Out of a total 329 million hectares of land in India, the Ministry of Environment and Forests oversees, in one way or another, 306 million hectares, about 93% of the country. Further, with a mandate to safeguard water, monitor pollution and to balance economic growth with environmental conservation, the ministry’s policies regularly affect the country’s entire population. The ministry is more important than ever. India's burgeoning economy – and population – has come with a corresponding rise in pollution. But with humans increasingly moving further into rural and forested areas, the ministry’s regulations have also become increasingly difficult to carry out. For decades, many Indians perceived the Ministry of Environment and Forests as a rubber stamp for industry. That perception largely changed during Jairam Ramesh's tenure. Today, observers on all sides of India's ideological spectrum see the ministry as newly strengthened and an important check on India’s ultra-fast development and growth.
The presence of the word ‘environment’ in the ministry’s title underlines a relatively new focus. The colonial and post-Independence bodies overseeing India’s forests, reflected their era. As in the rest of the world, pollution, conservation, sustainability are relatively modern concepts.
Under the colonial setup, after all, the authorities in charge of the subcontinent’s vast forestlands and rural areas were concerned primarily with the extraction and monetization of natural resources – the primary reason that the British were present in India in the first place. As such, much of the oversight, such as it were, over the Subcontinent’s forests for the first few centuries of colonial control were handled through the East India Company, the mercantile body overseeing much of South Asia under the British.
Even after the British left the subcontinent, however, it took decades for the new Indian government to establish a formal body to deal with the ills of environmental degradation and pollution. The Department of Environment was set up only in 1980, and it took another five years for this to be upgraded to a full-fledged Ministry of Environment and Forests. Like all new nations, post-Independence India overwhelmingly focused on economic and social development. Like other governments, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's attendance at the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, in 1972, corresponded with first pro-environment policies. That same year India's passed its first wildlife-protection legislation.
Still, for years after the creation of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, many saw the body as ineffectual. While some pro-industry critics saw its regulatory functions as an unnecessary obstacle to the country’s growth, many others felt that the ministry was functioning as little more than a rubber stamp. Only very recently, under the ministership of Jairam Ramesh (2009-11), that observers believe the ministry grew some teeth. During his tenure, Ramesh blocked several massive, high-profile projects, based on environmental concerns; he also instituted national policies that won wide plaudits from environmentalists while pitting him against industrialists and even, at times, his own Congress party.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests oversees and protects India’s vast forestlands, watersheds, biodiversity and any other areas that fall outside of what are legally considered settled or agricultural lands. Its legal mandate includes the cataloguing and conservation of flora and fauna, the control of pollution, and the regeneration of deforested and otherwise degraded areas. It also functions as a first point of contact for a broad spectrum of international and multilateral agencies and agreements dealing with issues of the environment or pollution. The Ministry of Environment and Forests says it is guided by two overarching concerns, sustainability and enhancing human well-being – pursuits that have led to decades of debate over how to balance the latter with the former.
Attached Bodies or Autonomous Bodies
Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education: The council is India's preeminent body for forestry-related knowledge, including both research and widespread education components. It is made up of eight established research institutes, accompanied by three additional advanced centers that focus on the specific needs and ground realities of local micro-climates and biological zones. The council is also consults with the 14 state and five general universities that offer programs in forestry.
Central Pollution Control Board: CPCB was created in 1974 and receives the majority of its powers under two pieces of legislation, one dealing with water-related and one with air-related pollution. It now engages in routine surveillance and monitoring of related issues, with a special focus on automobile-related pollution, while also providing technical support and data for the ministry.
Central Zoo Authority: Constituted in 1992, the Central Zoo Authority is required to check and license all of the country’s zoos as well as its traveling circuses. Thus far, it has inspected around 350 zoos around the country, licensing 164 and refusing to recognize 183.
G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development: Set up in 1988, the G B Pant Institute focuses primarily on identifying sustainable management strategies for the area officially known as the Indian Himalayan Region.
The ministry's growing budget reflects India's increasing emphasis on environmental sustainability and pro environment policymaking in recent years. (The increases haven't satisfied most environmental activists, however, who remain critical of the government.) Most recently, the 2011-12 Union budget increased the Ministry of Environment's coffers by just Rs. 100 crore ($18.27 million USD), although this followed on a relative surge in the ministry’s budget in recent years.
Under this budget, a significant amount – around Rs. 200 crore ($36.54 million USD) – was earmarked for the cleaning of India’s notoriously polluted rivers and lakes (other than the Ganga clean-up, which was covered under previous programs); another Rs. 400 crore ($73.09 million USD) was to be used for the additional protection and remediation of the country’s forests. Another Rs. 200 crore ($36.54 million USD) is to be used to try to act as a catalyst to an initiative called the Green India Mission, started in 2010-11, which plans to improve 5 million hectares of degraded forest and cover another 5 million hectares of currently denuded land with forest within the decade (though this program has yet to begin functioning). For the most part, the ministry’s budget is split relatively evenly between environment- and wildlife-related programs and regulatory activities.
A Raja's Other Scandal
To most observers, A Raja's most notorious scandal is the 2G Spectrum Scam, but other accusations are still unsettled from his tenure as Environment Minister between 2004 and 2009 disgraced former Telecom Minister A Raja gave out nearly 170 unfounded clearances to mines in Goa during his tenure as environment minister. These alleged giveaways have fueled years of suspicion by activists that the ministry was being kept purposefully toothless to benefit industry. While the newly aggressive ministry has recently invited criticism for being anti-industry, environmentalists say the licenses already granted in Goa will permanently harm a sensitive eco-system.
Raja Link Emerges In Goa CM Kamat’s Mining Scam (by Raman Kirpal, Firstpost)
Raja Again: Gave Green Nod To 169 Mines In Goa (by Snehal Rebello And Ketaki Ghoge, Hindustan Times)
Saving Narmada
One of India's most controversial dams, the Narmada project involves construction of 3200 large, medium and small dams across the River Narmada. The Narmada flows through three states: Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Sardar Sarovar Dam is the largest dam on the River. Saving Narmada Movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan) is leading a protest against the construction of Sardar Sarovar project and other projects on River Narmada. The activists have claimed that the project will displace more than 200,000 people and permanently alter the region's ecology. Work on the project stopped in 1994 when the World Bank and other international financial institutions withdrew. The Supreme Court of India gave a go ahead to the project in year 2000 with the dam height of 90 meters, against the initially proposed height of 140 meters. After completing 90 meters, the developers sought permission to increase the dam height and raised it to 100 meters. The additional increase of height met with huge protests from Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Understanding the Narmada Controversy (by Dinkar Shukla, Press Information Bureau)
The World’s First Anti-dam Movement (by Ramachandra Guha, The Hindu)
Should Mining Be Banned in Coastal Areas?
The Supreme Court in 2006 banned mining in the Western Ghats and ordered the state-owned Kudremukh to shut down mining of magnetite, a low grade iron ore with magnetic property used in steel manufacturing. Illegal mining in Karnataka has recently been stopped and there is an increasing pressure to stop mining in environmentally sensitive areas. The private mines in Karnataka have gone through an extensive rehabilitation and reclamation plans that have been approved before being allowed to begin mining again.
Pro-Coastal Mining
A task force set up by the Steel Ministry has proposed underground mining of iron ore in the coastal areas. The ministry argues that the iron ore deposits in the country are fast depleting and underground mining could solve the problem of ore shortages. The environmental issues and bans on mining in the coastal areas have led to severe shortages of ores for the user industries.
Steel Ministry for Key Changes in Mining Bill (by Sudheer Pal Singh, Business Standard)
New Mining Bill: Steel, Mining Ministries Differ on Benefits of Captive Allocation (by Meera Mohanty, Economic Times)
Task Force suggests underground mining in western ghats (by Meera Mohanty, Economic Times)
Anti-Coastal Mining
According to the July 2012 HRW report Out of Control, even the so-called legal mining in Karnataka and Goa “illustrate broader patterns of failed regulation, alleged corruption and community harm. It shows how even mines operating with the approval of government regulators are able to violate the law with complete impunity.”
The report continues: “Some communities in Goa resort to making use of surface water for at least part of the year because their groundwater supplies have been damaged or destroyed by nearby mining operations.”
Private Iron Ore Mines in Karnataka to Open by Month End (by Anshul Dhamija, Times of India)
The DESPICABLE illegal mining HORROR of India (by Vicky Nanjappa, Rediff News)
Good? Bad? Ugly? Why They Put Four Women in the Jug (by Hartman de Souza, SaveGoa.org)
Out of Control (Human Rights Watch) (pdf)
Enact Stronger Mining Regulations
The subcontinent has historically been cut up and parceled out for the mercantile interests of colonial (and some local) powers. Today the power, money and, often, the land is controlled by large Indian families and conglomerates. This is most apparent in India’s incredibly lucrative mining sector, arguably the most contested segment of the economy. Given the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment and Forest to regulate and license mining operations (and other extractive industries), these statutory powers have become flash points for criticism from across the ideological spectrum. One case that particularly galls environmentalists is ministry’s rubber stamping of allegedly dangerous bauxite mines by Vedanta Resources in Orissa.
India's Mines and Minerals Bill is Desperately Needed (by Natasha Malpani, Policy Mic)
Vedanta at the Centre of Many Storms (Mines and Communities)
Enact Stronger Environmental Impact Assessment System
Perhaps the Ministry of Environment and Forests most pressing areas of potential reform is overhauling India’s dysfunctional system of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). Created during the early 1990s, at the start of liberalization, the EIA system requires official sign-off before construction can begin on a major project that might significantly affect local natural resources. Yet to this day, the system places the onus for creating the EIA on the project's developer. So the developer is responsible for locating a consultant, negotiating the fee and arranging for the assessment. He then hans the results to the ministry. Needless to say, such a system has not only led to the creation of a new sector of merely quasi-qualified consultants; but because the consultant is working for the project owner rather than for the government (and, hence, for the public), a host of skewed allegiances have led to innumerable examples of biased, lazy or flatly incorrect EIAs being offered in support of flawed projects. In 2006, a probe discovered that rejection rates by the ministry for several types of large-scale projects were low enough to raise suspicion. During Jairam Ramesh’s tenure as environment minister, new attempts at transparency within the ministry were undertaken; yet the obstacles to genuine reform of this process, particularly from industry remain significant.
Environment: Will the New Government Be Any More Responsible? (by Ashish Kothari, Infochangeindia.org)
India Mining Industry Out of Control (Human Rights Watch)
Focus More on Alternative Energies
In recent years, during discussions on climate change, the Indian government (and the Ministry of Environment and Forests, albeit tangentially) has faced increased criticism for failing to allocate sufficient funding for research on new and alternative energies. They also failed to introduce social-engineering policies benefiting public transportation that could also wean the vast Indian public off fossil fuels. This issue has become increasingly critical given the growing Indian middle class’s increasing desire for personal automobiles as status symbols. While the Ministry of Environment and Forests doesn't specifically set this policy, the central government relatively paltry allocations, coupled with the ministry’s reluctance to expand its mandate and areas of focus, continue to frustrate activists.
India Should Focus on Alternative Sources of Energy (Indo Asian News Service)
Jairam Ramesh
Jairam Ramesh ran the newly created Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation from its founding in July 2011 until October 28, 2011.
Ramesh lost the portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle but retained Minister of Rural Development. Born in Karnataka, Ramesh has recalled becoming interested in economics from a fairly early age, particularly its impact on the broader issues of everyday life. Although he eventually graduated from university, at IIT-Bombay, with a degree in chemical engineering, he quickly went oversees, to the US, to study economics and public policy.
Starting in the late 1970s, Ramesh took a series of consultancy and advisory jobs with the World Bank and the Indian government, particularly revolving around economic and energy policy. By the early 1990s, he was also a key actor in pushing through reforms that opened the country’s economy, reversing decades of domestic-focused Socialist policy championed by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Although a leading proponent of economic liberalization during the 1990s, Ramesh has recently become an increasingly outspoken proponent of progressive environmental stands. Today, he is seen as one of India’s foremost ‘technocrats’.
During his years as environment minister (2009-11), Ramesh was credited with significantly strengthening what was widely seen as an ailing ministry. Among his most notable decisions in that post included the refusal to allow Vedanta Resources, a large British firm, to mine bauxite in Orissa; and the refusal to allow Indian farmers to begin growing genetically modified eggplant.
Ramesh has continued in a similar vein – relatively progressive and contrarian – following his mid-2011 appointment to head the Ministry of Rural Development, choosing certain high-profile fights in opposing industry interests. In August 2012, for instance, Ramesh publicly suggested that mining be halted for a decade in regions experiencing the worst Maoist unrest – a longtime demand on the part of activists and community leaders, and a proposal made previously by Tribal Affairs Minister Kishore Chandra Deo. Ramesh noted that much of India’s mining was being done without thought being given to concerns over the environment or social inclusion, thus creating resentment among certain sections of society.
In his current position, Ramesh has likewise called on the government of Bihar, for years lauded for its high development figures, to slow down certain high-profile schemes, warning that the Maoist movement could be exacerbated by centralized projects that fail to deliver for the poorest and most marginalized communities.
Jairam Ramesh (Wikipedia)
- Table of Contents
- Overview
- History
- What it Does
- Where Does the Money Go
- Controversies
- Debate
- Suggested Reforms
- Former Directors
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Ministry of Environment and Forests
Out of a total 329 million hectares of land in India, the Ministry of Environment and Forests oversees, in one way or another, 306 million hectares, about 93% of the country. Further, with a mandate to safeguard water, monitor pollution and to balance economic growth with environmental conservation, the ministry’s policies regularly affect the country’s entire population. The ministry is more important than ever. India's burgeoning economy – and population – has come with a corresponding rise in pollution. But with humans increasingly moving further into rural and forested areas, the ministry’s regulations have also become increasingly difficult to carry out. For decades, many Indians perceived the Ministry of Environment and Forests as a rubber stamp for industry. That perception largely changed during Jairam Ramesh's tenure. Today, observers on all sides of India's ideological spectrum see the ministry as newly strengthened and an important check on India’s ultra-fast development and growth.
The presence of the word ‘environment’ in the ministry’s title underlines a relatively new focus. The colonial and post-Independence bodies overseeing India’s forests, reflected their era. As in the rest of the world, pollution, conservation, sustainability are relatively modern concepts.
Under the colonial setup, after all, the authorities in charge of the subcontinent’s vast forestlands and rural areas were concerned primarily with the extraction and monetization of natural resources – the primary reason that the British were present in India in the first place. As such, much of the oversight, such as it were, over the Subcontinent’s forests for the first few centuries of colonial control were handled through the East India Company, the mercantile body overseeing much of South Asia under the British.
Even after the British left the subcontinent, however, it took decades for the new Indian government to establish a formal body to deal with the ills of environmental degradation and pollution. The Department of Environment was set up only in 1980, and it took another five years for this to be upgraded to a full-fledged Ministry of Environment and Forests. Like all new nations, post-Independence India overwhelmingly focused on economic and social development. Like other governments, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's attendance at the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, in 1972, corresponded with first pro-environment policies. That same year India's passed its first wildlife-protection legislation.
Still, for years after the creation of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, many saw the body as ineffectual. While some pro-industry critics saw its regulatory functions as an unnecessary obstacle to the country’s growth, many others felt that the ministry was functioning as little more than a rubber stamp. Only very recently, under the ministership of Jairam Ramesh (2009-11), that observers believe the ministry grew some teeth. During his tenure, Ramesh blocked several massive, high-profile projects, based on environmental concerns; he also instituted national policies that won wide plaudits from environmentalists while pitting him against industrialists and even, at times, his own Congress party.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests oversees and protects India’s vast forestlands, watersheds, biodiversity and any other areas that fall outside of what are legally considered settled or agricultural lands. Its legal mandate includes the cataloguing and conservation of flora and fauna, the control of pollution, and the regeneration of deforested and otherwise degraded areas. It also functions as a first point of contact for a broad spectrum of international and multilateral agencies and agreements dealing with issues of the environment or pollution. The Ministry of Environment and Forests says it is guided by two overarching concerns, sustainability and enhancing human well-being – pursuits that have led to decades of debate over how to balance the latter with the former.
Attached Bodies or Autonomous Bodies
Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education: The council is India's preeminent body for forestry-related knowledge, including both research and widespread education components. It is made up of eight established research institutes, accompanied by three additional advanced centers that focus on the specific needs and ground realities of local micro-climates and biological zones. The council is also consults with the 14 state and five general universities that offer programs in forestry.
Central Pollution Control Board: CPCB was created in 1974 and receives the majority of its powers under two pieces of legislation, one dealing with water-related and one with air-related pollution. It now engages in routine surveillance and monitoring of related issues, with a special focus on automobile-related pollution, while also providing technical support and data for the ministry.
Central Zoo Authority: Constituted in 1992, the Central Zoo Authority is required to check and license all of the country’s zoos as well as its traveling circuses. Thus far, it has inspected around 350 zoos around the country, licensing 164 and refusing to recognize 183.
G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development: Set up in 1988, the G B Pant Institute focuses primarily on identifying sustainable management strategies for the area officially known as the Indian Himalayan Region.
The ministry's growing budget reflects India's increasing emphasis on environmental sustainability and pro environment policymaking in recent years. (The increases haven't satisfied most environmental activists, however, who remain critical of the government.) Most recently, the 2011-12 Union budget increased the Ministry of Environment's coffers by just Rs. 100 crore ($18.27 million USD), although this followed on a relative surge in the ministry’s budget in recent years.
Under this budget, a significant amount – around Rs. 200 crore ($36.54 million USD) – was earmarked for the cleaning of India’s notoriously polluted rivers and lakes (other than the Ganga clean-up, which was covered under previous programs); another Rs. 400 crore ($73.09 million USD) was to be used for the additional protection and remediation of the country’s forests. Another Rs. 200 crore ($36.54 million USD) is to be used to try to act as a catalyst to an initiative called the Green India Mission, started in 2010-11, which plans to improve 5 million hectares of degraded forest and cover another 5 million hectares of currently denuded land with forest within the decade (though this program has yet to begin functioning). For the most part, the ministry’s budget is split relatively evenly between environment- and wildlife-related programs and regulatory activities.
A Raja's Other Scandal
To most observers, A Raja's most notorious scandal is the 2G Spectrum Scam, but other accusations are still unsettled from his tenure as Environment Minister between 2004 and 2009 disgraced former Telecom Minister A Raja gave out nearly 170 unfounded clearances to mines in Goa during his tenure as environment minister. These alleged giveaways have fueled years of suspicion by activists that the ministry was being kept purposefully toothless to benefit industry. While the newly aggressive ministry has recently invited criticism for being anti-industry, environmentalists say the licenses already granted in Goa will permanently harm a sensitive eco-system.
Raja Link Emerges In Goa CM Kamat’s Mining Scam (by Raman Kirpal, Firstpost)
Raja Again: Gave Green Nod To 169 Mines In Goa (by Snehal Rebello And Ketaki Ghoge, Hindustan Times)
Saving Narmada
One of India's most controversial dams, the Narmada project involves construction of 3200 large, medium and small dams across the River Narmada. The Narmada flows through three states: Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Sardar Sarovar Dam is the largest dam on the River. Saving Narmada Movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan) is leading a protest against the construction of Sardar Sarovar project and other projects on River Narmada. The activists have claimed that the project will displace more than 200,000 people and permanently alter the region's ecology. Work on the project stopped in 1994 when the World Bank and other international financial institutions withdrew. The Supreme Court of India gave a go ahead to the project in year 2000 with the dam height of 90 meters, against the initially proposed height of 140 meters. After completing 90 meters, the developers sought permission to increase the dam height and raised it to 100 meters. The additional increase of height met with huge protests from Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Understanding the Narmada Controversy (by Dinkar Shukla, Press Information Bureau)
The World’s First Anti-dam Movement (by Ramachandra Guha, The Hindu)
Should Mining Be Banned in Coastal Areas?
The Supreme Court in 2006 banned mining in the Western Ghats and ordered the state-owned Kudremukh to shut down mining of magnetite, a low grade iron ore with magnetic property used in steel manufacturing. Illegal mining in Karnataka has recently been stopped and there is an increasing pressure to stop mining in environmentally sensitive areas. The private mines in Karnataka have gone through an extensive rehabilitation and reclamation plans that have been approved before being allowed to begin mining again.
Pro-Coastal Mining
A task force set up by the Steel Ministry has proposed underground mining of iron ore in the coastal areas. The ministry argues that the iron ore deposits in the country are fast depleting and underground mining could solve the problem of ore shortages. The environmental issues and bans on mining in the coastal areas have led to severe shortages of ores for the user industries.
Steel Ministry for Key Changes in Mining Bill (by Sudheer Pal Singh, Business Standard)
New Mining Bill: Steel, Mining Ministries Differ on Benefits of Captive Allocation (by Meera Mohanty, Economic Times)
Task Force suggests underground mining in western ghats (by Meera Mohanty, Economic Times)
Anti-Coastal Mining
According to the July 2012 HRW report Out of Control, even the so-called legal mining in Karnataka and Goa “illustrate broader patterns of failed regulation, alleged corruption and community harm. It shows how even mines operating with the approval of government regulators are able to violate the law with complete impunity.”
The report continues: “Some communities in Goa resort to making use of surface water for at least part of the year because their groundwater supplies have been damaged or destroyed by nearby mining operations.”
Private Iron Ore Mines in Karnataka to Open by Month End (by Anshul Dhamija, Times of India)
The DESPICABLE illegal mining HORROR of India (by Vicky Nanjappa, Rediff News)
Good? Bad? Ugly? Why They Put Four Women in the Jug (by Hartman de Souza, SaveGoa.org)
Out of Control (Human Rights Watch) (pdf)
Enact Stronger Mining Regulations
The subcontinent has historically been cut up and parceled out for the mercantile interests of colonial (and some local) powers. Today the power, money and, often, the land is controlled by large Indian families and conglomerates. This is most apparent in India’s incredibly lucrative mining sector, arguably the most contested segment of the economy. Given the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment and Forest to regulate and license mining operations (and other extractive industries), these statutory powers have become flash points for criticism from across the ideological spectrum. One case that particularly galls environmentalists is ministry’s rubber stamping of allegedly dangerous bauxite mines by Vedanta Resources in Orissa.
India's Mines and Minerals Bill is Desperately Needed (by Natasha Malpani, Policy Mic)
Vedanta at the Centre of Many Storms (Mines and Communities)
Enact Stronger Environmental Impact Assessment System
Perhaps the Ministry of Environment and Forests most pressing areas of potential reform is overhauling India’s dysfunctional system of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). Created during the early 1990s, at the start of liberalization, the EIA system requires official sign-off before construction can begin on a major project that might significantly affect local natural resources. Yet to this day, the system places the onus for creating the EIA on the project's developer. So the developer is responsible for locating a consultant, negotiating the fee and arranging for the assessment. He then hans the results to the ministry. Needless to say, such a system has not only led to the creation of a new sector of merely quasi-qualified consultants; but because the consultant is working for the project owner rather than for the government (and, hence, for the public), a host of skewed allegiances have led to innumerable examples of biased, lazy or flatly incorrect EIAs being offered in support of flawed projects. In 2006, a probe discovered that rejection rates by the ministry for several types of large-scale projects were low enough to raise suspicion. During Jairam Ramesh’s tenure as environment minister, new attempts at transparency within the ministry were undertaken; yet the obstacles to genuine reform of this process, particularly from industry remain significant.
Environment: Will the New Government Be Any More Responsible? (by Ashish Kothari, Infochangeindia.org)
India Mining Industry Out of Control (Human Rights Watch)
Focus More on Alternative Energies
In recent years, during discussions on climate change, the Indian government (and the Ministry of Environment and Forests, albeit tangentially) has faced increased criticism for failing to allocate sufficient funding for research on new and alternative energies. They also failed to introduce social-engineering policies benefiting public transportation that could also wean the vast Indian public off fossil fuels. This issue has become increasingly critical given the growing Indian middle class’s increasing desire for personal automobiles as status symbols. While the Ministry of Environment and Forests doesn't specifically set this policy, the central government relatively paltry allocations, coupled with the ministry’s reluctance to expand its mandate and areas of focus, continue to frustrate activists.
India Should Focus on Alternative Sources of Energy (Indo Asian News Service)
Jairam Ramesh
Jairam Ramesh ran the newly created Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation from its founding in July 2011 until October 28, 2011.
Ramesh lost the portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle but retained Minister of Rural Development. Born in Karnataka, Ramesh has recalled becoming interested in economics from a fairly early age, particularly its impact on the broader issues of everyday life. Although he eventually graduated from university, at IIT-Bombay, with a degree in chemical engineering, he quickly went oversees, to the US, to study economics and public policy.
Starting in the late 1970s, Ramesh took a series of consultancy and advisory jobs with the World Bank and the Indian government, particularly revolving around economic and energy policy. By the early 1990s, he was also a key actor in pushing through reforms that opened the country’s economy, reversing decades of domestic-focused Socialist policy championed by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Although a leading proponent of economic liberalization during the 1990s, Ramesh has recently become an increasingly outspoken proponent of progressive environmental stands. Today, he is seen as one of India’s foremost ‘technocrats’.
During his years as environment minister (2009-11), Ramesh was credited with significantly strengthening what was widely seen as an ailing ministry. Among his most notable decisions in that post included the refusal to allow Vedanta Resources, a large British firm, to mine bauxite in Orissa; and the refusal to allow Indian farmers to begin growing genetically modified eggplant.
Ramesh has continued in a similar vein – relatively progressive and contrarian – following his mid-2011 appointment to head the Ministry of Rural Development, choosing certain high-profile fights in opposing industry interests. In August 2012, for instance, Ramesh publicly suggested that mining be halted for a decade in regions experiencing the worst Maoist unrest – a longtime demand on the part of activists and community leaders, and a proposal made previously by Tribal Affairs Minister Kishore Chandra Deo. Ramesh noted that much of India’s mining was being done without thought being given to concerns over the environment or social inclusion, thus creating resentment among certain sections of society.
In his current position, Ramesh has likewise called on the government of Bihar, for years lauded for its high development figures, to slow down certain high-profile schemes, warning that the Maoist movement could be exacerbated by centralized projects that fail to deliver for the poorest and most marginalized communities.
Jairam Ramesh (Wikipedia)
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