Bengaluru: The ‘ease of doing business’ mantra is overtaking all environmental laws and regulations and we are increasingly viewing environment protection as a regulatory burden, said Jairam Ramesh, senior Congress leader and former environment minister.Ramesh was speaking at The Hindu’s Huddle, a two-day ideas conclave at Bengaluru, Karnataka, on June 5, in conversation with Gargi Rawat (journalist at NDTV) and Krithi Karanth, CEO and Chief Conservation Scientist of the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru.‘Difficult choices need to be made’At the discussion, which delved into the development and environment debate, Ramesh said that both need to go hand in hand – but that it involves making difficult choices. There are certain situations where sometimes you have to give the go-ahead to development because jobs, investments, urbanisation is involved, he said.“However, there are instances where we will have to say no, we will protect the environment at all costs,” he said. What is really evident now (when compared to 40 years ago) is that the environment has a public health impact, he said. You can see the impacts of air and water pollution, deforestation, in health and livelihoods. That’s why we need to search actively for a balance, he added. Today, forested areas that should never be deforested are being cleared of trees. The Great Nicobar island, for instance, is a unique ecosystem, and deforesting in Nicobar and managing its ecological impact by doing some compensatory afforestation in Haryana does not make sense, Ramesh said.Also read: Great Nicobar Project Entails ‘Perversion of Due Process’: Jairam Ramesh To Bhupender Yadav’s Latest Letter“Compensatory afforestation is no substitute for the loss of natural forests…whether it’s in Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Nicobar…Forests are not just trees. There is a loss of biodiversity that is both known and unknown, because everyday more species are being discovered.”‘Balanced dissatisfaction’There is no textbook solution for balance, Ramesh noted. “It has to be a give and take, democratic process. Not a top down technocratic process.” However in environment and development, you cannot satisfy all sides, he added.“The only policy that works is balanced dissatisfaction,” Ramesh said, adding that this was the main lesson from his ministerial tenure. “You can’t please all sides in this because there are choices to be made.”Karanth talked about the importance of civil society and collectives in making local voices heard, and said that local and environmental political will is there in states. There is great room for activism because India is a land of billion cockroaches, Ramesh said in a lighter vein, adding that cockroaches were after all a part of India’s biodiversity.Ease of business taking over Responding to a question from Rawat about whether there is a lack of a framework or legislation in India, Ramesh said that there is a framework of laws and institutions. For example, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of the protests surrounding the redefinition of the Aravallis and stayed its own judgment. It appointed a High Powered Committee to revisit the definition but while the committee has several experts, it is chaired by an official within the union environment ministry, he said.“So good intentions can sometimes get hijacked, subverted,” said Ramesh.“We have extensive institutions, progressive laws. But what has happened in recent years, sadly, we’re beginning to see environment protection as a regulatory burden. We are not seeing environmental protection as a necessary prerequisite for public health. Overall the ease of doing business mantra is overtaking all other laws and all our regulations,” he said in the panel discussion.‘Judiciary increasingly with the establishment’When asked about the recent instances of courts passing verdicts favouring the government’s stances, Ramesh agreed that judgments are indeed increasingly favoured towards the establishment.While the Aravallis order by the Supreme Court was a major step forward, it was also the same Supreme Court that held up retrospective clearances, Ramesh told The Wire. In November 2025, the Court had held that environmental clearances can be granted retrospectively for projects initiated or expanded without approval under the 2006 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification.“The NGT’s Nicobar verdict was particularly disappointing,” Ramesh said on the sidelines of the event. “There are occasional bursts of progressive judgments but on the whole I think the judiciary tends to be with the establishment.”In February, the National Green Tribunal, India’s apex green court, had refused to interfere with the clearances afforded by the union environment ministry for the Great Nicobar project. Just a couple of hours before his statements at the event, Ramesh called the Great Nicobar Island Project an “ecological disaster” – again – in a social media post. “Fanciful strategic reasons are now being invented for it whereas other alternatives exist. The environment & forest approvals for the project have been given on bogus grounds,” he said on June 5.