Monday, Nov 18, 2013, 9:50 IST | Agency: DNA

Subir Ghosh

It’s one thing for the corrupt and the indolent to circumvent the system. It’s quite another when the government itself subverts processes to serve vested interests. But that is just what the Indian government has done with small hydel projects, or SHPs for short. And few know about it too.

Hydel projects, big or small, are just that — hydel projects. The only difference between a big and small one is the scale; everything else — from the concept to the issue of environmental impact — is the same. So if you expected all hydel projects to be monitored by the Ministry of Power, you would be wrong. The Indian government thinks otherwise, and has put SHPs under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). You will agree there’s nothing renewable about a hydel project, nothing new either.

If you suspect there’s something sinister about this idea, you would find a circumstantial confirmation of your fears in the MNRE’s recent report ‘Developmental Impacts and Sustainable Governance Aspects of Renewable Energy Projects’ that was uploaded two months back on its website. The ministry has called for comments from the public, but the report looks at only solar and wind energy. SHPs have been kept out of the ambit. Why, you may wonder. After all, SHPs have more “developmental impacts” than any other programme, and the issue of “sustainable governance” is intrinsic to these tiny power projects.

It appears as if no one wants to talk of dams, not just big ones. But why, indeed? The clue, if not the answer itself, might lie in the environmental gerrymandering that the government has indulged in. By definition, any hydel project with an installed capacity of less than 25MW is an SHP (though MNRE itself, quite surprisingly, defines it as 2-25MW). And as the regulations have it, such a project does not need any environmental clearance. SHPs are exempt from environmental impact assessment, public hearing, and environmental management plans. This is because the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006 restrict itself to projects above 25 MW.

In other words, small crimes are not crimes — only the big ones might be. The former enjoy environmental immunity, and flout all norms with unabashed impunity.

The contention that these SHPs are far too small to be of environmental or social significance would not hold true. Most of these, both functional as well as proposed ones, are located in the Himalayas, Northeast or Western Ghats — all these are regions are ecologically fragile. Leave alone complying with EIA rules (if at all they were made to), many of these have also violated existing laws and regulations.

The world over perceptions towards SHPs have been changing. It is being increasingly accepted globally that these small projects probably wreak more ecological havoc than big dams do.

Probably. Yet, what is established for sure is that SHPs are not the innocuous projects that they were once projected to be. The environmental and social impacts of these dams are not commensurate with their benefits. In environmental terms, they are not sustainable. The government and its MNRE may disagree, though.

Moreover, many of the SHPs apply for credits under the clean development mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). There’s nothing wrong if project proponents make money, but it would be a crime if it throws all norms to the winds.

Unfortunately, many of these indeed do that and scores of objections have been filed with the UNFCCC. In fact, in certain ways the issue of CDM credits and dams have become a big scam waiting to be unearthed.It’s time to end this environmental skulduggery.