Nainital, Dehradun and New Delhi: Can governments outsource state functions of policing, tax collections and environmental protection to private companies? And claim they are doing so to prevent disasters?
The BJP government of Uttarakhand has done so, an investigation by The Reporters’ Collective shows.
The Uttarakhand state government has handed over its powers to collect royalty and other taxes from riverbed miners and police illegal-mining to private players.
The state has gone a step further, establishing by regulation, what many experts believe is a classic case of conflict of interest. Any private company that wins the rights to collect taxes from riverbed mining will also be given priority over others to mine the rivers. In other words, a mining company could now be collecting taxes from other miners and also be in charge of preventing illegal extraction of boulders, sand and gravel from the state’s rivers.
This investigation by The Reporters’ Collective also reveals that the Uttarakhand government has continuously violated the Supreme Court order which requires the state to plough the money from riverbed mining in forests into conservation – a face saver device to compensate for the damage caused to forests by ecologically harmful activities like river mining. The state has not been doing so, documentary evidence shows.
Records reviewed during the investigation show that the Union government is well-aware of the violations by Uttarakhand but has not exerted its legal powers to stop the state government.
The investigation brings together evidence of how the state has tweaked, bent and twisted environmental rules and regulations to benefit miners. The slew of orders and rules it has passed will potentially give a legal cover to illegal mining. Ironically, the state has greenwashed its actions by claiming such mining of rivers is necessary to prevent disasters in the eco-fragile Himalayas and also to generate revenue and employment. Some of the evidence is being revealed in this report for the first time. Other pieces of evidence have been brought out earlier by The Reporters’ Collective and others.
The story was originally published by The Reporters’ Collective. Read the full report here.
