Profs ask Ramesh to scrap project

As environment minister Jairam Ramesh gets close to deciding the fate of $12 billion Posco’s steel plant in Orissa, civil society pressure from India and around the world is mounting to scrap the project.

Updated on: Nov 8, 2010, 24:00:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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As environment minister Jairam Ramesh gets close to deciding the fate of $12 billion Posco’s steel plant in Orissa, civil society pressure from India and around the world is mounting to scrap the project.

Around 40 business schools professors have urged Ramesh to look into the dubious data produced by Orissa to convince importance of the Posco’s project of steel plant and a port.

The professors, who analysed reports submitted by different agencies, said Orissa failed to mention that the study done by National Council for Applied Economic Research to claim that 8,70,000 jobs will be created by the project was funded by Posco. “This constitutes a clear conflict of interest and should be enough to put the findings of the report in serious doubt,” the letter read.

The letter comes at the time when there appears to be a confrontation between environment ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office over what action should be taken on Meena Gupta committee report regarding alleged violations for granting clearance to Posco’s steel plant.

The report was submitted to Ramesh on October 18, after which Forest Advisory Committee had concluded that the Forest Rights Act had been violated.

Ramesh is said to be keen to take some action against Orissa. But, the PMO is against this as it would delay India’s biggest foreign direct investment. “There has been a series of meetings to find a way out in the last one week,” an official said.

The professors, however, accused Orissa of trying to take over large tracts of forest land and hand it over to Posco, while displacing communities that have lived there for generations.

The professors from institutes such as University of Massachusetts and Cardiff Business School, Wales, said: “Posco India project has become an important symbol of India’s commitment to a sustainable new economic policy”. They told Ramesh his actions will be crucial as he can set into motion pathways on how India must respond to such issues in the future.

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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