Daily News Mail - News of 29/04/2015

Sri Lanka adopts 19th Amendment

• Marking the beginning of a new chapter in the contemporary political history of Sri Lanka, the Parliament on April 28 night adopted the 19th Constitutional Amendment with an overwhelming majority. The legislation envisages the dilution of many powers of Executive Presidency, which had been in force since 1978.
• President Maithripala Sirisena  and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe thanked all the parties that supported the Bill.
• Among the important features of the Bill are: the reduction in the terms of President and Parliament from six years to five years; re-introduction of a two-term limit that a person can have as President; the power of President to dissolve Parliament only after four and a half years [unlike one year, as prevalent now]; the revival of Constitutional Council and the establishment of independent commissions.
• Though the abolition of the Executive Presidency was the major electoral promise of Mr Sirisena, the Supreme Court, in its ruling early this month, held that certain provisions, such as those making Prime Minister the head of Cabinet and empowering PM to determine the size of Cabinet, would require a referendum. So, the President remains the head of Cabinet.  However, he can appoint Ministers on the advice of Prime Minister.
• Earlier in the day, two issues cropped up — objections to the composition of Constitutional Council and the provision regarding the appointment of Ministers.  
• Eventually, the government agreed to include seven MPs in the Constitutional Council as against the original proposal of having only non-political members.

Modi, Ghani talk trade, terror

• India is keen to be included in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement and it will welcome Afghan trucks on the Wagah-Attari border with Pakistan, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he addressed a joint press gathering along with visiting Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani.
• Mr. Ghani, who is making his first state visit to India, said he hoped to increase regional cooperation where “the energy of Central Asia will flow to South Asia, where pipelines, fibre optics, railways, and connectivity, air, ground and virtual will connect us.” Neither side signed any agreement but announced that they would clear a motor vehicles agreement soon, as well as expedite the development of the trade route from Afghanistan to India via Iran’s Chabahar port, which would allow both countries to circumvent objections from Pakistan.
• Mr. Modi told Mr. Ghani that India shared Afghanistan’s pain over persisting terrorism and was “deeply grateful” to the Afghan security forces for protecting Indians in Afghanistan “as they would their own.” Mr. Ghani said “we must have a unified approach, we must be united both in the region and globally to contain this terror.”

Modi with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani in NewDelhi

Killing a country’s ecology

• A battle of epic proportions between the hydroelectric power companies and the people of Uttarakhand has now culminated with the struggle shifting to the office of the Prime Minister of India. It began with the extraordinary and far-sighted 2014 decision of the Supreme Court in the Alaknanda Hydro Power Company case, where the Court said it was concerned with the mushrooming of hydroelectric projects adversely affecting the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi river basins.
• The cumulative impact of dams, tunnels, blasting, the construction of power houses, garbage creation, mining and deforestation on the eco system has not yet been studied. The June 2013 tragedy that affected the Char Dham area of Uttarakhand, where thousands of people were killed and there was massive damage to property, forced a rethinking on projects. It was now considered important to make a cumulative assessment of bumper-to-bumper projects, where the rivers of the Himalayas are diverted from their normal course and channelled into tunnels, released at a lower level, then re-channeled into another pipeline, which ultimately leaves the main course of the river without water. The mistake made in the earlier environmental assessments — treating each project as stand-alone without going into the cumulative effect of all of them — was questioned by the Supreme Court. The Court, therefore, ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to constitute an Expert Committee to study the cumulative effects of such projects on the environment, on the stability of the Himalayas, and their adverse effect on the Himalayan rivers.

Unreliable assessments

• The Expert Committee’s report is possibly one of the best ever made on the fragile ecology of the Himalayas. It almost unanimously found that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) clearances were unreliable, wrongly prepared, made on the basis of false information submitted by the Hydroelectric Projects (HEPs), and that the clearances, in some cases, were motivated. These clearances, therefore, could not be relied upon for the continuation of these projects.
• The Committee concluded that EIA reports should be done by an independent agency and not by the project proponent, and said that HEPs had an irreversible negative impact on the environment.
• Five of the six projects now being examined afresh are in the para-glacial zone, rendering them extremely hazardous. As the glaciers recede due to construction activity, the land exposed becomes unstable, and an unusual cloudburst could again result in tragedy. The adverse impact on rivers and water quality and on forests, biodiversity and wild life are set out in detail.
• The scathing report of the Wildlife Institute of India that pointed to the devastation that would be caused to wildlife in the Himalayas was also relied upon. One chapter deals with the proximity of HEPs to national parks and eco-sensitive areas and the impact on these areas. The report responds to the classic defence of project proponents that they would do compensatory afforestation by concluding that such afforestation was poorly done. The Committee concludes that the negative impacts of HEPs cannot be mitigated. The blasting of rocks, creation of garbage, and the receding of glaciers are a concomitant of all industrial activity in the Himalayas and, if the Himalayas and the Ganga are to be saved, there is no way forward but to scrap such projects.

Government support

• To its credit, the Union of India initially supported the Expert Committee Report, pointing out that even prior to this report the B.K. Chaturvedi Inter-Ministerial Group, the Planning Commission, the G.B. Mukherjee Task Force Report, the CAG report, the Neeri report, and the Geological Survey of India (GSI) report had all recommended that hydroelectric projects be severely curtailed as they destroyed the environment. The Union of India pointed out that the Gangotri Valley and the Valley of Flowers were in eco-sensitive zones. It agreed that the seven main Indian rivers ought to be kept pristine, that the Himalayas are weak, the rivers drying up, and, in 2013, as against the state claim of 65 per cent forest cover, the actual cover was only 46 per cent.
• The Union said that earlier environmental clearances had to be reviewed and a cumulative environmental impact approach adopted, with sensitive areas in the Himalayas avoided for development work. Referring to the GSI report, the Union of India said the entire Ganga basin was in Seismic Zones IV and V, which carries the highest degree of catastrophe possibility. A reference was also made to the Planning Commission recommendation that the projects be decommissioned.
• However, despite the Union of India’s stand, the Minister for Environment and Forests, Prakash Javadekar, does not agree. He has made it his life mission to clear all projects, irrespective of their environmental impact. It is this attitude that has made India a country of toxic rivers, destroyed forests, declining groundwater resources, and the highest degrees of air pollution in the world. After the Union of India took a public stand that fully supported the findings and recommendations of the Expert Committee, Mr. Javadekar has set about clearing all projects. In typical bureaucratic style, a four-member Committee of Experts was appointed to make a report on a report. However, it did not play ball, pointing out that though environmental clearances were granted, the six projects studied would adversely impact aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity and the flow of the river.
• They would impact the protected areas of the Nanda Devi National Park and Biosphere Reserve, the Valley of Flowers National Park (World Heritage Site), the Kedarnath Wild Life Sanctuary, and the Alaknanda III, Bhyundar and Dhauli Ganga biodiversity-rich sub-basins, which are the habitat of the rare and endangered Himalayan Brown Bear. The diversion of water through the construction of underground tunnels poses a serious risk to water life. The Committee of Experts unanimously noted that environmental clearances have to be reviewed and the six projects must not be taken up as they have the potential to cause a significant impact on the environment.
• The future of the Himalayas and its rivers are at stake. Indeed, the future of India is in the balance. Within the government, well-meaning officials and Ms. Uma Bharti are fighting to clean up the Ganges, while Mr. Javedkar and his friends in industry battle to finish off what little is left of the Himalayas, its rivers and glaciers. The Prime Minister of India has to decide on which side he stands.

The Centre agreed with the Expert Committee that the 

seven main Indian rivers ought to be kept 

pristine(meaning of pristine - 'clean and fresh as if new').” 

Picture shows the Srinagar dam over river Alakananda.