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Business Commentary/Dilip Thakore

Left-wing environmentalists a hurdle to progress

Given the factors ranged against it -- political instability, endemic corruption, the breakdown of law and order and power outages -- it's a miracle that this nation is recording the 6 to 7 per cent annual rates of economic growth which it has been experiencing through the 1990s. Critics of the economic liberalisation and deregulation programme initiated in 1991 need to acknowledge that it is the momentum of the reforms, however slow and halting, which is driving contemporary India's unprecedented industrial and agriculture growth.

But even as the Indian economy is breaking out of the vicious circle of the so-called Hindu rate of growth (3.5 per cent per annum) and is all set to enter a higher annual growth rate orbit, a new threat to economic growth has emerged on the horizon -- environmental hyperactivism.

Though it is hardly a secret that virtually every state of the Indian Union is suffering greater or lesser power outages and that the 30,000 mw demand-supply gap between power generation and availability is threatening to make nonsense of economic growth projections, virtually every new power generation project in the country is being delayed and obstructed. Special interest groups sheltering under the broad umbrella of protectors of the environment have tied up scores of power generation projects in law suits and grassroots agitations.

For example, though political jostling and itchy palms have delayed the Enron power project in Maharashtra and Cogentrix in Karnataka (the only two of the seven 'fast track' power generation projects which have progressed beyond the blueprint stage), environment crusaders compounded the delay by tying up their promoters in public interest litigation.

Likewise, the 400 mw Maheshwar and 1,000 mw power projects in power-starved Madhya Pradesh have been road-blocked by the formidable environmental activist Medha Patkar and others on the ground that some 20,000 tribals will have to be relocated from their villages to facilitate the projects. Both Patkar and 'tribal Gandhi' Hirasingh Markam, who are leading the agitations against the two projects in Madhya Pradesh, admit that generous compensation has been paid to the villagers for their land.

Proposed power generation plants are not the only development project which have been held up by the nation's multiplying tribe of environmental activists. Desperately needed highways, bridges, flyovers, oil refineries, airports and coastal tourist resorts are all grist for the hungry mills of environmental activists. Patkar has been leading a high-profile campaign against the construction of several dams on the Narmada river proposed by the gigantic Narmada Project Authority.

Despite this project getting qualified clearance from the Supreme Court, Patkar has not diluted her opposition to the project which NPA managers say will harness the river to canalise precious water to the drought-prone areas of southwest Gujarat.

It would, of course, be foolish to argue that environmental activists have not contributed anything worthwhile to the national development process. Undoubtedly environmentally conscious citizens have created a welcome awareness of the need to build habitat protection and preservation into infrastructure and industrial projects. Some of them have wrested judicial directives which are clearly in the public interest. Court judgments which restrict industrial pollution damage to the Taj Mahal in Agra, and which have prompted efforts to clean up the Ganges for instance.

But having said this, there is a pressing need to caution well-meaning environmentalists against knee-jerk opposition to development projects which subserve the greater public interest of economic development and poverty eradication. Power plants, highways, oil refineries and even tourist resorts have to be built. And consequential inconvenience to minorities is part of the development process. It would be pertinent for them (and the general public) to bear in mind that historically high per capita income developed nations of the world have had to suffer environmental damage and dislocation of a greater magnitude than latter day developing societies. Unfortunate but true, all economic development extracts a price from society. And this price has to be paid.

Moreover, the ground-level reality in the developing nations of the Third World is that high birth rates, widespread illiteracy and poor hygiene and sanitation constitute a greater threat to the environment than infrastructure and industrial projects. Environmental activists would better serve the national interest if they included these grassroot issues within the ambit of their concern.

Though India's burgeoning and politically correct tribe of environmental activists are discharging a useful role in curbing the excesses of industrialisation, it's quite plain that most of them have an ideological agenda. After the collapse of Soviet Communism which provided intellectual respectability to the commonplace vice of envy of the enterprising and successful, the nation's unrepentant leftists are crowding the environmental platform to stop the resurgence of private enterprise. The irony of the Soviet Union and the Communist nations having been outed as far greater despoilers of the environment than greedy capitalists is being conveniently overlooked.

The plain historical truth is that the high per capita developed nations of the contemporary world first built themselves solid industrial capabilities. Then they proceeded to clean up their environments with the surpluses generated from self-sustaining economic growth.

Despite the benefit of hindsight which permits them to avoid the excesses of industrial growth, developing nations of the Third World have no option but to follow suit.

Dilip Thakore