I am not at all unhappy to see H D
Deve Gowda go. The manner in
which his coalition partner, the
Congress, turned against him is, maybe,
debatable. But his performance as a
leader who should have thought of economic development as a holistic issue,
taking environment, poverty and equity
into account - despite all his claims
of being a humble farmer - was
extremely poor and misguided.
In any democratic country, environmental concerns can get integrated with
developmental programmes only if the
leader is sensitive to them. Otherwise,
all actions of the government turn into
exercises on paper. This is because the
ministry of environment, by itself, can
do precious little to push for sustainable
development;. this is the job of all
ministries. What can the environment
ministry do if the ministry of power
insists on setting up polluting power
stations and does not incorporate within itself an environmental sensibility to
push towards ameliorative measures?
The same idea applies to the case of
vehicular air pollution which is affecting
our cities today. The ministries of
surface transport and industry must
take greater cognisance of the 'slow
murder' they are unleashing in the
name of economic development. In
institutional jargon this means that
every environmental issue is an interministerial one and, therefore, the
Cabinet and the Prime Minister (PM)
must act in concert with the ministry of
environment if the government as a
whole is to change anything.
But Deve Gowda, unlike any of his
predecessors, publicly joined the crooked
litany against environmentalists. Calling
them God's gift to earth, he described
public interest litigation as political
interest litigation. What power on earth
do environmental activists have to stop
public or private development projects?
Who responds to dharnas and fasts
in this country? The thing that has
changed is that judges in the various
High Courts and the Supreme Court
have started listening to environmentalists, recognising the fact that the
government does not care to implement
its own environment protection laws.
Why did Deve Gowda not get to the
core of this problem and dare to criticise
the honourable judges as roadblocks to
development? Politicians prefer scapegoats and easy targets. Deve Gowda also
took the easy route and sent an antienvironment message to his government and states, even as the air right
under his nose in New Delhi must have
told him that it was becoming a toxic
experience.
It is sad that political management
of environmental concerns in our country has steadily gone down over the last
decade. The first PM to take an interest
in environment was Indira Gandhi. My
impression is that she understood neither the poor people's relationship to
the environment nor sustainable development, but had a deep interest in
India's natural heritage. Under her leadership, the wildlife and water pollution
control acts were passed and forest
management was brought into the
Concurrent List of the Constitution,
giving the Centre a role in it. She also
initiated a project to protect the vanish-
ing tiger.
Her successor, Morarji Desai, had
no interest in environment. He shot to
fame only for banning export of Indian
monkeys for research abroad - which
was more of a moral issue for him rather
than an environmental one. Out of
power, Mrs Gandhi opposed the Silent
Valley hydroelectric power project.
When she returned in 1980, she set up a
department of environment and enacted the Forest Conservation and Air
Pollution Control Acts. Though never
vocal on dams, her regime coincided
with successful campaigns against the
Bedhthi hydroelectric project in
Karnataka and the Bhopalpatnam and
Inchampalli reservoirs in Andhra
Pradesh. Even a few hectares of forest
land being transferred for non-forest
purposes needed her approval and state
politicians, fully aware of her interest
and views on the subject, were scared to
approach her.
Rajiv Gandhi was India's first PM
with a deep interest in sustainable development. The Environment Protection
Act was enacted in his tenure. He also
upgraded the department of environment to a ministry which he himself
headed for some time, pushed for
greater expenditure on environmental
regeneration in rural employment programmes, made environmental education a component of the new education
policy, started the Ganga Action Plan,
and proposed a massive afforestation
effort and agroecological planning for
Indian agriculture. For the first time,
the prime ministerial effort was multidimensional. But as his prime ministership ran into trouble, the lack 6f will in
other parts of the political and bureaucratic systems meant that many programmes he had launched began to run
into trouble. He himself succumbed to
political pressures from Gujarat on the
Narmada dam even as he expressed
deep personal dissatisfaction with megaprojects. But he was clear that he could
not do much in this area unless he got
adequate support from the political system and the people. However, his choice
of Bhajan Lal as a cabinet-level environment minister sent out a wrong signal.
V P Singh, the first PM to downgrade
environmental management to the level
of a minister of state, was the next to
hold the office Singh brought in a person with an expressed interest in environment: Maneka Gandhi. But he soon got tired of her overzealousness for animals and brought in a
cabinet minister with the sole intention of spiking her.
Ms Gandhi also exacerbated events by her lack of vision of a
pragmatic and feasible strategy for environmentally-sound
development.
P V Narasimha Rao, Singh's successor, kept the environment portfolio at the level of a minister of state but gave
Kamal Nath considerable freedom to organise activities, both
nationally and internationally. Nath had a very limited understanding of environmental issues when he became minister,
but he picked them up fast. He, however, concentrated more
on global environmental issues which were then becoming hot
and put up a lacklustre performance on national environmental problems. Narasimha Rao himself intervened only once to set up a department of wastelands development in a bid to
kick-start the afforestation effort that had begun to wane in
the latter years of Rajiv. Just prior to that, he had told the
Indian delegation to the Rio conference that he was sorry that
while India was vocal abroad, little was being done within the
country itself.
Deve Gowda, who followed Rao, also placed a junior
minister in charge of environment - a person who had no clue
about the subject till he got into the position. The PM obviously
did not display any interest in his choice of the individual he
wanted for dealing with environmental problems. However, I P
Nishad, the minister, was replaced just as he was getting a hold
of the environmental issues, by another politician at the cabinet level - not because this person had greater knowledge of
environment or that this position needed political elevation
bemuse of its importance, but simply because of political compulsions to accommodate another constituent party in the coalition. Even the dream budget Gowda's government presented
revealed no effort to balance the hazards that economic growth
could bring for the people and their environment. Deve Gowda
and his finance minister's message was clear. First let us start
destroying at a faster rate in the delusion of growing wealthier,
and then we will take care of the branch we are sitting on.
We are back to square one now, waiting for another political
manager for India's environment to drop from heaven - even
as the nation's rivers and urban air become full of poisons, land
degradation and deforestation threaten food security and
people's survival, wildlife and biodiversity disappear and
industrialisation poses more and more hazards. Without a sensitive PM, there is little likelihood we will ever get a good one.
That is why I am happy to say goodbye at least to Mr Gowda.
We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.
Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition.