Veteran CPI(M) leader and former Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan on Thursday lashed out – though indirectly – at the party-led lDF Government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his enemy-in-the-camp, for their development first policy that allegedly ignored the importance of protecting the environment.
“There should be changes in the Government’s development perspective,” 94-year-old Achuthanandan, presently chairman of the State Administrative Reforms Commission, said while addressing the Assembly in the special session held on Thursday for discuss the unprecedented deluge in the State.
Stating that though the floods were caused by incessant heavy rains, the reason behind the landslides and landslips which intensified the impact of the disaster was the human interference in Nature, he said, “The slogan of development should not become roar for development. This is the time for deciding the border between development and sustainable development.”
“We cannot any more turn a blind eye towards the unauthorized or unscientific constructions and other activities through razing of hills, encroachment of forests, filling of farmlands and constructing check-dams… Controls should be imposed on unrestrained human interference in Nature in the name of development,” Achuthanandan argued.
“There should not be a situation where the law takes a different route in the case of some people,” he said. Taking an indirect dig at Pinarayi’s alleged development-first policy, he said, “It is not good that criticisms in this regard are ridiculed as anti-development stand and environmental absolutism.”
Pointing out that the whole State was now discussing the recommendations of environmental expert Madhav Gadgil for protecting the Western Ghats, Achuthanandan said, “The cost of our unscientific development is Western Ghats itself. We should understand that we are not strong enough to wrestle with the Western Ghats.”
He said the ambitious operation carried out by the Government when he was Chief Minister to dismantle the unauthorized constructions in Munnar in Idukki district, perhaps Kerala’s most sought-after tourist destination and one of the most hottest biological spots in the world, which had to be abandoned midway should be resumed.
There were rumours that the Munnar anti-encroachment mission undertaken by his Government in 2007 had to be abandoned midway due to pressures from certain sections in the CPI(M) and CPI. Most of the people’s representatives of the CPI(M) from Munnar and other regions of Idukki were opposed to the Mission Munnar anti-encroachment drive.
