India backs China, wants transparency clause out

India is supportive of transparency in governance, but does not favour the installation of a mandatory mechanism. Chetan Chauhan reports. India's grouse

Updated on: Apr 30, 2012, 01:18:17 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India has chosen China over transparency in governance.

As far as the proposed global agreement to replace Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2015 is concerned, India has cast its lot with China in opposing the binding principle — which calls for nations to “adopt transparency, public participation and justice” in their growth parameters.

The proposed agreement would be discussed at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro this June, forming a framework for around 200 countries to develop in a sustainable manner over the next 15 years.

Indian negotiators seemed inclined to declare that the policy framework be transparent and participatory, but they did not approve of installing a mechanism to make the principle mandatory for each country in the draft agreement — also called the outcome document.

The mechanism is prescribed under clause 58, which China wants deleted from the outcome document. The European Union got the clause included in the outcome document because it believed that transparency and access to justice would be key to monitoring the proposed SDGs. Though Indian negotiators have not opposed the provision in open forums, they have apparently sided with the Chinese view on the mechanism.

Curiously, India does seem supportive of transparency in the government — having enacted laws such as the Right To Information (which allows citizens to obtain information from the government) and the Forest Right Act (which makes gaining the consent of forest dwellers mandatory for projects).

Matters had taken an unexpected turn at a recent meeting of the G-77 plus China — a group of 130 developing countries — in New York. India backed the Chinese proposal to delete clause 58, demanding that the principle on transparency should be mentioned only once — clause 17 — in the outcome document.

Access Initiative, a group of 450 Indian NGOs, said in an email to negotiators that unlike China, India has nothing to lose by agreeing to clause 58 because its domestic laws comply with the stated principles of the outcome document.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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