How long can we live with such a Competition city ? Will cities prostrate at the altar of global capital? We need to invite investment but on what terms? Can all industries benefit us if the peace and quiet of residential life is cut into? What is the cost and who pays it?
Read this TOI article for more details: Set up shop first, get eco nod later:
Bangalore: How easy is it for industries to start operating without an environmental clearance? Former mayor Puthige R Ramesh had applied for information on this through RTI ... KPSCB recently passed a resolution that industries can start construction prior to receiving environmental clearance by paying five times the consent fee. .... The copy of the order that Puthige received through RTI says it was passed at its 168th meeting on November 13, 2007 by chief environmental officer, M D N Simha. “It is a serious ... They have given clearance to over 250 industries in one year. I am wondering how many must have gone ahead without clearance, ‘’ he said.
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Bending rules like Beckham...
This is the bane of our society. People responsible to uphold laws are tearing, trampling and mutilating the so called system that has more loopholes than laws; but they are only bending but not breaking.
This clearly shows that there is a 'hand-in-glove' compromising situation in establishing industries with environmental clearances. It is a shame on the part of those who are supposed to be upholding the law but are bending it... for what purpose...? Your guess is as good as mine.
Unfortunately, the Lok Ayukta office itself has such big bad wolves operating from within the sanctum sanctorum of the temple of anti-corruption, to the utter helplessness of the LA. The fence is eating the crop syndrome. Whom to belive?
Let us start a drive to clean up the society - by saying no to corrupt ways of living. We are equally responsible, we talk about corruption but encourage corrupt ways because it suits us. What a paradoxical situation for moral values?
Can we beg for one year of holiday for corruption, to start with?
- Vasanthkumar Mysoremath
Policy makers -is it Public or the Legislative Assembly?
It seems not either
Local laws must be framed to give policy implementation a chance esp for quality of life to improve
and the fight is the same all over the country.
Australia got its Local laws in 1988. BBMP will get one in 2009-10. So what should really get into this law?
the Public must be closely involved in it and the Legislature could follow their lead, instead of the bureaucrats lead. The Bureucrats take the cake and eat it too
Lets get just one e.g. of the Public's Agenda becoming a law: the Right to Information and Right to Food could be those
We have enough laws...grassroots level consultation like JNNURM
Yes Sir, we have enough laws, codes, manuals, articles, provisions, rights blah, blah, blah, to hang the law breakers to the nearest lamp post. But there are equal loopholes, if not more through which one can escape.
It is only in India that anybody can do anything and get away with it.
The need of the hour is to stick to the spirit of the laws, implement them sincerely, book the culprits, pass strictures, punishments, according to the law of the land. But bending rules to see that the prosecuting agency cuts its own hands and legs to go slow or to weaken the case is something that has to be tacked.
Public consultation is an inherent systemic need of any project from either Consolidated Fund of India or Contingency Fund of India... latest being JNNURM projects. But those requirements are stage managed or are given a brush aside and budget is voted either under plan or non-plan expenditure. These Babus know the bolts and nuts of the politicians and the system and they have the necessary tools to either tighten the bolts or loosen the nuts. Ask them... they wont open their mouths, can we put them under lie detectors? Choice is ours.
Take for example Lok Ayukta office itself has black sheeps and corrupt crouching tigers and LA has sent a number of them packing. He is so helpless that when he is riding one office in the third floor, somebody will be indulging in corruption in the fourth floor. Who will bell the corruption cat?
All of us seek permits of one kind or the other within the ambit of law; the corrupt officials make it look as if we are breaking the rules, if we argue, even see that one of the enclosures of our application is not there and lo and behold we are back to square one - corruption.
A day may come when we may have to take a few sheets from the holy book of Quraan, that prescribe details of punishments to be awarded to law breakers, adopt and rewrite our IPC and see that those who are screwing the system are flogged in Majestic.
Are we ready? Can we make a beginning somewhere?
-Vasanthkumar Mysoremath