The union minister for environment and forests (MoEF) is in the unenviable position of having to publicly confront his cabinet colleagues and risk being dubbed a stick-in-the-mud, anti-development green crusader. First it was a tiff with the agriculture ministry over Bt brinjal. Then it was a rebuke by the Planning Commission over mining and power project approval delays and now, a dispute with the surface transport minister that is on full display in the Supreme Court. The road of contention goes through a tiger reserve near Mr Kamal Nath’s constituency, and Mr Jairam Ramesh will not oblige. The tiger and road conflicts are but symbolic of a larger question that the nation has to wrestle with: how to manage the trade-off between environmental concerns and economic development. It is not just jobs versus air and water quality, but the interests of present versus future generations. This means occasional harsh decisions like Mr Ramesh’s ban on new projects in 43 out of 88 critically-polluted industrial clusters across the country, or his reluctance to give clearance for Mumbai’s new airport. Is the minister being unfairly painted as Dr No? His ministry has cleared more than 95 per cent of the proposals seeking forest and environment clearances. the MoEF clearances are not disguised licence raj. In fact, most of the pending clearances awaited are for steel, power and coal mining projects. Large investment funds are committed to these sectors, which, in turn, will fuel infrastructure growth. But that growth must be answerable to ecology and sustainability. Thus, while reforms in coal allocation via transparent auctions are welcome, that does not mean environmental clearance can be short-circuited.
The minister has rightly protested against being presented a fait accompli in which projects are flagged off without consulting the ministry and the ministry is then blamed for the subsequent delay. If the sequential approach is found wanting, the Central government should enable a genuine single- window clearance, wherein if a coal block is put up for auction, it is deemed to have been cleared by the MoEF. A similar coordinated approach can be taken in the award of all other mineral and mining projects. For his part, Mr Ramesh has offered to label areas pre-emptively as “go” and “no go”, so that no proposal need even be entertained in the “no go” areas. Such inter-ministerial proactive coordination will go a long way in clearing the logjam referred to by the Planning Commission. We must recognise that India’s economic growth cannot ride on underpriced coal or forests. In addition to under-pricing our ecology, we are also guilty of under-pricing minerals, whose royalty in many cases are still not ad valorem. India needs an enlightened and reformed mineral and forest policy, as well as a holistic environment policy.
