Biomass Burning to Combat Climate Change!

Recently I read the Report titled "Energy [r]evolution-A sustainable India Energy Outlook" that has been published by Greenpeace International and European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) in January 2007 with a foreword by Dr R K Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report ends up recommending incinerators for energy generation from biomass. In chapter 8 concerning energy technologies', on page no. 77 of this report, it talks about 'biomass energy'. On page 78, the report talks of 'biomass technology' wherein 'thermal systems' are mentioned and it goes on to recommend 'direct combustion', 'gasification', 'pyrolysis' (co-incineration processes) as ways of converting biomass into energy for heat as well as electricity.

Initially, I was saddened to note that the Greenpeace International & EREC Report has a foreword from Dr Pachauri whose The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has consistently supported incineration despite its own assertion that the techno-economic feasibility of incinerator technologies is not established. TERI is supported and sponsored by several corporate criminals and some NGOs who have allowed themselves to be coopted. In India, TERI-BCSD, India (Corporate Round Table for development of strategies for Environment and sustainable development- Business Council for Sustainable Development, India) is working as a secretariat network of corporates. In 2002, TERI became a partner of the WBCSD (World Business Council on Sustainable Development), a coalition of some 140 international companies like Dow Chemical, DuPont etc. It distributes Corporate Social Responsibility Awards to corporate criminals.

Later, it made me all the more sadder that the Report itself recommends incinerators. It is understandable when TERI and NGOs coopted by it support incinerators but one is at loss of words when environmental organisations do the same.

TERI defines Biomass. It says, "Biomass is a renewable energy resource derived from the carbonaceous waste of various human and natural activities. It is derived from numerous sources, including the by-products from the timber industry, agricultural crops, raw material from the forest, major parts of household waste and wood."

In India, it is being argued that large part of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is biomass and it is suitable for fuel. As per a Ministry of New and Renewable Energy document titled ENERGY RECOVERY FROM URBAN WASTES, "Any waste of renewable nature or biomass can be mixed to the extent of 25% with MSW ". The use of the word biomass seems an exercise to obfuscate the issue of municipal waste burning.

Isolation of US on Cultural Diversity

Mediavigil endorses UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity adopted in October 2005. This UN Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CCD) was approved by 148 countries, while two countries -the United States and Israel- voted against it and four countries Australia, Honduras, Liberia and Nicaragua abstained.

All the 28-amendments to the agreement proposed by the US were rejected by the UNESCO. This came in spite of a letter from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warning governments that the accord would "sow conflict rather than cooperation." The Financial Times reported it as "US isolated over cultural diversity".

Unnoticed by Indian media, this new UN treaty entered into force on March 18, 2007 following its ratification by a sufficient number of countries. It equates cultural rights with human rights.

The role of communication in the protection of cultural diversity has been discussed at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005 as well. Unlike the era of 1980s, the concept of information as a global public good are generally left unaddressed at the UNESCO Conventions.

US has vowed to lobby countries to frustrate CCD at other multilateral agreements.

The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions entered into force on 18 March, three months after the thirtieth instrument of ratification was deposited. To date, 56 States have ratified the Convention. In an unprecedented event, the European Union adhered to the convention as a regional organization of economic integration.

Adopted on 20 October 2005 by the General Conference of UNESCO, the Convention aims to reinforce the links between culture, sustainable development and dialogue. It reaffirms respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, equal dignity of cultures, equitable access and openness of cultures to the world. It establishes the sovereign right of States to elaborate cultural policies with a view "to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions" and recognizes the distinctive nature of cultural goods and services as “vehicles of identity, values and meaning”. It thus intends “to create the conditions for cultures to flourish and to freely interact in a mutually beneficial manner.”

In order to encourage international cultural cooperation, it places international solidarity at the heart of its action and calls for the creation of a voluntary International Fund for Cultural Diversity. Furthermore, each Party acknowledges the fundamental role of civil society and pledges to encourage its active participation.

Implemented by an Intergovernmental Committee elected and composed of Parties’ representatives, the Convention will have as its supreme body the Conference of Parties, which will meet for the first time before the summer.

With the Convention’s entry into force, UNESCO now disposes of a comprehensive set of standard-setting instruments, comprising seven conventions* which cover cultural diversity in all of its manifestations, especially the two pillars of culture: heritage - tangible and intangible - and contemporary creativity.

*Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005); Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003); Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001); Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972); Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property (1970); Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954); Universal Copyright Convention (1952, 1971).

Diverting Rivers in India and China

While media remains indulgent in jingoistic reporting of diversion of rivers in India and China and the civil society remains fragmented with its inherent historical amnesia and morality with regard to developments that are changing the natural course of rivers beyond repairs, Government of India has coopted some environmental NGOs in furtherance of its designs. These designs include equating national security with national security and public interest with national interest.

These NGOs publicly shy away from supporting Interlinking of Rivers in India or in China but they are within Government Committees whose terms of reference makes interlinking of rivers fait accompli. Even as such ecologically disastrous projects are under execution and there are only two ways of expressing one's ideological positions either by opposing them or by supporting them, there are those who prefer to be fence sitters. These entities must be identified because they are more lethal than the visible actors. The civil society space has suffered massive corrosion due such creatures.

China plans to divert Brahmaputra China's plan to construct a dam on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet will lead to a major ecological disaster within the next few years. It is feared in the near future as water flow in the Brahmaputra-Jamuna river will fall drastically if China goes ahead with its plan. China plans to divert 200 billion cubic metres of water annually to the Yellow River or Huang He by building a dam at Yarlung Tsangpo.

Like India, though Beijing has claimed the project is still at a conceptual stage, confidential sources confirmed that work has already begun with the target to finish it in the next five to seven years.
Yarlung-Tsangpo scheme is part of China's long-term river interlinking project to divert water from the south to the north.

On April 20, 2007 the media reported Bihar government's mammoth project to interlink the major rivers within Bihar to address the dual problems of flood and draught. Under the scheme Ganga water will get transferred to South Bihar; Kosi water to Mahananda basin; Burhi Gandak, Baya and Gandak waters to the existing Gandak Canal System; and Sone basin water to Punpun-Harobar-Kiul basin through barrages, pumps, and canals.

As per a Press Release of Government of India of April 2007 says, National Water Development Agency (NWDA) has sought an outlay of Rs. 241 crore for the 11th Five Year Plan. Out of the 30 links identified for preparation of feasibility reports under National Perspective Plan for Water Resources Development (16 Peninsular and 14 Himalayan), NWDA has prepared feasibility reports (FRs)for 14 links under Peninsular Component and 2 under Himalayan Component (Indian portion only).

The implementation of Interlinking of rivers depends upon the consensus and cooperation of the States. Consensus has been arrived for one priority link namely Ken-Betwa for which Government of Madhya Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh and Government of Indian signed a tripartite MoU on 25th August 2005 for preparation of Detailed Project Report (DPR). NWDA has incurred expenditure amounting to Rs. 19.7 crore for 2003-04, Rs. 21.3 crore for 2004-05 and Rs. 17 crore for 2005-06 for carrying out various studies pertaining to Inter basin water transfers including preparation of DPR of Ken-Betwa link. The expenditure is not booked State-wise by NWDA.

While this ominous trend of rewriting geography after having re-written history is manifesting itself rapidly, civil society formations of middle class, fund driven and apolitical nature remain focussed in their compartments with their selfish short term project goals. These Club of Rome creatures who call for change in human values rather the change in the unjust social and political order issues cohabit with manifest corporate criminals. Let us face it these formations are any day worse than the formations envisaged by likes of Mayawati.

Corporate media that builds these brand individuals not as humans but as market machines for mere mercenary gains are bound to miserably fail in the way it failed in the recent UP elections as also in the past by serving a make believe world to the urban folks so that they remain insulated from massive violent disturbances underway on our own landscape.

In fact even as China has intruded in Arunchal Pradesh and the Indian Defence Secretary says that China is preparing for regional war, the corporate NGOs and likes of B G Verghese argue that this opens up space for co-operation in the field of hydro-power generation and likes of M S Swaminathan argue that such projects are win-win initiatives pandering to the whims and fancies of the rulers in their parochialism to serve their own interest.

Not realising that even Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)in the US that was conceived during World War I although the execution happened prior to World War II. China consulted with the TVA because of its reputation soon after World War II, when China began to plan the Three Gorges Dam to control the flow of the Yangtze River.

Is there a conspiracy being hatched to initiate a war to use it as a manifest excuse to suppress the internal disturbances within India and China?

Farmers Suicide, Global Warming and Indian Parliament

Farmers Suicide, Global Warming and Indian Parliament

How media corporations globally are dictated by the way their proprietors perceive issues of concern has once again been revealed with Rupert Murdoch's shifting position on climate change. Murdoch who has long been a skeptic and has been sanitising coverage of global warming but now he has decided to advocate emission cuts to combat the problem and to make his own company Carbon neutral.

As the head of a $58 billion company that holds the reins the most cable broadcast networks and print publications in the US, Europe and Australia his change of heart means greater coverage of the adverse impacts of global change.

In the aftermath of the UN Security Council's first-ever discussion on climate change as a serious threat to security and future political stability on April 17, 2007 in New York at the UN headquarters, Indian Parliament too woke up to the issue with Lok Sabha holding a debate on the issue.

One of the newspapers aptly referred to it as "India too faces UN heat on climate change". It is clear that Indian parliament was under tremendous international pressure to adopt climate change as its problem. Isn't absence of similar pressure to discuss farmers suicide quite manifest.

Let all the members of all the legislative bodies of the world in general and Indian ones in particular use the ongoing suicides of farmers as the touch stone decide their action from a bundle of competing priorities. If they have failed to take cognisance of the immediacy of agrarian crisis afflicting the farmers, it only shows how divorced they are from the people who they claim to represent. They
are following the dictates of not their own people instead they are pandering to the likes and dislikes of the veto power holding members of the Security Council.

Elsewhere, the European Parliament adopted the composition of its new temporary committee on climate change on 10 May. At the ongoing UN conference in Bonn on slowing down global warming, the representatives of some 166 countries are split over 'how far to publicise the studies that clearly blame human activities for the impending catastrophe'.

Although no action emerged from these Security Council meeting or other meetings, it does reveal growing uneasiness within the capitalist world about social unrest that is likely to come with global warming.

US and China together are the biggest violators but there is a highly Irrational, Mischievous and Motivated tendency to club India and China together in the entire global warming debate, which must be dismissed with all the strength possible.

Underlining the significance, in addition to the 15 UN Security Council member states in attendance, 38 other UN member countries sent representatives to speak to speak in the Security Council discussion on climate change. It discussed the recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the upcoming negotiations in Bali in late 2007 on the post-2012 framework for addressing climate change when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires.

China, India, Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan and Group of 77 raised doubts regarding the Security Council’s role on this issue, with some suggesting that it was primarily a socio-economic and/or sustainable development issue that should be addressed by UN General Assembly. But the British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, president of the Security Council, introduced the topic saying, “The Security Council is the forum to discuss issues that threaten the peace and security of the international community. What makes wars start? Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use,” she said. “There are few greater potential threats to our economies ... but also to peace and security itself.” Expressing her concern about the poorest populations of the globe, she predicted global economic convulsions on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.

But what is worrisome is that even institutions who have contributed immensely to public knowledge of chemicals and its impact on health and has highlighted environmental degradation across the country in their earlier reports later argued that increasing damage to property and life in the Gangetic plains is not due to increase in flooding intensity or frequency but rather due to growing density of human settlements in flood-prone areas. This seems to be in tune with Beckett’s commiseration about “poorest populations.”

While the US submission seemed to support the position of the G-77, it is quite deceptive because it is strategically inspired by its short term interest as outlined in the report, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, undertaken by the government-funded national security think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses.

According to this report global climate change presents a serious national security threat, which could impact Americans at home, impact US military operations, and heighten global tensions. It draws an analogy with Cold War saying, “The situation, for much of the Cold War, was stable,” Gen. Sullivan continued. “And the challenge was to keep it stable, to stop the cata-strophic event from happening. We spent billions on that strategy. “Climate change is exactly the opposite. We have a catastrophic event that appears to be inevitable. And the challenge is to stabilize things—to stabilize carbon in the atmosphere. Back then, the challenge was to stop a particular action. Now, the challenge is to inspire a particular action. We have to act if we’re to avoid the worst effects.”

Treating climate change as warfare, the report says, “We never have 100 percent certainty. We never have it. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield” although it would is quite obvious as to between poverty, disarmament and climate change, which one is of immediate concern.

Indian submission by Nirupan Sen at the Security Council said the catastrophic scenarios posited by climate change couldn’t be discussed in any meaningful manner because the appropriate forum for discussing issues relating to climate change was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

He said nothing in the greenhouse gas profile of developing countries even remotely reflected a threat to international peace and security but strangely after talking about poverty eradication to mitigate the potential for conflict and positive implications for global peace and security he sought new and additional resources, to upscale the realization of resources from the carbon market.

It is incomprehensible as to how carbon market can mitigate poverty. The role of Indian Environment and Forests Ministry has become so subservient to World Bank Group that it does not have the spine to stand for people's environmental concerns. One cannot expect Ministry officials who have served in the International Financial Institutions (IFIs)and who are working overtime to get a post retirement appointment over there or in some UN body to make environmental imperatives a non-negotiable concern. If one submits that there is an incestous relationship between the ministry in question, the IFIs and the UN bodies, one is stating an obvious fact.

In fact carbon market allows rich countries to continue to damage environment by letting them pursue business as usual approach of energy consuming subsidies towards its economic activities including agriculture. These countries must shoulder responsibility and change the way produce and consume because that is the only way to fix the problem.

It is high time India rejected mechanisms like Joint Implementation, Emissions Trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, until equal per capita entitlements are accepted when the post-2012 framework comes up for negotiations because it takes away all the cheaper options to reduce emissions.

Indeed the danger of limited debate and consciousness is that they can be easily captured by vested interests. Climate change is too serious a 'business' to be left only to governments to make it the top most priority with ulterior motives. It is these interests who linked poverty to population and turned it into an ongoing 'family planning business' under the dictates of these very veto powers who are currently asking India to take obligatory commitments for emission cuts to combat global warming.

Beware of the news channels that are held by Murdoch in India!

Tryst with 1857

Why did Jawaharlal Nehru not refer to First War of Independence in his Tryst with Destiny speech? Did he get the speech approved or edited from Lord Mountbattan or the British Parliament?

Hundred years after the defeat battle of Plassey and later the battle of Buxer, the Indian independence movement spans 90 years from 1857 to 1947.

Gangadhar Nehru, father of Pandit Motilal Nehru and grand father of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was appointed Kotwal of Delhi by East India Company just before the eruption of the first war of independence in 1857 according to the official history of Delhi Police. Gangadhar Nehru was the last Kotwal of Delhi because after the British repression of 1857 the institution of Kotwal came to an end. There is dearth of information regarding his role in the British repression of the freedom fighters under the leadership of Bahadur Shah Zafar. A well-established army of 200,000 Indians officered by 40,000 British soldiers dominated India by 1857.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar who was the first to call 1857 in his book "The Indian War of Independence" wrote: "So, in the truer sense, we said that the raising of Bahadur Shah to the throne of India was no restoration at all. But rather it was the declaration that the longstanding war between the Hindu and the Mahomedan had ended... For, Bahadur Shah was raised by the free voice of the people, both Hindus and Mahomedans, civil and military, to be their emperor and the head of the War of Independence... Let, then, Hindus and Mahomedans send forth their hearty, conscientious, and most loyal homage to this elected or freely accepted Emperor of their native soil on the 11th of May, 1857."

The Meerut troops had revolted on May 10, 1857. The very next day a royal proclamation was issued: "To all Hindus and Mahomedans! We, solely on account of religious duty, have joined the people. Whoever shall, in these times, exhibit cowardice or credulously believe the promises of the English impostors, will be very shortly put in shame and receive the reward for their fidelity to England which the rulers of Lucknow got. It is further necessary that all, Hindus and Mahomedans, unite in this struggle and following the instructions of some respectable leaders, conduct themselves in such a way that good rule may be maintained, the poorer classes kept contented and they themselves be exalted to rank and dignity."

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in his Glimpses of World History and in The Discovery of India referring to 1857 as "The Great Revolt" but perhaps grudgingly he mentions it one place as "a war of Indian independence" but prefers to uses the words mutiny, revolt, rebellion and he felt that "Essentially it was a feudal outburst, headed by feudal chiefs and their followers... There was hardly any national and unifying sentiment among the leaders and a mere anti-foreign feeling, coupled with a desire to maintain their feudal privileges, was a poor substitute for this."

On 9 May, 85 troopers of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry at Meerut refused to use their cartridges. They were imprisoned, sentenced to ten years of hard labour, and stripped of their uniforms in public. The sepoys knew it was very likely that they would also be asked to use the new cartridges and they too would have to refuse in order to save their caste, religion and social status. Since their comrades had acted only in deference to their religious beliefs the punishment meted out by the British colonial rulers was perceived as unjust by many. When the 11th and 20th native cavalry of the Bengal Army assembled in Meerut on 10 May, they broke rank and turned on their commanding officers and liberated the 3rd Regiment.

The 21st Native Infantry stationed in Karachi declared allegiance to revolters, joining their cause on September 10, 1857. However, the British were rapidly able to reassert their control over Karachi and defeat the uprising.


On 22 July, 1853 Karl Marx wrote in The New-York Daily Tribune about the British East India Company's role in India. He said, "The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked. Did they not, in India, to borrow an expression of that great robber, Lord Clive himself, resort to atrocious extortion, when simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity? While they prated in Europe about the inviolable sanctity of the national debt, did they not confiscate in India the dividends of the rajahs, who had invested their private savings in the Company's own funds? While they combated the French revolution under the pretext of defending "our holy religion," did they not forbid, at the same time, Christianity to be propagated in India, and did they not, in order to make money out of the pilgrims streaming to the temples of Orissa and Bengal, take up the trade in the murder and prostitution perpetrated in the temple of the Juggernaut? These are the men of "Property, Order, Family, and Religion."

On August 28, 1857, Marx published an article in The New York Daily Tribune in order to "[show] that the British rulers of India are by no means such mild and spotless benefactors of the Indian people as they would have the world believe" (Marx 72). Marx cites the official Blue Books -- entitled "East India (Torture) 1855-57"-- that were laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857. The reports revealed that British officers were allowed an extended series of appeals if convicted or accused of brutality or crimes against Indians. Concerning matters of extortion in collecting public revenue, the report indicates that officers had free reign of any methods at their disposal (Marx 73).

Torture became a financial institution in colonial India, and was challenged by a petition from the Madras Native Association presented in January of 1856. The petition was dismissed on the basis of a lack of evidence, despite the fact that, according to the Marx, "there was scarcely any investigation at all, the Commission sitting only in the city of Madras, and for but three months, while it was impossible, except in very few cases, for the natives who had comnplaints to make to leave their homes" (Marx 74). Marx also refers to Lord Dalhousie's statements in the Blue Books that there was "irrefragable proof" that various officers had committed "gross injustice, to arbitrary imprisonment and cruel torture" (76).

In addition to torture, the Company levied extremely large taxes on the Indian people. Collier describes taxes as "a cynical outrage. A man could not travel twenty miles without paying toll at a river ferry, farmed out by the Company to private speculators. Land Tax, often demanded before the crop was raised, was made in quarterly installments ... the annual rent for an acre of land was 3s[hillings]., yet the produce of that acre rarely averaged 8s[hillings]. in value." (Collier 20)

Marx's position, as illustrated by the introductory quote to this page, is that the Indians were victims of both physical and economic forms of class oppression by the British. In Marx's analysis, the clash between the soldiers and their officers is the inevitable conflict that is the result of capitalism and imperialism.

Role of Gangadhar Nehru in 1857 War ?

Does anyone know as to what role did Gangadhar Nehru, grandfather of Jawaharlal Nehru play in the 1857 war as a Kotwal of Delhi while the repression of the freedom fighters were on?

Do we know as to whether he was with Bahadur Shah Zafar or with the East India Company?

Between 1857 and 1947 some important dates must be kept in mind to understand that after the repression of the freedom fighters, it was always the Britishers and their Parliament which had the upper hand in negotiating 'transfer of power'. Be it the formation of Congress in 1885, Government of India Act in 1935 or in 1947 when the British Prime Minister Attlee announced the British intention of leaving India by June 1948, and Mountbatten to succeed as Viceroy. In pursuance of the same the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Bill on 18 July, 1947.

British rule over the Indian states lapsed as per Article 7(b) of the India Independence Act 1947, and with it all treaties between the British Government and the Indian states also got a legal quietus. The Rulers of the Indian States became sovereign rulers from 18 July 1947, and they were free to accede to either of the two dominions or remain independent. As per the provisions of the Act, on 15 August 1947 two independent dominions of India and Pakistan were established.

The very fact that on 15 August, 1947 Jinnah chose to be Governor-General of Pakistan and Mountbatten sworn in as Governor-General of India. Nehru became the Prime Minister but was he as powerful as Jinnah and Mountbatten at that point in time.


But there are at least three moments which can be deemed exceptions.

1) They are the formation of 1942 Subhas Chandra Bose forms the Indian National Army (INA) and it assault on Brtishers, launch of 'Quit India movement' that led to declaration of Congress which was declared an unlawful organisation leading to the arrest of Gandhi and all members of the Congress Working Commmittee

2) On 18 April 1944 the INA broke through the British defence and captured Moirang in Manipur. The Azad Hind administration took control of the this independent Indian territory. Following Moirang, the advancing INA breached the Kohima road, posing a threat to the British positions in both Silchar and Kohima. INA had penetrated 250 miles into India. The Azad Brigade advanced, by outflanking the Anglo-American positions. INA's reliance on Japanese logistics and supplies and the total air-dominance of the allies and torrential rain, frustrated the INA bid to take Imphal.

3) The First trial of the Indian National Army in 1945

Have the freedom fighters of 1857 and INA been treated fairly by the Britishers and their successors in Indian Government? Is it surprising that they have largely been marginalised with the overt and covert means of the government dominated by the Indian Civil Service officers? Was Gangadhar Nehru a freedom fighter?

Note: The text above is a compilation from different books. It awaits analysis in political economy context amid a historical process wherein the precedent is yet to be set because invaders and exploiters of one period cannot be forgotten to interpret others. Or can it be?

Forest land, non-froest use etc

All through the first quarter of 2007 media reported the conflict between the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Environment and Forests over the composition of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) in the T N Godavarman case.The issue of Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) continues to make headlines. Effort to define the expertise needed to oversee conversion of forest land into non-forest use remains unresolved.

Any activity that requires the diversion of forest land for non-forest has to get clearance by the Ministry under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980. In pursuance of the same the Ministry refers every proposal with complete documentation to the FAC prior to granting clearance. The committee takes a view on whether the forest land in question should be allowed to be diverted or not.

FAC is the highest Government-appointed advisory body that is responsible for all clearances related to any diversion of forest land for purposes like laying of roads, water/sewerage pipelines, power projects, dams etc. The Centrally Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court had recommended that certain people known among environmental groups having required expertise be made the members of FAC.

The debate arose when the Ministry questioned the expertise of the people suggested by the CEC and it proposed its own people as experts. This created a conflict between the Ministry and the Court. The latter stayed the reconstitution of the FAC. With about 300 development projects of "national importance" stalled because of the non-constitution of the FAC, the Supreme Court allowed the functioning of the existing FAC on 27th April, 2007 taking note of "utmost urgency." Earlier the court had asked the Ministry to consider including one of the nine environmentalists suggested by CEC as member of the FAC but the Ministry
refused.

FAC has to clear the proposal for the ministry to issue the requisite license. The stay on the FAC for the last five months had stopped new clearances for mining and industrial activities in forest land. The directive from the court came with a condition -all fresh cases examined by the FAC will be considered by the CEC. The final nod will come from the apex court based on the CEC's recommendations. The court laid down the road ahead for future clearances without vacating the stay.

युगवार्ता: बहुराष्ट्रीय कंपनियों का पैरोकार संयुक्त राष्ट्र संघ

युगवार्ता: बहुराष्ट्रीय कंपनियों का पैरोकार संयुक्त राष्ट्र संघ