Heart of the matters

Jairam Ramesh may have been made rural development minister but his soul is very much with environmental issues, forests and, of course, tigers. He digresses even in the middle of speeches on rural issues to talk on these subjects. Soon after he was done with ensuring the Land Acquisition Bill was tabled in Parliament, he flew to New York to attend a conference as a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainable Development. This panel has a special focus on climate change and development in a carbon-constrained world — issues that saw Ramesh being transferred out of the environment ministry. The panel is to submit a report by December 2011 that will feed into, among other things, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development at Rio in 2012. So what if Ramesh is no longer environment minister and will not be representing India at Rio!