Jairam raises performance bar for Jayanthi

Making news for all wrong reasons: from blocking projects to making India's position on climate “flexible” was possibly what proved to be the undoing of Jairam Ramesh. He was elevated to cabinet rank and given the rural development ministry. Environment will be handled now by Jayanthi Natarajan. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 12, 2011, 16:45:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Making news for all wrong reasons: from blocking projects to making India's position on climate “flexible” was possibly what proved to be the undoing of Jairam Ramesh. He was elevated to cabinet rank and given the rural development ministry. Environment will be handled now by Jayanthi Natarajan.

Contrary to popular perception that Ramesh sat on or delayed clearances, facts tell a very different tale. Under his tenure in the last two years the ministry gave environmental clearance to over 90% projects.

No major projects, whether it was the Posco Steel Plant in Orissa or the Nuclear Park in Jaitapur or the Navi Mumbai Airport, was stopped. He even altered his own go no go policy for the coal sector by allowing three major blocks in no go areas with some stiff environmental conditions. That was part of his “flexible” approach on environmental issues.

Before Ramesh, the ministry was perceived as a rubber stamp for clearing projects and there were also allegations of corruption. He cleaned up the system and brought in transparency in functioning. In fact, one of the first things he did was to put in a transparent glass door in his office at the ministry since he believed that transparency had to begin with him. Ramesh also raised the hackles of several cabinet colleagues, the Prime Minister’s office and of course the industry from which he zealously guarded India’s ecology.

His ante on environmental issues was more for byte hungry journalists rather than bringing in any real changes in implementing environmental laws. On his own, he took action against the Adarsh Housing Society in Mumbai, the Lavasa Lake City Project near Pune and Nirma’s Cement factory in Gujarat for violating environmental norms but failed to set up a system where violation of environmental laws will be dealt with automatically.

Another area of controversy for Ramesh was climate change negotiations where he was seen as the final word. At two UN conferences on climate change, Ramesh subtly altered India’s position evoking strong domestic reaction. But it earned him lavish praise and admiration from American and and European climate negotiators.

In a ministry, which has hogged the limelight for awhile now, Natarajan, a Congress spokesperson of standing can bring in some sobriety. But her job will be tough as Ramesh has raised the bar of expectations, especially for pro-active environmental NGOs and has infused new life of activism into the ministry.

He has also left a lot of unfinished agenda items for Natarajan to deal with such as having a sound environment monitoring mechanism, giving a new direction to India’s climate change campaign and focus on preserving forests for wildlife protection.

What remains to be seen is whether Natarajan will be able to cope with the “pressure” to give environmental clearances to projects, especially from the coal and power sectors?

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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