First, the chief minister and the minister for forest and fisheries refused to accept the order. Then, foot firmly in the mouth, they have questioned the right of a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to determine the outcome of the case. Now backtracking a bit, they have decided to study the legal options before they appeal to a higher court. This is where the matter stands today.

The tragedy is that none of this need have happened. To prove that Maharastra remained the investors first choice the state government organised a show of strength through `Advantage Maharashtra'. A few days short of the event, the government realised that theyhad no multi-million dollar project to announce at the inauguration. So when P&O, the knight in shining armour, said they would be interested in a port at Vadhavan instead of Alewadi (the original site in the tender document), the state government decided it would not quibble about small matters.

Meticulous as corporations like P&O are with their homework, they could hardly be blamed for not knowing the geography or politics of the area. As the company was to construct the port, they had in the limited time available to them, checked out the basics at Vadhavan. Draft was excellent, connecting infrastructure could be easily constructed and volume projections indicated a viable proposition. If the state government was willing to grant them the site, they had no reason to believe that legally it was out of bounds. They signed on the dotted line in good faith. The state government however should have known better. It would have taken it less than a hour to do its homework. Any bureaucrat familiar with the statecould have told the minister that the site was one of the most legally protected in the country, not by mere notifications, but by supreme court directives as well. So clear was the legislation, that no contravention would hold up in the court. They would also have been informed that if they showed scant respect for the law, they would be stopped in their tracks by a band of committed environmental activists. What followed is even more incredible. Having realised that they made a mistake, the state government kept on assuring P&O that it would `take care of things'. Again the state had erred. Here, it was a case of believing that even if they were contravening the laws of the land, there would be no protest. Extra constitutional authorities in the ruling party only fuelled this belief, leaving the state government to actually deliver the goods. On its own, P&O made another strategic error. Once the hearings were well underway, P&O asked for an extension on the letter of intent that had lapsed. In doing so itforced the committee to focus of the legality of the case rather then the environmental angles. Now it had too much to lose, too little to gain. All it could gain was a reaffirmation of the state government's intention to allow P&O to develop the port - an intention that has never been in doubt, in letter or spirit. Unfortunately what it could lose, it has. If anything, P&O's move may have actually hastened a order that had to come and unwittingly saved tax payers money.

But what is possibly the most crucial mistake the state government made was to underestimate the unassailable legal position of the environmentalists. There is little doubt that the government as a sovereign has the right to choose the projects they want and invite the company they think is competent to execute it. Under the existing laws, it also has the right to acquire the land for the project and pick up the tab for it if they so wish (whether state governments have judiciously used this right is matter for another debate). In theabsence of this right, any government would find it difficult to be an agent of development. But in this case the government chose to do this outside the ambit of the law. The state government is now building a case for the port. The only obvious option before it is to question the very status granted to Dahanu as being ecologically fragile. That is within their right, if they think the region is undeserving of such a status.

Though this will no doubt be bitterly fought by the environmentalists, the side with the strongest case will win. Whatever the outcome, the state government will finally have tackled the issue within the law, rather than arrogantly pretend that it does not exist.