CB BureauStanding firm despite major criticism by the industry for prescribing strict green norms, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has suggested that environment become a political issue.
‘The general mindset we have is that environment is a side issue… that is not the way to deal with it. I think we need to mainstream many of these issues in our political agenda. I want to make environment a political issue,’ Ramesh said while speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
Ramesh said he was not an activist, but if laws of the land have to be implemented in seriousness, then some sacrifices would have to be made. ‘There will be occasion in which choices have to be made and we must make those choices upfront with courage and learn to live with the consequences,’ he added.
The minister, who has been at loggerheads with several ministers and industries for withholding infrastructure projects, said the real debate was not conservation and growth, but how a person or industry would follow the law of the land in environmental issues willingly.
Describing the categories of his ministry’s responses to various industrial projects, he said in a lighter vein that the responses were ‘yes, no and yes and but’. He said it was ‘No’ in case of Vedanta mining project in Orissa but ‘Yes’ for Navi Mumbai airport project. On South Korean company POSCO’s steel project in Orissa, he, however, refused to say anything. Ramesh said that in coming days there could be less and less of ‘plain vanilla yes’ and ‘more of yes and but’.
The minister said people would respond to tough decisions if they were convinced that the decision had been taken in a transparent manner, but for that ‘the reason behind Yes, No and Yes and But should be in public domain in time.’
He also refused to read any dichotomy between the stand of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the environment-versus-development debate, but maintained that divergent views on such matters, which are natural, need to be reconciled.
On accusations of delaying power projects, Ramesh sought to remind that before his present capacity as environment minister he was also a power minister and, hence, was fully aware of what alternatives the latter had.
The minister wondered why nobody wanted to carry out mining work in ‘Go Area’, which was 65 per cent of the total land, maintaining that forest cover was as important as power production.
Referring to his view that SUVs are diesel-guzzlers and as such a burden on economy, and that there should be a fuel policy, Ramesh said, ‘if you look at the number of cars in India, you will not have an idea that we are importing 90 per cent of the fuel we consume.’