THESE columns have covered many issues of environmental damage and systematic dilution or dismantling of environmental regulations in India under the present dispensation at the behest of corporate interests, all spuriously in the name of “development.” The question raised through these cases has been, not the hackneyed one of, do we want development or environmental conservation, but the fundamental one of, when the environment is damaged irrecoverably, when it can no longer sustain natural life or livelihoods of people dependent upon it, can this still b