Presentation made at the Press Conference of Environment Minister

Presentation made at the Press Conference of Environment Minister

          A PowerPoint presentation was made at the Press Conference of Minister of State of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Prakash Javadekar.  The Press Conference was held at National Media Centre here today.  

          Following is the text of the Presentation:

TOWARDS MORE GREEN

Ø      Unlocking Rs. 38,000 crore through CAMPA bill for more afforestation.

Ø      14^th Finance Commission has given 7.5% weightage for forest cover and has provided for nearly Rs. 55,000 crore for afforestation.

Ø      National Forest Policy being revised to ensure more greening, improving forest quality with participation of tribals and forest dwellers.

Ø      Forest fires reduced by 15%

Ø      Forest stocking (volume) in our forests have stabilized in the backdrop of negative trend earlier.

Ø      Effective National Afforestation Programme on 75,000 ha of degraded land.

Ø      More than 20,000 ha added to the forest area for reforestation while approving projects.

Ø      New guidelines are being prepared to make 1, 00, 000 Joint Forest Management Committees more effective.

Ø      New plan on anvil for improving fodder and water in Protected Areas.

Ø      New scheme for Green Credit on anvil.

Ø      PPP for afforestation on degraded forest land.

Ø      14 States have submitted their Perspective plans for Green India Mission out of which 6 have already been approved.

BETTER WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Ø      Wildlife growth robust

v     Tiger      2, 226 (70% of the world’s tiger population).

v     Lions           523   (24% growth)

v     Rhino      2, 889 (2401 in kaziranga)

v     Elephants 30, 000 +

Ø      3 new tiger reserves, one in Bor, Maharashtra and Rajaji and Pilibhit in, Uttarakhand.

Ø      4 Tiger Protection Force and 1 Rhino Protection Force sanctioned.

Ø      30 poachers killed in encounter in a continuous drive against poaching.

Ø       Burnt confiscated wildlife articles. State inventory ordered.

Ø      4 villages and 651 families relocated from 4 protected areas.

Ø      Collaboration of NTCA & WCCB towards an online tiger/ wildlife crime tracking/ reporting system in Tiger Reserves.

Ø      NBWL reconstituted and decided on 225 proposals laying stringent environmental conditions.

Ø      222 Eco-Sensitive Zones approved for providing effective buffer zone for wildlife areas after scientific evaluation and public consultation.

BETTER ANIMAL WELFARE

Ø      Animals in Circuses banned.

Ø      Grants for Gaushalas and Shelters for stray animals including Dogs

Ø      Manza banned.

Ø      Streamlining National Institute of Animal Welfare.

Ø      New Diploma and Degree courses in Animal Welfare to be launched.

PRESERVING BIO-DIVERSITY

Ø      NAGOYA Protocol ratified.

Ø      Access benefit guidelines issued.

Ø      National Mission on Himalayan Studies established.

v     This will remove data deficit on glaciers, landslides, sustainable methods of building roads and tunnels, weather and other related issues.

EFFECTIVE POLLUTION CONTROL

Ø      Mandated 24x7 monitoring of pollution for 3206 highly polluting industries. They have to fix such devices on effluent discharge points and on chimneys.

Ø      Many industries have installed these devices. Others have furnished bank guarantees.

Ø      Comprehensive Air Quality Index launched in 11 cities. Everyday bulletin at 5 PM on 8 parameters; PM-10, PM-2.5, SOX, NOX, O3, LEAD (PB), CO, NH3.

Ø      PSUs supporting AQI expansion in 66 cities.

Ø      3-months action plan prepared in 3 meetings of concerned state governments and other agencies for NCR Airshed.

Ø      Environmental norms for Cement industry made more stringent and notified.

Ø      Environmental norms for Sand, stone-crushing, brick-kiln, fertilizers, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, paper and pulp, paint, distilleries and other sectors are being reviewed.

Ø      Non-complying 124 industries closed.

Ø      New standards for Sewage Treatment Plant issued.

Ø      Sugar, Textile, Tanneries and distilleries mandated Zero Liquid Discharge.

Ø      Black Liquor Discharge successfully prohibited.

Ø      SOPs prepared for inspections.

Ø      Harmonised system proposed for Red, Orange and Green categories based on pollution potential of Air, Water and Hazardous Waste.

FOR SWACHH BHARAT

Ø      Following New Rules notified for Public Consultation

v     New Hazardous Waste Rules

v     New Solid Waste Rules, including Construction Waste Rules

v     New E-Waste Rules

v     New Plastic Waste Rules

v     New Bio-Medical Waste Rules

Ø      This will ensure scientific waste management at all levels and are open for consultations till 31^st July on our website – www.moef.nic.in

CLEAN WATER AND RIVERS

Ø      Top priority given for cleaning water by stopping industrial pollution in rivers/water bodies.

Ø      New norms for STPs notified.

Ø      Bio-remediation taken up for drains joining Ganga.

Ø      Mini-lab for major Ghats to monitor bathing water quality at important Ghats along Ganga.

Ø      8 Water Quality Monitoring Stations are active and 113 more planned.

Ø      Special drive to address water pollution issues in every state.

ENFORCEMENT BEGINS

Ø      64 polluting and non-complying industries on the banks of Ganga and 61 industries throughout the country were closed. 

Ø      Units are allowed to be reopened only after complying with the pollution norms.

Ø      11 units in U.P and 7 units in Delhi are closed for producing plastic carry bags below 40 microns.

Ø      Technology-based monitoring system being expanded for forest appraisal, wildlife management and pollution control.  Drones, electronic surveillance, camera traps, 24x7 pollution monitoring devices, geo-mapping being increasingly used.   

Ø      Various committees went into the urgent issues

v     Landfill in Mumbai

v     Lake pollution in Bengaluru

v     River pollution in Pune

v     Industrial pollution in Khargon.

v     Illegal Slaughter houses in U.P and Telangana.

THIS IS JUST A BEGINNING

PROCESSES MADE TRANSPARENT

Ø      Online process started for Environmental, Forest, Wildlife and Zoo approvals.  More than 3, 200 projects submitted online.

Ø      Access to previous EIA reports granted.

Ø      Compendium of all OMs/Notifications.

Ø      Standard TORs for all 39 sectors are prepared which will avoid the delay of 1 year.

Ø      Education and industrial complexes are exempted from EC with more stringent environmental standard conditions.

Ø      GIS-based decision making for forest approvals.

DECENTRALISATION

Ø      Approvals for 40 ha and below are delegated to Regional Empowered Committees consisting of the State officials, scientists, experts and MoEF&CC officials.

Ø      Mineral beneficiation sanctioning power of State SIAA increased from 2 million tonnes to 5 milliontonnes.

Ø      REC authorized to decide on Category A projects on the state borders and within 5 kms.

Ø      State Environment Impact Assessment Authorities to decide on the projects of

v     Distilleries up to 60 mld per year.

v     Irrigation Projects up to 10, 000 ha.

Ø      Biomass energy projects up to 15 MW.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Ø      Doors opened for more public participation.

Ø      Urban Forest (Nagari Vanodyan Yojana) launched.

Ø      Social forestry, agro forestry and Joint Forest Management to be made more effective through public participation.

Ø      ‘Fresh air my birthright’ campaign to be launched ín 20 cities.

Ø      Save water and energy campaigns to be encouraged with peoples’ participation.

Ø      School Nursery programmes to be launched soon.

Ø      Environmental syllabus and skilling courses. 

Ø      Workshop of 125 voluntary organizations and civil society groups held.

IMPROVING WORK CULTURE

Ø      Doors of the Ministry opened for common people.

Ø      Motivational workshops held in June 2014.

Ø      3 Chintan Shivirs for officers organized in Bengaluru, Bhopal and Guwahati.

Ø      3-day conclave of States’ Environment and Forest Ministers & Pollution Control Boards and concerned officers held in Delhi in April 2015.

REVAMP OF LAWS

Ø      CAMPA Bill introduced.

Ø      A Bill for higher penalties for violations is circulated for consultation.

Ø      EP Act, 1986, Forest Conservation Act 1980 and Indian Forest Act 1927, Water and Air Acts, as also Wildlife Protection Act will be revised to address the sensibilities of effective environment protection and ensuring development without destruction. 

Ø      Consultation with stakeholders on High Level Empowered Committee under TSR Subramanian is near completion.

CLIMATE CHANGE: A PROACTIVE INDIA

Ø      India played an effective and proactive role at Lima to bring developing world together and arrive at a consensus that Paris agreement will be based on the principles of UNFCCC wherein equity, CBDR and Polluter to Pay principles are bed rocked into it.

Ø      India is taking ambitious pre-2020 actions and is asking developed world to walk the talk.

Ø      India has proposed separate brainstorming sessions to sort out contentious issues such as pre-2020 action, finance, technology, legal nature of agreement and differentiation before Paris.

Ø      Preparation for Indian INDCs is on track.

POLICY BASED DECISIONS

Ø      Decentralisation of power to the States and RECs.

Ø      Defence projects within 100 kms of LAC, border roads by Army, ITBP, BSF, SSB and roads in 117 Left-Wing Extremism affected districts given general approval without compromising on the environmental conditions.

Ø      To fast-track linear projects, the permissions to start work are given after Stage-I clearance.

Ø      Irrigation with command area less than 2, 000 ha will not require EC and powers up to   10, 000 ha are delegated to the RECs.

Ø      Upgradation and strengthening of existing roads in forests is allowed for the convenience of tribals and forest dwellers.

MAJOR PROJECTS OF PUBLIC INTEREST APPROVED (Indicative list)

Ø      Project Sea Bird of Indian Navy at Karwar pending since 2011.

Ø      ChhatrapatiShivaji statue at Arabian Sea off Mumbai coast.

Ø      EC has been granted for more than 100 MTPA of coal production.

Ø      Damancherla Power Project in Nalagonda district, Telangana.

Ø      82 Goa mines sanctioned for reopening after SC’s approval.

Ø      Approval for Sand mines’ auction by Punjab government.

Ø      Immediate transfers of ECs for coal mines auctioned by Coal Ministry.

Ø      TOR for Bengaluru airport expansion. 

Ø      Chennai Port Mega Terminal pending since 2012.

Ø      Four-laning of National Highways approved for Gwalior-Shivpuri, Siluk-Dambuk road to Trans-Arunachal highway in Arunachal, Gondia-Seoni NH-7; Mumbai-Goa road,   NH-50 Nasik-Pune,Ludhiana-Talwandi NH-95, Panchkula-Yamunanagar NH-73.

Ø      Strengthening of Ropar-Doraha road NH-1, Sikar to Bikaner NH-11, Jalandhar-Amritsar and Amritsar-Tarn Taran.

Ø      Six-laning of Jaipur-Ajmer Ring Road.

Ø      Koderma-Tilaiya broad gauge line, Guna-Etawah broad gauge line, Sabroom-Agartala broad gauge line,Haridas-Paradip new broad gauge line in Cuttack, JNPT broad gauge line for DFCCIL.

Ø      Transmission lines in Chandwa-Gaya, Korba-Jabalpur, Ambasa-Gandacherra in Tripura, Bareilly-Kashipur, Mugaliachhap-Bhopal, Sasaram-Daltonganj, Paranbati II to Koldam in Himachal Pradesh,Dharamjaigarh-Jabalpur. 

Ø      Irrigation projects – Gunjwani, KariwaliDhariwali (Maharashtra)

IAS-2015 TEST SERIES,SAMVEG IAS DEHRADUN

Black money: pinning the shadow down

The steps taken so far, and this includes the Black Money Bill, to bring back an estimated $1.5 trillion stashed abroad are completely ineffective. There are better and stronger solutions available

Recently, on the suggestion of the eminent lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court allowed me to lead arguments on the effective steps to be taken to bring back black money, or undisclosed illegally held funds, estimated at Rs.120 lakh crore, stashed secretly abroad by Indians in numbered bank accounts. This amount is about 60 times the annual revenue from income tax in the Union Budget.

The media had reported during the 2014 Lok Sabha election, possibly with the usual dose of interpolation and dramatisation, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pledged in election speeches to bring back to the country all this black money. According to these reports, Mr. Modi had said the money belonged to the nation, and every citizen would receive Rs.15 lakh in his or her bank account when the money came in.

When or where Mr. Modi said this is not clear, but the nation, convinced after his speech that this would be done, now holds the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) responsible for having failed to keep this promise.

It is a fact that despite the Modi government setting up, soon after coming to office, a Special Investigation Team under two former Supreme Court judges, there is no sign yet of black money having being brought back.

Does this mean that the BJP had underestimated the reality and complexity of the issue and that there are no quick fixes for retrieving the black money back? To understand this, it is important to recognise why eliminating black money is crucial to the nation’s strategy for high growth.

The black money issue should not be misunderstood as one of merely avoiding taxes. It is, in fact, a major systemic crime of denying the nation’s financial system the proceeds of wealth. Such denial should actually be declared as treason, where opportunities to share the wealth for the benefit of the poor are wilfully denied.

The spreading cancer

Black money is a cancer in our economic system, not yet terminal or life-threatening. But we do not have much time left, possibly only a decade, before the economic system starts to unravel and contort.

There are three dimensions to this cancer. First, there is a distortion of investment priorities because acquiring luxuries with black money favours high-level investment in the luxury goods industries — there is a higher rate of return on investment. This is similar to the cellular disorder in the body of a cancer patient.

Second, forward trading in agricultural commodities by cash-rich speculators causes fluctuations in prices due to hoarding of agricultural products.

Third, generating black money with impunity means that the quality is sub-optimised in public sector infrastructural projects by tender manipulation, under- and over-invoicing in trade, and so on. The so-called Black Money Bill of 2015, passed recently by Parliament, is inadequate to secure the return of an estimated $1.5 trillion deposited illegally abroad by Indian citizens in about 90 countries.

The statute is structured in a way that will ensure punishment for black money hoarders once the money is detected or admitted for amnesty, but has no provisions on how to bring back the money itself.

Taking the right steps

There are four ways by which the names and accounts that are illegally held abroad can be ascertained, and the money stashed away brought back.

First, the Central Bureau of Investigation/Enforcement Directorate can register a First Information Report on the receipt of information of illegal accounts through Intelligence sources, and then obtain a Letter of Request u/s 166A of the Criminal Procedure Code (1973) from a designated court. Then, the agency can use Switzerland’s Law On International Judicial Assistance in Criminal Matters and seek Swiss cooperation to confiscate the account.

The second way is the German or French method of obtaining records of a particular bank. Monetary inducements are used in these two countries to will senior bank officials, as was done with the Bank of Liechtenstein and HSBC in Geneva.

The third way, the U.S. method, was used in the Washington D.C.-based branch offices of the Union Bank of Switzerland and Credit Suisse. Senior bank officers based in the Washington D.C. branch were arrested on charges of espionage to pressurise Swiss authorities into giving over 5,000 names of U.S. citizens who had illegally opened bank accounts in these two banks that had claimed secrecy as a business principle. India also has Swiss bank branch offices in Mumbai.

The fourth is the method suggested by eminent jurist and senior advocate Fali S. Nariman in his Rajya Sabha speeches and opinion pieces in newspapers, namely, invoking the Resolution of the UN Convention against Corruption, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005 and ratified by India in 2011.

This requires Parliament to pass a law. Or, as a first step, it requires the President to issue an Ordinance to nationalise all the bank accounts of Indian citizens in the 90-odd nations where black money is stashed. Thereafter, bilateral discussions with each of these countries can take place to get hold of the accounts.

Moreover, SIT must seek a report from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the Indian government on what it has done about suspicious transactions reported by banks. This will ensure that the banks report, on a real time basis, all suspicious transactions. SIT should demand both an investigation into at least 100 of the major suspicious transactions that have been reported in the past three years, and action to be taken against them within 10 days. There must also be a follow up on all other cases, as and when reports surface.

Issue of ownership

There is also no precise definition of politically empowered persons. It is defined as per the UN Convention against Corruption 2005, which India ratified and became a signatory to in 2011. Further, in line with the provisions of Section 12 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, all institutions must declare to the government their beneficial ownership — this will include ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Jet Airways, and so on. Unless this is done, the ownership of several large corporations will remain unknown.

Mr. Nariman’s suggestion, the first of its kind, should become a crucial instrument of black money restitution, mandated by the Supreme Court.

These are the effective ways of obtaining the estimated $1.50 trillion stashed abroad. The measures being taken presently by the government are completely ineffective in tackling this cancer and are, therefore, only of diversionary value.

Why are many of the sports so badly governed

Why are many of the sports so badly governed? In India, there is no end of complaints from players and spectators about the bad and often illegal behaviour of the people in charge of administration of sports. Those in charge get elected in small exclusive coteries with neither players or spectators allowed to vote. They are answerable to no one. No wonder the Supreme Court had to intervene in the affairs of the IPL.

The latest scam is, of course, the re-election for the fourth time of Sepp Blatter as president of FIFA and his sudden resignation. There had been a lot of complaints about the way the World Cup locations for 2018 Russia and 2022 Qatar had been chosen. The investigative journalism of some British newspapers was commendable. But then England was also bidding and lost. Sour grapes, people said. ‘All this talk of corruption is just because the Europeans no longer rule football like they used to.’ ‘African and Asian countries are the majority. They loved Sepp Blatter.’ ‘Europeans were just being imperialists. They did not understand the way of doing business in Asia and Africa.’ ‘They were just imposing their own standards.’

FIFA had commissioned a report on the allegations of corruption but did not publish it. There had been rumours that Qatar and Russia had bribed the members of FIFA to secure the World Cup. Nothing fazed Blatter. He stood for the fifth time as president. One by one his rivals began to drop out till only the Jordanian prince remained as his rival. Then as if by miracle, the authorities in Switzerland where FIFA is located acted on a tip-off from the FBI and arrested 10 FIFA officials. Still Blatter insisted he was innocent. His friends came to his aid. Europeans were derided for going on about corruption.

Blatter got elected . Europeans had lost and did not know what to do next. Then FBI moved a bit closer to Blatter himself. This was a signal that the game was up. He resigned. There will have to be new elections and perhaps reconsideration of the locations for 2018 and 2022. We may begin to see the cleansing of FIFA.

The remarkable thing about this episode is that it illustrates the contradictions of globalisation beautifully. When England won the World Cup in 1966, football was largely a European and Latin American game. Most players in football clubs were local born and spectators also local, watching their weekly games in cold and uncomfortable stadiums. By 2014, when the World Cup was staged in Brazil, all had changed. European football teams had become multi-racial and multi-national. Television had multiplied the audience and brought lots of money to the game. Players commanded huge .incomes and even more fabulous transfer fees. Neither colour nor nationality mattered. If you had talent enough to play at the top, the world was your oyster. But when corruption proliferated, the cure also had to be global. Europeans complained about their beautiful game being ruined by the newcomers in FIFA but it was not they but the new kid on the block, the US, which moved to arrest the likely culprits. But then the dollar is a global currency for all transactions. Large bribes were being paid by cheques. (In India they know better and use the Gandhi notes.) These cheques passed through one or the other banks which did business in the US and around the globe. The globalisation of football and of finance set up the trap. There was one diligent nation which takes fraud seriously. The Americans tipped off the Swiss about the FIFA meeting as a good time to nab the suspects. The point has to be made that there can be no separate morality for the First World and the rest. Those who defended corruption by attacking European Imperialism were just defending elite rent seeking. Their citizens did not benefit nor did the spectators. No country treats corruption as legal. The elite get away with it if the democratic pressures from the Press and the civil society are weak. But global policing helps protect the interest of the weak against the powerful local elites. Globalisation zindabad! -