The rapid clearances of projects in order to promote industries are proving to be a death knell for the environment
The Coronavirus pandemic has not only killed lakhs of people worldwide, it has sickened the global economy, too, as nations have been forced to shut down their industries and businesses in order to stem the spread of the contagion. India, with its 9,39,192 Coronavirus cases and 24,327 casualties is no exception to this need to hunker down. And the country, which had begun to open up in a phased manner after an extended, hard lockdown, is being forced to impose brief shutdowns again. Naturally, this COVID-19 chokehold over the economy has put developmental projects, industry, trade and business in a coma and impacted thousands of lives and livelihoods.
The worst affected of the lot have been the migrant workers of the nation, who are rightly considered the silent contributors to development. The labour community, who at the best of times is neither appreciated enough nor remunerated fairly, continued to suffer even more badly during the COVID-19 lockdown. This was tragically epitomised by the horrid accident in Aurangabad where unemployed, exhausted and broke labourers walking back home were mowed down by a train after they went off to sleep on the tracks. The incident had sparked off a nationwide outrage and sense of grief for the sufferings of the workers in the informal economy.
Now, with the country slowly opening up, despite the Coronavirus cases skyrocketing, the very same labourers are being coaxed to come back from their villages and get the wheels of the economy moving again. That brings us to the fact that no matter what happens, even during a pandemic, an economy cannot be stopped in its tracks, it has to keep ticking. The economy is given precedence over everything, and this includes the environment, which is the proverbial poor cousin.
But in this bid to restart the economy, India is probably committing the same mistake all over again by making trade, business and industry a priority and putting the environment and ecological concerns on the back-burner. Unfortunately, this lopsided agenda of promoting economic development at the cost of the environment has heightened the risk of more pandemics such as the COVID-19 occurring frequently in future. In a stark but positive contrast, this aspect has been understood by the western world whose nations are quickly scrambling to cover their ecological deficiencies and environmental weak spots by ensuring that their economic development projects have a robust environmental compassion built in.
So, given these circumstances, it is natural to expect the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to get into an overdrive and release a slew of measures that would herald the safeguarding of the environment in the current, COVID- 19-stressed conditions. But this is not the case. Curiously, the Minister in charge for MoEFCC also happens to be in charge of the portfolio for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. In any other environmentally-conscious nation, this would have been perceived as a conflict of interest. But not in India. This anomaly notwithstanding, the MoEFCC recently went on a project clearance spree in 11 States.
These rapid clearances of projects in order to promote industries are proving to be a death knell for the environment. The MoEFCC, for instance, cleared a railway line in Telangana that cuts through 168 hectares of a prime forest, which also happens to be a tiger reserve. In this case, the Government could have considered an elevated track to spare the trees but this was obviously not done. The Etalin Hydropower project in Arunanchal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley is yet another example of sheer indifference towards the environment. The project entails the diversion of 1,150 hectares of forest land that will cause the felling of a whopping 2,70,000 trees.
This kind of ruin of nature cannot be justified at all, no matter what the gains are. Numerous representations from environmental activists and scientists have been able to stall the final approval of the project, but it is surprising how the project was conceived in the first place, given the scale of environmental destruction. In the midst of baffling examples such as these is yet another instance of environmental neglect. This is the proposed hydel project in Uttarakhand that involves compromising 768 acres of forest land.
The Government must realise that the environment cannot be pawned off for industrial gains. Repeated announcements of projects that threaten the environment will keep inviting representations from the environmental and scientific community to roll back these projects. Parallely, the nation will slowly but surely understand the apathy of the Government towards the environment and this will be the end of the trust people have in the Government. This kind of knee-jerk conception and approval of projects with utter disregard for the environment is detrimental to national interests and cannot be allowed to proliferate.
As a first step to stem this, the Government must ensure that the environment and heavy industries ministries are not represented by the same person. This will ensure that there is no conflict of interest and decisions taken in one Ministry will not result in collateral damage for the other. The current trying times are a great opportunity for India to reaffirm its commitment towards the environment and this must be shown through actions rather than words. This can be done only by effectively balancing the ecology with the economy.
(The writer is an environmental journalist)
