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India has become the fastest growing corona epidemic in the world. We certainly understand how severely an epidemic can spread in a highly populated country and what a challenge it is to control it. But China, a more populous country, has achieved it whereas we are competing with the nations of the world to advance to first place. The rulers, unable to protect people's lifestyle, are asking us to get used to living with the virus. What this really means is: 'We cannot help you; live if you can or die'.

Nowadays, news about Corona patients do not even frighten people. Seeing death news every day, people have developed a clear mindset that it is better to die of Corona than starvation. This is the mentality expected by the rulers - a mentality of enduring it as destiny rather than fighting. While he does not offer food and essentials to crores of people and lets thousands die of the disease and starvation, Modi labors for 18 hours a day - for whose benefit is obvious to anyone observing the country's current economic status.

The Modi government, which has been acting as a pawn for the US to stop China's trade hegemony and turn India into a world power, is inviting various industries exiting China and other countries to set up activities detrimental to the environment, with the 'good intention' of turning the corona epidemic situation to India's favor.

Despite all the cheap labour, resources, watered-down labour-welfare laws and the fascist government structure that suppresses struggles, the profit-minded manufacturing industry fears that it is hard to escape the wrath of such a large population after causing ecological degradation with its expired low-quality technologies. To dispel this fear and to destroy India without any objection, the Modi government brings in the Environment Impact Assessment Draft 2020 to dilute the already ineffective environmental laws.

Permission under Environment Protection act 1986 is required to set up factories in India. Accordingly, a report must be prepared on the proposal's impact on the environment under the Environmental Impact Assessment 2006. A committee set up on behalf of the government should review the report and approve the project only if it is found to be environmentally friendly. If not, it should be cancelled.

If the people around the factory feel that it is either harmful or irrelevant to them, environmentalists and other social activists concerned about people's welfare can complain, and the government should act on the complaints. But the Modi government serving only big businesses is changing the situation so that only industrialists and government officials can lodge a complaint.

The draft states further that an assessment is not needed for projects of national importance and national welfare. The time allotted for public comments is also reduced from 30 days to 20 days. The requirement for factories to submit activity reports has been reduced from twice a year to once a year.

Thus, the Modi government opens a way to seize lands from farmers under the guise of national importance and welfare and hand them over to domestic and foreign corporates who can give them huge election campaign funds. Already, since the Modi government took office, big business and corporate preachers have been given large tracts of land free of charge and allowed to destroy the environment.

It was complained to the National Green Tribunal that biodiversity in the flood plains of the Yamuna had been affected by the 3-day World Cultural Festival on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi conducted by Shri Shri Ravishankar, founder of the Art of Living Foundation. The Tribunal hearing the case refused to ban the show. Instead, it ordered that Rs 5 crore be paid to the Delhi Development Authority as an interim compensation for biodiversity damages on the banks of the Yamuna.

An expert committee reported "approximately 300 acres of floodplains on the right bank of Yamuna river and 120 acres floodplains on the left bank of the river have been adversely impacted ecologically at different magnitudes. The physical recovery will cost Rs 29 crores and biological recovery Rs. 13 crores. It will take almost ten years to complete the rehabilitation". It is noteworthy that an initial four-member committee had recommended that the Art of Living Foundation should pay Rs 100-120 crore as the restoration cost for "extensive and severe damage" to the floodplains of Yamuna river.

Similarly, no one would have snatched land from farmers as the BJP did and given it to Baba Ramdev, one of Modi's noble slaves.

In 2013, when Congress was in power, 400 acres of land were seized from farmers for a BHEL factory. But the BJP's Devendra Fadnavis' government in Maharashtra allotted it to Patanjali Food and Herbal Park at about half the market price in addition to 100 percent allowance on the registration fee, free electricity for a prescribed period, electricity at Rs. 1 a unit after the period and GST tax allowance. It should be noted that the Maharashtra government had allotted 230 acres to Patanjali already.

In the same way, it is the Modi government and its slavish ADMK that have been supporting Jackie Vasudev to block elephants' crossing paths, steal hundreds of acres of land, build resorts and villas, destroy the environment and plunder billions in the name of yoga.

Not only that. From the toxic gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal to the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, we see evidence of how the Indian ruling class sees ordinary people as sacrificial lambs. The Thoothukudi shootings shed light on the fact that the rulers, who act as mercenaries for the corporates, are fearless villains.

Finding all this insufficient to butter up the corporates, the Modi government is now explicitly showing its evil face of servitude to capitalists through Environment Impact Assessment 2020. This self-authorized hypocritic government bluntly states that land, water, air and sky all belong to the masters and that they and a servile government as their bootlickers have the right to destroy it.

Hereafter, if civilians or social activists take to the street demanding "Do not destroy our soil, do not kill our descendants", events such as the Thoothukudi shooting will take place without anyone to question it. The rulers will maintain that they did not know that such an incident took place and that they knew it only by watching it on television. The bodies of those murdered will be dragged away like dead dogs and thrown away. This government will try to tell you in a language you understand what will happen to the fighters.

The rulers who tell us to get used to living with Corona today will tell us to get used to living with the poisoned environment tomorrow. Only the government and corporate bosses have the power to decide whether you should live or die. We should all be ready to give our lives for Modi without question; that is true patriotism. We have no other way to prove our national devotion in the world of Sanghis. We can all escape even from the Corona virus, but it is doubtful whether the entire Indian people can escape from the grave that Modi is currently digging.

Written by S.Gorky

Translated by Kottalam

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