The second Modi government had the right intentions in dealing with environmental degradation and climate change but there wasn't enough focus on implementation, top environmentalist Sunita Narain has said.

In an interaction with PTI editors here, Narain said successive administrations have diluted the environmental clearance system to the extent it no longer works.

"Overall, my assessment is that the government had the right words and the right intentions. If you look at the government’s policies, you can't argue that anything was per se wrong. Renewable energy, drinking water, waste management... all were on the table. So you put the whole package together, it's all there. My assessment is that there wasn't enough focus on implementation," Narain said.

In its second term, the Modi government focused on several initiatives, including scaling up renewable energy, improving forest cover, combating desertification, reducing air pollution, conserving wetlands, providing potable piped drinking water to all households, and eradicating single-use plastics.

The Modi-led government – now in its third term -- also made significant amendments to forest, wildlife, and environmental laws in the last five years, some of which drew criticism from opposition parties and environmentalists.

According to Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), new imagination is required to advance key government programmes concerning the environment.

"A lot of these programmes have reached a point where we have not been able to deliver the goods. If we take the question of cleaning up rivers, we haven't been able to clean our rivers. We are still in a situation where we are taking clean water from our rivers and giving back sewage." She said governments should pursue development the old-fashioned way.

"Development in the old-fashioned way was about learning from the ground, changing your approach, and then relearning. You come back, policy gets infused, you learn from it, and you do things differently. So, in this echo chamber, you cannot have imagination," said Narain.

She added that the government has "closed its ability" to listen to people and learn from what's happening on the ground, and stressed that gathering feedback is essential to infuse new imagination into its programmes.

"It has closed its ability to listen. Every point or position which may not be agreeable becomes dissent," she said.

"You're not an enemy of the state if you point out that the Ujjwala scheme, brilliant as it was, is not leading to the gains because women don't have the money to buy refills. It's something that everybody knew about two years ago, but if you discuss it, it becomes, 'Oh, but you're against the Ujjwala programme'," Narain added.

The environmentalist said previous governments weren't courageous enough to take new ideas on board but were definitely more open to listening.

"But if you ask me to compare this government to past governments in terms of environmental track record, I will tell you very clearly they are all both bad and good," Narain said.

She was also member of the government-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority from 2002 to 2020.

Asked how much time it will take India to have clean blue skies and rivers, she said it all depends on the government's ability to implement its projects and make some inconvenient decisions.

"The environmental clearance system is not working either for the environment or for development. It is only working for a breed of consultants or auditors and others who look at projects and clear them. All governments have cleared projects, even the Congress government, the UPA government. All governments have progressively diluted the decision-making system, making it weaker and weaker. It makes no sense today," she said.

Narain claimed most environmental impact assessment reports are "cut-and-paste documents".

"So all that process has been diluted. Today we know that document comes, there is a committee, faceless people, no accountability. They sit and decide on whether this project should be granted clearance or not. How do they grant it clearance? By making sure that it has 100 conditions which cannot be enforced. There is no system even to make sure that those conditions are actually enforced," she said.

Narain said the regional offices of the environment ministry responsible for ensuring compliance are understaffed.

"They don't have the ability to go and even check whether that condition has been enforced or not. It's a system which is broken. The entire focus of the government for the last five years has been... let's speed up the process. I have no problem. Speeding up is good. Loss of time is bad for economics. Why would I want a three-year process to get clearances? The cost of the project goes up.

"I want an effective, hard, tough decision-making process which balances the good versus the bad. The environmental clearance process was to bring a balance between environment and development. If you break down the process, you dilute the institutions, you make them spineless. You basically make it into a system which doesn't work," she said.

How did successive governments respond to climate and environmental protests over the years? Narain said government processes have inbuilt ways of managing people's opinions so that they do not become protests.

"You had a public hearing process. A public hearing was supposed to be broadcast and was supposed to be done in a way that you listen to people. Now those processes have been diluted. Even if people come and say... nobody listens to them, and the project is still cleared. If you listen to those views at that time, the issue does not become a point of conflict," she said.

"Not everybody who comes to protest is a paid lackey of the competitor. I think this distrust has to be fixed because there are issues by which people are genuinely affected, and there need to be institutional processes to listen to them," the environmentalist said.

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