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E n v i r o nme n t a l g o v e r n a n c e i n I n d i a : T h e c h a l l e n g e o f mu l t i p l e t r a n s i t i o n s maybe take 20 to 30 years to spend itself before a natural process of social aggregation lays the basis for the rise once more of a few dominant political parties. Urgency and balance No one can get away with the empty promise made to Oliver Twist of ‘jam tomorrow’. Yet few seem to recognise that time is a most precious but wasting resource. Critics or busybodies, as many of them are, demand more and still more time for ‘democratic’ consultation and review in the market place instead of getting on smartly with the job through due constitutional process. The nation needs to add ten million jobs per annum, or 100 million jobs over the next decade, just to keep pace with the annual growth in the labour force commensurate with population increase. That is a stupendous task by any yardstick, anywhere. Where are these jobs to come from? National Sample Survey studies indicate dwindling numbers among mainline farmers. Marginal farmers are leasing in land where they can to make up more economic holdings, or selling their land and, with the landless, migrating to the big city in search of gainful employment. Studies done around the time of the Singur-Nano controversy in Bengal suggested that the first priority from sale of land was education of the children to give them a better chance in life and, thereafter, investment in self-employment. A small-scale industrial sector is not going to be enough to stimulate and sustain high growth and exports so essential to generate the wherewithal to invest in uplifting the poor and alleviating poverty. For this the country needs to expand and upgrade its limited, creaking infrastructure – the railways, highways, power plants, ports, telecommunications, irrigation systems, cities, water supply and sanitation systems, and educational and health facilities. This in turn is going to require further and more efficient exploitation of natural resources such as land, water, minerals and forests, while not ignoring the need for conservation and sustainability. The key consideration here is balance. Poverty has been the worst polluter. Land Like all development since the beginning of time, this requires changing land use patterns through land acquisition. With colonial principles of eminent domain yielding to participative development, resident communities legitimately claim stakeholder rights apart from fair, even generous, compensation and resettlement for involuntary displacement. India has been on a learning curve in these matters and past default cannot be reason to veto ongoing and future development through stubborn defiance or insistence on totally unreasonable demands. It is routine to hear demands of land-for-land as compensation. There is less and less land available or, in some cases, none at all. Equally, people increasingly want to get off the land to better their economic and cultural lives. Yet the cry remains ‘land for land’ which, translated, means imprisoning people in a past from which they seek escape and emancipation. It is as sad to see project clearance all too often become a long drawn out battle with final approval taking five, six, eight or ten years to obtain after second thoughts, litigation, retrospective application of regulatory laws, delays in framing of rules, violent protests, divergent interpretation of agreements, much back and forth on safety and impacts, consequent project reviews and so forth. The giant 12 million tonne POSCO steel project, with mines, transport links and a captive port to be built with South Korean collaboration in Orissa, has been pending for years on grounds of displacement, compensation, and scepticism about local employment and ancillary arrangements. Land acquisition for it has just been completed, after eight years! Costs have meanwhile multiplied and benefits postponed. Who gains? In the case of the twin Vedanta bauxite mine-cum-alumina project, continued production at the current one-million tonne alumina plant at Lanjigarh, Orissa, is threatened by delayed clearances for bauxite supply even as the licence to mine bauxite at the nearby Niyamgiri site has been cancelled. Energy There has always been an anti-nuclear and nuclear power lobby in India. Following the tsunami that damaged the Fukushima power plant in Japan in 2011, local protestors, joined by ideologues, have continued their highly emotional agitation with reinforced zeal against the Kudankulum project, being built with Russian collaboration. Plant failure in tsunami-like situations, possible radiation leaks, loss of livelihoods, damage to fisheries by discharge into the ocean of return coolant water outflows at temperatures of up to seven degrees Celsius, and less than generous R&R have been variously pleaded. These fears and allegations have been carefully examined and answered, and safety and monitoring regulations have been tightened. Comparisons with Fukishima have been shown to be mistaken. Yet the agitation has long continued, delaying commissioning of the first of four 1,000 MW units by over a year in a powerstarved state like Tamil Nadu. Fortunately, the project has moved forward and Kudankulam power will shortly feed into the grid. Displacement caused by development, especially dams, is constantly cited. Yet who knows that 30 to 40 million distress migrants, families included, tramp the country annually in search of any seasonal work they can find for lack of development. Project displaced persons benefit from planned R&R. But distress migrants get nothing. They are ‘nowhere people’ without civic rights left to fend for themselves, human flotsam and jetsam. Who cares? Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 121


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