Noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil has called upon the Government to involve local people in the development projects undertaken in their community.
Addressing a seminar organised here on Sunday by the Western Ghats Protection Movement, he said that he was encouraged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that development should be a mass movement.
Prof. Gadgil was the Chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel. It was an environmental research commission tasked by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests in August 2011 with recommending measures to conserve Western Ghats.
Recalling the words of Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and worked in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, Mr. Gadgil said that development should not just be about increasing the gross domestic product but also the social, human and environmental capital.
In his report on Western Ghats, he said that he had advocated developing the region but not at the cost of unnecessary destruction of forests and social injustice.
He noted an incident in which a chemical plant in Maharashtra was reported to have created around 11,000 jobs. However, the locals said that nearly 20,000 fishermen had lost their livelihoods as the factory had polluted the rivers to a level where the fishes died.
Further, it was in Maharashtra where a Rs. 21,000 crore irrigation scam broke out in which a lot of dams were constructed across the State which actually resulted in a decrease in the water available for irrigation.
“In one particular incident alone, 6,000 acres were submerged for a dam which now provides water for just around 600 acres. Such incidents will not have occurred if the locals had been involved.”
He noted that Germany, one of the most industrialised nations, had the Green Party, which advocated protection of nature, represented in the Government in almost all provinces.
Development modelThe country had created a development model that emphasised conservation of nature and this must be replicated in India, added Prof. Gadgil.
