Think local and act local

The entire debate after the Uttarakhand disaster appears to have been hijacked by a lobby that is against hydel projects, rather than talking about a Himalayan development model based on environmental sustainability and the creation of livelihood avenues for Paharis. Chetan Chauhan writes.

Updated on: Jul 8, 2013, 03:07:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan

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The entire debate after the Uttarakhand disaster appears to have been hijacked by a lobby that is against hydel projects, rather than talking about a Himalayan development model based on environmental sustainability and the creation of livelihood avenues for Paharis.

More than 60 years after Independence, India does not have a comprehensive study on the carrying capacity of the Himalayas. As a result, decades of unplanned growth have ravaged the hills and the locals unknowingly have had to bear the brunt.

Paharis everywhere, from Jammu & Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, have been left out of India’s economic growth, while the Himalayas have been harnessed for money by politically linked outsiders, thereby alienating the locals who could protect the local ecology.

Half of the hotels around popular tourist destinations in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are owned by non-residents. Most of the hydel projects coming up in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh are by companies with no stake in the economic empowerment of the locals.

The reply to an RTI filed by an activist in Himachal Pradesh showed that of the total white-collared jobs created in the state by the private sector in the last five years only nine per cent went to the locals. This was despite the fact that the companies were required to give half of the jobs to Himachalis in return for acquiring land on the fragile mountains at subsidised rates.

Skewed development models have made the Paharis slaves to outsiders in their own land, and this is why they protest against any talk of controlling the number of pilgrims at the Char Dhams or a ban on hydel projects. Thousands of villagers in Uttarakhand depend on the annual pilgrimage for their livelihood.

The support for hydel projects stem from the assumption of the locals that they will provide employment and better infrastructure. The widening of the national highway from Rampur to Kinnaur because of the Nathpa Jhakri hydel project is an example. Denying this right to the economically-deprived people to save the ecology would be suicidal for any state government in the hills.

The government needs to allow projects as per the carrying capacity of the region and ensure it leads to inclusive development. That can happen if the government introduces mandatory revenue sharing for hydel projects with village bodies as being proposed for mining projects under the Mines and Minerals Development Act.

The government needs to push the companies involved in hydel projects to employ high-cost tunnelling technologies that cause minimal damage to the mountains. The environment ministry should penalise companies that fail to adhere to the laws. In the case of any violation, the courts should give their verdict within a stipulated timeframe, preferably six months. This will create the impression that the government is serious about protecting the environment.

The need of the hour is to think about the people in the hills rather than activists sitting in air-conditioned offices calling for a ban on all development in the hills. Without the active participation of the local community, protecting the environment is not possible.

There is no better example of this than Uttarakhand, the birth place of the Chipko movement. Thanks to Magsaysay award-winner Sundarlal Bahuguna and his team, around 62% of the state’s geographic area is still categorised as forest.

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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