Internet Censorship Over The Draft EIA 2020

[The co-authors of this article are Radhika Ramesh & Kumer Singh are research interns with the Climate Change Laws project at Niti Manthan. Radhika is a 5th Year Law student at Alliance University and Kumer is a 1st-year student of Climate Change & Sustainability Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences]

India’s Stance: Dilution or Delusion?

Government of India blocks access to websites which were raising public awareness and campaigning against the highly criticized draft Environment Impact Assessment notification of March 2020.

The Environment Awareness Groups LetIndiaBreathe, FridaysForFuture.in and ThereIsNoEarthB.com were confounded with surprise to find out that their websites had been made inaccessible to anyone trying to open their page. These groups had been raising awareness regarding the Draft Environment Impact Assessment notification 2020 that seeks to threaten the environment and dilute the law.

The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) was created by the Environment Protection Act 1986 foreseeing the possibility that certain industries and business may cause environmental harm in their creation, development, functioning or expansion. Therefore, environment clearance was put into place through the EIA.

The current Draft itself is a major weakening of the law that’s in place. Some of the changes include Post Facto Clearance which basically gives a free pass to industries who have begun carrying out their work without getting a clearance. They may apply for later if required by the government. This is ignorant of the fact that in India many entities have already been functioning this way by setting up potentially harmful industries without getting the necessary authorizations. The Supreme Court was also in the opinion that post-facto clearance is in derogation of environment jurisprudence. This post-facto clearance can lead to many disasters such as the ones India has witnessed due to improper clearances, like the LG Polymer Vizag Gas Leak, which had allegedly not procured the necessary clearances.

Another change in the notification is the reduction of the public hearing period from thirty days to twenty days. The draft corrodes the vitality of public consultation which takes concerned citizens more than a 30-day period to form opinions regarding any project in their locality. How does the government expect people as a community to come together and formulate their opinions and communicate that clearly to the officials in just twenty days? Ideally, the period must be increased to months, rather than what is being proposed right now. The government is essentially making it easier for industries to avoid meeting their environment accountability.

Another cause for concern is that information about “strategic” projects do not have to be revealed to the public at all, therefore defence and national projects, that may come under strategic projects do not need any prior clearance. Defence projects could mean the installation of nuclear power plants, which the government has shown its readiness to embark on are extremely volatile in nature and can cause disasters that can hurt the local population and have long-lasting effects on the environment. This spells disasters for those who may not be comfortable having a nuclear power plant next to their balcony, and therefore would like to be given an opportunity to ponder about it before they are forced to live with it. You can read more about the draft EIA here (https://nitimanthan.in/blog-posts/blog-niti-manthan/2020/06/29/pollute-pay-go-idea-behind-token-law-under-eia-draft-2020/ )

This decision to block the websites and curb the freedom of expression and exchange of information regarding the notification causes adverse implications for public awareness as this notification affects all, and sustainable development largely. No notice or reasoning was given to the environmental groups as to why their websites are blocked by the National Internet Exchange of India (NiXi), which is controlled by the current government. With 10 years left to reach the Sustainable Development Goals with national promised target reductions, India’s current government’s new developmental agenda, in the name of “ease of doing business” seems to be ignorant of environment degradation that stems from unsustainable development, which is not the model India can be following anymore. The changes in the Draft Notification, if passed will only make the situation direr.

When a physical protest is nearly impossible with social distancing and lockdown in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the timing of this notification is devious. Therefore, people are left with the choice of digitally voicing their concern about this notification that is also time-sensitive. Currently, the last date for sending the objections is on August 11th as decided by the Delhi High Court, but the Karnataka High Court has requested the Union Government to consider extending the last date in light of recent backlash against the notification. Websites such as the three that were blocked were doing their part by raising awareness and forming legal toolkits that enrich a layman’s understanding of the notification, and the changes that are going to be brought, and how it is against the interest of the public at large and supplying the readers with sample emails that provide critical feedback about the EIA.

When we reached out to one of the group ThereisNoEarthB, about their website being blocked, they maintained that they were not informed as to the reasons why their website has been blocked, and have taken help from the Internet Freedom Foundation (https://internetfreedom.in/blocking_env_web/) in filling RTI’s after recognizing that they were not alone in this incident. The three websites have been put on hold by the National Internet Exchange of India (NiXi), which is controlled and managed by the current government. According to some of the officials in NiXi, they were acting on government orders and refused to disclose which Ministry gave the orders. (https://theprint.in/india/our-websites-blocked-say-3-environmental-groups-campaigning-against-contentious-draft-policy/460530/). They say NiXi is only responsible for the registration of the sites with the domain ‘.in’ and the act of blocking takes place only after an order from the Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology.

ThereisNoEarthB maintains that these developments do not take away the light from the more burning issue, which is the draft itself, which may roll out to be a new law unless more people send in their objections. Speaking about the draft itself, they say-“the coronavirus pandemic has shown us the disastrous consequences of encroaching upon nature and at the same time has given us a window of opportunity to correct ourselves. But this notification seeks to do the exact opposite! This will cause the repeating of the same mistakes that led humanity into this global crisis in the first place. We simply cannot accept this dilution of a law that is already severely weakened.” They urge people to also check out their other toolkits that provide an insight of other ecocides occurring in India currently, such as the Assam Floods, which you can access here (http://thereisnoearthb.gitlab.io/)

Recently, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi launched the auctioning of 41 coal mines(https://www.financialexpress.com/economy/new-model-privatisation-kicks-in-with-auction-of-41-coal-assets/1996250/) to private entities in the scheme of making India “Atmanirbhar” (self-dependent). These coal belts are located in sensitive areas such as Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa where a huge population of tribes depend, or rather they are “nirbhar” on their environment for economic, social and spiritual needs. Mining leads to the rampant destruction of their habitat and an ecological loss. If a relaxed EIA comes into force, it will spell trouble for these local inhabitants, who might get whisked away to lands that are alien to them, in the name of rehabilitation and resettlement for what the government thinks is development.

In a timeline where countries are beginning to phase out coal, are leaping to switching over to renewable energy and implementing developmental policies to meet Sustainable Development Goals, domestically and internationally in order to reduce emissions, and eventually, save the planet, India’s current stance has been to undermine the importance of such laws that are in place that, and give industries a free pass. It is now in the hands of the people of India to come together and appeal for stronger laws and their better enforcement.

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