Prime Minister Narendra Modi has focused on the water crisisfacing the nation in his first Mann Ki Baat of the post-election season. Thisis not a model that the BJP necessarily built though it is a model that Modi asthe Chief Minister of Gujarat has comfortably used to benefit big business andto the detriment of the environment. At the national level, it has flourishedunder the Congress at the Centre when the voice of business became louder andmore demanding than many other voices after liberalisation, and led eventuallyto the mayhem caused by monumental corruption under Dr. Manmohan Singh. It wasthe UPA government that removed its minister for the environment Jairam Rameshin the face of criticism that the ministry under him was becoming toofastidious about environmental clearances. Ramesh, who lasted 26 months in the environment ministry, is quoted hashaving said last year: “If I had not taken the decisions that I took, I wouldhave lasted 60 months.”
This is then a national trap of lopsided development, andescaping from it won’t be easy. If anything, the government has already falleninto it and it was Ramesh’s turn to tell the Minister for Environment, Forestand Climate Change Prakash Javdekar, just a few days before the Prime Ministerspoke, that he must stand up for environmental laws and not seek credit forclearing projects. Yet, today no one is better placed than this government,fresh with a huge mandate, to explore alternatives and to seek a new path toinnovation and growth. This may not be aradically different path but even small directional changes (like stricterenforcement of the laws of the land) will mean a lot in the long run and can set the stage for a greeneconomy. This will still be a version ofgreen capitalism, but that, too, will be better than the place we are in –drilling, mining, concretising and depleting our water resources recklessly.
On the one side is intense usage of water for crops likesugarcane in Maharashtra, the acreage growing as it is linked to the politicalmuscle of sugar cooperatives in the powerfully connected Western region of theState. The agriculture sector accounts for over 85 per cent of total waterconsumption in the country, with usage that is considered highly inefficientand with reported wastage of up to 30 per cent and more in irrigation systems.Then there is the example of “development” of the kind seen in”India’s first private city” near Pune called Lavasa, diverting water, takingover tribal land and lifestyles and bringing artificially-constructed lake-sidebeauty to residents migrating in – the project has since filed for insolvencyunder the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). Or people running short ofwater while construction magnates, already subsidised by the financial system,building swimming pools into overpriced residential complexes with funny names.And on the other hand there is the continued pressure from business leaders whowant to expand and set up projects but see environment laws as a hurdle thatmust be somehow crossed. Industry and the energy sector account for less than 5per cent of water usage but some of the damage left behind, particularly whenregulatory systems are weak, can be very long lasting.
Issues of the environment, of rights of the local residents,respect for due process, respect for local needs and sensitivities, indeed oflocal flora and fauna, then come to be sacrificed at the altar of what passesoff as development. Violence, often with State cooperation, is a common falloutand the State becomes one with the cronies who can take on exploitative rolesin the name of growth of the economy. Asthe nation receives the Union budget, there are already groups asking thegovernment for “relief” at a time the economy is doing badly. One prominent demand came in from theChairman of Vedanta Resources Anil Agarwal, who after a meeting at the NITIAayog, was quoted by PTI as saying mining in 200 blocks should be approvedimmediately and big blocks of coal, bauxite, copper and iron ore should beauctioned, with no production cap such as ones existing in Goa and Karnataka oniron ore. The scrap merchant turned billionaire tycoon in metals said allforest and environment clearances should come in 60 days and corporate taxshould be reduced to 20 per cent from the current 30 per cent. Clearances in 60days are fine but what about the violators? Should they not be jailed in 60days and projects taken away from their control?
This idea of lopsided development is tempting only if theGDP number is all, no matter the cost – the model that is seen as failingaround the world. Instead, a new and sharper focus on environment protection,with the ministry making its processes even more robust, transparent andspeedy, with stiff penalties and heavy barricades for violators, is the onlyway to change course and nudge for a greener form of development. That would be the least required in thesetimes.
The direction and energy for this change must come as muchfrom the ideals of Gandhi-ji whose words ring loud today (The earth, the air,the land and the water are not an inheritance from our fore fathers but on loanfrom our children. So we have to handover to them at least as it was handedover to us) as it must come from shifts in the economy that tell us yesterday’smodels are spent and will soon be discarded. It will mean drawing on nativewisdom that helped build the water tank in Porbunder that still stands behindMahatma Gandhi’s house 200 years later and harvests rain water, as the PrimeMinister said in his Mann Ki Baat. It is a part of the UN SustainableDevelopment Goals (SGDs), notable SDG6, or the “water goal”, which is socritical that it “does not only aim for sustainable water management across theglobe, it also underpins many other SDGs; meeting SDG 6 would go a long waytowards achieving much of the 2030 SDG agenda.” This is the deep interconnectednessof water to everything else. While all systems are very complex andinterconnected (that is the nature of systems), water is the critical threadthat runs through all the parts and gives life and sustenance. In that sense,water is more precious than GDP.
(The writer is a journalist and a faculty member at SPJIMR.Views are personal) (Syndicate: The Billion Press)