Politics pollutes the environment

Indian Express, Aug 29, 2010
Tavleen Singh
For fear of an onslaught by lunatic fringe environmentalists, I begin with a prologue. I am a fanatical environmentalist. I remember with deep nostalgia India’s rivers when they were clean and Delhi’s air so clear that at night you could count the stars. I remember when tigers wandered about thefarms my cousins had in the ‘terai’ of Uttar Pradesh. When INTACH began its campaign to clean the Ganga in 1985, I, who write for a living, wrote an action plan of more than 30,000 words for free. And, I wept when Rajiv Gandhi made the project governmental and killed it. I long to see real environmental movements that would clean our rivers, save our forests and give our children clean air to breathe. This is why I think of fake environmentalists as criminals and fake environmental concerns as a crime against India.

In the Niyamgiri hills, this is what could be happening and for Rahul Gandhi to go there last week and speak of the clash between ‘rich India’ and ‘poor India’ is most disturbing.
If Vedanta succeeded in making aluminum close to a bauxite source, as it had planned in Orissa, world prices of aluminum could have fallen by half and India may have become an important aluminum producer. So, was it the powerful international aluminum lobby that persuaded idle socialites from London and New York to take up the fight against Vedanta? It is a question worth investigating. Assomeone who has actually been to Kalahandi, I would like to state clearly that the Adivasis live in such horrible poverty and deprivation that such exalted ideas as cultural heritage are irrelevant. In 1987, when I visited remote Kalahandi villages, there was a drought and the single crop had failed. I saw children dying slowly of hunger on the mud floors of bare huts. They had eaten nothing but birdseed for six months. If Vedanta had succeeded in bringing schools, hospitals and employment to Kalahandi, it would have transformed the bleak, hopeless lives of those who live here. It is a shame that this has been prevented by an Environment Minister whose concerns may be genuine but who appears to be in the clutches of some very dubious NGOs. He keeps forgetting that in 2010, development is not necessarily the enemy of the environment. This is how it used to be in bad, old socialist times when it was mostly government factories that poisoned our air and polluted our rivers. Private industry found it harder to break the rules because of the inspector raj. Today a company like Vedanta is forced to do everything in the full glare of international publicity. If it does not replace the trees it cuts, if it does not ensure that local people are paid well for the land they sell, if the promised schools and hospitals do not get built,Vedanata will be vilified in the forums of the world.

If Jairam Ramesh is genuinely concerned about preserving the environment, he needs to begin by ensuring that India does not make the same mistakes that other countries did when they were developing. Since he appears to be fervently concerned, why has this not already happened? Why do we not have clear guidelines about what can and cannot be done? What should planners keep in mind when they plan an airport, a railway station, a port or a road? What should planners keep in mind when they build a city? What should companies like Vedanta keep in mind when they decide to build a factory in an area full of forests and primitive tribes? Once there are clear guidelines it will become easier to put a systemof environmental clearances in place and make it a rule that if anyone stops a major project once it is cleared they will be locked up and the key thrown away.
As an ardent environmentalist, I have paid close attention to NGOs who operate in the name of the environment and have to sadly report that 99 per cent of the ones I have run into are fakes whose main ‘environmental’ concern is seeing their mugs on prime time. It is frightening that people like this have so much power not just over the Governmentof India but over the man who would be Prime Minister. When Rahul Gandhi said last week to the Adivasis of Niyamgiri that he was their ‘sipahi’ in Delhi, what exactly did he mean? Did he mean that he thinks they have a standard of living that he will help them preserve? Did he mean that he wants them to remain backward and primitive? He needs to explain because as someone more likely to be Prime Minister of this country than anyone else we need to know what his dream is for India.
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