Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part II : Actionable points for the WGEA : 3. Towards Multi-centred Governance in the Western Ghats : 3.5. Forest Rights Act : 3.5.1Poor regulatory oversight and institutional coordination : Plachimada experience :-

Opinion
       19/12/2018
                1611.

Sub : Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part II : Actionable points for the WGEA : 3. Towards Multi-centred Governance in the Western Ghats : 3.5. Forest Rights Act : 3.5.1Poor regulatory oversight and institutional coordination : Plachimada experience :-

Ref : 3.5.1 : Poor regulatory oversight and institutional coordination : Box 14: Plachimada experience :-

14: Plachimada experience A myth actively perpetuated by traditional politicians and a supportive bureaucracy is that panchayat bodies are India's lowest ranked implementing agency for government programmes. Thus their status as an institution of self-government, as designated in the Indian Constitution, remains a distant dream. This is why, when the Plachimada panchayat in Kerala's Pallakad district rescinded the license of a global soft drink major corporate and the state high court dismissed the company's writ petition challenging this decision, it became an event with huge ramifications.

The event strongly indicates the emergence of the panchayat as 'government'. That is why the fight between the panchayat and the company – paternally supported by the state government – has occurred on the terrain of constitutional rights and their relevance to public good.

While cancelling the license, the panchayat evoked its constitutional rights (further empowered by state legislation). As local elected government, it has argued, it has the duty to protect the well-being of its subjects. So it has the right to cancel – or refuse permission – to anything that affects its subjects adversely. The panchayat holds the soft drink plant responsible for depleting groundwater in the area under its jurisdiction; this has affected local agriculture. The panchayat's reasoning is important: it establishes the crucial link between governance and managing local natural resources, and if history serves memory right, panchayats were formulated precisely for this reason. The Plachimada panchayat has established the supremacy of an elected government.

The company contends the panchayat is a subordinate of the state government and thus can not operate out of its domain. This is usual corporate arrogance, which was shattered by the turn of events. The company has visibly panicked, what with the prospect of being denied permission permanently, and is now sitting-in at hearings with village leaders. The Constitution has given enough power to the panchayat (to avoid such stand-offs, it has even listed 29 functions in a separate schedule) to function totally outside state policy. Judicial pronouncement from the Supreme Court also upholds the panchayat's power to evolve its policy and to take all necessary steps to implement it. Plachimada is a first-hand lesson on the power of local government. This is the event's first important lesson.

Coincidentally, Plachimada occurred even as India tried dimly – hesitantly – to remember Bhopal, site of the world's worst industrial disaster. Or, should we say: corporate social irresponsibility. Bhopal is a perfect case of how a gap between government and people can stymie the delivery of justice. Practically nobody has been punished for this disaster. More importantly, people's right to know about the hazards they and their environs might encounter gets grossly curtailed by such distance. Till December 2-3, 1984, local residents had no clue about the poison being brewed right in their backyard.

To think of Bhopal's affected people reacting against the plant as swiftly and successfully as Plachimada is, unfortunately, wishful thinking. When the disaster occurred, panchayats were not constitutional bodies (panchayats were made possible by the 72nd and 73rd amendments to the Constitution in 1992). The idea of making people a part of governance was overpowered by the need to get more industries. This overpowering need to seek multinational investment is still a policy, but the difference is that, in between, Bhopal happened. Plachimada residents asked questions of the company that Bhopal victims would surely have asked much before the tragedy. Arguably the tragedy could have been averted. Thus Plachimada comes across as an effective mechanism to instil corporate accountability in the country, and for the corporate sector an amicable way to transact business. This is the second important implication of the event.

Notwithstanding sceptics, panchayats are showing signs of maturity as able governments. This is not the place to clinically dissect a crucial development like this, but to realise the inevitability of panchayat as government. Interpreting Plachimada as a setback to the country's economic liberalisation programme is primarily abrogating responsibility in a democracy, that also the world's largest one. If the states use the 'federal' argument to ask for more power from the Union, they must apply the same argument to themselves and give power back to the panchayats.

In fact empowered panchayats like Plachimada can make the flow of investment smooth and faster. Companies will not only bypass the massive bureaucratic hierarchy, but can also avoid Plachimada-like scenarios. This is because panchayats will make allowance only for such companies as would suit their growth; at the same time, the responsibility of how companies conduct themselves will fall to the panchayats. Small in size, panchayats would also be able to speedily sort disputes out.

But before all this happens, as a beginning, the company and the Kerala state government must give in to what Plachimada wants.


Action point : Local government should have representation in the proposed Western Ghat Ecological Authority

EIA and Environmental Clearance (EC) Reform, Implementation of key Acts
Within existing provisions of EIA processes, the following needs to be done (Dutta and Sreedhar, 2010) :

 Specific Terms of Reference (TORs) should be framed for preparation of EIA reports for projects located in the Western Ghats and the TORs should be available for public comments.

 The process of accreditation of EIA consultants is welcome. It would be better still if the project proponent deposited the money with the MoEF and the MoEF then chose the consultant so as to preserve the independence of the consultant.

 The EIA process in the Western Ghats should move to Regional and Cumulative Impact Assessments and carrying capacity studies.

The EIA clearance procedure introduced in 2006 can be re-visited :

 To provide a separate forum for inputs by the State: The conditions in the Environmental Clearances specify the role of the Regional Office of the MoEF, to monitor the conditions stipulated in the ECs. It would be ideal that the State Pollution Control Boards should undertake these tasks. This will help resolve many local monitoring issues and curb unhealthy mining practices, which the mining operators indulge in, in the absence of regular monitoring of mining conditions by the Regional Office.10

 For inclusion of projects having significant impacts within the ambit of the EIA: It was observed that several projects with significant impacts were outside the purview of the
10 Suggestion from the Government of Goa.

EIA process or requiring only state clearances, i.e. the so-called B category. Examples of such projects are: diversion of rivers, mini-hydel projects, wind mills, tourism projects and resorts specially located within or in proximity of forest land and other ecologically sensitive areas. For the Western Ghats, given the richness of the area, this differentiation should be revisited. Instead of such compartmentalization of projects, protecting the environment needs better coordination between Centre and State entities and across State regulatory and development bodies. The EIA process has to also take into account whether a particular project is permissible in the ESZs so declared.

 No mine or tourist infrastructure is to be allowed to continue if environmental rules and conditions of clearance are flouted.

 Strengthen institutional coordination for monitoring impacts

Given that the challenges to the tribal community’s way of life have severely intensified in the past decade with a liberalizing economy, the wooing of private capital for industry, the profitable rush for natural resources (in particular, minerals and farmland) along with the phenomenon of left-wing insurgency, the neglect of PESA has had particularly tragic and violent implications.

The Western Ghats region has a few Scheduled V areas such as the district of Nandurbar in Maharashtra where the experience of implementation of PESA has also been very negative. Consequently we need to move ahead to genuinely empower tribal people using the path-breaking provisions of PESA.

Action Point:

A special Western Ghats Expert Appraisal Committee should be set up (or may be part of the function of the proposed Western Ghats Ecology Authority) to further appraise a project after it is recommended by the Sector-specific EAC.

A separate Cell is needed to take forward the enforcement of PESA and FRA in Western Ghat districts

Diffusion of Control through Society

We would also like to suggest that governance in the Western Ghats allow for a wider range of instruments, norms and processes beyond the legal rules that are in place and thereby allow a diffusion of regulatory control through society in order to strengthen good development practices and incentivise conservation (Scott, 2004). Such processes and instruments can include the following :

 Pro-active disclosure of information in connection with RTI

 Social audits of projects and development activities

 Participatory monitoring of impacts using tools and indicators

 Green accounts for the minerals and tourism sector

 Creation of spatial databases

 Creation of incentives for conservation and innovations

o Payments for ecosystem services (Somanathan, 2010)
o Influence social attitudes and norms
o Reward good corporate/state behaviour
o Encourage green innovations

Strengthening Environmental Governance

The Panel believes that immediate steps must be taken to address the issue of the serious deficit in environmental governance all over the Western Ghats tract. The Panel is impressed both by levels of environmental awareness and commitment by citizens towards the cause of environment, and their helplessness in the face of their marginalization in the current system of governance. The Panel urges the Ministry of Environment and Forests to take a number of urgent steps to involve the citizens, in particular :

(a) pro-active and sympathetic implementation of provision of Community Forest Resources of the Forest Rights Act,

(b) establishment of fully empowered Biodiversity Management Committees in all local bodies,

(c) promotion of programmes on the pattern of ‘Conservation of biodiversity rich areas of Udumbanchola taluk’ formulated by Kerala State Biodiversity Board,

(d) a radical reform of Environmental Impact Analysis and Clearance process,

(e) a revival of Paryavaran Vahini programme, and

(f) institution of a social audit process for all environmental issues on the model of that for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Andhra Pradesh.
To recapitulate, we recommend the following :

 Pro-active disclosure of information in connection with RTI

 Implementation of Forest Rights Act, 2006

 No mine or tourist infrastructure to be allowed to continue if environmental rules are flouted

 Social audits and participatory monitoring of impacts using tools

 Recognize and incentivise good corporate behaviour

 Green accounts for the minerals and tourism sector

 Require EIA even for ‚green‛ technologies

 Creation of spatial databases in the public domain

 Strengthening institutional coordination before giving EC

 Strengthen institutional coordination for monitoring impacts

 Tax the mining and industrial sectors to improve social infrastructure in region

 Strengthen local panchayat capacity in environmental governance

 Empower local panchayats in mining regions financially by sharing royalty with them

 Central Government to arrive at ways to compensate Western Ghats states for the contribution to preservation of country’s forests given the high share of forests in their land area

NEXT : A More Thoughtful Conservation and Development Through Education : Role of Schools, Colleges and Voluntary Agencies Educational institutions.

NOTE :

MOVEMENTS : Plachimada betrayed :  March 04, 2016 : R. KRISHNAKUMAR : FRONTLINE

The Centre and the State government of Kerala seem to be turning their backs on the people of Plachimada as the President denies assent to a Bill that aimed at setting up a tribunal to hear the compensation claims of victims of the local Coca-Cola plant.
THE struggle of the people of Plachimada against corporate greed and the denial of their right to water and other basic needs and livelihood has once again reached a dead end, with the President of India denying sanction for a Bill passed unanimously by the Kerala Assembly in 2011 with a view to helping those affected by Coca-Cola’s controversial bottling unit there.

The Bill was meant for establishment of a special tribunal for speedy adjudication of disputes and recovery of compensation for the predominantly poor, landless victims of Coca- Cola’s activities at Plachimada, a village in Perumatty panchayat in Kerala’s Palakkad district.

The district lies in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats. A majority of the people there have been traditionally engaged in agriculture, relying heavily on irrigation and groundwater for irrigation needs. This is especially true of Plachimada, which has a sizeable number of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe families depending on agriculture. Coca-Cola built its controversial plant here in 2000.

The Home Ministry’s communication to the State Governor’s office in mid-January did not explain why the Bill was being returned. It merely said that “the President is pleased to withhold assent to ‘the Plachimada Coca Cola Victims Compensation Claims Tribunal Bill 2011’ on 20-11-2015”.

For over four years after the Bill was passed by the State Assembly and sent for presidential assent, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and then the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre kept it in abeyance. Five Union Ministries reportedly approved the proposed law. Still, in December 2014, the Union Home Ministry asked the State government to approach the National Green Tribunal (NGT) instead of continuing to seek the President’s assent for the Bill.

The Ministry’s position was that the Bill violated the powers of the NGT, which was established under an Act of Parliament in 2010 with the necessary expertise to handle disputes relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources and for giving relief and compensation for damages in such cases. The argument was that the State did not have the legislative competence to constitute a separate tribunal to deal with issues that came under the NGT’s jurisdiction. This is now widely alleged to be a pretext for serving the interests of the Coca-Cola company and is reportedly based on the legal opinion provided by the company.

The Bill could have set a precedent in paying compensation to victims for the damage caused by corporate over-exploitation of natural resources. It was proposed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF)government in Kerala towards the fag end of its term. It was, however, passed without any discussion on the last day of the 12th session of the Assembly, a day when LDF MLAs and members of the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front coalition were otherwise busy levelling allegations of corruption against one another.

OPINION :

1. KERALA UDF AND LDF ALTERNATE GOVERNMENTS BETRAYED THE PEOPLE : ON PLACHIMADA ISSUE : COCO - COLA'S CONTROVERSIAL BOTTLING UNIT THERE;

2. CONGRESS AND COMMUNISTS AND POLITICIANS OF KERALA ARE CORRUPTED, HAVING NO VISION ON ANY SUBJECTS, DO NONSENSE IN THE NAME OF UNSUITABLE DEVELOPMENTS IN A SMALL STATE KERALA;

3. THESE FOOLS CRITICIZE BJP, RSS AND PM MODI JI ON DAY TO DAY BASIS, WHERE AS THIS STATE IS INFECTED HEAVILY WITH MUSLIM AND CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM;

4. MOSQUES, CHURCHES, AND SUNDRY ASSOCIATES HAVE UPPER HAND IN GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS, STUPID UDF AND LDF POLITICIANS TAKE ORDERS FROM MOULVIES, THANGALS, CARDINALS AND BISHOPS AND THEIR SPONSORED COMMUNAL PROGRAMS ARE MORE IMPORTANT IN VOTE-BANK POLITICS OF KERALA;

5. THESE BUGGERS ARE UNFIT DIRTY BUNCH : TO BE WIPED FROM KERALA POLITICS : TO SAVE KERALA FROM FURTHER DAMAGE.

JAI HIND
VANDE MATARAM

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