Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Losing the Environment
India's environment is at the centre of the debate over liberalization and the future of In-
dia's economic growth, and it is in a no-win situation. On the one hand, mountains and
hills, forests and rivers have been plundered by mining that is often illegal, and by other
industrial and commercial activities that have laid to waste much of India's natural herit-
age, causing social upheaval and irreparable damage. Sometimes there is loss of life, as
was seen in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in 2013 when devastating floods led to
industrial, mining and highway projects and creating procedural blockages that slow down
essential investment and development.
Environmentalists see the debate in terms of protecting forests, rivers and wildlife, and
they worry that they are losing the battle, which indeed they are. Businessmen, almost
without exception, see the environment as something that has to give way to allow invest-
ments and development to go ahead. They grumble that projects are being held up while
those who are well connected bribe politicians and officials to let their projects through -
though the environment ministry claims that the vast majority of proposals are sanctioned.
Politicians usually back the growth story and are often involved at both the national and
state level in trying to undermine the environmentalists, either by revising regulations, as
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying to do since 2004, or by circumventing
them and accepting bribes for doing so.
Tribal communities, who occupy potentially lucrative forests and mountains, complicate
the issue. There are about 96m Adivasis in India, belonging to various 'scheduled tribes'
in relatively remote regions that were inaccessible until the mid-1900s when they were pen-
etrated by mining companies and others that did not have a good record of caring for the
interests of those they displaced. Since then, huge sums have been spent in trying to bring
these tribal communities into the mainstream, for the most part unsuccessfully. Tribals are
also seen as a potential vote bank by politicians including Sonia Gandhi and her advisers.
The threat to peace and security posed by Maoist Naxalite rebels is linked with this because
they thrive in remote areas inhabited by tribal communities and where the environment is
threatened by illicit mining and similar activities.
Put bluntly, the poor will remain poor and India will not meet its economic potential un-
less some forests are cut down, some mountains and rivers are mined, some tribal people
