Between green terror and growth fascism

Green is a colour that often makes people see red. I am not talking merely of the opposition between environment and justice, but also the battles between green and growth. The tragedy is categories are set up as Manichean dualisms when they should be friendly reciprocities in a democracy.

One misses the public nature of public policy that can challenge these false debates with real and lethal consequences.
The recent battle between Jairam Ramesh and Jayanthi Natarajan and an India Inc. crying for growth is one such drama. A recent India Today issue characterised the behaviour of the ministry of environment as outdated, creating a stranglehold on the Indian economy. Ironically, corporate India is seducing itself with corporate social responsibility but sees green justice as alien. It is a case of downstream management refusing to recognise upstream ethics.
The drama is a complex one. It began with a series of skirmishes. The initial one was between Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Mr Ramesh on growth. Central to it all was the advice Madhav Gadgil, the great ecologist, gave that ecological zones should be divided into go and no-go territories presenting growth and development. Mr Gadgil’s classification is not just relevant for the Western Ghats; it’s not ecology specific. It’s a different way of conceptualising reality so as to adjudicate it between sustainability and growth, between green and red. This is why the Gadgil classification was met with such immaculate hysteria. It tried to provide a conscience for the growth ideologues.
Mr Gadgil is an ecologist with impeccable credentials and a distinguished genealogy. His father was a leading planner; Mr Gadgil himself was a student of the legendary E.O. Wilson. Mr Gadgil’s objection to nuclear energy was treated with contempt as if his retirement was a summons to environmental sentimentality. The unfairness and contempt shown to him was to be prelude to later behaviour.
Meanwhile, one witnessed a fascinating and increasingly fertile experiment in environmental democracy. One set of reports said that new environmental sensitivity was encouraged by Sonia Gandhi. Mrs Gandhi, along with Rahul Gandhi, had initiated two zones of conscience called NREGA and environment regulation.
Mr Ramesh gave this imagination flair and a sensibility. Collaborating with Kartikeya Sarabhai, he held a series of open sessions on BT brinjal. He became the technocratic subaltern, championing the fate of marginal tribals forgotten after the entry of development masquerading as dams and mines. He was trying to create governance with a conscience fully aware that he was going to be lambasted by both sides. The NGOs felt he was too restrained and corporations felt he was too dictatorial. Eventually his behaviour was seen as egotistic, a flaw in personality rather than in the logic of the institution. Few realised the shrewdness of his balancing act seeking to battle powerful politicians and power-hungry ministries. He gave environment a regulatory touch, a technocratic rendering of justice. He asked for transparency and interrogated about sustainability realising his days were numbered. As early as the international conference on the commons in Hyderabad, a year ago, he hinted that the mine and the reactor had become taboo for the ministry. Soon after, he was replaced by Ms Natarajan. The surprise was that after a slow start, she also showed spunk and verve resisting instant clearances. For corporate India and the gung-ho spirit of ministries of growth the days of Kamal Nath as environment minister appeared as nostalgia.
The two ministers were not populists like Mamata Banerjee. They were literate, logical, cited law and public goods emphasising normativity and responsibility over sentimentality. For corporate India, Ms Banerjee might have been intolerable, but these literate ministers were suddenly treated as quislings against development, spreading green terror.
The corporate counter-attack followed a specific set of strategies. Growth was defined as national purpose and a public good and the environmental ministry became an enemy of public good.
Environmentalism in its thrust for regulation and accountability was seen as a throwback to socialism, a return of isms through an outdated bureaucracy. Environmentalism had become proactive instead of retreating before the corporate onslaught.
The green ministers were committing the cardinal sin in the catechism of growth. They were accused of delays. A whole litany of projects from Lavasa to Posco was laid at their doorsteps. Suddenly the multiplicity of environmental time was reduced to linearity of growth. Speed became sacred. Investment was seen as the Holy Grail and concerns of land and infrastructure were seen as unreasonably holding up growth. Respectable figures like M.V. Kamath of Infosys and Adi Godrej of CII echoed the new theology. What was interesting in these presentations was that the quotes were exclusively from corporate India. No tribal in a mining area or a villager displaced by a dam had even a token presence. It was almost as if corporate India had issued a party whip.
The one word missing in the whole debate was democracy. One missed keywords like justice, sustainability, balance and audit. All one heard was speed; it was clear that corporate India could no longer wait for the slowness of ecology and democracy. One suddenly realised it is not green terror we are confronting but an elite fascism masquerading in the name of growth. The real question is — will India find a public space to debate environment as a public good. To treat environmentalists as non-persons may not be the best of beginnings. Inquisitions can be triggered not just by theological fears but by anxieties in economy and politics. The whole debate needs to be reset to focus on issues and frameworks of time beyond market and electoral politics. The green debate is a moral drama that we will have to explain to future generations.

The writer is a social science nomad