s book (an online version is here) is considered the authoritative source on corals. Fenner himself worked with Veron – a legendary figure among coral researchers, said to have discovered 20% of all coral species – for six years in the Caribbean. Fenner is now based in American Samoa, a US territory in the South Pacific, as a consultant for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fenner found that other bits of Veron’s book had found their way into the ZSI book too. It listed, for each coral species, “key characters” that were used to identify that species – and this text too was identical to that in Veron, unattributed. “This is plagiarism,” wrote Fenner. “It is passing off the text as though it was original and written by the authors.”

Porites porites. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The book, like the papers, claimed to find corals in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that are actually found only in the Caribbean (in addition to at least three species that don’t exist). To compound the misleading nature of the information, these Caribbean species have in fact been misidentified. The photos accompanying these labels, Fenner noted, are actually those of Indo-Pacific species.

For instance, one of the photographs in the book is labelled as Porites porites, a Caribbean species that is a hexacoral, with six tentacles. But the photo actually shows an octocoral, with eight tentacles. “From the texture of the colony surface, it appears to be Heliopora coerulea,” an Indo-Pacific species, said Fenner. “This is a very basic mistake and demonstrates clearly that they don’t know what they are doing. That makes the data totally unreliable, and any other scientist that uses it will have many mistakes. So the scientific community has to know that their data and papers are unreliable.”

As it happens, one of the questionable papers (Int. J. Env. Sci. Vol. I (1st Issue), pp. 37-51, 2011) by this research group has been cited two times by other authors. The paper lists two species twice, each time with different data. “That suggests that they may have been making the data up,” said Fenner. Similarly, in a third paper published by Mondal and Raghunathan with Venkataraman (‘Diversity of Scleractinian Corals in Middle and North Andaman Archipelago’, published in the World Journal of Zoology in 2011), one species is listed twice with different data.

The problem, he pointed out, is that these published works do not contain any information that could be used to check if the claimed species identification is accurate.

Heliopora coerulea. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The lead author of the book, Ramakrishna, is a former director of the ZSI. He expressed surprise at the finding of plagiarised content in the book when contacted by email. He said that he had retired in July 2010 and that the book was published only later, in September 2010. K. Venkataraman, a coauthor of one of the two papers that reported Caribbean corals in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, succeeded Ramakrishna as director of the ZSI. C. Raghunathan, who is an author on all three papers as well as the book, is presently the joint director of the ZSI. Email queries to Mondal, Venkataraman and Raghunathan were unanswered at the time of writing – as were emails to Kailash Chandra, the present director of the ZSI.

Ironically, Chandra was himself accused of plagiarism in 2014 along with three of his colleagues, in a paper on hawk moths. The then director Venkataraman had promised stringent action if Chandra was found guilty. Chandra took over as director of the ZSI in 2015, according to his CV.

The ZSI, founded in 1916, has been and continues to be an important institution. It “holds the type specimens for many species in the country,” said Rohan Arthur, a marine scientist at the Nature Conservation Foundation, where he directs the reef research program. “It’s found across the country, and is still among the principal institutions of taxonomic research in the country. However, institutions of this calibre really need to have adequate checks of research quality and ethics if they do not want to squander their formidable academic reputation. Many of our legacy research institutions in the country need a serious, ground-up rethink of how they’re doing their research if they want to remain relevant.”

One conspicuous problem with many of the publications from this research group at ZSI, as can be seen from their CVs, is that they are in-house publications. “In-house publications have their place and they are a valuable source of information, where scientists can publish their work rapidly,” said Arthur. “But unless their quality is rigorously monitored, they can rapidly lose their credibility.”

Fenner suggests that the ZSI should have outside experts, including internationally recognised coral taxonomists, as reviewers for its in-house publications in this area. And that they should collaborate more with researchers abroad and publish in international journals. “That is a way to get outside help in improving quality,” he said. “ZSI needs to rely less on quantity and more on quality, as judged by international judges, not only Indian.”

However, foreign collaboration for taxonomic research in India is hampered by regulations such as the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which make it difficult to exchange specimens. One of the intentions behind the Act was to stop biopiracy: people abroad patenting biological material of Indian origin for commercial profit. However, as a 2008 article in Current Science, titled ‘Death sentence on taxonomy in India’, put it,

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 seriously curtails the scientific freedom of individual taxonomists by putting draconian regulations on the free exchange of specimens for taxonomic research and threatens to strangulate biodiversity research in India with legal as well as bureaucratic control.

The Act requires that exchange of specimens for research be done through the government, with all the bureaucracy and inappropriate handling of delicate and valuable specimens that that entails.

A related side effect is that specimens housed in the ZSI’s section in the Indian Museum in Kolkata has become unavailable to researchers abroad. As the article said, “It is generally accepted among the scientific community that the types [specimens] are the property of science and should be made available to bona fide researchers throughout the world.” Failure to do this on the part of government-run museums in India would, it went on to add, “totally isolate Indian biodiversity researchers and is akin to a self-imposed siege on scientists in the country.” This situation appears to have contributed to taxonomic research in India growing stale.

Researchers in India outside government-run institutions find it difficult to collect new specimens too. “Taxonomic studies of coral down to the species level requires some fairly detailed skeletal analysis,” said Arthur, who limits himself to identifying the genus rather than the species. (Genus is the level above species in biological classification.) “Without being able to collect physical specimens, it’s very difficult to identify coral species. Most institutions in the country apart from the ZSI find it very difficult to even get samples because corals are a protected group.”

In April 2018, India adopted a new tiered system for penalising plagiarism, based on evaluating what percentage of the work in question has plagiarised content. These regulations were issued by the University Grants Commission and is binding on universities. It’s unclear if they apply to a research organisation such as the ZSI, which comes under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

Fenner had contacted the ZSI researchers with his findings. “I had hoped that the people in ZSI who did this would admit publicly what they did. I urged them to do it, but they have not done it,” he said. “ZSI needs to change its culture of tolerance of these things.”

Arthur, who has worked on corals around India and Kenya, cautioned against generalising from this one instance of plagiarism, given that the email Fenner sent to the mailing list was titled “Plagiarism in coral reef science in India”. “I find it a little objectionable – and more than a little parochial – to label this ‘Plagiarism in coral reef science in India’, as he did,” said Arthur. “While raising the issue is critical, it does a huge disservice to tar the entire research community with a single brush.”

“There is a problem of quality, we have a problem with our attitude towards publishing. It’s a much larger problem that has to do with certain institutional cultures – that certainly needs fixing,” Arthur said. “But this should not take away from the large number of scientists who are doing some excellent research in marine and coral reef science in India.”

Fenner agreed. “It is clear that many scientists in India are honest and do not engage in these practices, and the problem is by no means restricted to India,” he said. “It is just shocking to see such a blatant example of it in documents published by professionals, instead of just students, and the authors getting away with it and benefiting from it.”

India, in fact, has a long heritage of pioneering work in coral taxonomy. The first International Coral Reef Symposium was held at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Mandapam Camp, Tamil Nadu, in 1969. One of the forces behind this was the late C.S. Gopinadha Pillai.

“Dr Pillai is world-renowned for having been one of the most important pioneers of coral reef taxonomy, globally,” said Arthur. “The Latin name of every species known to man will be followed by the name of the taxonomist who first described it formally. If you examine the list of corals known from tropical reefs today, Dr Gopinadha Pillai’s name appears frequently. His work has been quite an inspiration for many people globally when it comes to coral taxonomy. But since his passing away, there have been very few people to carry on that mantle. As a result, what we know of coral taxonomy from reef regions in India is still relatively poor. It’s still not completely well-worked out.”

Plagiarised and unreliable work from institutions like the ZSI makes this worse, not least because quite apart from the academic implications, there are real-world implications too.

“We depend on taxonomists to give us accurate descriptions of the species we find. And if they did not, many of the biogeographic trends we rely on don’t make much sense,” said Arthur.

Estimating the population of a species of coral, to begin with, requires reliably identifying species. If this isn’t done, any population-based estimates become unreliable. “So, if you find either increases or decreases in numbers of species in particular regions,” said Arthur, “it is very difficult to evaluate if this is a true trend that needs exploration for scientific or for conservation reasons, or if it’s merely an artefact of shoddy science.”

And we could do without shoddy science at a time when corals are facing climate-change-induced stress. “We know that the responses of coral to climate change are highly dependent on the species. So you can get very wrong information if you’re identifying species wrong,” said Arthur. “So on one level, there are troubles academically but there could be very real problems in terms of management as well.”

Nithyanand Rao is a freelance science writer.

Museum of Natural History Fire a Chance to Secure Our National Treasures Better

The museum had been gifted to the country in 1972 by the then-PM Indira Gandhi, on India’s 25th anniversary of gaining independence.

A scan through the charred windows reveals maximum damage to have occurred in the upper two floors. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: Until a week ago, you entered the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Delhi to be greeted with an imposing Tyrannosaurus rex, a grey, life-sized long-tailed figure made of cement, its jagged teeth arranged in what looked like a snarl. Then, there was its relative Allosaurus that lived 155-150 million years ago, and a one-horned rhino to greet you a little further. These days, the T. rex is still there but outside the charred building, in the company of the despondent NMNH director B. Venugopal and a few colleagues, seated on plastic chairs. “Investigations are in progress. Until a report is submitted to the Ministry [of Environment, Forests and Climate Change] and I have permission to talk, I cannot talk to the press about the extent of damage and loss of specimens,” Venugopal told The Wire.

In the early hours of April 26, around 1.45 am, a blazing fire turned the 38-year-old museum’s collection of fossils, stuffed animals and other exhibits to cinders, though exactly which items were reduced to ashes and which ones can be retrieved and restored remains to be known. The museum had been gifted to the country in 1972 by the then-PM Indira Gandhi, on India’s 25th anniversary of gaining independence.

The museum had housed some rare fossils, including one of a Sauropoda dinosaur that was 160 million years old. The Sauropoda were the largest land animals that walked Earth. The museum also possessed a rare cup-sponge fossil found in the Pacific Ocean and a fossilised dinosaur egg. There were life-size replicas of the big cats – the Asiatic lion, white tiger, cheetah and snow leopard, all as one would have seen them in their natural surroundings, crouching as if atop a tree or pouncing on a prey – and rare vultures –including varieties fast disappearing from India. Finally, there were birds’ eggs such as those of the ostrich and the long-billed vulture, and butterflies, reptiles and beautiful plant specimens.

A scan through the charred windows reveals maximum damage to have occurred in the upper two floors while the lower two seem relatively less burnt, and that is where the staff expect to retrieve the most from. Especially crucial is the first floor that had the fossils and stuffed-animal exhibits, including of some extinct and endangered species. This floor also contained an introduction of and brief tour through the elements of natural history, with exhibits on the universe and the Solar System, life through the ages, endangered animals, man-made crises, etc.

The second floor had “an introduction to ecology” and “bio, geo and chemical cycles”, which exhibits delineating man’s place in various ecosystems and the variety and diversity of life.

The third floor, now mostly damaged, dealt with conservation, with dramatic life-size diorama of a typical deciduous forest with depictions of both a rich, balanced forest ecosystem and of a denuded, barren terrain. Two exhibits depicted the environment-conscious Bishnoi community and India’s historic Chipko movement.

The environment ministry estimates 225 crore rupees will be needed to restore the museum. “The fire at the National Museum of Natural History is tragic. The museum is a national treasure… the loss cannot be quantified,” the union environment minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted. He also ordered a fire audit of all the natural history museums in the country.

These museums are not only repositories of information but they also serve as valuable resources in supplementing classroom teaching. “Natural history museums are national treasures,” says Neha Sinha, a wildlife scientist from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). “And given that so many school children visited the museum, there is a huge question of how the building authorities ignored safety issues.”

Restoration of most, if not all, specimens is eventually possible. “It’s not difficult entirely to procure dinosaur fossils as India has them in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu,” Sinha explains. “Also, one can get them from other museums. And animal skins can be procured from the forest department and stuffed.” That said, it will not be easy. “[the] populations of many species have come down drastically in recent years. Others have become endangered.”

It’s rare to come upon a complete, intact fossil even at the best of times. Experts usually unearth pieces of skeletons and reconstruct the remaining parts with aids. “It is a long process; it takes years,” explains Rahul Kot, curator at the department of natural history collection at BNHS, Mumbai. The process of a fossil’s reconstruction also depends on the kind of technical expertise available and the condition of the fossil at the time of recovery, according to Kot. Then the parts are transported to the museum for reassembly.

Unlike in developed nations, India does not have dedicated laboratories for fossil reconstruction – even if individual institutions such as the Botanical Survey of India, Zoological Survey of India and the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany have some capabilities.

Making stuffed animals also takes a long time – one or two years – says Kot. After a suitable body (of a dead animal or bird) has been recovered, taxidermists take two or three weeks to clean and stuff it. Then, they need to keep the newly stuffed specimen under observation for six months to check that there are no fungal or insect attacks. “The skin has to be cleaned and dried slowly, in a shadow. Sometimes if the skin is not cleaned properly, some fungus or insect gets in, or some fat or oil oozes out,” says Kot. “Insects or fungus can do irreversible damage.” At other times, hairs and feathers begin to slowly fall off if the specimen hasn’t been handled carefully. “Then the aesthetic value of the specimen decreases.”

“Over the last decade, the museum has [developed] a run-down look and there have been fewer visitors,” says Sinha, who has been visiting it since her childhood. “Despite that, it still had an old-world charm to it – as it did not have all the electronic displays and gadgetry that modern museums do. One could touch and feel some of the specimens. And to understand and appreciate natural history, ‘touch’ is very important, be it feathers, horns [or anything else].”

Money was sanctioned for a new museum building during Jairam Ramesh’s tenure as the minister for environment, in 2009-2011, but there has been scant progress on the front. Even if the museum is restored in a more modern version after the fire, Sinha wishes it should continue to allow visitors to touch the specimens.

“Other museums need to learn from the NMNH fire,” according to Kot. Mandatory fire audits will be a first as natural history museums have a lot of inflammable material, such as hairs, dried samples and alcohol (used for preservation). BNHS, for example, has made its alcohol storage room fireproof and is now trying to procure fire-safe cabinets for its specimens. “The specimens are very fragile. Even a small fire can damage them. And this was a raging fire.”

Unlike Europe or the US, which tend to have natural history museums in almost every big city, India has few of these institutions. “And we have lost one of them. We should set a timeline for its reconstruction [and] not just allow it to take another decade again.”

Meet the Western Ghats’ Wonderful New Freshwater Crabs

Prior to this, 36 species belonging to 14 different genera were known from the Western Ghats in the family of freshwater crabs. The latest discoveries bring the total species count to 41.

Five new species of brightly coloured freshwater crabs have been found in the Western Ghats, India’s wildlife haven. Of these, two species belong to the genus Ghatiana (discovered in 2014) and the remaining to Gubernatoriana (known since 1970).

Behind the discoveries are an undergraduate student and researchers from the Zoological Survey of India and the Indian Herpetological Society. They described the five new species, named Ghatiana atropurpurea, Ghatiana splendida, Gubernatoriana thackerayi, Gubernatoriana waghi, and Gubernatoriana alcocki, in the journal Zootaxa on February 23.

Prior to this, 36 species belonging to 14 different genera were known from the Western Ghats in the family of freshwater crabs called Gecarcinucidae. So the latest discoveries bring the total species count to 41. These crabs, which have adapted to a terrestrial or semi-terrestrial mode of life, need a freshwater pool for breeding – unlike their marine counterparts that breed in vast, salty water-bodies.

Freshwater crabs also produce fewer, yet larger, eggs than marine crabs. And their eggs hatch into fully-developed juveniles, which are cared for by the females over the coming few weeks.

Ghatiana atropurpurea

Ghatiana atropurpurea. Credit: Arjun Kamdar

This is a tree-living crab with a preference for the jamun tree, whose fruit colour it resembles. It was found in July 2015 from rainwater-containing tree holes in Amboli, Maharashtra. Mature and immature adults were also sighted at ground-level tree holes in Hathipal, Goa, where younger crabs were seen foraging in the undergrowth or resting under rocks.

G. atropurpurea gets its name from the Latin for ‘dark purple’ (atropurpureus). This crab has a broad, deep purple shell that distinguishes it from the other newfound species. Before its scientific discovery, the crab was known to the locals as the ‘purple tree crab’; they had also observed it scavenging on millipedes and snakes that were accidentally killed by vehicles on roads.

Its claw-bearing legs or pincers are differently sized – one is larger than the other. Fingers of the larger claw have four or five large teeth, leaving a gap when their tips meet. This gap in the pincers helps in gripping food and competing for mates. (However, researchers don’t think there is a single reason why they are larger in some species and smaller in others, or differently sized between males and females. This could be due to foraging, sexual selection and defence).

Ghatiana splendida

Ghatiana splendida. Credit: Arjun Kamdar

Named for its splendid looks – pink coloured shell and pincers, and orange legs – this species was found feeding and hiding among cracks in basaltic rocks of a plateau near Amboli, Maharashtra. It was seen during the monsoon season, when rainwater collects in rock crevices. Its claw-bearing legs are unequal in size with left one much larger than the right. Additionally, in males, fingers of the larger claw have six or seven blunt teeth and they meet at the tip leaving a large gap while those of the females have nine or ten teeth and a smaller gap in between.

“The locals knew about the two Ghatianas and photographers had clicked them, too, but no one really thought what genus or species they were,” says Tejas Thackeray, who discovered the two species, along with Gubernatoriana thackerayi, when he was on a project photographing the endemic reptiles and amphibians of Kokan, Maharashtra, in 2015.

“They would just call them the purple tree crab or the pink forest crab,” adds Thackeray, who is a 19-year old BA student at Jai Hind College in Mumbai and a wildlife photography enthusiast.

“On the third day of the trip we decided to go on a plateau nearby looking for the rare olive forest snake. After hours of searching and no signs of the snake, we decided to climb down the slope and explore the area. It was raining heavily and the area was full of leeches and suddenly I see this absolutely stunning, brilliant pink crab getting out of a hole and I couldn’t believe it; I had never seen a crab this beautiful. Hence, we decided to name it Ghatiana splendida,” Thackeray told The Wire.

Gubernatoriana thackerayi

Gubernatoriana thackerayi. Credit: Shailesh Bhosale

Named after its discoverer, G. thackerayi is active during the day and feeds on worms. It was found during monsoon among horizontal cracks in sloping rock formations of Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra. Its shell and walking legs are a striking red while the two pincers are orange-red. Thackeray had suggested the name Gubernatoriana rubra (Latin for ‘red’) but his co-workers decided otherwise.

G. thackerayi’s pincers are broadly rounded or spoon tipped. They are slightly unequal in males; larger claw fingers are dotted with small, rounded teeth and the gap between them is small. In females pincers are of the same size. The crab’s long walking legs are adorned with fine brown bristles.

Gubernatoriana waghi

Gubernatoriana waghi. Credit: Rachit Shah

This orange crab with ivory coloured legs was discovered in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra in October 2014 by zoologist Prashant Wagh, after whom it is named. It was observed under small rocks on the edge of a cliff in Harishchandragad.

Like other newly discovered species, G. waghi has unequal pincers with the right one being larger. Claw fingers have two or three large teeth and leave a big gap when their pointed tips come in contact.

Gubernatoriana alcocki

Gubernatoriana alcocki. Credit: B.V. Jadhav

G. alcocki was first seen in 2014 in the Satara district of Maharashtra. It was found under small rocks in short-lived streams on a mountain plateau. This species is restricted to high altitudes (at least a kilometre above sea level) of the Western Ghats because of its preference for such habitats and their isolation from other landscapes.

The crab lives alongside Bombay swamp eels (Monopterus indicus) in a strange predator–prey relationship: adult swamp eels feed on crabs and crabs feed on juvenile eels. The crabs are commonly sighted during monsoons (from June to September) but they are also abundant during the dry season.

Crabs are olive-brown with orange-brown and hairy appendages. Pincers are of nearly the same size in females – their fingers have 12-14 small, blunt teeth; a relatively small gap is formed where the digits touch. In males, the right pincer is larger and smoother, and its fingers have two or three large teeth and leave a large gap in between.

G. alcocki is named after Indian-born British naturalist Alfred William Alcock, who contributed immensely to the study of ten-legged crustaceans (such as crabs) and “suggested the establishment of an Indian Zoological Survey” (PDF; p. 122) in a letter to the Secretary, Government of India, in 1906. The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) was born a decade later.

Sameer K. Pati, a senior zoological assistant at the Pune centre of the ZSI, who was also behind the discovery of the genus Ghatiana in 2014, says that the finds are just tip of the iceberg. According to him, there are still as many undiscovered species and even new genera of freshwater crabs out there.

An elated Thackeray adds, “With DNA analysis, what we think of as one species could turn out to be three or four different species [sharing] similar morphological characteristics. Genetically, they could be different.”

However, freshwater crabs are endemic to the Western Ghats and have adapted to some specific habitats. With little tolerance for change, they face several human-induced threats like water pollution, deforestation and habitat transformation for agriculture, Pati explains. Cutting down trees, for instance, will directly affect Ghatiana atropurpurea, which is a tree-living crab. These problems are compounded by other factors such as the low number of eggs produced by freshwater crabs and a limited home range.

Richa Malhotra is a freelance journalist. She reports on science, wildlife and the environment.