Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
India Is Back To A Time Before The Bhopal Gas Tragedy
I wrote today’s piece — for Article 14 — after reading a comparison between the draft Environmental Impact Assessment Notification (2020) and its forerunner, the 2006 notification.
Such analysis is problematic. It suffers from what George Monbiot called the ‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’ — of assuming what we inherited was ‘normal’ and everything thereafter is a change. In reality, the 2006 notification was a diluted version of the first EIA notification (1994), and our terrain of usurped environmental rights runs deeper. And the total of these usurpations is the total evaporation of Indians’ hard-won environmental rights over the last 35 years.
Take the recent LG Polymers leak in Visakhapatnam. As I write: “That night in Visakhapatnam, India witnessed the effects of successive dilutions of EIA law. When a poisonous gas leaks, from a poorly maintained industrial unit operating without an environment clearance in the midst of residential neighbourhoods, it invites more than comparisons with Union Carbide. It forces the belated recognition that, in terms of effective protection against industrial pollution, India is back where she was before the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.”
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
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