This woman in West Bengal’s Sundarbans is not out for a morning swim. She is wading along the muddy bed of a tidal stream in Sudhanyakhali, searching for crabs. That is what she has to do today to survive. No stranger to risk, she braves tiger, crocodile and shark attacks on a daily basis.

Many like her succumb to disease and drown each year while eking out a living in hostile swamps in the 24 Parganas district.

She represents the faceless millions across India to whom politicians glibly make false promises: “When we build a nuclear reactor next to your home in the Sundarbans, prosperity will flood your life,” or “Give us your land to set up the Special Economic Zone in Nandigram and we will ensure that you and your children will never lack anything for the rest of your lives.”

Empty, ill-intentioned, duplicitous promises. Trusting by nature, hard-pressed by circumstance and forgiving (misfortunes are god’s will) to a fault, when sea levels rise, this woman’s toes will no longer touch mud. Right after global warming victimises the Pacific Islanders, she will become a statistic.

Her village will be inundated. Her wells will turn saline. She will no longer be able to feed her family. She has no clue yet, but 10 million people like her have “environmental refugee” written into their future.

Today, NGOs and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M) believe that arsenic poisoning is the prime threat to such people. In the North 24 Parganas alone, 30 per cent of its seven million people were discovered to have been poisoned (after almost 50,000 water samples were analysed).

But to the best of my knowledge, not one NGO has gone village by village to explain to the people that as many as one million of them may have to abandon their homes when the waters of the Bay of Bengal rise.

Possibly twice that number of environmental refugees from Bangladesh will start moving northwards in search of high ground.

Seen in this light, the financial and political fate of Kolkata is sealed. Is the West Bengal government alive to this looming threat of climate change? Do they realise that the carbon-based heavy industries, mines and thermal plants that they continue to vigorously promote will devastate their state?

Sanctuary has written to senior members of the CPI (M) politbureau about such fears. We received no response. Meanwhile, the party is busy celebrating its ‘victory’ over environmentalists through self-congratulatory messages that are being broadcast to constituents daily.

People’s Democracy, the weekly organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Vol. XXX, No. 52, dated December 24, 2006, makes for interesting reading. Such texts might help them win votes and cheap popularity today, but tomorrow these same texts will be used as evidence against them during tribunals that are bound to be held to affix blame for the destruction of India.

The passage of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006 constitutes a significant victory for tribal and forest-dwelling communities and a big step forward in the struggle for tribal rights.

There are crucial differences between the original bill moved by the UPA government and the final bill adopted by Parliament. These differences reflect the often bitter struggle to ensure that the bill’s declared intention to undo the ‘historical injustices’ that tribals faced, was not subverted.

The Left and particularly the CPI (M) has played a crucial role in the struggle.

1. The cut-off year of 1980 is now December 2005.

Implication: Anyone who can bribe, coerce, or fool the competent authority into believing that lands encroached as late as November 2005 were in use for ‘generations’ will reap a real estate bonanza possibly 1,000 times the size of the SEZs over which lives were lost recently in Nandigram, just west of the Sundarbans.

2. Non-tribal traditional forest dwellers included in the Bill.

Implication: Apart from tribals, even industrial workers, small-time quarry owners, prawn-farmers and brick kiln manufacturers can now lay claim to forest lands, provided they can find (bribe?) someone to certify their possession of such lands prior to December 2005.

3. Sanctuaries and National Parks included for the land distribution.

Implication: Lands protected for almost 50 years, with ecosystems making a tentative come-back will be overwhelmed by agriculture and urban use. These protected forest lands would have helped to sequester carbon and thus mitigate some of the effects of climate change. Now, such lands will actually release carbon, thus aggravating climate change.

4.Instead of 2.5 hectares of land beneficiaries will get four hectares.

Implication: The quantum of forests at risk from Forest Rights Act has risen by 60 per cent. Is there enough forest land to satisfy this clause?

5.Penal provisions for punishment to tribals who violate existing wildlife and forest laws have been removed.

Implication: It was tough enough to protect endangered species with existing tough laws. With no fear of retribution, a virtual invitation has been sent out to every forest dweller to cut trees, kill wildlife and turn forest land to (profitable) non-forest use.

Even the East India Company was unable to effectively destroy the ecological foundation of the Indian subcontinent, an achievement for which the CPI (M) will proudly be able to claim credit for in the foreseeable future. And the woman from Sudhanyakhali, already neck deep in trouble? While migrating to Kolkata, she and her daughter will probably turn to god – not the CPI (M) – and ask “Why have you forsaken me?”