 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. India's right-wing government is set on diluting its environment protection laws. The government has proposed amendments in the environment impact assessment process that will make it easier for private capital to exploit natural resources. EIA 2020 includes provisions that can grant environmental clearances to a variety of projects without adequate scrutiny that can allow violators of environmental laws to get their projects regularised by paying fines and that exempt many kinds of projects and activities from any consultation with the local communities. Historically, the efficacy of the EIA process in India has been limited. Environmentalists have referred to it as a rubber stamp for legitimising environmentally degrading projects. Almost no projects have been rejected as part of this process. The worst affected have always been and will continue to be the marginalised communities who survive on land and forests. Without public consultations, the forest communities will lose the only opportunity available to them to learn about the projects and demand that their needs are not neglected. It was the only real obstacle in the way of environmental approvals and it has now been removed. The exemptions to public hearings will adversely affect the rights of forest dwellers to conserve and protect forests, their right to minor forest produce, and their access to biodiversity which has been guaranteed to them under the Forest Rights Act. The law is yet another in a series of anti-people laws pushed by the Narendra Modi government in the midst of the pandemic. It is being pushed in a way that people are unable to resist and unable to get information. The notification for EIA 2020 came just before the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in India. Unable to physically resist, activists launched online campaigns against EIA 2020. Three websites where such campaigns were being carried out were blocked by agencies affiliated to the Modi government. The new impact assessment rules have only been published in two languages, English and Hindi and the government has refused to publish the document in the 22 regional languages notified in the Indian constitution. This makes it particularly inaccessible to the indigenous and forest communities. People in eco-sensitive zones especially have strongly opposed the proposed law. Trotters are gaining momentum in the northeast in states of India and over 50 environmental organisations and activists from across the Himalayan region have issued a statement opposing EIA 2020. They say in their statement that the Himalayan region today is in the most vulnerable position with massive climate-induced disasters, increasing deforestation, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, drying of rivers, death of groundwater sources, melting glaciers, hollowing of the mountains, solid and hazardous waste-related pollution. Amending environmental norms will accelerate the ecological crisis in the Himalayas.