Promoting growth not MoEF’s duty: Jairam Ramesh

“In doing its job, the Environment Ministry must ensure that economic growth is not only rapid but also sustainable,” he said, while expressing apprehensions about the ability of the Narendra Modi government to do this.

“I am not terribly optimistic about environmental laws being enforced by the current administration. I think we should prepare ourselves for a systematic dismantling of the existing environmental laws and rules,” he said, but did not spell out the decisions of the Modi government that had prompted him to take this view.

Ramesh, who was moved out of the Environment Ministry in 2011 with a promotion in cabinet rank, said the Ministry could do with a little more transparency and referred to his practice of giving ‘speaking orders’, explaining in detail why a particular decision had been taken.

“I think we need to develop a culture of keeping a written record of government decisions. So much work in the government is carried out on oral instructions that it is difficult to affix responsibility later. That is why I had begun this practice of passing ‘speaking orders’ and putting it in public domain. My decisions could turn out to be wrong. There might be criticism. But at least everyone knows why and on what grounds a decision was taken,” he said.

Green Signals, he said, was based entirely on written records and “facts”. It contained not just official orders and decisions but also his written communications with the PM, ministerial colleagues and others. “There is no way the incidents described in the book can be denied. There is nothing that is not based on written material,” he said.