Environment not issue of activism but of public health: Jairam Ramesh

As he faces criticism for blocking development projects over 'green' norms, environment minister Jairam Ramesh today asked industry captains not to look at environment as an issue of "activism" but of public health that affects all.

"I would request all the captains of the industry to please not look at environment as an impediment or bottleneck or for that matter as a speed breaker," Ramesh said addressing the who's who
from the automobile sector at a summit here.

He asserted that "environment is very much an integral part of your expansion plan because increasingly we are having evidence that there is a very strong co-relation between environment quality and public health.

"As you tread environmentally benign growth path, please do not look upon it (environment) as an issue of activism. It is an issue of public health," he said.

"It affects me and you as everybody else...," Ramesh said in an apparent bid to justify his decisions to halt several projects for violating green norms, the most recent ones being the Vedanta mining project in Orissa and proposed Navi Mumbai airport in Maharashtra.

The minister stressed on the need for fuel efficiency standards in the auto sector to ensure clean technologies. 

He also questioned the automobile sector's plan to manufacture electricity-powered vehicles making it clear that forests cannot be destroyed for extracting coals to be used as power for locomotion purpose.

"From where is the electricity going to come for use for locomotion purpose?" he asked.

"There is no magic bullet. We are stuck with the present fuel such as petrol and diesel. In this background, we need to improve fuel quality and automobile standards," Ramesh said.

He also favoured deregulation of diesel prices as is being done in the case of petrol. "We have ended subsidising diesel for automobile sector instead of for agriculture sector," he said.