Full Report of MoEF’s Committee to Review Environmental Laws Confirms Initial Apprehensions: Recipe for Dilution of Environmental Protection Regime

Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has recently made public the report of the “High-Level Committee constituted for review of Environment and Forests Laws” (the TSR Subramanian Committee). The full report confirms and strengthens the initial apprehensions that had been built up from a reading of the leaked executive summary.

A reading of the full report shows that its recommendations are a sure recipe for serious dilution of environmental protection regime in the country, which is not too effective in any case; and that its recommendations seem to have ignored the lessons and experience of last few decades since the operation of the Environment Protection Act and other laws.

Our initial concerns, based on the leaked executive summary, articulated here remain valid. We give below some additional issues based on the full report (Report from here on). Note that concerns articulated earlier are not repeated here.

Some Useful Analysis and Recommendations

The Report has correctly analysed the key problems with the current environmental protection regime. Some of these are:

“The lasting impression has remained that the Acts and the appurtenant legal instruments have really served only the purpose of a venal administration, at the Centre and the States, to meet rent-seeking propensity at all levels. This impression has been further strengthened by waves of large scale ‘clearances’, coupled with major delays in approvals in individual cases. It should also be added that our businessmen and entrepreneurs are not all imbued in the principles of rectitude – most are not reluctant, indeed actively seek short-cuts, and are happy to collaboratively pay a ‘price’ to get their projects going…”

“The Executive, as pointed out has not covered itself with glory – indeed it has invited the attention of the judicial branch through lack of basic care.”

“The Committee notes the tardy implementation of even the current penal provisions, which is by itself a catastrophe.”

“The principal aim of Environmental Laws should be to ensure enhancement of environmental quality parameters and maintenance of ecological balance.”

“While India has a strong environmental policy and legislative framework, much of the problem relates to weak implementation of the various acts and the rules there under.”

“… whereas most projects sooner or later obtain approval; one analysis indeed indicated that the percentage of approved projects works out to 99.1% – clearly the focus is not on substance.”

Unfortunately, in spite of the correct identification of the problems, the Committee’s  recommendations do not address these problems, particularly the issue that “the focus is not on substance”. Instead, their recommendations are mainly focussed on expediting clearances, and are likely to result in a go-by to basic environmental principles.

There are some useful recommendations that can potentially enhance environmental conservation. The few such recommendations in the Report are (1) Suggestion to include noise pollution as an offence in EP Act. (2) Creation of a geo-referenced database of environmental parameters for the entire country, including parameters like topography, hydrology, forest cover, bio-diversity, pollution etc. (However, the utility of this is limited by making it accessible as a paid service which common people, civil society groups are not likely to afford) (3) Some of the suggestions in the Wildlife Protection Act.

However, the impact of these few useful suggestions also may be  lost as the overarching framework within which they are recommended to be placed is highly problematic.

Let us look at few of these issues now.

Nothing New in NEMA/SEMA, May Worsen the Clearance Process

Section 7.8 of the Report recommends the formation of the NEMA and SEMA for clearing various projects. It says:

“It is proposed to create agencies, viz. National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) at national level and State Environment Management Authority (SEMA) for each State as the pivotal authorities to process applications for composite environmental clearance (one window), for category A cases through NEMA and for category B projects through SEMA. These would be standing technical organizations, manned with professionals, supported by appropriate technology, which will have the primary responsibility for processing all environmental clearance applications, in a strictly time-bound manner”.

However, a detailed reading shows that there is little to distinguish the NEMA and SEMA from the current structure of the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) at central level and the State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) at the state level, except for the fact that the members of NEMA and SEMA are expected to be full time. While this would be a welcome step, the basic character of the NEMA remains that of the EAC and hence this change may not have the desired impact.

The most serious problem with the NEMA is that its Chair is required to be a:

 

“Person with administrative experience and of the rank of an Additional Secretary to the government or above or persons with unblemished record of service under any government of not less than twenty five years in the field of pollution control or environmental management.”

 

First of all, this recommendation limits the selection of Chair to those who have been in the government, thus excluding many capable, knowledgeable, respected and independent people from outside the government.

 

Second, this allows bureaucrats and government officers with no experience in environment to be chairperson of NEMA and it is likely that this will become the norm. Such an apprehension is not misplaced at all. In the EACs, most of the Chairpersons appointed have had no background in environment; rather they have been heading departments or ministries that are involved in building dams, mines etc. There is no reason to believe that this will change in the case of the NEMA.

 

The absence of a Chair with strong environmental background, knowledge and concerns has been seen as one of the main reasons why the EAC has failed to deliver on ensuring environmental protection and the Committee should have recommend environmental experience and knowledge as a prerequisite for the Chair of NEMA and SEMA.

In a recent Order[1], the National Green Tribunal has taken cognisance of this issue and has noted:

 

“Thus, we are of the considered view that it will neither be permissible nor in the interest of the environment, or any of the stakeholders, to appoint persons from only administrative or management field, without having specific experience in the field of environment”.

 

Further, it directed that:

 

“We direct MoEF not to appoint experts as members/Chairperson of the EAC/SEAC under these head [“public administration or management “] unless the said experts in the above field is/are directly relatable to the various fields of environmental jurisprudence.”

 

Thus, the NGT has clearly ruled - something that should also be obvious from basic principles – that any member, and particularly the Chair of the EAC (and now the NEMA) must primarily be an expert in the field of environment.

 

Second, the NEMA has a vastly expanded set of responsibilities that go beyond project clearances, so making the NEMA Board full time would only be a limited improvement over the EAC.  In particular, NEMA  has to “Monitor the compliance of specifications and enforce all the conditions of project clearances.” This is very important, for as the TSR Committee itself notes, the main problem with the environmental regime in India is lack of compliance and implementation. However, there is nothing in the Report that indicates how the NEMA is going to manage this monitoring, which will require a large staff. Most of the Report’s recommendations for monitoring are in terms of using modern technology – which is welcome and must be done – but it is not going to be a silver bullet. The Report seems to believe in a technological fix.

 

The real issue with the monitoring and compliance is, of course, that the establishment does not have the political will to take action against the offenders, against projects and promoters who are often in nexus with the political and bureaucratic establishment, or where other considerations like bribes prevail. Clearly, a NEMA headed by a member of the same bureaucracy is unlikely to rise above these reasons and suddenly transform itself into an organisation that can take strong action.

 

The Report notes that among the principles it tried to follow is that of “providing adequate teeth to regulators to check the violations.” Unfortunately, lack of teeth was never the problem – current laws provide ample scope for taking strict actions – but rather the willingness to bite. None of the recommendations have the intent of creating this political will to take strict action. Nor do any of the recommendations go to make the bureaucracy more accountable. On the contrary, by diluting provision like the NGT, the Report has decreased the accountability.

Last, but not the least, there is a recommendation that :

“The Union Government shall have the powers to give directions to NEMA and SEMA in the matters of project clearances. All such directions shall be binding on NEMA and SEMA”.

 

The intent of this is not clear, but the results are likely to be further enhanced control of the Government on the NEMA.

 Dilution of Public Hearing Process

 The most serious problem of omission with the Report is that it has no recommendations to address what is probably the biggest lacunae in the current environmental regime, that is, virtually no scope for the participation of local communities and civil society in appraisal, decision-making and monitoring.

 At the same time, the Report has chosen to recommend a number of dilutions in the one limited space available for the same, that is, the public hearing that takes place as a part of the environmental clearance process.

First of all, it recommends that “only environmental, rehabilitation and resettlement issues are captured in the public hearing.” This means that the local communities have no scope to raise issues questioning any other part of the project or the project itself.

 

Equally serious, it recommends that “A mechanism should be put in place to ensure that only genuine local participation is permitted.” This is a clear attempt to shut out civil society and public interest groups from the public hearing process and in turn deprive the local communities of inputs that can empower them. It should be noted that many of the projects are complex technological interventions, the EIAs are complicated documents (often available only in English), and so the local communities need support to understand the EIA and other impacts of the project. It is ironic that projects are promoted mostly by outsiders, the EIAs are done by outsiders / consultants, but it is now expected that now only “local” people would participate in the public hearing. This is a clear attempt to weaken challenges to grossly destructive projects by isolating local communities from external support and thus disempowering them.

Further, the Report says that public hearings can be dispensed with “in the matters of projects of strategic importance and national importance.” This offers a very easy escape route for exempting projects, particularly since national importance is not defined, and virtually every major project could be considered nationally important. For example, the Polavaram dam and irrigation project has been declared a national project; this could well mean that it is of national importance. Then, even such a controversial project, facing serious challenge from local people, could be exempt from public hearings.

Several other dilutions are also proposed for public hearings.

Other Concerns

 For the record, the concerns dealt with in our earlier comments are:

 

Report finds legal framework robust, yet recommends changing it drastically

Winding up or Dilution of National Green Tribunal on Cards

(Details were not clear in the Executive Summary. It is now clear that the NGT will remain, but its powers of review will be limited to “judicial review of administrative actions” as against reviewing the core of the environmental aspects on merits that an expert Tribunal can.)

Utmost Good Faith Mechanism

Delinking Compensatory Forestation from Project

No Provision for Participation

 

In Sum

 In sum, while the Report correctly identifies many of the significant problems in the current environmental regime, the recommendations provided by it hardly address these reasons. On the contrary, if accepted, they will go towards creating a system that is bureaucratic, with little accountability and geared mainly towards “expediting” clearances, with little to ensure that the environmental principles are maintained and enshrined in projects and developmental activities.

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[1] Order of the National Green Tribunal, Principal Bench in the matter of  APPLICATION NO. 116 (THC) OF 2013, Kalpavriksh and Ors. Vs Union of India and Ors., dated 17^th July 2014.

Recipe for Dilution of Environmental Protection Regime: Report of MoEF’s Committee to Review Environmental Laws

The “High-Level Committee constituted for review of Environment and Forests Laws” (the TSR Subramanian Committee) has recently submitted its report to the MoEF. Preliminary information about its report indicate that its recommendations are a sure recipe for serious dilution of environmental protection regime in the country, which is not too effective in any case; and that its recommendations seem to have ignored the lessons and experience of last few decades since the operation of the Environment Protection Act and other laws.



Laws based on the Committee's Report are unlikely to ensure environmental protection

The note below presents some comments on the recommendations of the TSR Committee Report. It should be noted that comments are limited only to some recommendations. Second, as of now, only the executive summary (ES) of the report is available in the public domain, so the comments are based on the ES only. Some of the comments could be revisited when the detailed report is made public.

Report finds legal framework robust, yet recommends changing it drastically

The Committee was set up to review six environment related legislations, and suggest amendments to them. However, what the Committee found was that

“While India has a strong environmental policy and legislative framework, much of the problem related to weak implementation of the various acts and the rules there under.”

Clearly, if we already have a strong environmental legal and policy regime, then the recommendations should have pretty much left it alone. As they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Yet, the Committee has suggested sweeping changes in the laws.  Most of the changes appear to weaken environmental protection, which then seems to be very purpose. Why else should the committee recommend sweeping changes in the laws when it itself found the regime to be robust?

In fact, it should have focussed mainly on suggesting ways to make implementation stronger.

Ironically many of the changes suggested are likely to decrease accountability, weakening implementation further, or allowing weak implementation to continue.

Winding up or Dilution of National Green Tribunal on Cards

The recommendation of the Committee to have an “appellate mechanism against the decision of the NEMA [National Environmental Management Authority] and SEMA [State Environmental Management Authority]” appears to be aimed at doing away with the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

This is ironic in context of the Committee’s finding that implementation is the key issue; as the NGT has been the main, one can even say the only mechanism that has brought in some semblance of accountability to the environmental protection regime. In spite of this, or may  be because of this, there has been a clamour against the  NGT and a dilution has been talked about a lot. The Committee seems to have gone along with this clamour.

Apparently, the reason to bring in an Appellate mechanism is that the first forum of appeal should not be a judicial one. However, the Committee report is silent on whether the NGT would still remain and be the second level of appeal.

In any case, if such a new Appellate mechanism is brought it, the least of provisions should be that the Environmental or Forest Clearance (or other decisions) of NEMA/SEMA that are being challenged should automatically be suspended once the appeal is made. Otherwise, the appeal would drag on for months if not years, and the work on the project would continue. After that, any appeal at the higher levels is likely to be doomed from the very start as the project would be a fait accompli. Of course, the Committee recommends that every appeal has to be disposed-off in three months, but experience of such mechanisms shows that this is likely to be breached more than honoured.

Utmost Good Faith Mechanism

A measure most disconnected with  the Indian situation is the  recommendation of legislating a concept of “Utmost Good Faith”. As the Summary notes:

“A new concept of ‘utmost good faith’ has been inducted, through a new legislation, to ensure that the applicant for clearance is responsible for legally for his statements, but would be severely penalised, as prescribed, for any deliberate falsehood.’

This is supposed to ease implementation by significantly reducing inspector raj.

However, this exhibits a complete disregard for the Indian situation. The real question  is not whether industries or corporates will not exhibit good faith – the real issue is whether the Indian state will be able to (or will want  to) take strict action.

The problem is that the Indian political, bureaucratic and technocratic establishment has no political will or intention to take strict action and penalise offenders, often in lieu of extra-legal considerations.

Of course, this is very easy for the Government to contradict, if they want. All they have to do is to show such action – for which there is ample scope even within today’s legal regime. Indeed, such a demonstration of the Government’s ability to act strictly need not wait any new legislation, and rather, must form a prerequisite for even thinking of any new legislation of ‘utmost good faith’.

Delinking Compensatory Forestation from Project

One of the important recommendations of the Committee is

“…delinking the project proponent from Compensatory Afforestation obligations  after he fulfils the  necessary financial commitments…”

Ethics demands that the responsibility and accountability to carry out environmental compensatory measures must lie with the one who is responsible for destroying it – in this case, the project promoter. And if he is not able to ensure compensation, then he should not be allowed to destroy.

It is true that even today, the project proponent pays the money to the afforestation fund, and the responsibility for carrying out afforestation is that of the government forest departments. But the final responsibility remains that of the project proponent. The proponents have a grievance that they are being made responsible  for afforestation but they don’t have any control on it, and this certainly has some merit. But the solution cannot be in delinking the project completely from the afforestation, for then one is likely to defeat the very purpose of environmental regeneration and it also goes against the principle that responsibility for ensuring compensatory measures must lie with the one who is responsible for destroying it

There is also a practical consideration. Experience of last several decades has shown that the main motivation for carrying out the afforestation (and any other environmental protection scheme or rehabilitation processes) in time would be of the project proponent and that too only if his project is likely to be delayed in case of default.

No Provision for Participation

 

While the Committee has recommended sweeping changes in environmental laws in spite of finding that the regime is robust, it has not made recommendations for the one most glaring lacunae in the current legal regime. This is that the current legal regime has almost no place for participation of local communities, affected people and ordinary citizens in the assessments of impacts, in environmental decision making, or in monitoring of implementation of environmental measures.

Such participation is most crucial in ensuring proper implementation of environmental laws and for ensuring environmental protection measures. Unfortunately, the Committee has lost the opportunity for introducing comprehensive provisions for meaningful participation of people. Possibly, its very limited consultations and the limited exposure of its members to relevant aspects of environmental regime has been responsible for this omission.

It is imperative now for the MoEF not to rush into implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, but put them in the public domain and first have extensive consultations on these.

Report of visit to Coastal Thermal power plants and their impacts on water

This report presents some preliminary findings related to the impact on water of coastal coal based thermal power stations based on a field visit to some operational and in-pipeline coastal plants in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The visit was undertaken in early July 2014.

This will  feed in into our ongoing larger work on coal and water which is steadily progressing towards some sort of completion!

Report is also available on Manthan website at http://www.manthan-india.org/spip.php?article87

Comments are welcome. Feel free to share it too.

New Land Acquisition Act – Rules for Social Impact Assessments and Consent Provisions Notified (Relative Progressive Rules – Can also be a useful guide for EIA Processes)

The NDA government – amidst speculations that it is set to dilute important provisions of the new land acquisition act – has recently notified the Rules for two of its most important and progressive sections, those pertaining to the Social Impact Assessments and the Consent provisions. These Rules, notified on 8^th Aug 2014 detail out how to implement these two provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 which is the full and formal name of the new Land Acquisition Act( referred to hereinafter as Act).

Overall, these Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Social Impact Assessment and Consent) Rules, 2014 (Rules hereinafter) provide a relatively progressive framework of implementation. 

Provisions for Social Impact Assessment

There are some significant provisions for carrying out the SIA. First and foremost, the Rules require that the SIA be carried out in consultation with the local self-government institutions in the affected area. This provision is also there in Act.

The Rules require the state or the central government to establish a Social Impact Assessment Unit, “an independent organisation which shall be responsible for ensuring that Social Impact Assessments are commissioned and conducted by such person or bodies other than the Requiring Body as per the provisions of the Act”. (Emphasis added). This is a critical provision for maintaining the credibility of the SIA. Here, a lesson seems to have been learnt from the problems with the Environment Impact Assessments (EIA) process, where the project proponent selects, commissions and pays the agency that carries out the EIA. This creates a direct conflict of interest, and it’s not surprising that most EIAs are highly biased towards the project proponent’s interests. 

The Rules empower the SIA Unit to formulate the Terms of References for any SIA proposal, list the activities required, decide the size and profile of the team required, and prepare the costs estimates for the same. Then, the Requiring Body (the agency that wants the land) will deposit the money with the Government, and the SIA Unit will select the agency to carry out the assessment from the roster that it maintains. 

To further ensure a distance between the Requiring Body and the SIA team, the Rules explicitly state that the Requiring Body shall not be involved in any way in the appointment of the SIA agency, and that it should be ensured that there is no conflict of interest involving the team members of the SIA agency. 

The Rules allow the SIA team to include independent practitioners, academics, qualified social activists, and mandate the inclusion of at least one woman member. 

The SIA Unit is also tasked with building and “continuously expand a Database of Qualified Social Impact Assessment Resource Partners and Practitioners”, “conduct training and capacity building programmes for the Social Impact Assessment team and community surveyors”, and “continuously review, evaluate and strengthen the quality of Social Impact Assessments and the capacities available to conduct them”. 

Apart from giving a detailed list of the aspects that the SIA must cover, which include all direct and indirect impacts, the Rules also require the SIA to “assess the viability of impact mitigation". This is critical because often, the mitigation measures are just listed out as a lip service and the project cleared on this basis, but the affected people suffer because it is practically impossible to carry out the measure effectively particularly when the displacement involves large numbers.

In this context, it is also important that the Rules require the SIA to “provide an assessment as to whether the benefits from the proposed project exceed the social costs and adverse social impacts that are likely to be experienced by the affected families or even after the proposed mitigation measures, the affected families remained at risk of being economically or socially worse, as a result of the said land acquisition and resettlement”.

There are several other important provisions including the time period for the SIA (six months), recording the views of the affected families in writing, involving local voluntary organisations and media in the public hearings, recording and considering in the SIA every objection raised in the public hearings, the SIA and public hearings to be in local language and a web-based flow management information system of the acquisition process.

The Consent Provision

The Consent related Rules specify that the Consent process shall be carried out by the Government, through the District Collector. The consent would be obtained (where required by the Act) at two levels – the Gram Sabha level and for the private and public-private partnership projects, at the individual land owner levels. 

For getting the consent from the Gram Sabha, the quorum requirements not only ask for 50% of the total members to be present, but also require that one third of total women members also to be present. 

The Rules specify that negotiated terms for rehabilitation, compensation, impact management and mitigation which the Requiring Body has agreed to, shall form a part and parcel of the Consent Agreements. This means that the Consent is given only against these commitments.

It also declares that any attempt to coerce or threaten anyone into giving consent shall be treated as a criminal offence, and most important, if any such threat has been made, the consent so given shall be void. 

Two Caveats

Of course, these Rules cannot and do not transcend the fundamental problems with the original Act itself (see here for a detailed account of these), but within that limitation, provide a much better process than has been available earlier for project affected people. 

Second, it’s a question as to whether and how long these Rules will survive, as the very provisions that these Rules help actualise are the ones that the Central Government seems to want to do away with. However, till such an eventuality, these Rules will be the ones that will provide the framework for implementation of the Act.  

A Lesson for the MoEF

All in all, even with several limitations, these Rules provide a process of SIA that is miles ahead of all earlier processes. Indeed, at this time, the Ministry of Environment and Forest is examining all the environment protection laws, and it could do well to adapt all these provisions of the SIA for the EIA process too.

22 September 2014

The Rules can be downloaded from http://dolr.nic.in/dolr/downloads/pdfs/RFCTLARR%20%28SIA%20and%20Consent%29%20Rules%202014.pdf

IIT Bombay – Build, Build, but Where is the Imagination?

Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Bombay, now Mumbai – my alma mater – has undoubtedly been a happening place, even when I was there some 25 years back. Still, I was quiet taken aback to see how much was “happening” when I visited it sometime last week.  This was not the usual campus sort of activity. Rather, what is happening is that the campus is in the middle of a construction boom. It is abuzz with the sounds of excavators (popularly called JCBs), bulldozers, concrete mixers and the likes. Mingling amongst young men and women wearing the characteristic look – half earnest, half I could not care less – of students on campus, are seen men in plastic hard hats and bright yellow and green coloured reflective jackets. Construction is on everywhere.

Excavator at a construction site near YP Gate

Now anywhere in the world, construction is a sure sign of progress – or, to use a more nuanced and lively word, construction is a sure sign of “vikas”. In the last few months, the word (and its more mundane sounding English equivalent, “development”) has been much thrown around as India witnessed an energetic and loquacious election campaign. While India waits for the new government to unleash vikas, the IIT Bombay campus – as always – seems to be miles ahead of the country. 

Naturally, all this must be great for the campus and its residents. But somehow I am left feeling just the opposite. Not surprising, of course, because I am amongst the minority which believes in such odd ball things like rivers should flow, and dams that stop the flow of a river are not exactly great news; that open spaces are nice, nicer than glass fronted tall buildings; that mountains are great, particularly when they are not hollowed out and cratered by mine pits; that if we need to forego some coal extraction to keep in place centuries old forests, that’s not a bad deal; that animals, plants, fish – in fact, the entire non-human biota, have a right to live and a right to an ecological space that will ensure that they live; and that such a right accrues to them not because they are useful to the human race, but rather because its intrinsic to their being on this planet.

So when I saw the campus last week, I was, to repeat what I said earlier, quite taken aback. I saw in the happenings on campus a microcosm of what is happening in the larger world out there, things that go against the grain of what I have outlined in the earlier paragraph.

But I must qualify my above thoughts. I am not an extreme ecologist nor, to use a word that has often been thrown at me and my friends, an eco-terrorist. If I think a river should continue to flow, I also agree that it’s okay to extract some of its waters for human use. But some, not all. How much, and how to arrive at this how much, is a complex interdisciplinary field of science, technology, social, environmental and political processes, called “environmental flows”. Similarly, I feel that we need to mine minerals, but “how much and how” remains the crucial question. This approach needs to be extended to all things described above.

So when I felt bad at what was going on at IIT campus, it was not because open spaces are being eaten away rapidly, but because it seems to be done in a mindless manner. I understand that IIT badly needs more hostels, residential quarters for staff, departments and so on. Yet, I wonder whether all this cannot be built without destroying open spaces, dumping muck in the lake and destroying the greenery? 

Old Hostel 10 makes way for a new high rise 16 storey H10

Indeed, if there was one place where one could expect an innovative answer to this question, which is a smaller version of the larger question confronting humanity – how can we meet the needs of human beings at the same time ensuring that we destroy the surroundings the least – then it could have been IIT Bombay. It has the brains, it has the talent, it has the funds; what it probably lacks is the interest to take a particular approach to developing the campus. Else, we would not have a flashy new air conditioned sports complex coming up on the gymkhana grounds – a sports complex that takes away significant part of the sports ground itself! (Alumni may be interested in knowing that construction is coming up on all three sides of the gymkhana grounds H1 to H3 side, H4-H5 side and H8 side.). Or muck being disposed into the Powai lake. And so on. When I asked around if there was indeed a master plan, several people – who I know are sensitive and concerned campus residents – said if there was one, they were not in the know of it. 

While walking along the lake side path from the (old) guest house to behind hostel 8, (hardly a lake side path, now that the lake has receded so much), I wondered aloud: With so many alumni donating generously to the Institute for a variety of causes, including for big new departments and buildings (sometimes named after themselves!), why has someone not thought of donating funds with an express purpose of preserving a part of the campus? A sort of a no-build fund, a modified version of “debt for nature swap”? My friend, an alumnus and a faculty, Prof. Milind Sohoni, immediately responded saying that apparently the batch of 1980 had done something like this, giving funds to preserve the very stretch of the path that we were walking on. I also saw a small park called Kshitij built as a part of this. But it seems the authorities have renegaded on the promise to preserve the area, as there is a new big multi-storey guest house being built next to this very path. 

A heap of excavated debris piled up. A common site at several places in the campus

Certainly, part of the reason for me to feel bad about the campus is because I spent five incredibly great years there, and have a residual attachment to it. But I don’t want to make too much of this attachment – I no longer live there, and have visited it probably all of 10 times in the 25 years since I left it. But my disquiet stems more from a sense of missed opportunity. IIT could have showcased a different way of doing things, an approach that would not only keep the campus as beautiful it was, but would have also been an inspiration and guide for how to do things in the larger world outside. 

But then again, may be IIT, and the world outside wants to do things in this very manner, and they are indeed showcasing and inspiring the world with an approach they believe in?

May be I am really in a minority?

27 May 2014