Misguided debate on environment

With the growth of the Indian economy pitched at a healthy 8.5-9 per cent, and a renewed emphasis on infrastructure and manufacturing, the question uppermost in the minds of both industrialists and environmentalists is how the environment-development conflict is going to be resolved.

Hardly a day passes without a massive protest by people who stand to be displaced by projects or the Minister for Environment and Forests having to explain his Ministry's decision to grant or refuse clearance. Nor are the environmentalists ever satisfied with the efforts of the state in protecting the environment, despite the periodical chastising by the courts of the State and Central governments and industry over their acts of commission and omission.

Is the environmental movement in India organically grown and moulded by indigenous forces? Or is it an implant, well intentioned but not really suited to the country's development imperatives?

India's environmental movement had its origins in the early 1970s when, on the eve of the UN Conference on Environment and Development at Stockholm in June 1972, a high-level body was set up to prepare the documentation for the Conference, highlighting plans and programmes to develop the environment, social and economic, under the aegis of the Five-Year Plans. The composition of the body — the National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination (NCEPC) — reflected the realisation that while development must give due regard to environmental considerations, the latter should not become a fetish and stifle development.

Stage of Imitation

The country, however, could not remain immune for long to the winds of green fashion sweeping in from abroad. Whether it was the use of DDT, an inexpensive insecticide trusted over time in battling malaria, or the building of a multipurpose hydel project, projects of note came under opposition from sections of the intelligentsia on environmental grounds, no doubt influenced by external models.

Starting in the early 1980s, this trend saw the emergence of green NGOs, of which many drew their inspiration from foreign models. This marked the beginning of the ‘stage of imitation' in India's environmental movement. This was also the time when international NGOs, with ample financial backing and public relations savvy, established themselves in India.

Portrayal of environmental concerns moved away from highlighting larger issues such as the provision of clean drinking water, sanitation, public health and hygiene to such fashionable items as banning the use of asbestos and plastics, and highly localised issues.

This imitative approach still continues. One has only to look at the excessive attention showered on ambient air pollution by designating “hot spots” and online monitoring, on the one hand, and the lack of efforts to curb indoor air pollution affecting millions of poor Indian women, on the other.

Shift to Litigation

The emergence of Public Interest Litigation in the 1980s presented green activists an opportunity to knock at the doors of the judiciary, seeking its intervention in acts of commission and omission on the part of the executive in environmental matters.

In the 1990s, following the Rio Principles adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June, 1992, particularly the Precautionary Principle, the scales weighed heavily against development. As a lofty ideal, this principle conveyed that scientific certainty of an adverse outcome should not be insisted upon to put a project on hold.

This was interpreted liberally to mean that possibility of an adverse outcome, however remote, was enough to stall or put an end to any project. Any trade-off between ecology and economic welfare, even where possible, was shunned.

On to Agitation

Liberalisation, that began in 1991, brought with it its ‘goods', to be confronted with the ‘bads' prevailing in the country. The ‘goods' were in the form of massive inflows of capital investment into India, arrival of new technologies, products and services. The ‘bads' were nothing new but the old opposition to anything on a large scale and that too stemming from the private sector. As a weapon, ‘the environment' came in handy to those who were ideologically set against large projects and to those in business to thwart the initiatives of competitors, Indian or foreign.

A major dimension of large projects is land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation of the displaced persons. It must, however, be remembered that this is not so much of an environmental problem as a social one and should be dealt with as such. The Posco project in Orissa exemplifies the mixing up of environmental issues with the problem of land acquisition.

Need for Conciliation

Today, sadly, environment and development confront each other, instead of being two faces of the same coin.

Given this situation and its impact on developmental projects, we need to usher in a stage of ‘conciliation' wherein a collegiate exchange of views prevails among various departments resulting in agreement over the scale and scope of development in various sectors.

This is best done as a two-step process, the first being the consideration of plans and projects by a multidisciplinary high-level body, such as the NCEPC, and the second being endorsement of its recommendations by a group of ministers.

(The author is a former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )

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