Recently, 100 former civil servants and well-meaning citizenry wrote to the President of India, protesting the proposed mega infrastructure at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that entails a transshipment port, an airport, a power plant, and a greenfield township.
At stake is the displacement of the indigenous and vulnerable Shompen tribe numbering approximately 400 and the clearance of approximately 15% of forest land of the Great Nicobar Island of the southern tip of 572 odd Islands. A classic case of genuine community-environment concern conflated with the ‘costs’ of development. However, development ought not to be a binary ‘either-or’ case, but an ‘and’ decision that accounts for both sides of the argument.
The daunting reality in governance is often about having to choose a path of least ‘cons’ (not least resistance), driven by the principle of ‘larger good’, with the full know and acknowledgment of the inevitable flipside. Decision neuroscience is a complex web of topical urgencies, local sensitivities, and the ‘larger picture’ with the implied ‘larger good’ needing to triumph the alternative options of status quo or even rash implementations.
History is instructive that procrastination or bluntness is never a good plan and at the cost of sounding inconsistent, one must put forth the holistic ‘and’ plans with full facts, assumptions and rationalities that underlie any clearance.