ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on issues of environmental justice, resource exploitation and conflicts over resources between communities and corporate interests. The public is considered disorderly, unreasonable and presents an illegitimate challenge to the powers that be. Also, public participation and people in general tend to be seen as impediments to good and speedy governance. One crucial difference between them and rest of the communities is that they look good, smell good, drive fancy cars and speak the same language that the bureaucrats and the policy-makers speak. So, policy-makers feel comfortable with them even if their views clash. The National Democratic Alliance government came in and re-instated the public hearing clause but simultaneously initiated the Govindarajan Committee on investment reforms. The Committee stated that the public participation clause of the Environmental Impact Assessment notification in particular was delaying and impeding investments in India. It is true that the public has participated massively in public hearings.
