Over the last 12 days, India has been gripped by the ongoing struggle to extricate 41 trapped workers from the Silkiyara tunnel in Uttarakhand. As any geologist will tell you, the Main Central Thrust — the world’s biggest active geological fault, created by the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate — runs through Uttarakhand. One part of the fault, as Himanshu Thakkar wrote, runs close to Silkiyara itself.
And. Yet. There. Was. No. EIA. For. Either. Silkiyara. Or. For. Char. Dham. Pariyojana. (Char Dham Pariyojana = A highway project which seeks to connect four Hindu holy towns — and counts Silkiyara tunnel as one node. All of it lies in Uttarakhand.)
A month ago, a similar elision came to public attention. The biggest ecological risk for Teesta III came from glacial lakes. And so, did the EIA for Teesta III study the risk from glacial lakes? If the project should be built? If so, what mitigatory mechanisms would be needed?
No. Nope. And Nada.
What do these two instances tell us about the state of India’s environmental governance process? In this piece for The Wire, I argue that successive dilutions have resulted in an outcome where India, for all practical purposes, again operates in a pre-EIA notification time. All the slowly-won environmental rights from the mid-1970s have been usurped.
Do read.
Fractured/Earth 
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