
BLOGS
Samosa@Parliament !
09/6/2014
Today's lecture was by someone who has immense experience in forming and implementing the environmental regulations and legislation in India. Dr. D.D Basu, the former head of CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board), started his lecture on "Governing the Environment - function of regulatory authorities in India," with the Stockholm Conference of 1974, the epicentre of formation of environment legislations.
Quoting the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indra Gandhi to explain the India's stance on the growth and pollution prevention, Dr. Basu elaborated on the history of India's environmental laws, and how form the year 1974 there started a series of Environment Protection Acts concerning water and air to come up along with side acts like CESS act. Then came the Bhopal gas tragedy that lead to various legislations taking shape linking pollution to public liability and insurance to pollution control, to the formation of a special ministry for environment.
Being involved with policy makers, bureaucrats and jury of highest courts of India from beginning of the environmental legislation era, he gave inside view of how legislation thought started with and what problem came up with formation and implementation of the laws and what was done to solve those problems. Dr. Basu also explained the structure and working of the CPCB and SPCB with the working of inter authority network and the interconnected ministries. Advisory, awareness, research and regulatory functions of the state pollution board with respect to water and air was discussed in length, along with the controls and powers of the central board. He went on further, detailing the various problems that marr the functioning of the board and even suggested some alternative ways.
The main charm of the lecture was that Dr. Basu was able to make the dry and boring area of policy legislations interesting with a lively and interactive session that included interesting anecdotes and stories (that is where the Samosas in Parliament come in). The swift end came with nice quote from the former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam "if you salute your duty, you no need to salute anybody, but if you pollute your duty, you have to salute everybody."
By - Namrata Upadhyay