“The mobility of women in Xi'an is already very high and the Project will enhance the quality and frequency of transportation services in a safer manner”. This bizarre submission was made by the consultant in the feasibility report submitted to the Environment Ministry with regard to the proposed Chennai-Salem Expressway.
Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi Province in China. It appeared that the particular sentence was lifted from a gender and development report.
The report was prepared for the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) by Feedback Infra Pvt Ltd. The consultant made the claim under the sub-head ‘Gender and Development’ of the report submitted to the Environment Ministry for grant of TOR (Terms of Reference). The sub-heading had three questions. The first question was, “What are the key gender issues in the sector/subsector that are likely to be relevant to this project/program?”
To this, the answer read, “The Project will enhance the urban road network and public transit system, which benefits women and men equally. The mobility of women in Xi’an is already very high and the project will enhance the quality and frequency of transportation services in a safer manner”.
The Hindu reached out to Feedback Infra to find out how a reference of a city in China was made in relation to a project in Tamil Nadu. An official informed this correspondent that the Chairman was not immediately available, and would revert with a reply soon.
While the TOR for the project was granted on June 8 by the Environment Ministry (Impact Assessment Division), the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the MoEF made it clear that the grant of TOR “does not mean grant of EC (Environmental Clearance)”. An EC is required for a project to be implemented. The EAC also mandated that the final Environment Impact Assessment-Environment Management Plan report must incorporate issues in the TOR and “that are raised in Public Hearing.”
Public consultation
Interestingly, the feasibility report submitted for the TOR claimed that public consultation was carried out by the consultant. “Public consultation was done using various tools including interviews with government officials and questionnaire-based information with stakeholders etc.” The report also said a reconnaissance survey was carried out ‘informally drawing people into dialogue’ to obtain an overview of likely impacts and concerns of the community. “A checklist of questions was kept ready and responses were elicited from people and guidelines were issued to field assistants for the purpose,” it said.
The report also said that many people were very positive about the project and benefits such as better access to facilities, organised market facilities, increased customers and less travel time were identified.
“Many people worried whether the work will be taken up due to political conflicts. The construction work should be taken up on urgent basis, rather than conducting surveys again and again,” it said.
Environmental activist Nithayanand Jayaraman said the consultant ought to have done a full feasibility report. “A reasonably rigorous job has been done on the technical feasibility of the project. (But) essentially, the consultant and client are okay to have a feasibility report without social assessment,” he said.
The report, however, concludes that this is an initial assessment and is a step towards preparation of the Social Impact Assessment. He wanted to know why data from the public consultation was not there in the report. “The company has said that they have carried out public consultations at every level. That’s a lie. If they have done that, the data is not there,” he said.
