More than any country in the world, India needs a strong green movement. We were ranked 155 out of 178 countries in the Environment Performance Index, a joint survey conducted by Yale and Columbia universities last year. We have 13 of the 20 most polluted cities among G-20 nations, reported a World Health Organisation survey. A World Bank report said environmental degradation costs India $80 billion per year or 5.7 per cent of its economy. One-sixth of the world population resides in India, and breathes some of the foulest air on the planet.

Yet, India’s green movement is in crisis, let down by those who claimed to champion the environment at the highest levels of policymaking. Former Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s sensational letter, first accessed by The Hindu , has further pushed green activists into a corner. Environmentalists were already reeling under the new government’s crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs like Greenpeace and the urgency to clear industrial projects with looser environmental checks. Greenies had been called “anti-development” and even “anti-national” by the right wing, which has been elected to power.

Now more questions will be raised: were the green protests against certain industrial projects genuine grassroots movements, or were they part of the cynical political game that Natarajan’s letter hints at? Her allegations and innuendos, whether true or not, show a farcical attitude to India’s environment by its top public servants.

Files in the washroom

“A few days before I was removed as Minister, I needed to review the Adani file for some legal issues,” writes Natarajan in her letter. “When I sent for the file, I was told that it was ‘missing’. After considerable search, my officials ‘found’ it, apparently in the washroom of the computer section, the very day on which I had been asking to resign.”

Franz Kafka would have struggled to come up with a better plot of bureaucratic ineptitude. Reports also suggest that the CBI is probing the environment regulatory regime of the last UPA government, which may reveal even more skeletons.

The public already believes that concern for the environment was just a façade used by the last government to extort businesses. This perception gives the new government ample political capital to hasten environmental clearances. Even if we assume the government’s intentions are honest, there is now greater likelihood that more offending projects will get through, and there will be more damage to the environment.

And all this will happen at a time when the morale and credibility of India’s environmentalists are at an all-time low. So if you care for the air you breathe, the future looks as bleak as the Delhi smog.

Losing influence

The principal challenge for environmentalists in India is to win back the credibility and political capital they have lost in the last couple of years and particularly after Natarajan’s letter. The task before them is not easy.

India’s young, hungry population need to be convinced that the jobs being created for them may not be good for the world they live in. That is a tough-sell to a generation that seems to have adopted a “grow now, clean up later” philosophy to the environment. But they are also the ones who will be worst affected by India’s toxic air.

India’s urban population is at high risk of cardio-pulmonary diseases caused by the air they breathe. The World Bank’s report ‘Greening India’s Growth: Costs, Valuations and Tradeoffs’ suggested several affordable policy options to promote green growth. These measures, they claimed, would cost the economy only 0.02-0.04 per cent of annual GDP growth, but would create a much healthier working population in return.

For a trade-off such as this to be acceptable to Indians, policymakers, environmentalists and industry will have to come together and carve out a deal. Natarajan’s letter damages the prospects of any such deal, by pitting environment versus industry every step of the way. Her allegations can only create further suspicions and acrimony among the different stakeholders who have the capacity to work out a trade-off.

Natarajan claims that she was eventually removed by Rahul Gandhi to appease industry and revive the floundering economy. This claim, which could well be true, leaves industry with no incentive to cut a deal for a better habitat. If they have the power to remove a minister over the non-clearance of some projects, why would they even consider a compromise with the environment?

India’s green movement has lost considerable influence with youth and industry, two vital constituencies that could have been its partners. That could be the most damaging legacy of Jayanthi Natarajan’s letter.

( Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi is the founder of The Political Indian )

Follow Sambuddha on Twitter @some_buddha

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