Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 6, 2010
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/301432/Green-fundamentalism-as-state-oppression.html
Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar
is, arguably, one of the most resourceful figures of contemporary India with
interests that range from politics and business to cricket. To admirers he
is the very personification of business-friendly pragmatism, carrying with
him the reputation for getting things done. To sceptics, however, Pawar is
synonymous with amoral deal-cutting and calculated expediency - the epitome
of the go-getting ruthlessness that has come to define both Mumbai and Indian
capitalism.
Pawar's colleague in the UPA Government Jairam
Ramesh sets a very different trend. A wordsmith with a penchant for witty
one-liners, he has won admiration in a remarkably short time for his ability
to grasp issues and challenge conventional thinking. A far cry from the fuddy-duddy
politician, Ramesh is the bridge linking Mrs Indira Gandhi's vengeful populism
with Sonia Gandhi's more calibrated, but no less self-serving, paternalism.
Since assuming charge as Environment Minister,
Ramesh has consciously kept himself in the news. On the plus side he has energised
wildlife protection and sought to put some order into India's neglected national
parks and animal sanctuaries. But these have been overshadowed by the controversies
over his attempt to close the gap between India's environment policies and
the path being advocated by the West, notably the European Union. His unilateral
declaration, just prior to last year's Copenhagen summit on Climate Change,
of reducing carbon gas emission by 20 per cent by 2020, was been attacked
by many as "lacking due diligence". There are now fears that at
Cancun he may commit India to an international inspection regime without securing
anything tangible in return - apart, possibly, from a career in the global
seminar circuit when he ceases to be Minister.
The charge of playing to the activists' gallery
has, ironically, spurred Ramesh to don the Al Gore mantle more energetically.
In the past few months, Indian business and State Governments have been devastated
by the single-mindedness with which he has used his discretionary powers to
stop big-ticket projects. He has been particularly savage in using the Green
veto against Odisha. But he was more accommodating with State Governments
in which the Congress has a stake, prompting charges that environmental laws
are being used as a variant of the licence-permit-quota raj.
A clash between the forces that Pawar relates
to and those who play cheerleaders for Ramesh was imminent. Pawar has reposed
faith in a market-driven growth that, it must be said, also suffers from familiar
distortions; Ramesh, on his part, champions an interventionist state, apparently
committed to checking the distortions resulting from rapid growth.
Ideally, the clash should have come a few
months earlier when Ramesh put a spanner in the works of Vedanta and Posco
in Odisha, one of India's most backward States. Unfortunately, Chief Minister
Naveen Patnaik decided that quiet lobbying, the good sense of the Prime Minister
and the judicial process were better alternatives to a direct clash with the
Centre. The Odisha challenge would have triggered an overdue debate on the
conflict between growth and Green fundamentalism, and the right of the Centre
to dictate to the States. Tragically, the opportunity was missed.
Pawar's protest against the stay on all work
and the restoration of status quo ante in the Lavasa hill station located
in the Baramati parliamentary constituency has been seen in a narrow political
light: As a constituency compulsion and a defence of its promoter Ajit Gulabchand
of Hindustan Construction Company. Indeed, Pawar has readily conceded that
he conceived the spectacular township after a trip to the English Lake district.
Additionally, his daughter was among the original promoters, till she sold
her stake in 2004.
Equally, the sub-text of Ramesh's stay order
has been read as a bid to 'fix' Pawar and ingratiate himself with the likes
of Medha Patkar and Anna Hazare - activists who are to the Sonia Congress
what Left intellectuals were to the Indira Congress. In short, the battle
is widely perceived to be political and not really centred on the protection
of the environment.
It is for, example, revealing that Ramesh's
ex parte order is based on Lavasa not getting certain clearances from the
Centre. In its reply, Lavasa Corporation, apart from listing the 25 different
clearances from different authorities it has already secured, says that it
has secured the necessary permission from the Maharashtra Government. It claims
that as per law it does not need a clearance from New Delhi. Ramesh's Ministry
has thought otherwise and peremptorily imposed a stay without even a hearing.
The stay was carefully timed to disrupt Lavasa's Rs 20 billion IPO scheduled
for this month.
Whether Ramesh is personally culpable for
his draconian order that demands the demolition of an entire town, the unemployment
of 8,000 workers and the dispossession of 1,600 house owners, is for the courts
to decide. What is important to note is the potential havoc an Environment
Minister can wreak with his apparent discretionary powers. And it was done
on the strength of a dispute over the jurisdiction of the State and Union
Government - a babu problem, not a Green issue.
Indian environmentalism under Ramesh is fast
turning into state oppression. Too many people have tolerated his flights
of whimsy silently. Maybe it needed Pawar's buccaneering endorsement to create
the confidence to challenge a Minister who has convinced everyone that he
is just a proxy for the heir apparent.
