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Journalism of Courage
Sustainable Development, the theme of the deliberations at the world summit currently on in Johannesburg, is not a new concept. Its provenance can be traced to the 1987 report of the Brundtland Commission and, in many ways, it expresses one of the greatest dilemmas of modern existence. How do we live in a biosphere with finite resources in a manner commensurate with our infinite drive to maximise our potential? It highlights the constant and ubiquitous tug-of-war that lies at the heart of the environmental movement, between the need to 8216;preserve8217; the environment, and the need to 8216;develop8217; ourselves. Embedded in this conundrum is the concept that the environment cannot be divorced from the quality of life of the people, especially the very poor; that consumption patterns differ sharply between and within countries; and that we, as trustees of the future, are required to consider the fate, not just of ourselves, but that of succeeding generations.
This raises a more immediate question: how effective has India been in internalising, in practice and policy, the idea of sustainable development? Some would say that the question has already been answered by the Asian Brown Haze, which hovers over us like Coleridge8217;s fearful bird as evidence of our abject failure in this regard. The problem is this great disjuncture that has always existed between what we profess and what we practice. Sadly, even our professions are getting fainter and soon we may not even have our stated principles to guide us. While forests disappear, it is a jungle out there, with the slash-burn-loot instinct threatening to overtake every other.
It shouldn8217;t have been this way. India was one of the first nations in the world to actually enunciate the environment principle in its policies. The Fourth Plan 1969-1974 set down that 8216;harmonious development recognises the unity of nature and man8217;. In the wake of the Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, 1972, which Indira Gandhi famously enlivened with her clumsy formulation, 8216;poverty is the biggest polluter8217;, there was a flurry of legislation here. The Supreme Court, through its creative interpretation of Article 21 the right to life deepened and widened the scope of these laws. The court stated that it is not sufficient that people have certain rights, but that they should also have the right to vindicate these rights. It also recognised that the right to clean air, water and a clean environment hinged crucially on the right to information.
Somewhere, however, we slipped on all these wondrous words and our response to two important developments symbolised the precipitous slide. The Chipko andolan of 1973, when village women took on Symonds, a sports goods company, for daring to fell the ash trees in their forests, was quickly perceived as the ultimate mascot of our environmental movement. The assertion of local communities, especially women, of their rights over their natural resources was hailed both nationally and globally. But instead of ensuring sustainable social forestry in the region, the state responded with the Forest Conservation Act, which has all but removed the community from the scene. Today, people here are bereft of both their forest and 8216;development8217;, left forgotten in their pristine isolation.
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While forests disappear, it is a jungle out there, with the slash-burn-loot instinct threatening to overtake every other |
If Chipko highlights the limits of the action taken by the state, the Union Carbide disaster underlines the extent of state inaction. The February 14, 1989, out of court settlement of US470 million presided over by the Supreme Court, gave short shrift to the principle of absolute liability. Instead of using one of the world8217;s worst industrial disasters to create a just compensatory and regulatory regime that would protect both people and environment, we turned our back on the wretched lives of the survivors, even as those responsible made a clean getaway.
If this is the past, will the future be different? Not unless we learn to mainstream some important insights garnered from decades of misgovernance. The most important among them is the need to harness democracy to protect the environment by making people agents of their own destinies, rather than as objects to be manipulated. Take the miracle at Ralegan Siddhi. It all began with a percolation tank built so shabbily by the government that it did not hold water. Anna Hazare got the local people to voluntarily repair it. Soon seven wells in the region filled with water and for the first time the Maharashtra village had water at the height of summer. Water soon translated into prosperity for every household. Or take that initiative in Kerala, begun in 1996, of placing up to 40 per cent of the state8217;s annual budget directly in the hands of municipalities and panchayats and thus ending the sterility of the top-down process of developmental planning.
But if such initiatives are to work 8212; and work they must if we are to come up with a sustainable blueprint for sustainable development 8212; we would need to bind together the power of information, the power of decentralised budgetary allocations, the power of political mobilisation and, above all, the power of democracy.
