Reality is mostly sordid. It could be as unpleasant as the fact that only those who are caught and jailed are considered law breakers.
An entire building in Mumbai would soon bite the dust if the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) indeed carries out its decision to demolish it for being illegal. The construction of a real estate-cum-tourist haven in Lavasa in nearby Pune may come to a stop as the project has been termed illegal by the ministry. Activists and environmentalists alike are gleefully impressed by the courage shown by minister Jairam Ramesh. This bubble of joy is too fragile to last.
For it is still fine to be illegal if the ministry can bear with it. It mostly does.
In February last year, the Supreme Court allowed the Madhya Pradesh government a period of 10 weeks to continue with its work on land acquisition and canal building in the command area of Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar dams. Further work was dependent on clearance from an expert committee of the MoEF within that period. The 10 weeks got over in May last year. But the state government continues to acquire land and cut canals right through the middle of farmland in villages surrounding the dam in the highly irrigated catchment area.
People in the area have been pleading for a review of the canal building exercise to spare farmland in the area and both the High Court and Supreme Court looked at this sympathetically. In fact, as per the Environment Protection Act no work can be done in the command area of a dam without a command area development plan. The expert committee of the MoEF found in July last year that these plans were never submitted. It, therefore, said “the conditional permission given by the Supreme Court for excavation, or construction of canal work should be withdrawn”.
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However, work goes on, leaving farmland bleeding while the ministry turns a blind eye. The Gujarat government was forced to abandon plans to make canals as people refused to part with their farmland. But the Madhya Pradesh government is violating the court orders, with the MoEF observing silence.
Stories of illegalities abound and if it were to take belated action in all these cases, the ministry would need to run a year-round employment programme just demolishing illegal dams, buildings and structures it had itself facilitated.
In Andhra Pradesh, the most gigantic of illegalities could be coming up in the shape of the Polavaram dam. One of the illegalities is in the fact that the ministry has no evidence of its complying with the conditions it had made while giving the environment clearance five years ago. Six monthly reports are to be sent by builders to the ministry. But the ministry has, in a response to an RTI query, said it has not received a single report from the dam authorities since the very first one sent to it after a month of the clearance in 2005. The ministry’s regional office has also not made any visits to check the violations.
These regional offices are probably the only safeguards the ministry has against the violation of environmental conditions set by the ministry while clearing various projects. But there is no incentive for these offices making surprise visits and they are known to be understaffed. Hence, while demolition orders and stop orders in select cases create occasional moments of dramatic relief, ultimately it is the fait accompli that prevails.