People come before ‘Gadgil’ or ‘Kasturirangan’ do
This is, as they all say, is the last weekend before the ‘acche din aane wale hain’ the leitmotif of the Narendra Modi rule of swaraj and vikas (rule of the people and development). The country is in a complete stupor at the stunning mandate for good governance. While there can be no argument against numbers of this kind with large parts of Goa in sync with the national sentiment, some crucial red flags need to be raised to ensure that swaraj and vikas are harmonious co-travellers in the path to progress.
In very few states in the country is this balance on the edge. In very few sates in this country, is this balance so critical to both arms – economy and environment. In very few sates in this country, is it an issue of survival, yes of life and death.
But it’s not an even battle, because Goa’s fundamental economic crisis as a direct result of the mining closure has put the onus on economic revival at a pace that is bound to outstrip the concerns of environment. Here the goalposts have shifted. From an even chance to both, the issue of economic survival and livelihoods and the tool to ensure that – investment, is dominant. It is this vikas – inarguably important, which will face strong challenges from Goa that wants preservations of lands, forests, beaches and ecology. This is a quintessential dilemma but never in Goa’s history has the need been greater to strike the right balance than now because we don’t have the luxury of letting the scales tip either way.
The first challenge to this balance has already come in the nature of the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports with environmentalists and the states taking hard positions. Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has rejected the Gadgil report on the Western Ghats as well as the High Level Working Group report, made under the leadership of former ISRO boss K Kasturirangan.
While the Gadgil report recommends stopping large scale economic activity and mining in the region, the High Level Working Group (HLWG) better known as the Kasturirangan report, opens up two thirds of the region for exploitation, at the same time recommending strict conservation in the remaining third of the Western Ghats region.
In a touch of supreme irony both Parrikar and Claude Alvares, the man who has single handedly stopped mining in Goa through his Supreme Court petition have opposed the Kasturirangan report, the former saying the report would mean an end to all economic activity and the later saying that the report opens up a large area for “exploitation”
Parrikar said “The report tends to convert 40 percent of Goa into eco-sensitive zone and takes away right of the state government to rule these areas”. He said that entire mining industry will have to be shut down, if the report is implemented.
Alvares on the other hand said “It means that Kasturirangan has fixed the entire future of the western ghats without any concern for ecology while referring to only 37% of the ecology sensitive area,” he said. Alvares was obviously using the Madhav Gadgil report, the precursor of Kasturirangan, which recommended 90% of the Western Ghats as a no go area.
The battle over the implementation of these reports will mark the next phase of attrition between the government along with the mining sector which is literally on its last throes and these reports will effectively pull the plug on its survival, and those proponents who want the Gagdil report with its extremities and the Kasturirangan report to be further tightened to accept the entire Western Ghats as an effective No Development Zone.
If a balance, as we argue, fails to come about, this will no longer be a Industry(big money) versus Environment issue. It could unfortunately turn into an environment versus people issue. An extract from the last issue of Peoples Democracy the weekly of the CPI(M) gives a detached view not influenced specifically by Goa’s current conflicts
P Krishnaprasad writes in People’s Democacy “The MoEF did not even consider the crucial aspect of whether the HLWG had addressed the concerns raised by the local people. It hastily initiated steps to implement the HLWG ( Kasturirangan) recommendations and declared 4,156 villages in six States (99 in Goa, 64 in Gujarat, 1576 in Karnataka, 123 in Kerala, 2159 in Maharashtra and 135 in Tamil Nadu) as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA). The intention was to impose the Indian Environment (Protection) Act on all these villages. This bureaucratic step invited widespread resistance and protest actions from the local population, which are still continuing”
The Goa government and its friendly Modi government has an unenviable task. But common gut level logic tells us that above all, in a democracy people come first.
