The Intelligence Bureau’s (IB) crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs such as Greenpeace for their opposition to coal mining and nuclear power projects is an assault on the freedom of expression. “Massive efforts to take down India’s coal-fired plants and coal mining activity” cannot be considered unconstitutional if such dissent is expressed in a nonviolent way. To suggest that it is a foreign conspiracy is like seeing a CIA hand in every nook and cranny.
To set the record straight, the IB report was commissioned by the UPA government, possibly to push back the Aam Aadmi Party, some of whose members were campaigning against mining projects, dams and nuclear power plants. But if this government’s focus on speedy green clearances is anything to go by, it may wink at the IB report. The Prime Minister said in Parliament that “we must make development a mass movement”. What about those who decide not to join, raising social and environmental concerns? For a party whose rise can be traced to the anti-Emergency movement, when dissent was curtailed like never before, one expects a reasoned response.
“Development” is a view (and not a right, as it is made out to be) which says that for everyone to be better off we need to develop our industry and infrastructure fast. This view has been contested since Independence by none other than Mahatma Gandhi and his followers. They are wary of the environmental and social costs of unbridled industrialisation. Ironically, the Prime Minister invoked the Mahatma to say that the push for development should have the intensity of the freedom struggle! In a democracy, conflicting positions should be reconciled through debate.
To blacklist dissenters is like George W Bush saying “you are either with us or against us”. Is the new government telling us that those against its idea of development are either foreign agents or Maoists when it is possible to defy such labels and be a sceptic?
Senior Assistant Editor