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“We should manufacture goods with zero effect that they should not have a negative impact on the environment” – Narendra Modi on August 15.
The single line in the Prime Minister’s speech on Independence Day led some to suggest how Narendra Modi had used his unique mantra to balance the needs of environment with growth.
Hogwash. The Prime Minister revealed nothing from the ramparts of Red Fort about his policies on furthering sustainable development. Signals emanating from the NDA government so far have been to the contrary, in fact.
The single line thrown in to the speech, which focused more on building ‘civic responsibility’ in the citizens, is in fact misleading. India certainly needs to increase its manufacturing base. The service sector provided a disproportionate 60.05 per cent of the share of the GDP in 2013-14. But there are no two ways about it: industrial activity produces waste and pollution. It also creates new urban conglomerations that gobble natural resources and energy. The environment does get impacted and altered. Precisely because the country pretends to be blind to the fact, the degradation of environment and natural resources hurts its poor disproportionately more.
The NDA government has shown early indications of its mood to overhaul the country’s environmental regime. For the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. As of now, it’s begun by playing around with rules and regulations. Just like the UPA did previously.
The green laws of 70s and 80s recognised and protected India’s environment and natural resources as an elitist abstract – devoid of the rights of the poor over it. Which is why they have failed to check misappropriation of these resources by the political class in favour of the economically better off, and in the recent decade to rising crony-capitalism.
Under these laws, it’s almost impossible to protect a tribal village’s rights over its resources but there are innumerable convenient loopholes to simply gift away the village’s resources – water, land forests (and can I add, air) to the engines of growth. A symptom of this lies in the catena of executive and judicial decisions on environment over the past decade which post-facto approved illegal misappropriation of common resources. Strict implementation of law was forgone in the name of balancing growth with environment. Oh yes, the higher judiciary has been party to this bad governance too.
I am reminded of a case in the Supreme Court some years ago. People protested the building of a dam in the tribal regions of northeast by submerging community forests. The court agreed that forests (and attendant biodiversity) was being destroyed. Its expert panel demanded that the state government make up for this loss by displacing yet more tribals from yet more forestland – to create a wildlife sanctuary as compensation.
India does need a new resource regulatory regime that can arbitrate and adjudicate the competing interests over natural resources and environment better. Surely, such an overhaul cannot begin by the Prime Minister spinning myths about industrial activity that has zero impact on the environment. He could easily learn lessons from one of the most industrialised states - Gujarat, home to also one of the most polluted industrial clusters in the country at Vapi. Instead of learning those lessons, his government recently did away with the moratorium on building new factories in the critically polluted zone. And, put a one year moratorium on the comprehensive system of measuring pollution in these industrial clusters of India.
Nitin Sethi is an Associate Editor and writes on development and environment. His twitter handle is @nit_set
Nitin Sethi is an Associate Editor and writes on development and environment. His twitter handle is @nit_set
