Medha Patkar's contribution

A distinguishing mark of the Modi government is the determination with which it's diluting, even scuttling, India's already-weak environmental regulation system to promote “fast-track clearances” for industries, and curtail people's access to natural resources.

That will increase environmental destruction, pollution and related illnesses, and cause economic regression, not progress. According to the World Bank, India is annually losing 5.7 percent of GDP to environmental degradation—more than its income growth. (http://www.worldbank.org/en/ news/press-release/2013/07/17/india-green-growth-necessary-and-affordable-for-india-says-new-world-bank-report)

Immediately on taking power, the Modi government changed the composition of the Expert Appraisal Committee, a specialist body to examine projects' environmental impact, and the Forest Advisory Committee, which decides on the diversion of forest land to mining and industry. It reduced the National Wildlife Board's independent experts from the mandated eight to one.

Within 100 days, these committees cleared 240 of 325 pending projects in coal-mining, roads, power-plants and oil-exploration, diverting over 7,000 hectares of forests, and sanctioning a road through the Kutch Desert Sanctuary, the sole breeding-site of flamingos. They also allowed oil and gas companies to expand capacity without environmental scrutiny.

Within 11 days of taking over, the new environment minister lifted the moratorium on industrialisation from eight “critically-polluted” clusters, including highly-poisoned Singrauli (Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh) and Vapi (Gujarat), where cancer and neurological disorders are rampant.  

His ministry allowed mid-sized coal mines to expand without a public hearing. Irrigation projects affecting a sizable 2,000 hectares will no longer require environmental clearance.

The government is trying to bypass the Forest Rights Act, which grants rights to indigenous tribes over forest lands and requires their “prior informed consent”. This is a vicious assault on some of India's poorest people.

Perhaps the worst part of this “silent war on the environment” is the just-submitted high-level committee report on amending key environmental laws. It has recommended fast-track clearances for power, mining and roads; self-certification of compliance by project-promoters (notorious for misleading/false reports); and more state-level project clearances.

The committee wants an umbrella law to create new (but weak) regulators and abolish separate air and water pollution acts. It wants administrative, not judicial, tribunals to hear appeals, and redefines “no-go” forest areas for mining.

To combat this assault, India needs a strong people's movement that fights against destructive projects, and demands popular participation in environmental decision-making which is bureaucratically-driven and captured by industry.

Nobody has made a greater contribution to building this movement than Medha Patkar who turns 60 on December 1. Patkar is best-known globally as the leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, one of the greatest ecological mobilisations anywhere. She also founded the National Alliance of People's Movements, comprising over 250 civil-political-social rights grassroots groups. 

NBA was created in 1985 to oppose the displacement of lakhs of people by the Sardar Sarovar and other giant dams on the River Narmada, and demand

their just rehabilitation. The peaceful agitation highlighted the projects' ecological, social and economic irrationality and horrendous human costs, and

led to the World Bank pulling out of Sardar Sarovar.

Patkar was maligned, physically attacked, and charged with false offences, especially by the Gujarat government. But she took the fight to the people through protests, fasts, and education campaigns, solidly backed by in-depth documentation of the projects' impact, including livelihood loss and natural resources destruction.

Patkar never lost sight of the central issue of equity: the projects would benefit the privileged, and impoverish the poor, without rehabilitation. NBA challenged their “development” claims and demanded humane alternatives.

This received support from a galaxy of activists, writers, jurists, artists, public intellectuals and scientists, and mobilised large numbers in solidarity struggles.

NBA secured assurances that the authorities wouldn't undertake further construction until there was prior, informed and just rehabilitation. This promise was comprehensively betrayed.

An integrated environmental assessment was never made for India's costliest dam. Sardar Sarovar's per-acre irrigation costs are so high that agriculture would become unviable if farmers were to pay even a fraction of the interest. Also betrayed was the promise of reliable water for parched Kutch and Saurashtra. 

Even the Supreme Court let NBA down by negating its own orders freezing construction before rehabilitation—a judicial black-mark. Yet, several studies, including one by Mumbai's Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), prove NBA was right. Even in conventional cost-benefit terms, which exclude human and environmental costs, Sardar Sarovar is a failure.

Meanwhile, NAPM has become a formidable force. It fights for the right to information, unorganised-sector workers' rights, the rights to food, social security and shelter, and decentralised development.

Patkar is active in people's struggles everywhere—against evictions in Mumbai, against Special Economic Zones, in defence of water rights, tribals' rights in Orissa, and against land acquisition in Singur-Nandigram in West Bengal.

Patkar comes from a Socialist background. Her main political grooming happened in TISS. She soon got immersed in work among tribals and peasants.

A Gandhian, Patkar represents the high noon of commitment to people's causes. She lost the last Lok Sabha election. But her contribution—to the new rehabilitation/resettlement policy under discussion, to raising equitable development issues, or to empowering millions of underprivileged people—will prove lasting.

The writer is an eminent Indian columnist.