WHEN REALTY STRIKES
On July 12, 2017, the Supreme Court fined the environment ministry Rs 50,000 for not complying with its directions to notify revised rules to protect wetlands. The ministry was given June 30 as the deadline to identify and inventorise 201,503 wetlands across the country. Wetlands like marshes, swamps, peat lands and inter-tidal areas are lands saturated with water, either seasonally or permanently. They are important for water recharge and maintaining hydrological cycles on the one hand and supporting specialised occupations, including fisheries, on the other. In recent years, their use has been contested. Property developers have systematically occupied wetlands for housing projects and shopping malls in urban and peri-urban areas.
When the ministry first made the draft wetland rules public in 2016, the indiscriminate use of wetlands was of foremost concern. Senior environmentalists like Manoj Mishra said the proposed rules were vague and would, in fact, encourage the ecologically destructive use of wetlands. Neha Sinha, a journalist and conservationist, in her June 2016 Op-ed for The Hindu, wrote that the use of wetlands, whose ownership may be undefined and which are used as common resources, warrants more checks and balances. As per the existing 2010 rules, activities such as setting up new industries, dumping waste and constructing permanent structures are prohibited on identified wetlands.
Disasters like the 2015 Chennai floods have emphasised the damage unregulated use of wetlands by the real estate sector can cause. Despite this, the sector has received exemptions from critical land use regulations. The building and construction sector was first brought into the purview of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification back in 2004 when the sector was booming and demands for more land and water were being made. Construction activities were also generating waste and dust, affecting surrounding areas. But the sector’s representative associations argued their activities are “by nature nonpolluting, non-hazardous, and environment friendly…” and, therefore, should be exempted from regulation.
They finally got their way on December 9, 2016, when the environment ministry exempted the building and construction sector from the requirement of environment clearance en masse. The notification bases its decision on the suggestions received by the ministry for ‘Ease of Doing Responsible Business’ and streamlining permissions for the PM’s flagship programme Housing for All by 2022. Similar changes have been made to the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification, 2011, to open up inter-tidal areas for coastal roads, housing schemes and tourism projects. These safeguards had existed in CRZ areas since 1991.
Regulations like the wetland rules, EIA or the CRZ are important to define the social and environmental limits of land use change. There is a reason why governments bring in these restrictions and prohibitions and citizens demand their implementation. Contrary to treating these limits as blockages or hurdles, they need to be understood as supporting better environmental services as well as community-based occupations. Excluding the real estate sector from land use regulations can have serious environmental and social consequences and eventually affect the financing of projects.
The building sector might go the same way as the thermal power sector, once pampered and promoted extensively by the UPA government. Today, it faces serious social legitimacy issues and conflicts. Coal power and coal mining have lost out in the global markets and banks are no longer willing to finance these projects. Indulging the real estate sector with sops and easy approval processes will harm it in the long run. It is not merely vote banks that are appeased by governments, economic sectors too are appeased.
Excluding the real estate sector from land use norms has serious social and environmental consequences