Mani-Talk: Save India from Modi's Gujarat Development Model

(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.)

The twin pillars of Modi's "Gujarat development model" were, one, unrestrained environmental damage and, two, massive displacement of tribals to help capitalist fat cats reap undreamt-of windfall profits to then fund Modi's revoltingly expensive election campaigns.

The symbol of that outrage is Vapi, the industrial city in south Gujarat that is the most horrendously polluted cluster in the whole country. In his 12 years in power in the state, Modi did nothing to clean up Vapi. He now threatens the whole country with similar ecological disaster.

Moreover, over the period of his Chief Ministership, as many as 76 per cent of those displaced by so-called "development" were tribals. To comprehend the scale of callousness that goes into the mindset of the Gujarat development model, one has to set this figure against the share of tribals in Gujarat's total population: a mere 8 per cent. Thus, a mere 8 per cent of the population has had to bear 76 per cent of the burden of displacement. The poorest and the least empowered are pushed to the side to enable private sector barons to lord it over ordinary people. This is not even capitalism. It is feudalism in industry.

This too is now being prepared for imposition all over the country. Already, the Minister of State for Environment, Prakash Javadekar, has announced with pride (!) that he has cleared 240 projects in three months. How is that possible except by sweeping under the carpet the laws, regulations and procedures carefully devised to protect the environment and give tribal people a fair deal? He has also delinked forest clearance from clearance by the National Board of Wild Life and halved NBWL clearance requirements from 10 km to 5km around forest reserves, besides emasculating the Board by replacing eminent experts and concerned NGOs with rubber stamps. He has also relaxed procedures for the application of the Forest Conservation Act in precisely those areas where FCA is most required: Naxal-affected areas; linear projects in forest areas; and in eco-sensitive areas along the international border.

Relaxations have also been introduced in regard to public hearings for coalmines; irrigation projects; and even the moratorium on clearances for the 43 "critically polluted clusters" identified by his own Ministry.

All this is capped by undermining the National Green Tribunal and considering doing away with gram sabha consent for forestland diversion for minerals' prospecting. The Modi government has further threatened to heavily dilute the landmark Land Acquisition Act that they themselves voted for but a year ago, and amend with a view to dilution, a whole raft of environmental protection legislation ranging across the gamut of the Environment Protection Act, the Wildlife Protection Act, the Forest Conservation Act, and the Water and Air Pollution Act, while preserving as it is the highly discriminatory colonial legislation that is the Mother of all forest Acts - the Indian Forests Act, 1927.

Ashish Kothari, to whom this column owes most of the last paragraph, has summed up the consequences of the development model with which the country is threatened, as follows: "employment in the formal sector has hardly grown; undernourishment and malnourishment are at an all-time high; India ranks among the worst in social indicators of various kinds; inequalities between the rich and the poor are growing significantly; and ecological un-sustainability has already set in. "O tempora! O mores! ("Oh, what times, what ways", as the Romans used to say).

What is being done to the tribals is even worse. The root cause for the spread of Naxalism is tribal unrest. 65 million tribals have been displaced since Independence, most of whom have received neither rehabilitation nor resettlement. It has been no "Independence" for them. They do not see "development" as desirable; they see it as disruptive. The bureaucracy and police they deal with are unbelievably oppressive (as detailed in the 2007 Bandyopadhayaya Committee report).

The oppressive forest guard, the bullying thanedar and the exploitative patwari are the instruments of state they encounter. No wonder they are seduced by the Maoist talk of revolutionary change.

We can only retain our tribals in the mainstream of nation-building by making them part of the national mainstream. That means empowering them to control their own lives and habitat, and manage their lives as they wish, according to their norms and their traditions, not in terms of imposed alien value systems. The Maoists live among them, share their food, their homes and their ways of life. The State merely bares its ferocious teeth at them. Hence the tribal revolt that, by Home Ministry accounts, has affected nearly a third of India, including a wide swathe across the breadth of the country at its widest, from Odisha to Gujarat.

Modi has sought to stamp out that tribal revolt in his home-state by stamping out the tribals. They have reacted by over three-fourths of them not voting for Modi even at height of the Modi wave. Being but less than a tenth of the population, their voice is barely heard in Gujarat. But as we move eastwards, the tribal voice grows stronger. It has to be heard. Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were among the first to hear it in the country, but the credit must go to the Deve Gowda government for passing in 1996 the most important pro-tribal legislation that independent India has seen - The Provisions of The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 - usually known by its acronym, PESA.

This is the only legislation mandated by the Constitution. As a Congress back-bencher and former Minister of Panchayati Raj, I regard the failure to secure universal compliance with PESA as the single biggest failure of ten years of UPA governance, but worse is imminently in store - the dilution of PESA by the Modi government.

We must resist it. We will resist it. However brute Modi's majority might be in the Lok Sabha, in the Rajya Sabha he is in a minority. There, we will hold up reactionary amendments for as long as we can.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.