The reported recent discovery of an ancient shoreline on the planet Mars (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3563651.stm ) may be an enduring source of wonder for those who like to contemplate the boundaries that are fundamental to pre-human, human and post-human existence (see, for example, these contributions introducing the shorelines series on openDemocracy – parts 1 http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-1-102-1386.jsp and 2 http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-1-102-1407.jsp ). Contemplating shorelines on other planets is, for me, both an exhilarating and disturbing experience. The probable absence of life – at least on the great majority of planets within our compass – is awe-inspiring and awful. What would it be like to be on a planet utterly devoid of life? And what about planets that have seas but no shores – either like Jupiter’s moon Europa, where waters may be locked beneath an endless mantle of ice (see http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast09sep99_1.htm), or where oceans naked to the stars rage in storms without end?

JARVA’S of Andmaan # Shailendra Chauhan Over the years, the tremendous pressure on these tribes to preserve their identity has only increased. The most significant reason for this is the shrinkage of their forest habitat - their lifeline - because of deforestation and settlements. The Great Andamanese are on the verge of extinction, with just about 30 of them remaining. The Onge - the sole inhabitants of Little Andaman in the early sixties - are reduced to just a hundred. What semblance of their own identity the Jarawas had was quickly threatened by the ATR; their much larger historical territory has now been reduced to a reserve of 700 square kilometres, as the forests that provide them with all the necessities of life have been ripped apart. As Samir Acharya of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology says, "Closing the ATR and putting an end to the indiscriminate interaction between the Jarawas and the settlers would appear to be the only way to save this ancient tribe." From the 1960s, the Jarawas opposed the construction of the ATR, fearing its its impact on their lives. They were not consulted, and they showed their displeasure by resorting to hostility and attacking the workers. Work was temporarily halted in 1976, but was resumed soon. Gradually the thick forests of the Jarawas became more and more accessible to the outside world. Settlements increased, timber was heavily extracted, poaching activities rose, and the natural ecosystem of the Jarawas was gravely threatened. Protests by various environmentalists, anthropologists and the Jarawas themselves were ignored. Today the road is ready, and the increased traffic that now passes through the Jarawa land has only served to unleash new causes for concern. Contact with outsiders has brought disease to this insular community. In 1999, a measles epidemic hit the Jarawas, infecting nearly 60% of them, an alarming figure for a community as fragile and small as this. Says Dr. James Woodburn of the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, "When an isolated community with low population density (like that of the Jarawas) comes into contact with one of high density (like the settlers), it is particularly vulnerable to diseases like measles against which they have not acquired immunity in childhood." That is not all. The intense contact which the ATR provides with the outside world has induced the Jarawas to consume a variety of foods containing salt, sugar, saturated fat, etc, that their body systems have never been accustomed to. This can result in significant changes in their metabolism and consequently expose them to diseases of the modern communities such as blood pressure, diabetes and heart ailments. With increased access to such foods, the Jarawas are also gradually giving up on their traditional foraging activities. Moreover, the interaction between the two is highly unequal. The Jarawas are placed in a weak position against the dominant culture, and are thereby exposed to the vices of the latter. Consumption of tobacco, alcohol, gutkha by the tribals are now commonplace. Sexual exploitation of the Jarawas has also been reported. Over the years, a new kind of tourism has developed in the islands - Jarawa tourism. They have become a chief attraction for visiting tourists, resulting in disgusting instances of voyeurism. Tourist vehicles charge something between Rs.6,000 to 8,000 for a single trip from Port Blair to Rangat, to provide passengers with a fleeting glimpse of the Jarawas. Did the administration not anticipate such devastating consequences to indigenous lifestyle, or was it all swept under the carpet of development? In any event, the ATR has not proved to be the best way to travel in the Andamans. The traditional inhabitants of these islands, most of whom live along the coast, have always used the sea route. The ATR has made even less sense when one considers the costs incurred to maintain this road. Huge amounts of money (over Rs. 15 crore) and timber are used for maintenance. The SANE estimates that this maintenance consumes a minimum of 12,000 cubic meters of timber, one-eighth of the entire amount that is logged from these islands annually. The 340-kilometre-long Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) originating in Port Blair in South Andaman cuts across the islands to reach Diglipur in the North. It runs on four different islands: South Andaman, Baratang, Middle Andaman, and North Andaman. In two places, the vehicles using the ATR climb on to ferries that are needed to cross the creeks. In some places, it traverses through some of the finest surviving tropical rainforests - virgin tracts of forestland that have traditionally been home to the Jarawas. The ATR that rips through their reserves has raised the interaction of the Jarawas with the settlers and the tourists manifold; alongside it has also eroded much of their original way of life. The Jarawas belong to the Negrito group of tribal communities including the Onge, the Great Andamanese and the Sentinelese living on the Andaman Islands. These are communities that have lived and flourished here for at least 20,000 years, but their end could be well round the corner. Just 150 years ago, their population was estimated to be at least 5,000. Today, while the total population of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has risen to about four lakhs, all the four tribes are numbered at not more than a mere 500. Of these, the Jarawas are about 250. The 340-kilometre-long Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) originating in Port Blair in South Andaman cuts across the islands to reach Diglipur in the North. It runs on four different islands: South Andaman, Baratang, Middle Andaman, and North Andaman. In two places, the vehicles using the ATR climb on to ferries that are needed to cross the creeks. In some places, it traverses through some of the finest surviving tropical rainforests - virgin tracts of forestland that have traditionally been home to the Jarawas. The ATR that rips through their reserves has raised the interaction of the Jarawas with the settlers and the tourists manifold; alongside it has also eroded much of their original way of life. The Jarawas belong to the Negrito group of tribal communities including the Onge, the Great Andamanese and the Sentinelese living on the Andaman Islands. These are communities that have lived and flourished here for at least 20,000 years, but their end could be well round the corner. Just 150 years ago, their population was estimated to be at least 5,000. Today, while the total population of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has risen to about four lakhs, all the four tribes are numbered at not more than a mere 500. Of these, the Jarawas are about 250. The ATR has, understandably, been a subject for heated debate, especially with various environmental action agencies. In 1998, in an issue relating to excessive logging activities in Little Andaman and the danger posed to the Onge tribe, the Pune-based environmental action group Kalpavriksh, the Port Blair-based SANE and the Mumbai-based Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) filed a writ petition before the Kolkata High Court. The administration stonewalled it. It was argued that the matter could be taken up only in the Supreme Court, and the case landed there. On May 7, 2002, the Supreme Court of India, while hearing this case, accepted the recommendations of a commission it had appointed earlier to look into the issues and passed a set of landmark orders. The one-man Shekhar Singh Commission, set up in 2001, made 25 major recommendations regarding the conservation of the forest habitat. One of these was the shutting down of that stretch of the Andaman Trunk Road that passes through the Jarawa Tribal Reserve areas. It even stated a time frame of three months for this to take effect. However, the recommendations accepted by the SC have not been put into practice by the local administration. Instead, a review request has been filed. The environmental groups are in the process of preparing a responsive affidavit..The request for a review cannot be justified. This is a clear violation of the SC's orders.. The ATR hangs like a sword over this fragile community. Regulatory arrangements alone are insufficient to guarantee their existence; as the Singh Commission noted, the Jarawa's continuing survival depends on closing the road that winds through their lands and lives. 

"This is what he said he saw, and Shoab a man of his word: It all remains to be seen, this evidence of the flux of nature’s patterns which are the stuff of an intricately meshed web of ever greater and ever smaller patterns of which we are mostly in the ghostly dark and make of it what we can within an untold margin of error for which no choice but to make generous allowances. The eternal modulation of the landscape, this ever shifting lie of the land. What was beneath the ocean now a continent or a tiny island, or an outcrop of limed rock useful only to mating and migrating birds to rest and multiply, or sailors for bearings and dread. What is now a continent, an island, an outcrop of more thickly limed rock than on day one, one day will return below the sea, become icebound or be blown to bits in a rhythmic and sporadic heaving of the earth, inside and out, time immemorial and for ever and ever and so be it. What was below the crust from time to time spills out on an instant and changes things, the way a surprise visitor drops in on an impulse and precipitates a hasty change of plans, things like the shape of the lie of the land and the state of the animate and inanimate that rest on or within or pass over it or pass it by, things transformed in a heart-stopping flash after unknown millions of years of celestial foreplay and tinkering, the upshot of energy finding an outlet somewhere anywhere along the porous aeons of duration and expanse, a length of time in which millennia warrant scant attention, millennia which on a different scale are as marginal as a snap of the finger in ten thousand generations or one speck of dust to the entire world nurtured by water, or one breath in a lifetime of the inhalation of exhalation of breathing things, except the first and last gasps which arguable carry more weight than the rest. Neither ascending nor descending, it continues on its unpredictable way, expanding and contracting, imploding and exploding here and there, expelling itself and consuming itself without commentary, evidence both immaterial and visible spreading with impunity wherever it must, this seepage of a serenely volatile not yet…" Anon. Message was edited by: gaea.cornelius