Namati’s Kanchi Kohli on how India’s ‘balance’ of industrialisation and ecological protection actually looks at the ground level.
“The lives of people living in coastal or forest ecosystems are likely to change drastically if one is to go by the number of power plants going up in India today. Each company seeking permission to operate a coal mine is often doing it because they have power plants to feed. And with each plant, there is not just a change in existing land use – farms, forests, fishing and related livelihood. The entire ecological ethos and biodiversity, in fact, is completely replaced by the quest for ‘power’.”
Read the entire OpEd at Civil Society Online.