The
Electricity Pensioners’ Welfare Association has said that it is high time that
the Kerala government started giving due seriousness in dealing with matters
regarding the implementation of the Gadgil committee and the Kasturirangan
committee reports on the Western Ghats.
In a
statement here on Sunday, chairman of the association K. Radhakrishnan said
that the association was of the opinion that the Madhav Gadgil committee report
was prepared in a biased manner without considering the different sides of the
issue. It happened mainly because of the incompetence of the committee to deal
with a subject affecting the development of a large area of the country.
The
committee which should have been a multi-disciplinary one unfortunately
comprised only people from ecology and related areas.
Kerala
was represented in the committee by people known to be biased. There were no
engineers in the committee.
“Unfortunately
the Kerala government and the Kerala civil society took the committee lightly.”
 |
K RadhakrishnanState Chairman |
Mr.
Radhakrishnan alleged that the government failed to coordinate the various
departments, and the Kerala State Electricity Board was perhaps the lone agency
that apprised the committee of the real facts about the State. Many departments
lined up before the committee against the arguments of the KSEB.
Mr.
Radhakrishnan, a former member (generation) of the KSEB who led the KSEB team
before the Gadgil Committee, said that all the organisations and popular groups
which appeared before the committee argued against any development in the area.
The committee did not consider the use of modern technology to avoid
considerable damages to the ecology when it came to meeting some basic needs of
the human community. Modern concepts such as ecosystem transplantation,
enabling lateral growth for ecosystems and rebuilding of damages to the
environment were not even mentioned in the report for reasons best known to the
committee.
He said
that the Gadgil committee report which opposed all developmental activities in
the Western Ghats failed to propose any viable alternative. Total opposition to
hydroelectric projects, neglecting the fact that more damages were inflicted to
the environment by other forms of electricity generation, was a glaring
handicap of the report.
Athirappilly
Interestingly
the committee which didn’t include any power engineers questioned even the
technical viability of the Athirappilly project which was approved by the
Central Electricity Authority. This indicated that the Gadgil Committee had
arrived at some hasty conclusions.
Later
the Kasturirangan Committee set up by the Union government to have a fresh look
into the matter gave the opportunity to all those interested to place their
views before the committee. But again the Kerala government failed to apprise
the committee of the real picture of the State.
Though
the Kasturirangan Committee report was not in favour of a total ban on hydel
projects, it still failed to view the facts in a comprehensive way. The
constitution of the committee was again not sufficiently multi-disciplinaryThe
committee did not include any engineers.
State-level panel
Welcoming
the decision of the State government to set up a high level committee to deal
with the issue, the association felt that a conventional committee comprising
preoccupied government secretaries would not serve the purpose.
Keywords: Gadgil report, Madhav Gadgil, Electricity Pensioners’ Welfare Association, Gadgil committee, Kerala government, Gadgil report implementation, Kasturirangan committee, Western Ghats
Source : The Hindu
