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Livelihood Losses and National Gains PDF
Livelihood Losses and National Gains PDF
This rejoinder to Jairam Rameshs article, The Two Cultures Revisited: The EnvironmentDevelopment Debate in India (EPW, 16 October 2010) argues that there are three and not two cultures in opposition to each other: the corporatedriven campaign for economic development at any cost, the elitist concerns articulated by non-governmental organisations, and the desperate struggle of indigenous people who are under the threat of extinction.
Not only is the economy not about the people who live in it; according to economists, the economy actually requires human sacrice Moshe Adler, Economics for the Rest of Us (2010).
he union minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh is perhaps the only one in the union cabinet who has tried manfully to coax some rationale out of a chaos of interestdriven policies and objectives that the government is pursuing in that sphere under different pretexts (16 October). There are, indeed, laws in place to protect the environment, but not only is their implementation weak and perfunctory, but government action itself under different ministries outs these laws most casually. That tends to encourage corrupt ofcials at lower levels to bend the existing rules after their own fashion. Policies, however enlightened, make no difference to practice.
become a farce. The deliberations of the Expert Appraisal Committees have become ritualistic, only meant to clear the projects at any cost. This puts in a nutshell the experience of the common people in a thousand other cases. Ramesh seeks to nd his way out of this mess by negotiating between what he likens to two sides of the celebrated debate on two cultures stated by C P Snows Reith Lecture, to wit, sciences and humanities. He thinks he has struck a ne balance. But, in fact, he conjures three, not two culturesrst the corporate-driven all out campaign for economic development at any cost, second, the elitist concern (led by non-governmental organisations) for protecting the environment from rampant exploitation, and third, the desperate opposition of indigenous people rooted in an immemorial way of life adapted to the natural environment now under threat of extinction because of the campaign of development. Each represents not only a set of norms, but also different social groups. While the second may come to terms with the rst, the third will not and cannot.
True, that vandalism has been curbed after the uproar. But the harm has been done. The quoted article goes on to remark: The public hearing process has
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and uneven. Tehelka quotes on page 11 (4 September 2010) the convenor of the Khalsa Action Committee from the developed state of Punjab: The state is rich but the people are very poor. So there is an extreme anger in them, which nobody is addressing. There is no employment opportunity, nothing. So much for development creating jobs.
on the grievances of the Idu-Mishmi tribe, 2008). It is, of course, another matter that politicians there have voiced full-throated support. People must have the freedom to choose not only the pace of development, but also its pattern. Is wholesale eviction of tribal people or small farmers from the sites of hydroelectricity generation or massive mineral extraction to be preferred to improvement and enrichment of forests, and better harnessing of water-sources for irrigation and natural shery? A radical alteration in the ecology must appear rational and convincing to people to be immediately affected, and as promising a better future. At this very moment Assam is in an uproar over the construction undertaken by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) of the Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project at Gerukamukh at an extremely volatile seismic area that includes a run-of-the-river dam 116 metres in height, and designed to generate 2,000 MW of hydropower. The Environmental Impact Assessment Report covered an area up to only 7 km from the dam site and the public hearing organised by NHPC was alleged to have been farcical, involving only a handful of people who were not representatives of the people concerned. The dam is designed to alter drastically
the ow regime of the river, leading to abrupt diurnal uctuation of ow discharge from 6 cubic metres per second (cumec) to 2,560 cumec, and in the lean season to be reduced to only 6 cumec for 18 hours a day all of which will throw the ecosystem into a tailspin.2 It will mean loss of livelihood for lakhs of people on its banks, stupendous silting of fertile elds, destruction of rich traditional sh-sources, not to speak of deadly ash-oods and catastrophic possibility of dam-break in quakes Jairam Ramesh had attended a public hearing in Guwahati after representations movements against the dam, and is reported to have conveyed to the prime minister the extent of public anxiety and concern. But only a couple of days later, he himself came out with a statement defending the dam. Such tradeoffs will certainly deal a death blow to lakhs of people, while promising a rip-off to contractors, corporates and nanciers as well as to politicians. It will be an ultimate triumph of a certain type of monoculture.
Notes
1 2 Vedanta is the First: There Are Many More, E A S Sarma, Tehelka, 4 September 2010, p 29. Observations and Findings, Expert Committee Report, sponsored by Assam Government, All A ssam Students Union, and NHPC, 2010. Later NHPC hastily rejected the 500-page report after a cursory study for only three days.
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