Press Statement
National Investment Board to unleash terror of environmental
diseases by handing over environment to
wolves for electoral finance
New
Delhi/1711/2012: 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 intra-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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