So the National Green Tribunal has decided that spiritual Guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar can preside over the three-day World Culture Festival after his outfit pays an "environmental compensation" of Rs five crore. The Art of Living is organizing a mammoth World Culture Festival on the banks of river Yamuna in Delhi which might see more than 3.5 million people congregating on the river bank. The day that the NGT passed the order, a bench of the Delhi High Court said that the event is akin to an ecological disaster. Inevitably, politics and politicians have jumped into the fray. Modi baiters have trolled him and his regime for using army jawans as manual labor working for a private function. More pyrotechnics would have definitely come if Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his storm troopers had publicly opposed the jamboree. But then, Kejriwal himself is a confirmed invitee and it was also revealed that his government had sought army assistance to build pontoon bridges for the event.
But let's leave political grandstanding and entertainment aside. The issue here is: how seriously does India tackle environmental concerns and what role have bodies like the NGT played in the process? The NGT came into being in 2010 and seems to have a broad mandate to ensure environment protection laws are implemented effectively and that the environment is effectively protected. Since its inception, it has been a fairly active body grabbing frequent headlines. But the sad reality is that its orders often appear whimsical, or dictatorial or seem to fly in the face of logic.
For instance, the NGT banned all sand mining in Uttar Pradesh. This was around the time IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal had her unwanted 15 minutes of fame when the Akhilesh Yadav government suspended her for allegedly "taking on the sand mafia". The NGT ban on sand mining drew applause from "activists". But basic economics and common sense would tell you that the ban would not work. Construction work needs sand and ban or not, it is going to be mined. In fact, a ban of this nature encourages the "sand mafia" just as a ban on gold imports created the then Bombay Mafia. Far better would have been a transparent regulatory process where sand mining permits were auctioned.
The NGT delivered another "shocker" in 2013. In September, it ordered that fifty-five odd housing projects coming up in Noida must stop construction as they fell in the 10 kilometers radius around the "sensitive" Okhla bird sanctuary. More than 70,000 middle class citizens who had invested in flats in these housing societies did not know what hit them. One month later the NGT ordered the Noida authority to refuse possession certificates to another 20,000 houses as they also posed a threat to the Ohkla bird sanctuary. Mercifully, subsequent interventions by other institutions have provided relief to these middle class home buyers.
The Rohtang pass, near Kulu-Manali is a favorite destination for tourists. Without doubt, excessive in flow of tourists and their callous behavior in dumping plastic packets and bottles posed an environmental hazard. The NGT entered the fray in 2015 and banned every eatery and every other commercial establishment along the entire 100 kilometer stretch. Locals who earned a livelihood there were shell shocked by this overkill. Then again, the NGT had decreed that street food vendors and rickshaw pullers must be banned from the streets of Delhi. The author thinks such orders definitely border on the whimsical.
That brings us to the term "Jayanti Tax" which was used extensively by Narendra Modi during the 2014 election campaign. Basically, it was an allegation that the UPA regime was using environmental laws to indulge in rampant corruption. It just so happened that Jayanti Natarajan was environment minister in the UPA regime for some time. But the roots of "Jayanti Tax" go back to 1991, the year in which India abolished industrial licensing. Till 1991, industrial licensing was the primary source of extracting under the table money from businessmen and industrial houses. Thanks to P. V. Narashima Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh, this source of corruption vanished. The same year, Congress leader Kamal Nath was given independent charge of a relatively new and hitherto ignored ministry of environment and forests. He was a high profile environment minister. Talk to any businessman and you will get to hear tales of how the "license-permit" raj has since been replaced by the "environment protection raj. The fact is that environment protection laws have given too much discretionary power to governments and government functionaries. And wherever there is discretionary power, corruption is not far away.
Truly, the more the things change, the more they remain the same!
