NITI Aayog’s Strategy for New India @ 75 is a comprehensive national Strategy for New India, which defines clear objectives for 2022-23. It seeks to make development a Jan Andolan, details key recommendations across growth drivers, infrastructure, inclusion and governance. It is a detailed exposition across forty-one crucial areas, that recognizes the progress already made, identifies binding constraints, and suggests the way forward for achieving the clearly stated objectives.

The document details out the overarching focus of the Strategy document.

The progressive objectives of the strategy document are:

• It focuses to further improve the policy environment in which private investors and other stakeholders can contribute their fullest towards achieving the goals set out for New India 2022.
• It gives the way to propel India towards a USD 5 trillion economy by 2030.
• It follows the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Inclusion, sustainability, participation, and gender equality.
• Major focus on renewable energy, organic farming (with the zero budget natural farming), increasing forest cover, and reducing pollution and waste.
• An entire chapter titled ‘Sustainable environment’ focuses on air pollution, solid waste management, water pollution, and forestry.

However, the document misses out on many issues

• The document focuses on air pollution, solid waste management, water pollution, and forestry where as there are much larger number of environmental issue India faces. Example: deforestation, global warming, land degradation, wiping out of bio-diversity, plastic pollution etc.
• The urgent need to conserve a range of non-forest ecosystems is missing. Example: grassland, marine and coastal, wetland, mountain, and desert conservation.
• The increasing presence of toxic chemicals around us finds no mention. Excessive use of fertilizers, herbicides, industrialization has lead to intoxication of soil, water sources and even biomagnification.
• The absence of an integrated, comprehensive view on how ecological issues can be integrated into all sectors indicates that this is still not core to the mindset of our planners. A case in support of the statement is study of 2008, the Confederation of Indian Industry indicated that India was already using twice of what its natural resources could sustain, and that more than half its biocapacity had already been eroded.
• c There is positive mention of organic farming models for replication, but nothing on the amazing work of dryland farmers (such as the Dalit women of the Deccan Development Society in Telangana) showing productive, sustainable, bio-diverse agriculture with millets and women as the fulcrum.
• NITI Aayog proposes a doubling of the extent of mining. The large-scale open-cast type mining is one of the biggest ecological and social disasters in India.
• NITI Aayog recommends doubling the number of domestic tourist visits to over 3,200 million from 1,614 million in 2016. Exceeding the carrying capacity has lead to degradation of many ecosystems.
• It proposes a host of mega river valley projects that have proved to be ecological nightmares, including Pancheshwar in the fragile Himalaya, the Ken-Betwa link in Madhya Pradesh, and dozens in the Northeast that are going to choke up rivers and are being pushed ahead despite strong local opposition.
• There is an emphasis on rapid, single-window clearance of infrastructure and other projects. Any decent ecological assessment of a project needs a year of study (over all seasons), so the 180 days limit it suggests will mean short-cuts. This rush also means compromising on crucial processes of social assessment, public hearings, and participatory decision-making, as already seen in the last few years.

Way Forward:

• Planning will have to become more decentralised, but within a stipulated time framework.
• Bureaucracy will need to change from generalist to specialist, and its accountability will have to be based on outcomes achieved, not inputs or funds spent.
• By collecting fresh ideas and sharing them with the Central and State governments, it pushes frontiers and ensures that there is no inertia, which is quite natural in any organisation or institution.
• Making Environmental Impact Assessment more stringent.

Conclusion:

        The debate of Environment and development is a tricky one. There is a need to balance both without compromising on either. Deliberations and discussions in public forum can bring out the shortcomings in the strategy. This can be restructured in tune with our efforts towards the Sustainable Development goals.