The monster that is modernisation!

It’s a larger question, not confined to a place, a city or a country. It concerns us all in South Asia, wherever we are living. Money, more aptly, the mafia with the help of corrupt public servants is destroying our national heritage in the shape of forests and fields.

This is supposed to be modernisation. I have nothing against it, except that what is being built looks hideous. My real complaint is that as the land in cities becomes scarce, a forest, a park or, for that matter, any green patch is being blotted out to make room for concrete contraptions. Where does environment figure?

Dazzled by skyscrapers in Europe and America we have come to prefer bricks to plants, opulence to simplicity, buildings to nature. And when I travel through India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, I find tall buildings devouring open spaces which are lungs of our habitations. Most of us are indifferent to what is going on but we will regret the loss of greenery some day.

India is the worst example. The green cover has already come down to 6.5 per cent from 15 per cent in the last 50 years. The phobia of 8 per cent annual growth is not only bulldozing the dissent on the type of development, but doing worse. The government is itself a party to changing the complexion of India through steel and cement. Unfortunately, it is thoughtless, inept and crass development. One example at Delhi will amplify what I mean. There is a ridge, older than the Himalayas. It has been cut and re-cut many a time to accommodate colonies. The worst was when the government wanted to build 11 hotels at the bit of forest left at Vasant Kunj. I petitioned to the Supreme Court and got a stay order.

The worst followed when the Supreme Court itself released a part of the forest land. I wrote a letter to Delhi chief minister Shiela Dixit six years ago to request her to notify the ridge under the Environmental Act and stop the "construction and felling of trees." There was not even an acknowledgement. I was then a Member of Parliament. Subsequently – by then I had retired from the Rajya Sabha _ I wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to draw his attention to the havoc played to environment in the ridge area. There was no reply from him either. That probably has encouraged the grasping builders and corrupt authorities to start raising plazas, destroying even the source that recharges water. Although obliged to get permission from the Ministry of Environment, the builders disdainfully ignored it. A few days ago an international workshop at Delhi passed a resolution to say: "If construction is not reversed in this area (the Vasant Vihar-Mahipalpur ridge) it will amount to giving licence to builders to build anywhere _ be it Lodi Garden or Corbett Park."

But this is bound to happen sooner than later. Much will depend on the Prime Minister who has been sent a copy of the resolution. In the case of the ridge, the Indian Army is equally to blame. Out of an area of 640 hectares, DDA possesses 315 hectares and the Army 325. The latter's plea at the public hearing was that it had to have tenements near the airport (where the ridge is) to be able to respond quickly to the enemy's surprise attack on India.

When I asked a question in parliament on the construction at the ridge, the then defence minister George Fernandes said that it was "in public interest." To vandalise the decades old trees indiscriminately and to build even without the Environment Ministry's clearance is no public interest. It is only a blatant, deliberate illegal activity. But since the Army is a sacred cow in every South Asian country, it can get away with anything even in a democratic setup.

India has another racket in the name of progress. This is the SEZ (special economic zone). The government acquires a large chunk of agriculture land at a cheap price and passes it on to big business houses to set up industry. The zone is a free enclave and considered "foreign territory for the purpose of trade preparations," where duties, tariffs, etc. are exempt.

One specific instance is that of the Haryana government allotting to an industrial house 25,000 acres of cultivable land. An internal assessment of the Finance Ministry is that the central government will lose Rs 90,000 crore in direct and indirect taxes over the next four years. Punjab and UP are in the midst of concluding similar ventures with known industrial houses. Some 140 SEZs will come up throughout the country.

Is this what development is all about? I have heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul. But I have never known Peter robbing Paul and that too with the help of the government. The 70 per cent people living in the countryside _ the mainstay of our democratic structure _ are the milching cows. They are being ousted from their homes and lands to enlarge industry and business, the signposts of progress. Whether they are the oustees of mines in Orissa, of Narmada Dam in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh or of SEZs in Haryana, Punjab and UP, they tell the same story: the government has decided to eliminate the poor, not poverty. The Prime Minister promised development with a human face. But it has turned out to be an ingenious way to further exploit the exploited.

Development will be judged from the journey the lowest have made on the road to progress, not from the malls and plazas. Jawaharlal Nehru said once that India might have tall buildings, big factories and modern laboratories but they would be of no consequence if the country had lost its spiritual heritage in the process.

The government is on a wrong track when it permits the destruction of the ancient ridge at Delhi and does not provide land from the land-for-rehabilitation to create SEZs, the sources of political corruption. What shocks me is the connivance of the Left. I think that they are having vicarious satisfaction of being in power. This was their best opportunity to expose the government, but they have become part of it.