I'm not sure whether to dig or scrape
I was flipping today's The Hindu the newspaper.
Undergoing Brownian motion within the newspaper, technically.
Saw the two-page notification that I had ignored earlier.
There were ROC numbers for eight Villages: Inamkattupatti, Kanjanur, Mallapuram, Onnakarai(Katteri), Onnakarai(Sulakarai), Reddipatti, Sulakarai and Thathampatti, of Uthangarai Taluk.
Being the curious person I am, I looked up Life Shells Labs India Private Limited.
I found absolutely nothing about this company, that supposedly drafted the EIA report for this project.
Except for a half-baked LinkedIn page, which had a website link, that also did not work.
And what's with the double-negative here? What does "No family will not displace due to land acquisition" even mean? I thought it means that the family absolutely must move. But Perplexity explained otherwise:
Also, I thought that the EIA covers the socio-economic sort of stuff to some extent. But apparently there's a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) too: "As the Environmental Impact Assessment Study has Been Carried Out For This Irrigation Project, Social Impact Assessment shall not apply according to the provision of sub section 6 [2] of Right to Fair Compensation, And Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013."
Apparently, a publicly-available report, as the EIA report has to be, does not mean that it is available online. It is kept with some officer and can be requested. Here:
"A plan of the land may be inspected in the office of the Collector, Krishnagiri, and Land Acquisition Officer/Revenue Divisional Officer, Krishnagiri, on any working day during during the working hours. The Government is pleased to authorise the requiring Dept Executive Engineer, PWD, (WRO) Dharmapuri, and his staff to enter upon a survey land, take levels of any land, dig or bore into the subsoil and do all other acts required for the proper execution of the work........ Objections to the acquisition, if any, may be filed by the person interested within 60 days from the date of publication of this notification in the Tamil Nadu Govt Gazette ..."
When everything is available online, I suppose this can also be made so. After all, the EIA report must be hundreds of pages long, and it probably is not very feasible to keep multiple hardcopies of the report in the office, in at least two languages (Tamil and English).


