Nabard aid for `illegal' road through Mannavan Shola
 
 
By P. Venugopal
 
The National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (Nabard) is unwittingly becoming party to a gross act of illegality through the assistance it is rendering to the State for the construction of road through the Mannavan Shola in Idukki district.
 
The 14 sq. km. Mannavan Shola is considered the biggest shola forest in peninsular India and it is home to many endemic and threatened plants and birds. This shola was notified as a reserved forest through an order of the Government of the erstwhile Travancore State on October 22, 1901.
 
Such a forest tract automatically comes under the purview of the 1980 Forest Conservation Act. Any activity in this area, including the construction of a road, could be undertaken only after obtaining the prior permission of the Central Government. The State Government has not even put up an application to the Centre seeking this permission.
 
Sources in the Government said the Nabard was providing assistance for laying of a road through this shola under its Rural Infrastructure Development Fund scheme. Clearly, the Nabard has not bothered to verify whether the road is legally permissible.
 
Formerly, there used to be a trek path through this shola, connecting Kanthallur and Kundala villages, where there are many settlers. This trek path was converted into a jeepable rugged road in the very recent period without the requisite clearance from the Union Department of Environment and Forests. The new project envisages widening of this road and tarring of its surface for all kinds of vehicular traffic.
 
The leading beneficiaries of the project will be the ganja cultivators and sandal smugglers of the region. The road will help them bypass all forest check-posts to take their booty to the market. It can also lead to the devastation of the rich, high-altitude shola vegetation of the Mannavan Shola by making even the interior areas accessible to the plunderers of the forest wealth.
 
Already, many trees, including tree ferns of gigantic size unique to this shola, have been axed down for constructing the road.
 
Conservationists say that 12 of the 16 endemic species of birds reported from the Western Ghats are in Mannavan Shola. A study by the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), highlighting the ecological significance of the area, describes it as one of the richest high-altitude shola vegetations in the country. The KFRI, in this study sponsored by the Union Department of Environment and Forests, recommends notifying this "rare montane forest as a shola reserve.''
 
Significantly, the streams flowing from the Mannavan Shola are the only source of water for the entire rain-shadow region of Anchanad valley in Idukki district.