This is because the ministry of environment and forests, led by environment zealot Jairam Ramesh was till the other day raising the red flag to many industrial and mining projects. Has Ramesh gone through a metamorphosis on his own? Or his appearing to be a lot more flexible on green issues has got to do with prime minister Manmohan Singh delivering warnings about emergence of an environmental licence permit raj and the Reserve Bank of India seeing in the country's strict green regulations a reason for a 36 per cent decline in foreign direct investment in the first half of 2010-11 over the corresponding period last year? Ramesh has also come to understand that this country will be denied the benefits of frontier steel making technologies like Finex dispensing with the use of coking coal unless we allow Poscos of the world to build plants here.
Lakshmi Mittal tells us that while emerging nations will continue to have bigger share of the world steel capacity, we will be seeing technology updates happening mostly in the West. Our leading steelmakers like SAIL, Tata Steel and JSW are, however, looking more towards Japan and South Korea for breakthrough technologies to build new mills and also to move up the value chain in their existing facilities. But, for these ambitions to be given shape, environmental clearances should be available in a reasonable time. This certainly was not happening till recently. It is not anybody's case that environment should be less priority if we are to pursue growth. The prime minister is unequivocal in saying that as we pursue growth we have to protect “our environment, forests and biodiversity." Equally importantly he says that “benefit of growth must be shared equitably with weaker sections of society." He believes economic decision makers could work in an “environmentally benign" manner without ushering in “licence permit raj." Read the full report here.
Source: Kunal Bose, Business Standard.
