Environment Conscious

It's not everyday that one finds a successful bureau craft becoming a successful environment activist. But Madhav Mehra, a former director in the Ministry of Railways, appears to have made the transition effortlessly. Having quit the government job a decade back, Mehra is now the president of UK-based World Environment Foundation and Chairman of the World Quality Council, a body constituted by 52 national and international quality activities across national boundaries. Internationally renowned for his innovative ideas for marrying quality and environment issues in business and industry, Mehra was recently in India, at his birthplace Palampur in Himachal Pradesh to organize and address the fifth World Environment Congress on Environment management committee where Golden Peacock Wards on presented by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to companies which showed best environmental performance. Though Mehra is a strong votary of changing lifestyle and innovative environment- friendly technology, he is also a pragmatist. Take this, for example- the benefits of felling tress to develop high-class roads, which would provide employment opportunities to people, would far outweigh the damage done in environmental terms. If there is no development, poor people will anyway cut the tress for fire, he points out. Well, it does make sense.