Compromise deal on Navi Mumbai airport

The deadlock over the Navi Mumbai airport project, stuck in a wrangle over environmental issues, is set to be broken next week, environment minister Jairam Ramesh said on the sidelines of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
“Next week we will announce the final decision,” Ramesh said. “And you will see we have got a compromise.” Ramesh also sought to dismiss the perception that as a minister he’s acting as a stumbling block to investment and development. Edited excerpts:
Do you feel the debate between environment and development is spiralling out of control, more polarized than ever before?
The debate should not be seen as environment versus development or conservation versus growth. I have always believed the terms of the debate are based on ‘do you want to follow laws or do you want to circumvent them?’ Because the industry has been used to a certain way of ‘managing’, or ‘navigating the regulatory system’. But that has changed in the last 18 months. And what I am saying is that my job in this industry is to implement the laws Parliament has passed. Those laws were passed in the 70s and 80s. And the job of any minister in any ministry is this. So I am not doing rocket science or any Nobel Prize-winning effort.
So now the debate is of the guys who manage to keep within the laws, the 95% who don’t complain, and the 5%, the high profile, rich, powerful, politically very connected, who never had to have any problems or any impediments, who have not had any compliance and have ridden roughshod. And now they have to find that they have to answer uncomfortable questions. So the debate is between those who believe in following the law and those who have been comfortable circumventing them.
20/11/10 Padmaparna Ghosh/Live Mint

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Categories: Airports Nov 2010