There are two ways to legally get a loan from a bank. One, apply for a loan with your credentials, balance sheet, profit and loss statement, statement of assets, etc. If these are not good enough, then one can take the second route- buy off the bank and award yourself a loan.

The Indian government has adopted this second route in the matter of assessment of its performance on various parameters where it has demonstrably performed miserably according to global agencies - Environmental performance, Equality, Democracy, Press Freedom, Independence of the judiciary, Pollution, Hunger, Corruption, to mention just a few. Even on GDP the IMF has stated that it does not trust the govt's gaudily rose-tinted picture!

So Delhi has now decided to abandon these purveyors of unfavourable ratings and to start its own system of ratings. We shall see how that pans out in due course.

Every piece of data, however, - empirical, scientific, satellite based- shows that we fully deserve our miserable ranking in the Environmental Performance index. We are at 176 out of 180 countries, and consistently declining every year- we were at 155 in 2014. Reaching these depths has not been easy- we have been working hard at it for the last 11 years in order to award a bunch of crony capitalists unlimited access to the nation's natural wealth.

But that is not the only sad part; the real tragedy is that the higher judiciary has looked the other way-if not facilitated- this continental scale of vandalism and provided its seal of approval to much of this environmental depredation.

It was not always so. People of my vintage can remember the 90's and first decade of this millenium when Apex court judges like Justice Kirpal and Justice Ahmadi stood like a wall, shielding the country's natural environment- its rivers, forests, mountains, air- from the excesses of the executive, strictly interpreting and implementing the laws meant to protect them.

For instance, I dare not even imagine what our environment would have been like today if it had not been for the path-breaking judgment in the TN Godavarman case in 1996. And they did this by relying on science and invoking the "precautionary principle" which mandates that if an activity poses a threat of serious or irreversible damage to the environment or human health, preemptive protective action should be taken even if there's no full scientific certainty........

© National Herald