Press Release
Cabinet Approval for
National Investment Board (NIB) will make Dr Manmohan Singh the most environmentally catastrophic Prime Minister
Finance Minister’s ecologically destructive proposal for
NIB by electoral finance of investors
NIB will unleash a reign of terror from environmental
diseases by handing over environment & forests to wolves
New Delhi/19/11/2012: Amidst ongoing extinction of plant
and animal species and destruction of river valleys and forests, a despotic
clearance agency like National
Investment Board (NIB) is unacceptable. This proposal of Union Ministry of
Finance to get government’s business of transaction rules altered to
usurp the jurisdiction of Union Ministry of Environment & Forests is
structurally ecologically destructive and is formal declaration of war on
natural resources, land and water of the people by electoral finance investors.
NIB is being proposed despite the fact that Union Ministry
of Environment & Forests draws its mandate from the Cabinet Committee on Economic
Affairs (CCEA) of which Union Finance Minister is a member. CCEA members
include Dr Manmohan Singh, A. K. Antony, Sharad Pawar, Palaniappan Chidambaram,
Ghulam Nabi Azad, M. Veerappa Moily, S Jaipal Reddy, Kamal Nath, Ajit Singh,
Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Dr. C. P. Joshi, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Jairam
Ramesh with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Prof. K V Thomas and Manish Tiwari as
special invitees. The anti-environment and anti-tribal stance of Indian
National Congress led United Progressive Alliance Government is evident even
from the fact that CCEA does not have the representation of Ministries of
Environment & Forests and Tribal Affairs. The track record of CCEA members
has consistently been insensitive towards environment.
To save the environmental rights of coming generations, the
Prime Minister should put the Cabinet Note on NIB proposal which is with the
Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister's Office on hold, to avoid being
branded as the most environmentally catastrophic Prime Minister of independent
India. During 11th Five Year Plan period, 8,734 projects have been granted
forest clearance. Forest land to the tune of 1.98 lakh hectares has been diverted.
Since 1981, this accounts for about 25 per cent of all forest land diverted for
development projects.
If the Cabinet Note on NIB proposal is put before CCEA, it
should disapprove it by acknowledging centuries of ecological services rendered
by environment and forests. The proponents of NIB should be asked why
environment and wildlife should not be saved just because they are voiceless.
Driven by investors in the electoral finance, the proposed
National Investment Board (NIB) for exploiting ecosystem is situated in the
Companies Act, 1956 and the proposed Companies Bill 2011. The proposal of NIB
is pregnant with terror of hitherto unacknowledged terror of environmental
diseases. While efforts are on to monetize natural resources, it does not
internalize the cost of inter-generational and intro-generational adverse
health impacts.
This is contrary to globally acknowledged preventive route
to reverse the trend of mortality and morbidity as has been confirmed by World
Health Organisation (WHO)’s Global Burden of Disease project which has
underlined that one-quarter of the global disease burden, and more than
one-third of the burden among children is due to modifiable environmental
factors.
Even a conservative National Environment Policy, 2006
revealed, “It is increasingly evident that poor environmental quality has
adversely affected human health. Environmental factors are estimated as being
responsible in some cases for nearly 20 percent of the burden of disease in
India.” When country’s environmental health infrastructure is almost
non-existent and admittedly public health system has collapsed, NIB proposal is
an invitation for public health disaster.
The proposal for an all-powerful National Investment Board
to clear large projects has stirred opposition, including from within the
government. The opposition has been about riding roughshod over the concerns of
some ministries. But the NIB proposal also throws up larger issues. Has India's
economic growth really meant "development" in the true sense of the
word, and how sustainable and equitable is it? Measures like the NIB may well
help in taking the growth rate a notch up, but is this necessarily good? Who is
the real "terrorist": those who "delay" investment projects
in the name of the environment or people's rights, or those who impose such
projects in the name of development?
The deafening silence of almost the entire opposition party,
members of United Progressive Alliance despite the protest by citizen groups,
Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister of Environment and Forests and V Kishore Chandra
Deo, Union Minister of Tribal Affairs even in the face of NIB proposal reveals
the impact of electoral finance in dictating creation of docile investor
friendly institutions that favor ungovernable business enterprises seemingly
beyond legislative will. If their silence is viewed in the context of provision
for corporate funding to political parties in the form of 5 % of annual profit
to companies under the Companies Act, 1956 (amended in 2003) and 7.5 % of
annual profit to companies under the proposed Companies Bill, 2011 (recommended
by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance), it does not appear surprising.
The Bill also provides for contributions to NGOs. The purchased silence of a
large number of NGOs in this regard is not inexplicable either.
While the current Finance Minister and the Prime Minister
will be remembered in the history as the most environmentally destructive
individuals, the collusion of almost the entire political class and the so
called voluntary organizations (who have been volunteered by corporate
donations) will remain enshrined as an act of collaboration with terrorist activities
against the ecosystem and the elements that constitute the substratum of human
and non-human living existence. When billions of hazardous wastes and thousands
of kilometers of ‘mined’ land is abandoned with impunity, it is not an
exaggeration to refer to such acts of ‘development processes as developmental
terrorism. NIB is an act of subordinating health and ecosystem of Indian to
2008 National Mineral Policy, 2008 in particular which advocates a regime of
self-regulation. If that logic is accepted then instead of enforcing Criminal
Procedure Code and Indian Penal Code, criminals will have to be given the task
of voluntary compliance with the rules laid down in the Codes.
From the very outset, Ministry of environment & forests
has consistently been kept structurally weak now the premature obituary of the
ministry is being authored by the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister in
lieu of electoral finance for the upcoming parliamentary elections for which
parties have started declaring their candidates.
It is increasingly becoming clearer that NIB like proposals
are artifacts of investors in electoral finance. The proposal of NIB is an act
that envisages devouring the present and future generations of Indians and
their ecosystem.
The structural dependence of ministries environment and
forests and tribal affairs on Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs makes their
opposition a pro forma act. Given the fact that a junior environment and
forests ministry and under a junior minister gives clearance to some 100
projects every month and some 25 of its officials are supposed to monitor
compliance of environmental clearance conditions for over 6,000 projects which
have been accorded clearance, its formal opposition does not inspire even an
iota of confidence.
It is clear that India’s ecosystem is all set to be handed
over to wolves. Forewarning future democracies, Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President
of the USA said, “Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive
their attention…If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and
I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves.”
Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of USA and the principal author of
the Declaration of Independence of USA.
If investors in electoral finance have not totally hollowed
out the legislative will as yet and legislators remain homo sapiens, the winter
session of the Parliament still can ensure that NIB does not see the light of
day. Failing which peoples’ movements will have to gear up to give the
proponents of despotic NIB a fitting reply in the 2014 elections.
For Details: Gopal Krishna, Convener, ToxicsWatch
Alliance (TWA), Mb: 9818089660, E-mail: Krishna 1715@gmail.com Web: toxicswatch.blogpsot.com
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