Industry representatives met commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma to convey apprehensions about the implications of the cuts for economic growth.
The government’s shuffle on climate change may have earned it brownie points with the west on the eve of the Copenhagen meet but at home, it is threatening to snowball into a controversy.
After official negotiators and experts expressed strong reservations, it was the turn of Indian industry to flag its concerns about the government’s unilateral decision to announce a 20-25% reduction in carbon intensity by 2020.
Industry representatives met commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma on Saturday to convey apprehensions about the implications of the cuts for economic growth, particularly in the manufacturing sector. They expressed surprise that despite being major stakeholders and users of energy, they had no inkling that an announcement was on the cards. Nor had the government shared with them a roadmap to achieving the projected emission slowdown while maintaining a 9% growth trajectory.
It now turns out that even the industry ministry was not consulted before environment minister Jairam Ramesh announced the cuts in Parliament on Friday. “There were no inter-ministerial consultations,’’ said an industry ministry source. He disclosed that Sharma has brought this to prime minister Manmohan Singh’s notice and will take it up again with the PM on his return from Russia on Wednesday.
Sunday saw a flurry of activity by the man in the eye of the storm. Ramesh spent the morning trying to pacify the negotiators, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta and Prodipto Ghosh, who wanted to pull out of the Copenhagen meet because of differences with the minister. While Ghosh said later that he was satisfied with Ramesh’s assurances and would fly to Denmark on Tuesday, Dasgupta was vague. He only said that he would fly to Copenhagen in the next few days to assist the delegation in whatever way he could “under the circumstances’’. Those who know Dasgupta believe that he is still very upset.
Former FICCI president Rajeev Chandrasekhar was surprised that the government had not taken industry representatives into confidence before announcing carbon cuts.
However, despite the storm clouds gathering at home, it is too late for the government to go back on the reduction announcements.
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