Whither environmental swaraj?

Late last month, the Goa Government appealed to the Supreme Court to be “left alone” to evaluate its actions against illegal mining. The Supreme Court, mindful that Manohar Parrikar had assumed office last year, generously agreed to lift the mining ban.

The State government has issued fresh mining leases. In its deposition before the Supreme Court, it had pointed to the shortcomings in the Shah Commission whose report last year on illegal mining had blasted the State.

By the state for the state

But Parrikar will have another report to contend with. This one isn’t a critical review by a watchdog agency, an NGO or some wild-eyed environmentalists. As it turns out, the report bears the weighty gravitas and experience of scientist Madhav Gadgil, who headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel.

Two years ago, the then State government commissioned the local unit of the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) to examine the working of the components of environment compliance in the mining industry in Goa.

This was a first-of-its-kind probe at the State level and, fittingly, it was in Goa that has been at the centre of considerable attention over the impact of mining on an eco-system that is part of the Western Ghats’ bio-diversity. The report — on the investigation that involved experts and public hearings across the State with various stakeholders under the overall guidance of Madhav Gadgil — is now available.

The project assessed the “…Quality of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Compliance of Environment Clearance (EC) Conditions and Adequacy of Environmental Management Plan (EMP) of the Mining Industry in Goa.” The EIAs, of which public hearings are a crucial part, should ideally point to likely adverse environment consequences so as to enable the project at hand to be reformulated, modified or tweaked to prevent those baneful results. If these results outweigh positive outcomes, the project would need to be rejected.

The EC sets conditions to be followed by a project in operation and the EMPs outline the sound environmental management practices to be followed.

The CEE team found the Goa EIA, EC, EMP experience, measured against the guidelines issued in 2010, to be highly deficient in the case of the mining leases it examined.

Major environment parameters — land-use pattern, water resources, biodiversity, demographic profile, dependency of people on agriculture, air quality and impact of air pollution on the locals — had been wilfully ignored in the pursuit of iron ore. The report lists flagrant violations of environmental laws, bypassing of official advice or counsel on dangers to water bodies, falsification of information about soil, waste disposal vehicular traffic and much more.

The democratic dividend

The hidden value of this report, however, lies in its observations on the absence of popular involvement and those public hearings in the EIAs that would have provided a more comprehensive picture of diverse stakeholders likely to be affected. Most respondents felt alienated from the decision-making processes.

It is here that Gadgil’s work acquires importance. Gadgil rests his faith on the devolution of powers to local levels of governance that have become inactive or, as in the case of environment protection, never been used.

The report informs us of complaints by “citizen respondents” that EIA consultants “never involved the local people for any information, nor are the people aware that such an exercise was being undertaken”.

The team points out, for instance, that of the 95 EIAs received for processing, only one was held at the actual site; more than half were at district headquarters of Margao and Panaji, a third at taluk headquarters; in most, “valid objections” find no mention in the EIAs.

Looking for alternatives

In this report and the one on the Western Ghats, one can trace three critical assumptions on which Madhav Gadgil’s investigations into environmental destruction or spoilage rest.

One is the idea that the environment must become an integral part of the development imperative. Most policymaking in India views the two as mutually exclusive categories. For the public, then, the choice is: development of mining as the channel for growth or the environment at the price of stagnation.

Second, the notion of development is itself very narrowly defined with restrictive options. Gadgil urges, “…a proper scrutiny of various possible alternatives for meeting a particular development objective, such as mining of iron ore or construction of a highway or generation of thermal power, so as to lead to the selection of the most desirable alternative…”

That alternative has to maximise “the net gain from the development intervention, that is, maximise the balance of economic, environmental, social benefits minus the economic, environmental, social costs.”

So the second premise that can be read into the report’s perspective is the need for balance between a project’s benefits and costs. And since “in real life many unforeseen impacts may materialise,” the balance always needs to be recalibrated and re-measured. Environmental clearances, the report accordingly advises, should be reviewed periodically. For instance, every five years.

The third premise endows responsibility for the above two not on the upper layers of policymaking — the legislative or judicial arms alone — but principally on the lower tiers of governance down to the city and the village.

For Gadgil, sound environmental protection — indeed the quest for that balance and its shifting dynamics — rests on the devolution of decision-making.

This is where Gadgil departs from a lot of environmentalist critiques. It isn’t just “grassroots” democracy of the popular imagination he has in mind; it is more than a sombre version of participative democracy.

What his concern for decentralised decision-making evokes is “swaraj” in the sense India’s founding fathers defined it and that New Delhi and state capitals forgot it.

India’s environment and development expediencies remind us that ‘swaraj’ is a birth-right we still don’t have.

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