The recent Wayanad tragedy in Kerala shook the whole country. I happened to be the member-secretary of the Kasturirangan committee on Western Ghats, which had many prominent environment experts as members, and gave its report to the Government in 2013.

The tragedy brought back memories of the context in which this committee was set up in the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), extensive consultations it had with six State governments and other stakeholders, various site visits, and finally the unenviable task of coming out with a balanced report.

At the end of it, the committee was quite satisfied with its efforts and felt that the recommendations were pragmatic and amply implementable. Alas, that was not to be the case!

So why is it so difficult to implement the environment conservation measures in our country despite such tragedies occurring time and again.

There are several factors. To begin with, India is an ‘environmentally stressed’ low middle income developing country. It has 18 per cent of the world’s population and 30 per cent of the world’s cattle, but with merely 2.4 per cent of world surface area and 4 per cent of the water resources. The per capita annum average income is only $2,500, with large income inequality.

Development ‘conflict’

It is but natural that the developmental aspirations would meet environmental constraints.

‘Environment’ is an all-encompassing term not amenable to being uniquely defined. No wonder ‘Environment’ is not included in any of the lists — Union, State or Concurrent under the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution; though its constituents like water, forest, sanitation, etc., are included in the lists. This creates jurisdictional issues between the Governments’ legislative powers and functions.

Political parties often find it difficult to convince their electorates about the long-term benefits of environmental measures, especially if they conflict with other development schemes.

In contrast it is easier for parties to showcase their achievements through infrastructure projects and job generation schemes.

So, in a fast developing country like India, politicians have a serious problem of selling conservation proposals.

Political parties and politicians, both at the State and Central levels, are stuck in the five-year electoral cycle. This cycle conflicts with the long-term objectives of environmental protection.

The Environment Protection Act 1986 was enacted by Parliament post the ‘Bhopal tragedy’ in 1984, with the objective of providing for the protection and improvement of the environment.

The bare Act is rather small with only 26 sections, and relies on subordinate legislation on various aspects for effective enforcement. Conceptually, this may be the right approach. ‘Environment’ being a wide subject, requiring interventions by the governments at different levels, hard-coding everything in the main Act could lead to avoidable inflexibilities and operational problems.

Unfortunately, this philosophy hasn’t worked well. Though this Act has largely withstood the test of time, with very few amendments till date, the same cannot be said about the rules, regulations, notifications, circulars, etc., issued by the governments under the Act.

These are modified on a regular basis based on developmental needs, projects of ‘special’ or ‘strategic’ nature, livelihood issues, people’s representations, etc.

The Centre should have a relook at the Environment Protection Act with a view to hard coding the critical and essential environmental aspects as ‘non-negotiable’, clearly stated with no ambiguity, leaving no interpretational discretion to the stakeholders, governments and courts. Of course, this is easier said than done, and would need wide consultations and dispassionate analysis to ensure that the inflexibilities are justified. Anyway, leaving all type of flexibility to the political executive, through rule-making is certainly not working.

Weak enforcement

Enforcement of environmental laws is one of the weakest as compared to any other sectoral legislation. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) are perpetually short of funds and manpower. They depend on allocations from the governments, and are low on priority amongst other competing demands on the Budget.

Many of the SPCBs have politicians as chairmen, usually the ones who couldn’t get elected to the legislatures. Then there is the serious issue of rent seeking and corruption while according environment and forest clearances.

The issue of compensating the people who, for the larger public good, are made to give up their earning potential is a genuine one. There is enough literature on the subject, but no agreed implementation mechanism to compensate the affected people.

Many special category hilly States have been repeatedly raising this issue before the successive Finance Commissions, set up by the Central Government every five years to decide fiscal transfers to the States, with no success.

The Election Commission may consider mandating all recognised political parties to clearly state their stand on environmental issues in their manifestos, while contesting elections. Hopefully, this might at least help in sensitising the politicians and electorates about this serious subject.

The writer is a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, and former SEBI chairman