Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
vironmental organization. He held public consultations in seven cities that were attended
by about 8,000 people including farmers, scientists and activists, and in February 2010 an-
nounced an indefinite moratorium till studies established BT brinjal's safety and long-term
impact on human health and the environment. He cited a lack of scientific consensus on
its safety along with opposition from ten state governments and the lack of an independent
biotechnology regulatory authority.
All this led to immense pressure from opponents who included, to varying degrees, the
prime minister, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and other government ministers. Ramesh gradu-
ally had to give way on many of the coal mining 'no go' areas and other projects, though
he usually often claimed - for example, on Lavasa - that he had ensured that regulations
were followed or environmentally improved. He compromised with Patel on a new airport
for Mumbai, claiming he had achieved 80 per cent of what he wanted. But he also admitted
that he felt 'guilty' for succumbing to pressure to breach regulations in some cases. 'Un-
fortunately, many times I am forced to regularise. Because I have no option, because one
refinery has been built... a steel plant has been built. So I am guilty in some cases of having
actually condoned many environmental violations,' he said at a management conference in
May 2011.
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Around the same time, despite knowing about inadequate relief and rehabilitation work,
he gave conditional clearance to a 400MW hydroelectric project in Madhya Pradesh, at
Maheshwar, which was part of a highly controversial engineering scheme on the Narmada,
one of India's largest rivers. This followed intervention by the prime minister's office,
which led Ramesh to say he had 'no option but to agree to lifting the stop-work order on the
construction of the last five spillway gates'. He told the media that, even though he knew
that regulations had been violated, he had to refuse to reverse clearances on various power
other environmental groups had earlier accused Tata, which was in a 50-50 joint venture
with Larsen & Toubro (L&T), a large Indian construction company, of starting construction
without obtaining adequate environmental clearances and without honouring commitments
made by Ratan Tata, the company's chairman.
14
Two months after making the remarks about being forced to approve projects, Ramesh
were the angry businessmen whose projects had been hit and who were not used to dealing
with an environment minister who could not be bought. Experts had become bewildered
and there was despair among environmentalists about his style and lack of consistency.
16
'He was like the curate's egg,' says Bittu Sahgal, editor of
Sanctuary Asia
, India's leading
wildlife magazine, using an English expression that means, depending on one's interpreta-
tion, 'bad, but I won't say so', or 'bad and good in parts'.
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