Web of Life

The proposed Sethusamudram Ship Canal is a projected canal between India and the Jaffna peninsula, running from the Gulf of Mannar to the Bay of Bengal, 260 kilometres long, 300 metres wide and 12.5 metres deep. It will enable ships from the west coast of India and the Arabian sea to use this canal to reach the Bay of Bengal without navigating round Sri Lanka.

This canal had been proposed about 144 years ago during the British colonial period but not taken up. Now that India is developing fast as a highly industrial country, perhaps she could conveniently afford to spare the estimated Indian Rupees 2000 crores the cost of the project. However, the repercussions that would result on the Sri Lanka side of the canal has not been fully investigated and considered by the Indian Government, which is about to undertake the construction on the Indian sea area of the Palk Strait. Still there is no guarantee that the canal will not cause serious repercussions on Sri Lanka territory.

It is reported that Rameshwaran in India and the Jaffna Peninsula are linked via a Miocene era lime stone reef, and dredging of the canal would result in nearly 86 islands and half of the Jaffna Peninsula submerging under the sea. Even a lay observer could see this as a real danger. The hill country of Sri Lanka is not a continuation of a mountain range coming from the Indian sub-continent. The Sri Lanka hill country is an isolated phenomenon. As such, the bonding of Sri Lanka with the Deccan Plateau of South India cannot be deep and strong. The Elephant Pass sea divided between the Jaffna Peninsula and the Sri Lanka Mainland could have been caused by the subsidence of the lime stone based Jaffna Peninsula into the sea owing to past earthquake shocks occurring in South India.

When 84 million cubic metres of sea-bed lime stone dredged are piled on the Sri Lanka side of the canal 260 kilometres long, 12.5 metres deep and 300 metres wide, the situation can be compared to a trap which will go off at the very next serious earthquake shock from India that will make the Jaffna Peninsula lime stone shelf to crack along the canal line and submerge under the sea owing to the weight of the piled up lime stone and cracks caused in the canal bed by rock blasting while dredging.

The subsidence in the Jaffna peninsula may affect some other areas in the Northern province as well. Once land gets submerged in this manner, it will be lost for good. There is nothing that India could do to restore the lost land, should Jaffna Peninsula get submerged owing to the Sethusamudram Canal. The Canal will only save 400 nautical miles of a journey and at the most 36 hours in time. This little gain is not worth the risk of losing more than 2000 square miles of inhabited land, though it is not a part of the Indian State.

As the calamity that can befall, Sri Lanka is so horrible, it is of paramount importance that our versatile President Chandrika Bandaranaike promptly take up the matter with the Indian Government and stop this cosmetic sea canal the benefits of which are so small to India and the possible loss so great to Sri Lanka with dire consequences.

D. W. Edirisooriya

Mt. Lavinia