Editorial: From Accused to Benefactors

The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, in a rejoinder to this newspaper yesterday, clarified that it had not paid Rs. 74.5 lakh to the Forest Department as a fine for illegal dumping, but to amicably settle, out of court, a dispute with the Department regarding ‘treatment’ of the road at Elaichi Khola with excavated muck. The letter is brief and does not let on too many details, but the news-report in this paper was elaborate. The Forest Department had found NHPC dumping muck from the Teesta Stage V project site in and around Elaichi Khola along the Singtam-Dikchu axis. The environmental clearance for such projects requires excavated earth to be dumped only at prescribed zones. The NHPC letter suggests that it was dumping on the road near Elaichi Khola as a ‘treatment’ [repairs in other words]. The Forest Department was however, at least initially, convinced that the dumping was unauthorised and in violation of Forest laws. Its officials are on record stating that an inspection found the people’s complaint of unauthorised dumping to be true and the damage to the area drastic enough to warrant a court case. Nature however is very resilient, and with time, the eyesore of the illicit dumping settled down and did not appear as devastating as it initially did; further, most of the loose soil was washed away by the rains and drained away by the Teesta below. The Department agreed to an out of court settlement. So, legally speaking, NHPC was never found guilty of illegal dumping because the case was settled out of court and no verdict pronounced. Interestingly though, the Department claims to have transferred this Rs. 74.5 lakh to the Land Use circle of the Forest Department for rehabilitation works in the area. This leads to the obvious inference that there was some damage caused, otherwise why would rehabilitation be required and it is also established that Elaichi Khola area in question was not a designated dumping ground for the Stage-V project.
The case was already five years old when it was settled, and the project, which was a work in progress at the time when the first complaints were lodged, had been commissioned in the interim. There will be many who will agree that an out of court settlement was well advised because it expedited the process and also because all ‘evidence’ had been lost to the monsoons apparently weakening the case. They would only be partly correct, because an out of court settlement does not fix accountability and officially allows the charge company to claim a clean sheet. And this is not about trivial nit-picking, because it is in relaxations and adjustments like these development comes into conflict with the affected people and arguments seeking to justify some sacrifices for the sake of development lose their persuasiveness. A clean slate allows project developers to claim cleaner records than what the affected people would give them. What is more, it widens a loophole through which they can move from being proscribed to being feted as benefactors. The NHPC is not in the wrong when it claims that it was treating the road at Elaichi Khola, which means that they were doing a service to the people and the State with their unauthorised dumping. It will be interesting to see how the people of the area who lodged the first complaint feel about this claim. One sees too many such leeways allowed to project developers when even though they are made to release ‘compensation’ for damage caused due to their handling of the project, these are never officially recorded as such. The affected people do not bother about technicalities so long as their loss is made good, but the concerned officials should ensure better and ensure that official documentation of a project registers clear details of damage caused. What might publicly be called a compensation or even ‘fine’ as in the latest case, is not necessarily so in official documentation. The project developers can release the funds and record it under the head of ‘assistance’ or even bill it to their corporate social responsibility account. In retrospect, the records will reflect a glowing account of the project developers conduct instead of recording penalties for recklessness. This is also a contributing factor to the ease with which project developers can talk down to the people and get away with inconsequential events in the name of CSR. Say for example the spate of eye camps held last year by project developers in affected areas. Did someone suggest these camps because the number of ophthalmic complaints had gone up in the area? If this was indeed the case, and we are speculating now, then the first step should have been to find out whether this was because of the increased amount of dust being kicked up in the area because of increased traffic and excavation works. If so, then the eye-camps should not have been a CSR undertaking, but a compensatory service and the State Government agencies and the affected people could then have demanded a permanent eye clinic as part of the CSR.
More instances can be quoted, but the point being made here is the same and simple- fixing accountability and establishing culpability for ever slip and oversight is as important as compensating affected people, because, one, it wins the trust and faith of the people in the establishment’s commitment to look out for them when it comes to confrontations with project developers [a much-needed reassurance] and two, it flags issues of concern for future projects thereby ensuring that lessons are learnt well and future conflicts pre-empted.