Anti-endosulfan stir enters a new phase

Anti-endosulfan activists will take out a march from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram today to press for their demands of rehabilitation and financial assistance.
The march would be inaugurated later in the evening by ecologist Madhav Gadgil. It would culminate at Shamkhumukham beach here on December 30, Ambalathara Kunhikrishnan, convenor of Endosulfan-affected Peoples' Front said.
The Front has also decided to stage an indefinite 'porridge-making stir' (cooking porridge) by women victims in front of the official residence of the Chief Minister here from January 26.
Kunhikrishnan said frequent government assurances had not been kept so far, the latest being formation of a medical panel in March last to identify and categorise deserving people, which was expected to submit its report within four months.

"Nine months have passed and nothing has come out. Our demands have fallen on deaf ears," Kunhikrishnan said.
The National Human Rights Commission's direction in 2010 to central and state governments to take urgent steps to arrange treatment facilities and adequate financial assistance to Endosulfan victims was also not heeded to, he said.

The Front then began an indefinite satyagraha in front of the Kasaragod collectorate. Though the Chief Minister came to Kasaragod twice and held talks with officials on the matter, he did not care to meet the agitators, Kunhikrishnan said.
N Subramanian, activist of the Front, said NHRC's directions were sabotaged. "Despite stoppage of spraying in 2000, children are being born even now with genetic defects," he said.

A study by Centre for Science and Environment in 2001 in the area after the spraying was stopped also found the presence of endosulfan in humans, water bodies and soil.
The government estimates 710 people had died due to ill effects of aerial spraying of Endosulfan in cashew plantations in 4,696 hectares in the northern district from 1976 to 2000. "But the number is much more and runs into thousands," say activists.