Former environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s belated, but explosive, letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi demanding reasons for her unceremonious sacking as minister and the subsequent treatment meted out to her is a cathartic exercise at self-vindication by another piqued Gandhi family loyalist. But what it offers in terms of public interest is a glimpse into the chaotic functioning of the environment ministry, UPA government, and the Congress. Jayanthi is primarily upset about the U-turn by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, morphing overnight from environmental and tribal rights defender to corporate messiah, leaving her in the lurch, and the alleged  “planting” of negative stories against her by Rahul’s aides. Jayanthi has alleged that she was asked to resign on December 20, 2013, to enable Rahul to address industry leaders at the FICCI summit, where he claimed that environmental bottlenecks where a thing of the past and henceforth there would be no delays plaguing projects. However, it is noteworthy that Jayanthi’s attempts at clearing her reputation and fixing blame did not follow immediately after these stories were planted, or when Narendra Modi referred to a “Jayanthi tax”, evoking the rumours of corruption in environmental clearances. In effect, the agony of months of being sidelined  from party work appears to have prompted the leak of the letter before her Congress exit. 

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Jayanthi claims she abided by the party line and “strictly followed the laws and rules and tried to protect the environment”. She also hints that some of the environmental clearances she blocked, like Vedanta’s Niyamgiri plant and Adani’s port and SEZ projects, were backed by inputs from Rahul’s office. It is clear from Jayanthi’s allegations that neither Rahul nor she, the environment minister, had any uniform policy on environment clearances.

Rather than concerns of environment or economic growth or balancing both, it appears that the political compulsions of the day drove every environmental decision. Such an approach promises catastrophe for both environment and governance. Unless governments free themselves of allegations of crony capitalism, they will increasingly struggle to push industrial projects. Conversely, unless a robust regulatory mechanism to study and probe ecological damage arising from projects becomes the basis for deciding clearances, rather than the political affiliations of states and businessmen, the measures to address the worrying climate change forecasts become mere farce. This ad-hoc approach is best exemplified in the leaked letter itself. Jayanthi’s decision to notify the Kasturirangan panel report on regulating development activities in the Western Ghats was immediately put on hold by her successor, Veerappa Moily, to assuage protesters in Kerala.

Jayanthi’s outburst is also a lesson in politics for Rahul Gandhi. He has been caught in a position few politicians would want to be in. An insider has outed him for mouthing populist, pro-environment slogans from civil society platforms and then hopping over to a corporate forum where he derides his environment minister for acts of omission and commission that had his sanction. If Rahul Gandhi, the politician, wants people to take him seriously, he must decide what his politics are. He must decide where he stands on the burning issues of the day and communicate this in clear terms to his party. The confusion and leadership crisis in the Congress and the public’s disinterest in Rahul stem from this indecisiveness that everyone, save Rahul, can sense. Deciding where to draw the line in the extremely contested and divisive times we live in is difficult, but unless Rahul Gandhi makes the effort, the Congress recovery will prove a non-starter.