top of page

By:

Dr. Kishore Paknikar

29 January 2025 at 2:43:00 pm

World Environment, Day-to-Day

For a greener future, environmental concern must become a daily practice rather than a symbolic annual ritual. AI generated image Every year on June 5, the world observes ‘World Environment Day’ with seminars, tree plantation drives, social media campaigns and solemn declarations about saving the planet. Governments issue statements, schoolchildren hold placards, and citizens post photographs of greenery and rivers. For a day, environmental concern becomes fashionable and urgent. Then comes...

World Environment, Day-to-Day

For a greener future, environmental concern must become a daily practice rather than a symbolic annual ritual. AI generated image Every year on June 5, the world observes ‘World Environment Day’ with seminars, tree plantation drives, social media campaigns and solemn declarations about saving the planet. Governments issue statements, schoolchildren hold placards, and citizens post photographs of greenery and rivers. For a day, environmental concern becomes fashionable and urgent. Then comes June 6 and the plastic bottle returns to the roadside. Garbage again appears beside lakes and rivers. Water leaks from public taps for hours. Rivers continue receiving untreated sewage. All environmental concern slips back into annual rituals. Everyday Consciousness Perhaps the biggest environmental challenge today is not lack of awareness. Humanity has never known more about environmental destruction than it does now. The real challenge is the enormous gap between what we know and how we behave. This is why the future of the environment may depend less on one grand annual celebration and more on what may be called ‘World Environment Day-to-Day.’ The environment cannot just be protected once a year but daily, through thousands of ordinary daily decisions made by ordinary people. Modern civilization has achieved astonishing technological progress. Humanity has reached the Moon, developed Artificial Intelligence systems, mapped the human genome, and connected billions of people digitally. Yet the same civilization struggles to keep rivers clean, reduce plastic waste, and provide breathable air in cities. According to the United Nations, the world generates more than 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste every year. A significant fraction is not managed scientifically. Plastic production has crossed hundreds of millions of tons annually, and millions of tons eventually enter oceans and ecosystems. Scientists estimate that around 11 million tons of plastic enter oceans every year and even human blood. Air pollution remains one of the world’s biggest environmental health threats. According to global health estimates, millions of premature deaths every year are linked to polluted air. Several Indian cities frequently appear among the world’s most polluted urban centres. Air pollution today is a public health crisis and a quality-of-life issue. India’s environmental challenges are especially complex because development pressures are enormous. India supports nearly 18 per cent of the global population with only about 4 percent of the world’s freshwater resources. Urbanization is accelerating. Energy demand is rising. Consumption patterns are changing rapidly. The consequences are visible everywhere. Rivers are stressed by untreated sewage and industrial waste. Groundwater levels are falling in several regions. Heatwaves are becoming more intense. Mountains of waste rise outside cities as monuments to modern consumption. The tragedy is that many environmental problems are not technologically impossible to solve. Humanity already possesses remarkable scientific and technological tools. Satellite systems can monitor deforestation almost in real time. Artificial Intelligence can predict floods and optimize energy systems. Nanotechnology is being explored for water purification and pollution remediation. Smart sensors can continuously monitor air and water quality. Renewable energy technologies have become dramatically cheaper over the last decade. Inconsistent Implementation The world is not suffering from a shortage of environmental technologies. The deeper problem lies in inconsistent implementation, fragmented governance and excessive consumption. Consider a simple paradox. Many educated citizens passionately discuss climate change while simultaneously following highly wasteful lifestyles. Expensive sustainability conferences sometimes generate huge carbon footprints through travel, energy use and luxury consumption. Environmental concern often remains intellectual rather than behavioural. The environmental crisis is therefore also a crisis of human habits. A leaking tap may appear insignificant, but a tap leaking one drop every second can waste thousands of liters of water over time. A single plastic bag may appear trivial, but billions of plastic bags create global ecological stress. One smoke-emitting vehicle may not seem alarming, but millions such transform urban air into a health hazard. Environmental degradation is often the cumulative result of countless small acts repeated daily. The opposite, fortunately, is also true. Environmental improvement can emerge from millions of small responsible actions repeated consistently. If citizens reduce unnecessary consumption, waste generation decreases. This is where education becomes critical. Environmental science should not remain confined to textbooks and annual celebrations. Students must understand ecological systems not merely as academic subjects but as survival systems. Future engineers must think about sustainable infrastructure. Future scientists must develop affordable green technologies. Future citizens must learn responsible consumption. Environmental literacy may become one of the most important forms of literacy in the 21st century. India has a unique opportunity here. The country does not need to blindly imitate Western models of development. It can become a global leader in affordable sustainability and scalable public solutions. India’s strengths are a young population, a growing startup ecosystem and an increasing scientific capability. But environmental progress requires a shift in national mindset. For decades, development and environmental protection were often presented as opposing goals. This is no longer valid. A polluted society cannot become a truly developed society. Environmental damage affects agriculture, tourism, biodiversity, urban life and economic efficiency. Environmental protection has never been more essential for long-term development. Perhaps the greatest lesson nature teaches is balance. Natural ecosystems recycle resources efficiently. Forests generate little waste. Human systems, in contrast, operate through extraction, consumption, waste generation and disposal. Modern civilization must eventually learn ecological efficiency. This does not mean rejecting technology or returning to a primitive lifestyle. The solution is not an anti-science romanticism. Humanity needs more science, more innovation and more technology. But these must be guided by ecological wisdom. Technology without environmental responsibility can become destructive. Technology guided by sustainability can become transformative. The future will belong to societies that can combine economic growth with ecological intelligence. As another World Environment Day passes, the most important question is not how passionately we speak about the environment on every June 5 but how responsibly we behave in the remaining 364 days. The planet does not need environmental concern only during commemorative events. It needs environmentally responsible behaviour woven into daily life. (The writer is an ANRF Prime Minister Professor at COEP Technological University, Pune, and former Director of the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune. Views personal.)

India waits to lasso diamantaire Mehul Choksi

Mumbai: India rubbed its hands gleefully as the Belgium Police honoured its request to arrest the absconder diamantaire Mehul Chinubhai Choksi – more than seven years after he, along with his nephew Nirav Deepak Modi - allegedly duped the Punjab National Bank of nearly Rs. 13,800-crores.

 

The scam involving the ‘Mehul Mama-Nirav Bhanja’ erupted in Jan 2018, after the PNB lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

 

By then the kin, along with many of their family members, winked and slipped out of the country, leaving a rattled India rubbing its palms in disappointment.

 

A political-cum-financial storm raged, embarrassing the Bharatiya Janata Party government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi a year before the Lok Sabha elections.

 

Multiple agencies launched a multi-pronged probe into what became the biggest banking scam in the past quarter century – and almost four times bigger than the stock market-cum-banking fraud the late Big Bull Harshad Mehta had inflicted on the Indian economy 33 years ago (in April 1992) – when it was just opening up.

 

In Belgium

According to official reports, Choksi was living with his Belgium citizen-wife Preeti in Antwerp, a global diamond hub, presumably for the past 18 months on a ‘residency permit’ acquired through questionable means, for medical reasons.

 

Earlier, he shot to the headers (June 2021) while being taken in a wheelchair to a court by the Dominican Republic's Police on charges of sneaking into the small country in the Caribbean Sea, North America.

 

Interestingly, as the Antigua & Barbuda government initiated the process to cancel his citizenship acquired through an investor visa, Choksi had suddenly gone ‘missing’ till he surfaced in the Dominican Republic.

 

The April 2025 action by Belgium followed a request by India’s CBI and the financial frauds specialist Enforcement Directorate (ED) to nab Choksi as the InterPol had revoked his Red Corner Notice in 2023.

 

Mama and Bhanja

‘Mama’ Choksi is the founder-owner of Gitanjali Group while ‘bhanja’ Nirav’s Firestar plus other companies – and the duo, with some PNB officials hand-in-glove – conspired to make a ‘mamu’ of not only PNB, but other banks, as it subsequently tumbled out.

 

After making a quiet exit, Choksi was detected living in the verdant Antigua & Barbuda Isles (West Indies), then attempted entry to the Dominican Republic, was sent back to Antigua & Barbuda and then went to Belgium where he was nabbed on Sunday.

 

Similarly, Modi was found sauntering on the streets of London and nabbed in March 2019. He remains in jail there since India's extradition is still pending.

 

However, India is keeping its fingers crossed that it may finally lay hands on Choksi, bring him to India and face trial in the PNB scam, though it may take time.

 

Born in Mumbai (1959) and educated in Gujarat, Choksi, 66, and wife Preeti have three children.

 

The Rs. 13,800-crore PNB scam

In the modus operandi revealed after India’s second-largest PSU bank PNB admitted it was scammed, Choksi and Modi used fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoU) to get overseas credits or loans from Indian banks.

 

The PNB first informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) of the fraud and then lodged a criminal complaint with the CBI in Jan. 2018, plus another CBI complaint in Feb, that led to a FIR against Modi and Choksi and their companies.

 

The ED entered the scene to probe the allegations of money-laundering through the LoUs – which they allegedly misused to avail short-term business finances from foreign branches of Indian banks.

 

The probe said that the duo were availing the LoUs from the PNB’s Brady House Branch from March 2011, and over the next six-seven years, managed to get a whopping 1,200-plus LoUs like a breeze with the help of some friendly bankers within.

 

Post-scam, the gold-diamond companies Gitanjali Group and Firestone Group with multiple operations in India and abroad have largely wound up, while some personal assets of the mama-bhanja have been auctioned to recover a part of the dues.

 

ED's plea to declare Choksi fugitive stuck for seven years

Even as absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi, a key accused in the Punjab National Bank loan fraud case, has been arrested in Belgium, the ED's plea to declare him a fugitive economic offender has been pending before a court in Mumbai for nearly seven years.


Choksi, 65, and his nephew diamantaire Nirav Modi are the prime accused in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB bank loan fraud case. Choksi was arrested in Belgium following an extradition request by Indian probe agencies, official sources said on Monday.


The Enforcement Directorate had filed the application in July 2018, seeking to declare Choksi an FEO and confiscate his assets under provisions of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act.


However, the matter has witnessed repeated delays owing to a barrage of applications filed by the accused in the PMLA court and the Bombay High Court alleging procedural lapses in the Enforcement Directorate's plea.


"The court is kept busy with frivolous applications, and hearing on our application to declare him (Choksi) an FEO has been adjourned for the past seven years,” an ED officer had said after the hearing was once again deferred this February.


"The court should have continued the hearing and taken a decision on the future course of action once the application was moved," the officer had said.

He had urged the court to take note of the repeated filing of similar applications and to not entertain them.


Choksi's lawyer had informed the court that the accused was undergoing treatment for suspected cancer in Belgium and intended to file an application in connection with his health.


Under the FEO Act, an individual can be declared a Fugitive Economic Offender if a warrant has been issued against him for an offence involving Rs 100 crore or more and he has left India while refusing to return. Once declared an FEO, the person's property can be confiscated by the investigating agency.


Choksi had challenged the ED's application in the Bombay High Court, alleging that the agency "had not followed proper procedure before filing the application and, hence, it stands vitiated".


However, in September 2023, the High Court dismissed his plea, ruling that the ED had adhered to the prescribed format under the FEO Act. It also vacated a stay on the special court's proceedings.


Despite this, the hearing on declaring Choksi FEO could not commence, with Choksi continuing to file applications before the special court through his lawyers.


While most of these pleas have been dismissed, a few remain pending. His latest attempt to stall proceedings through a plea to recall the notice issued on the ED's FEO application was rejected in December 2023.


According to ED officials, Choksi left India under suspicious circumstances in early January 2018.


Shifting stance

Choksi's counsel has argued that the ED kept shifting its stance on the material grounds for declaring him an FEO and that the suspension of his Indian passport made it impossible for him to return for investigation.

The court, however, rejected this argument, stating that the notice was issued based on accurate information and not based on "wrong facts or mistaken assumptions".


ED claimed the accused left the country under suspicious circumstances in the first week of January 2018.


Nirav Modi has already been declared as an FEO by the special court. He has been lodged in jail in London since 2019.

Comments

bottom of page