Let us be clear. Mr Ramesh is a shrewd and ambitious man. He began as a technocrat and later learnt the craft and humility that comes with politics. He also realises it as a balancing act where today's supporters might be tomorrow's opponents. He realises that environment and politics are about trade-offs. A trade-off is an art form. As Mr Ramesh stated it in his Satish Dhawan Memorial Lecture, there is always a trade-off between growth and environment. “In arriving at decisions to untangle the trade-off, three options present themselves — ‘yes', ‘yes, but' and ‘no'. The real problem is that the growth constituency is used to ‘yes' and can live with ‘yes, but'. It cries foul with ‘no'. The environment constituency exults with a ‘no', grudgingly accepts the ‘yes, but', but cries foul with a ‘yes'. Therefore one clear lesson is this — maximise the ‘yes, but', where this is possible." Read the full report here.
Source: Shiv Visvanathan, Deccan Chronicle.
