Did you miss something in the budget?

Let’s not even try to assess the economic value of the most crucial component of our natural assets — about 300 rivers and perennial streams that spring to life inside the forests and flow out to provide drinking and irrigation water. Also let’s not get overwhelmed by trying to calculate the net value of our 64 million hectares of forest land at the official net present value rate of Rs 5.8-9.2 lakh per ha.

The more tangible exploitation ranges from mega-products like minerals, timber and salt to comparatively lesser derivatives like tendu leaves or firewood. Add the massive exploitation undersea, of medicinal and aromatic plants, encroached plantations of coffee and tea and, of course, the illegal trade in wildlife, and even a conservative estimate will take you closer to the Rs 100,000 crore mark.

How does this exploitation take place? Mindlessly. For whatever is taken out, simply nothing is given back to restore sustainability. Big corporates flout mining regulations. Macro and micro encroachments are rampant. The administration puts on blinkers in the name of populism. Why, even 50 years after Independence, do we still have a land use policy? And for a sector that churns out at least Rs 70,000 crore per annum — and will continue to yield nearly as much under regulated utilisation — the yearly plan allocation for the nodal ministry hovers around the Rs 1000-crore mark.

In 2005-06, the ministry got an outlay of Rs 1235 crore (subsequently revised to Rs 1100 crore) with just Rs 260 crore earmarked for forests and wildlife. This year the total outlay has been raised to Rs 1339 crore, an increase of Rs 104 crore. This is a joke when you consider the pressure on these funds. In India, we have just 2 per cent of global forest cover as against 14 per cent of the world’s cattle and 15 per cent of its population. After such a hue and cry over the tiger crisis, Central investment for tiger reserves still remains an abysmal Rs 75/sq km per year. Little wonder the finance minister didn’t embarrass himself and the nation by mentioning the sector in his budget speech.

It’s no secret that the Prime Minister is one of the major architects of the government’s budget. Given his initial response to the tiger crisis, it was expected that this year’s budget would reflect some of the concerns — not for the tiger per se, but for the forest which the tiger represents as the flagship species. But just like the decisions regarding the future of the tiger are left to bureaucrats in the PMO and the environment ministry, who don’t have the stamina for rigorous field visits, even more tangible concerns like water and food security are forgotten in the rush for higher growth. And don’t forget the finance minister’s brief remark on how he regrets the slump in the mining sector.

It is preposterous to assume that the significance of sustainable exploitation of our natural assets is lost on scholars like Dr Manmohan Singh or P. Chidambaram. Their focus on infrastructure through roads and communication will not achieve anything if taps go dry. No amount of reform will enliven agriculture if the clouds don’t deliver rain, water vanishes from the rivers and even underground. And as our forest cover shrinks, water will be the biggest casualty. Already experts have predicted that 2.7 billion people — mostly in the semi-arid regions of Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa — will experience severe water scarcity by 2025. This is not rocket science. Even Bollywood producers find substance in it.

We can avoid the doom and still benefit economically if we ensure regulated exploitation of our natural assets with a systematic replenishment policy. We need money, manpower, legislation and enforcement to ensure this. We need to rein in a bureaucracy that wants to take control of inviolate forest land by distributing it for legal abuse and, in the process, seeks to please its political masters by ensuring vote banks. This madness must stop. With each illegal felling, mining and poaching, our future bleeds. It will also stain Mr Clean the Prime Minister if he fails to secure the future of the nation.