Environment Protection and the India’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan

Important feature of any environmental strategy is that environmental objectives require action in several areas, which typically lie in the purview of different ministries. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has the important role of monitoring the development process and its environmental impact in a perspective of sustainable development and to devise suitable regulatory structures to achieve the desired results. While this role is crucial, environmental objectives can only be achieved if environmental concerns are internalized in policy making in a large number of sectors. This would require sharing of responsibility at all levels of government and across sectors with respect to monitoring of pollution, enforcement of regulations and development of programmes for mitigation and abatement. The Eleventh Five Year Plan of India has taken the due note of the concerns in terms of threat to food security due to degradation of land, forest and overexploitation of groundwater, lack of access of the community to basic services particularly energy, drinking water, sanitation facilities, low level of socio-economic development, high incident of unemployment, stagnant infant mortality and under-nourishment amongst children and the deterioration in quality of life. There is a pathoply of evidence to indicate that poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth is undetermined by degradation of soil, scarcity of freshwater, over-exploitation of costal ecosystems, loss of forest cover, biodiversity as genetic, species and ecosystem level, and long term change in the climate. The Eleventh Plan, therefore, marks a paradigm shift as it visualizes that economic growth alone is not the objective of national planning and the development objective not to be GDP of per capita income, and to promote grater participation of the community in the decision making process. The eleventh plan has indicated the monitorable targets as indicators of human development as well as the human welfare as the determinant factor of the development strategy. The study of provisions regarding protection of the environment in XI^th Five Year Plan reveals that definitely some attempts will be made in Indian economy to protect the environment. But it seems those are not adequate. Some additional provisions and efforts are necessary. This plan does not much talk on the problem of air pollution and noise pollution, which are very much important in urban areas and have very bad consequences. The plan also does not consider what can be role of the private, cooperative sectors and NGOs in the protection of the environment. Likewise, what responsibility a city in our country is expected to discharge concerning environment protection. The plan also lacks in providing for the problems of climate change and global warming.