MoEF: Ministry of Environment & Forests (or) Moily's office of Environmental Failure?

Till recently the unfortunate Bhopal Gas Tragedy was the worst environment disaster of India. Now it is appointment of Mr Veerapa Moily as Environment and Forest Minster. In his short tenure Mr Moily has taken enough decisions which will allow for many Bhopal like incidents to happen again. From giving illegal clearances to POSCO to start mining in Odisha to suggesting field testing of genetically modified or GM crops, Mr Moily has played a perfect role of a corporate puppet.

When late Prime Minister of India, Smt.Indira Gandhi envisioned the Ministry of Environment and Forest, she would have never thought that her grandson will portray it as biggest hurdle in nation’s development. The current UPA government has done a great job of portraying MoEF as the biggest hurdle in nation’s development. In her short tenure Ms. Jayanthi Natarajan approved most of the project which came for clearance. Her fake resistance to establish a National Investment Board ( known as Cabinet Committee on Investment) was also ignored by UPA. Yet over last few week Mr Moily has declared her as the most inefficient Minister of MoEF and has vowed to clear projects, not review them. Not to mention that as Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas there a huge conflict of interest in the additional role he is handling.

The broad objectives of the Ministry are:

• Conservation and survey of flora, fauna, forests and wildlife
• Prevention and control of pollution
• Afforestation and regeneration of degraded areas
• Protection of the environment and
• Ensuring the welfare of animals

However as per the new Environment minister Mr Moily these objectives should be:

• Clear all the Corporate backed project
• Ignore people’s voice over corporate noise
• Make getting clearances as easy as possible

In an attempt to win corporate backing( financially) for upcoming election, Dr Manmohan Singh handed over the MoEF to Mr Moily. So far he has done a great job of winning corporate funds but a poor job on winning trust of citizens of India who will vote in the upcoming election.

If Mr Moily can clear 70 projects in 20 days only, imagine what he can do in coming 4 months. Many of these projects were delayed because of legal cases pending against project, Mr Moily has surpassed all these. The not so famous POSCO project is one of the many such controversial projects which are still under scrutiny by court and yet given a go ahead by Minister.

In order to protect rights of fellow Indians and to save India's ever diminishing forest cover, we need to get Mr Moily out of MoEF. We need to tell UPA head and Prime Minister of India no minister is above people's rights. We need to come together and demand for a stronger ministry which acts as guardian of India's natural resources not as its seller.