New Delhi: India’s rich geological monuments that capture the Earth’s tumultuous, evolving history in the form of rocks, sediment, and fossils, are at the grave risk of being wiped out, experts have said, highlighting the need for a law to protect these from erosion.
The warning has not gone unheeded, with the Narendra Modi government putting out a draft bill last month, for the preservation and maintenance of India’s geological heritage sites and relics. The draft Geoheritage Sites and Geo-relics (Preservation and Maintenance) Bill, 2022, published for “public consultation” by the Ministry of Mines on 15 December, aims to protect and preserve these sites for “geological studies, education, research, and for future generations as it is a non-renewable asset”.
Examples of India’s geoheritage are everywhere, but not always well known. The subcontinent’s collision with Eurasia over 50 million years ago, which birthed the Himalayas, is considered among the most significant geological phenomena in its history. India also has one of the largest dinosaur fossil reserves in the world, found in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, as well as remnants of the oldest life forms, called stromatolites, in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Caves and natural rock sculptures — found across states — are also geo relics of value.
“Landscapes are an archive. They are an archive of processes in the earth that form its history,” said Suvrat Kher, a sedimentary geologist. The biggest problem, he said, was that people aren’t inclined to see it that way.
Kher added: “Geology has never been a part of India’s public consciousness the way wildlife or forests have been. If you look at old colonial maps, everything without forest or tree cover was considered a wasteland, and that idea perpetuates today. The idea that landscapes have an intrinsic value is missing.”
The bill is an attempt to restore balance to an area of history that is often neglected, recognising that geoheritage sites deserve the same protection as biodiversity.
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What the bill entails
The Geological Survey of India (GSI) has made a list of 32 geoheritage sites in the country, among them volcanogenic minerals in Andhra Pradesh and wood fossils in Tamil Nadu.
However, just placing these sites on a list hasn’t assured them protection, according to experts.
The proposed bill makes it possible for the Union government to declare a geological site as being of national importance, which would bring it within the ambit of the law. Once declared, respondents have two months to air any grievances, following which the government will move to acquire the land of the site through the Land Acquisition Act. As a default, the 100 meters around the site are considered a “prohibited area,” and 200 meters around the site is a “restricted area”, according to the proposed bill.
Construction, reconstruction, and repair work of private property and buildings falling within the prohibited area are not allowed, unless explicit permission from the director general of GSI is secured.
The bill also proposes to impose a penalty of up to five lakhs and/or a six-month jail term in case sites are destroyed, removed or defaced.
Owners of land who face loss, damage, or diminution of profits because of the land acquisition “shall be paid compensation by the Central Government… as may be determined in such manner as may be prescribed,” the bill has proposed.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first attempt to create a domestic law in favor of protecting the country’s geological artifacts. In an article published in Current Science last year, geologist D.M. Banerjee noted that in 2009, the government had come up with the ‘National Heritage Site Commission Bill’, acting on the insistence of geologists. For years, the bill was sent to various committees and ministries for consultation, before being dropped in 2016.
In 2020, a group of geologists drafted a ‘Conservation of Geoheritage Sites and Development of Geoparks Act’, which included sections on the conservation, maintenance, and budget to protect the monuments. In April that year, the Ministry of Mines took the suggestion forward by creating an internal committee which “met virtually, and modified a few clauses in the original draft”, finally coming up with the Geoheritage Conservation and Geoparks Development Bill, 2020.
“The task force that carried out the revision was strictly internal. No progress in finalising the bill has been made since then,” Banerjee wrote.
India is a signatory to the UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted in 1972, which recognises it has a “duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage situated in its territory”.
Concerns over the proposed law
The new proposed bill gives the Union government power to denotify geoheritage sites if it believes they have “ceased to be of national importance”, without public consultation.
This has, however, raised the concern of geologists.
“How can a geological monument cease to be of importance? This opens the door to exploit these monuments for other purposes, like mining,” said R. Sreedhar, managing trustee of Environics Trust and a geologist by training.
According to Banerjee, the GSI is not equipped to handle the task of geoheritage conservation, as it is primarily a research body that works on various missions.
“GSI has never done this kind of work. The Archeological Survey of India is more experienced in the conservation, preservation, and restoration of artifacts, and they have been doing it for geoheritage monuments with the help of geologists. The bill should allow for this possibility,” he said.
Others have pointed out that the bill doesn’t make provisions for monuments in areas under the Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, which gives these regions special governance mechanisms and special rights over land.
For Satish Tripathi, secretary of The Society of Earth Scientists and former deputy director general of the GSI, the most concerning aspect of the bill is the lack of decentralisation in its operationalisation.
“The bill must include collaborations with other departments, and give some powers to the state governments as well. At present, most geoheritage monuments are being looked after by state departments, and very few by the GSI. This must be acknowledged in order for the bill to be truly feasible.”
The bill is open for public comments till 15 January.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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