Fire, Concerns & Care. Backed by Knowledge

Debi Goenka - BEAG

What drew you towards environment?
As a child I was always interested in wild life. In college I joined a hiking club & went out regularly for hikes along the Western Ghats. It was my first exposure to natural environment. We would take an early morning train from Dadar station to Karjat. I could actually see the transformation of hues of nature as train left Bombay, from dark brown to lighter brown then green. Similarly smell changed as we moved away from city.

Four hours later, instead of dirt, grime we found ourselves in green paradise. Ten hours later, coming back in reverse direction, from green it was back to brown. This transition strikes you immediately. I joined World Wildlife Fund in 1974. Later they offered me a job.

Elsewhere you have mentioned development as devil-opment. Is development really inconsistent with environment?
Well, we are part of the environment. There isn't any question of its inconsistency with development. The issue is do we go for sustainable development, where we are one of the component of the environment or we are supreme & nothing else matters. Present model of development focuses on short term needs, whims & gratification through electronic gadgets. Whether a rain forest is being cut, ancient civilization is destroyed, a meek life form is put at fate to satisfy someone's fancies remains unanswered.

Ministry of Environment & Forest & Prime Minister, Planning Commission focus on economic growth & trickle down theory as most important yardstick for development. It is assumed if India generates $ 10 billion, every Indian gets $ 10. However, reality doesn't work that way. 0.5% of population gets 99.5% of income.

300-400 million are people are totally cut off from Public Distribution System. Their natural resource base is also eaten away by richer section.

What is the bigger threat to environment-poverty or consumerism, Dharavi or Cuff Parade?
Off course, consumerism. However, it's the mindset of the decision makers who do not realize the issues confronting country today. GDP, for instance is measured only in economic terms. India has been showing remarkable growth in past decade. However, by employing natural resource accounting it may well emerge that country's economic growth is being overshadowed by withering away of natural capital resource of the country. The undercutting of resource base is greater than notional increase in National GDP. Hence, we can't have a financial budget of a country without having comparative natural resource budget with environment as a major component.

Rio Earth Summit 1992 identifies poverty as one of the biggest source of environmental degradation. What is the role of poverty?
In rural area, you find women carrying head load of fuel & a city dweller typically reacts & terms it as forests are being destroyed. However, they don't do it out of choice but through compulsion. They have to cook daily meal. Kerosene, they are entitled to never reaches them. Ration shops are run by bunch of thugs who have access to political varandahas. & divert PDS supply to commercial markets.

Poor forest dweller has only two options. Either, starve to death voluntarily or survive with limited resources & all the constraints.

Shifting cultivation is also a rampant practice.

Well, it's a totally different problem. It has been traditionally carried out all over the world by primitive nomadic tribes. They keep moving on & never fix to a particular place. It worked fine up to a 100 year ago, when number of people were smaller & forest area were larger to sustain this practice.

In past 100 years, forest area has declined dramatically & population has increased exponentially. What was sustainable 100 year ago is no longer sustainable today. Even from a practical point of view, even best of the subsistence existence---they start their work by May & by end of September, if they are lucky, they harvest 2-3 acre plot, some coarse grain, may be paddy, if they are lucky they get worth 3000-4000/- in market for labour of 5-6 people for five months, assuming normal monsoon, no crop failure or other calamities.

Under Employment Guarantee Scheme or NREGA, amount of wages is much higher than what a shifting cultivator gets & destroys non renewable & invaluable natural resources. Regeneration of forests takes 400 years. However, such issues are never undertaken by decision makers in Delhi.

How do you view Tribal Bill 2006 in this context, which lends Forest Dwelling Tribes to ownership of 2 acre of land?
Well, if I tell PM Mannohan Singhji to live on 2 acre of non-productive forest land without electricity, communication, medical services, I am actually condemning to you a fate worse than death. It's a sheer mythical, romantic idea that tribals live in a symbiotic relation with forest. It may have been accepted in Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling but today how many people are prepared to live in forests.

What alternatives are available to safeguard interest of tribals?
Well, if people are genuinely interested in Tribal Welfare, they should look how money meant for tribals has been siphoned off over the years. Considering the amount of money spent over tribals since independence, every tribal would have 5 lakh in his fixed deposit & earning Rs 40000/- yearly interest.

Secondly, tribals should be given opportunity to come in mainstream. There is total skepticism about government's ability to deliver as witnessed in past fifty years. Tribals realize that government services would never reach them & only option before them is to reach mainstream. Practically, it's happening as well. About 236 villages in Maharashtra have actually passed formal resolution at Gram Panchayat level & have asked state government to move them out of sanctuary & national parks. First time, it's not an environmentalist but villagers themselves are demanding to be shifted out of forest areas. Government officials have no resource to do so.

How do you find Tiger Task Force report which asserts that tigers & human can live in harmony?
Tiger Task Force was a very animal to begin with. The Chairperson had no exposure to tigers & had no interest in tigers. If a professional environmentalist living in a country like India with several national parks says that he has never seen tigers shows his or her lack of any interest in tigers. Sunita Narayan's appointment as Chairperson is questionable & she accepted it is more questionable. Resultantly, we got a very fancy report, running into several pages, which must have been at the cost of several hundred trees being cut down. How many have bothered to read that report from start to finish, I don't know.

Its recommendations were rehashed version of existing practices. Whole exercise of thinking outside the box is combining Chinese fired rice with veg biryani & claiming to be a new. Joining The Dots( TTF Report) was like a Chinese bhel puri. Tribal Tiger co existence & harmony is non-sense. There is no question of harmony between them. Both tiger &tribal living in forest area exploits the resources. If a tiger is required to kill tribal for survival, he will turn man-eater & if tribal is forced to kill tiger, he will kill it.

What is the biggest environmental threat to Mumbai?
Climate change. The fact that it is not acknowledged as a problem makes it a bigger problem than change itself. Mckinsey report talks of infrastructure but totally ignores climate change & consequences. We are living in an environment, which will be submerged forty years down the line.

What are the basic lacunas in environmental law in India?
Lack of political will to implement. It required Supreme Court to order Delhi government to demolish illegal structures. Why does one has to approach courts for polluting vehicle or Costal Regulatory Zones in Mangrove area. Bureaucrats at MoEF uses fig leaf of science to dismantle environmental laws in country. It is based on an arrogant assumption that science is supreme & has answers to everything.

For instance, Prodipto Ghos, Secretary, MoEF asked for scientific basis for 500 meters of CRZ. I wondered what was the scientific basis of an 18 year old allowed to drive, cast vote & someone of 17 years & 364 days being denied these. There are few things, which need to be decided on common sense where science is inadequate.

Five six years before, at a seminar in Mumbai, a senior Delhi bureaucrat made a bold & profound statement that in case of CRZs there was a typographical error when Prime Minister's India Gandhi's directive of 500 feet was wrongly typed as 500 meter. I was sitting next to him at same dias. At my turn, I commented that my bureaucrat friend is only partially correct. Actually, Mrs Gandhi recommended only for 500 mm of protected area of CRZ.

Which are the major forces against environment movement?
Major opposition to CRZ notification came from builders. MPs, MLAs of Mumbai. 1 acre of land is sold of crores of rupees.

What alternative model of urban & metro development would you suggest?
Hundreds of families come to Mumbai every day, adding enormous pressure to urban infrastructure. System has created a situation, where rural population has no employment opportunity, is exploited by local moneylenders & therefore is forced to migrate to urban areas.

How do you rate environmental NGOs?
Unfortunately, I don't have much to say about the role of NGOs because they lack the basic understanding about issue & hold a narrow & superficial approach. Its difficult to find even 8-10 serious people, who appreciate the environmental problem.

Corporate are actually anti thesis to the environment. Nature of Corporate activity automatically creates an adverse impact on environment. They utilize natural resource to make a product.

If a corporate is sympathetic to understand environment issue, it can always redesign the operations, technology, recreate the resources to minimize environmental degradation.

Fortunately, in India newly emerging companies are in information related field, where they do not destroy the resource base, even though they consume enormous resources. They have good potential to contribute towards environment without being directly confronted to environment.

What do you consider as your greatest achievement?
The decision makers are now accepting that environment is a serious issue in the country. When I joined environment movement, most people didn't know even the meaning of this word. Few who had heard about environment made it synonymous with pollution. Today, every child knows environment.

When I got interested in Mangroves, most ecologicaly productive system in world whose productivity outshines even best of the wheat fields were treated as waste lands. People would equate Mangroves with mangoes. Our campaign led to notification for Murud Janjira Mangroves area, which later became a guideline for CRZ. We made sure that Mangroves were included in CRZs.

Ashutosh Bhardwaj
Features Editor
IndianNGOs.com