Race to the sunrise
In this excerpt from Islands in Flux, Pankaj Sekhsaria remembers when a remote Nicobar island almost lured tens of thousands over a non-event, before common sense prevailed
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/read/excerpt-from-islands-in-flux-by-pankaj-sekhsaria/article9712554.ece
The Royal Greenwich Observatory had announced a few years ago that the
first sunrise of the new millennium would be visible from the island of
Katchal in the Nicobar group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. The recent
few months have seen the tourism industry and the A&N
administration in a tizzy as they went about planning a huge millennium
tamasha. Efforts were on to get more than 20,000 tourists (largely
foreigners) to the tiny and remote island of Katchal, which was
advertised as the only place in the world where the first sunrise of the
millennium will be visible.
It appeared to be the perfect situation for a huge tourism event — an
exotic, remote island, an occasion that will never come again, and a
government eager and willing to lay out the red carpet. However, the
entire event came to be seriously questioned and opposed by a number of
environmental groups from across the country as there were serious
flaws. The opposition was strong and sustained and eventually the
administration had to respond. In a secretary-level meeting held in Port
Blair in early August 1999, a decision was taken to scale down the plan
substantially.
The campaign that was coordinated by SANE was based on detailed research
and solid facts. The very fact that Katchal was being promoted as the
only place where the first sunrise of the new millennium will be visible
is incorrect. A clarification issued by experts of the internationally
renowned, Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and
Astrophysics (IUCAA) categorically asserted that these claims were
preposterous and that there were at least two falsehoods that were being
perpetrated — one that the new millennium begins on January 1, 2000,
and the other that Katchal is the only place where the sunrise will be
visible.
Experts all over the world, and this includes the United States Naval
Observatories, the National Bureau of Standards and Technology of the US
and the Royal Greenwich Observatory, England (before its demise in
1998) have accepted and adopted January 1, 2001 (and not 2000) as the
beginning of the new millennium.
The explanation for this is rather simple. There was no zero year and we
actually began this calendar with the year 1. Accordingly, the first
year was completed at the end of year 1, the first century at the end of
year 100, the first millennium at the end of year 1000 and this, the
second millennium, at the end of year 2000. Therefore, January 1, 2000
is only the first day of the last year of this millennium and not the
beginning of the new one. The Y2K problem seems to have struck here as
well, but in an entirely different way.
The second issue is of the site where this first sunrise would be
visible. From a technical point of view, the issue of the first sunrise
is not as simple as it initially seems. The US Naval Observatory in its
document titled ‘First Sunrise of the New Millennium’ discusses some of
these issues in detail: “(…) It is important to realise that on any
January 1, the sun is continuously above the horizon across most of
Antarctica.” So, very simply put, the place where the first sunrise of
the new millennium will be seen is Antarctica. However, beyond this, the
question becomes more involved. Does the new day begin at local
midnight, in the time defined by the local jurisdiction? Or, does it
begin at midnight on the meridian of Greenwich in England, which is the
zero longitude meridian, ie, 0 hours GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) also
known as 0 hours UT (Universal Time)?
Significantly, the paper states that at 0 hours UT, which is generally
taken to be the start of a new day, the sun is rising simultaneously
along an arc that runs 650 km east of Kerguelen Island in the Indian
Ocean to about 640 km east of Amsterdam Island, through the Nicobar
Islands, up along the Burma-Thailand border, through China, along the
China-Outer Mongolia border, along the China-Russia border, through
Siberia, and out into the Arctic Ocean just north of the Poluostrov
Peninsula. All places along this line will experience sunrise
simultaneously at 0 hours UT in 2000 or 2001 or any other year. There is
simply no unique ‘first sunrise’ location. The other interesting
dimension is that the time of sunrise is always calculated for sea
level. This means that if you go higher, the sunrise is seen earlier.
For example, if one was to move 1,000m above sea level, the sunrise
would be visible four minutes and 3.8 seconds earlier than a person at
sea level at the same point. Theoretically, this also means that if a
person is roughly 100 km west of Katchal but 1,000m above sea level, he
will see this sunrise at about the same time as an observer at Katchal
who will be at sea level. The basic argument is that there is nothing
spectacularly unique about the sunrise at Katchal. Various permutations
and combinations would give the same results.
The arguments over the timing of the new millennium, the time of the
sunrise and the exact location could well have been discarded as
academic. The logic of raising these points can also be questioned if
this unique opportunity had been beneficial to all. But that was
precisely the point. There are far greater and serious issues involved
in allowing this incorrectly nomenclatured event on the tiny island of
Katchal, says Samir Acharya of SANE, who was the first to realise the
problems with an event of this nature. The resident population of
Katchal is only 12,000, and nearly 4,000 of these are the Nicobari
tribals. The impact of suddenly inducting an additional 20,000 outsiders
on this island for a day or two can well be imagined. Acharya points
out that this could create a huge health hazard. The presence of 20,000
people means that a minimum of 20,000 to 30,000 kg of human excreta and
thousands of litres of liquid waste will be added to the local
environment and this will be in addition to unknown quantities of other
solid waste like paper and plastic, to name the common ones.
***
There is another important aspect that was also being ignored. Katchal
is the traditional home of the Nicobari tribals. It was designated a
tribal reserve under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of
Aboriginal Tribes Regulation (ANPATR) of 1957, and special permissions
have to be obtained if outsiders want to visit.
Additionally, the entire group of Nicobar Islands has always been
considered a sensitive area and the entry of foreigners is strictly
prohibited. In fact, in the last 30 years, except for one single
occasion, not a single tribal pass has been issued to any foreigner to
visit the Nicobars. The only exception was the permission given to Rene
Dekkar who was specially invited by the ministry of environment and
forests (MoEF), government of India, to study the endangered bird, the
megapode, which is found in these islands.
It is significant that in the past, as eminent a person as the legendary
Captain Cousteau (of Calypso fame), who wanted to study corals off the
Nicobars was denied permission. Renowned institutions like Cambridge
University, England, and the Vokkenmuseum (Museum of Anthropology),
Berlin, too had their requests to study the wild boar and the famous
pottery of Chowra Island turned down. Why then, questioned Acharya, is
the island administration taking the retrograde step of permitting
20,000 tourists of unknown vintage to visit Katchal to celebrate the
non-event of a pseudo-millennium sunrise? This is the ultimate
degenerate step that the government can take, he says.
Besides, there are other fears too. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are
unsurpassed in their botanical wealth, and the ethno-medical knowledge
of the tribals who live here is astounding. The possibility cannot be
ruled out that the event will become a convenient entry point for
bio-prospectors and pharmaceutical multinationals who are always on the
look out for virgin areas to explore. Prevention and even a little
over-cautiousness is certainly far better than any corrective action
that may be suggested in the future.
A lot of resources and public money are being spent on the event.
Recently, a new circuit house in the island, which violates the Coastal
Regulation Zone (CRZ), was inaugurated on the island. New work was also
being undertaken for the laying of pipelines and the construction of a
power-generating station.
For the present, however, the brakes have been applied, though the event
itself has not been called off. The decision taken was that the number
of tourists will be scaled down from 20,000 to only 2,000. No foreigners
will be allowed to land on Katchal or any other island in the Nicobars,
but those interested in viewing the sunrise could view it from ships.
It has also been decided that a Doordarshan crew will be allowed to land
on Katchal and record the sunrise for posterity.
The only problem, and surprisingly nobody seems to realise it yet, is that this is the wrong sunrise!
(This article was published in The Hindu on September 19, 1999)
Pankaj Sekhsaria researches issues at the intersection of environment, science, society and technology
The book is available in stores across the country and on amazon: http://tinyurl.com/y9pnz9ml
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