India Inc heaved a sigh of relief on Tuesday with the exit of Jairam Ramesh as environment minister. His shift to the rural development ministry, albeit with the elevated status of a Cabinet minister, was seen as the most significant part of the Prime Minister?s latest reshuffle exercise.
The common refrain from the members of India Inc was that Ramesh pitched himself as a crusader for clean air and environment, and certainly improved the profile of the environment ministry, but in the process lost the fine balance between development and environment. ?No one disputes that environment is important. But the way he went about targeting companies and their investment showed a one-sided agenda. If there were issues, those could have been resolved through dialogues with the industry for which we were always ready,? said an executive from a company whose projects suffered because of Ramesh?s single-minded pursuit.
?I expect Jayanthi Natarajan (Ramesh?s successor in the environment ministry) to be balanced in her approach and be reasonable. I hope that she does not take any extreme position because what is required is a balanced approach where issues of environment are addressed and at the same time development is not hampered,? former CII president and chairman of Tata Communications Subodh Bhargava said.
A top CEO of a Delhi-based technology firm who did not want to be named said that during Ramesh?s tenure development related work had taken a complete hit. He said that owing to the change of guard several manufacturing units would now heave a sigh of relief. ?Ramesh had taken a very hard stand, which sent out a wrong message. A rational approach is the need of the hour which I hope the change would bring about,? he added.
However, Ramesh also found a slew of voices supporting his tough stance on environment. A senior executive of a car company, who has known Ramesh for the last 10 years, said he was responsible for bringing environment to the forefront of national debate. ?Companies need to be aware that environment cannot be taken for a ride. Ramesh brought the issue directly into corporate boardrooms,? he said. He added that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also recognised Ramesh?s efforts which is why he was elevated to the Cabinet rank.
In 2009, Ramesh created a storm in the industry when he said it was ?criminal? to drive SUVs in India since they were gas guzzling and highly polluting. ?He realised that environment was an important issue for the country and he did not shy away from that,? the executive of the car company quoted above said.
Some of the development projects that hit a roadblock under Ramesh include the Navi Mumbai airport project and Jaitapur nuclear plant. Apart from that he had also started classification of coal mining areas into ?go? and ?no-go? areas. The demarcation was seen as detrimental to economic growth as production capacity of 660 million tonne per annum in 206 coal blocks falls in these ?no-go? zones.