JEEVAN

Postcards from Malaysia

2010-06-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

Sights and sounds from a multi-cultural country

By S S Jeevan

Twin Appeal

From the moment you step into Kaula Lumpur’s newly built and yet half-empty airport, you cannot miss Malaysia’s amazing tryst with multiculturalism. Long stretches of rubber plantations dot our hour-long drive to the KL City Centre, a reminder that Malaysia was primarily a tin and rubber exporting country until recently. But it is only when you reach the KLCC that the new Malaysia begins to unfold itself — needle-thin skyscrapers, high-speed trains, sanitised roads and bustling shopping malls. At the heart of the city is the magnificent 88-story Petronas Towers, which has also become the overriding symbol of Modern Malaysia. It houses the government’s oil company, Petronas, and was the world's tallest building till a while ago.
Though an Islamic country, Muslims enjoy much more freedom in Malaysia than in any other country in the world. Women wear the tudong — a tight drape framing the face — along with jeans or T-shirts. But it is not a compulsory dress code. Pork and alcohol too are available in almost every part of the country. And you begin to wonder how this developing country has transformed itself into a modern industrialised nation, and that too within a couple of decades.
“Mahathir Mohamad,” exclaims our guide Jamil. Everywhere people talk of the man who ruled Malaysia for 22 years and changed the country beyond anyone’s imagination. Income per head rose from $2,320 when he came to power to roughly $9,000 today. The multiculturalism manifests itself in the rendang that peacefully co-exists with the kway teoh or the butter chicken in numerous food courts. And for a country with a huge ethnic minority — Chinese (26 percent) and Indian (10 percent) — Malaysia’s inclusive culture is truly remarkable.

Indian Flavour

Close to 10 percent of the country’s population comprises second and third generation Indians, most of them employed in the service sector. Indians came to Malaysia as illegal workers in the early part of the century. And the trend still continues. A few days after we left Malaysia, the government was deporting around 17,000 Indians working illegally.
A typical Malaysian-Indian would at first deny his origin, but with a little prodding, would concede his ancestry. Scratch some more and the real emotions will pour out. Take JJ for instance. This middle-aged driver in Penang — whose grandfather ran away from Kerala in the 1940s to find work in Malaysia — has the choicest of left-handed compliments for local Malays. “We have played an equal role in the country’s development, but only Malays enjoy preferential treatment from the government.” We are told the sops include special privileges for Malays to have children.
But attitudes are changing. Says Rajoo, our room boy whose grandparents hail from Tanjavur, “It’s a safe place to live and there is religious freedom, despite the fact that it is a Islamic country.” And like the ubiquitous Indian, Indian restaurants too are everywhere, and hugely popular. Hotels such as India Palace in Penang are doing roaring business and the owner has plans to start a few more. A growing number of new generation Indians now occupy Malaysia’s upper middle class society, working as doctors, engineers and computer professionals. In many ways Indians add colour to Malaysia’s multi-cultural society and they now hope to get a bigger share of Malaysia’s fast-paced developmental cake.

Sun and Shine
A visit to Malaysia will be incomplete without its breathtaking beaches. So we were taken to Langkawi — a group of 104 islands located 100 km north of Penang. Langkawi did not exist on the tourist map till 10 years ago. Mahathir Mohamad changed all that. We were told that he got his first job in one of these islands, and when he became Prime Minister he decided to develop it with large private partnerships. Many of these islands are just outcrops of coral. The largest, Langkawi Island, is the only one with sophisticated tourist facilities (it has been declared a free port and duty-free shopping is available). Several international hotels and resorts have opened as the government and international developers flood into what is set to become Malaysia’s premier island beach resort. The island’s many coves, lagoons and inlets make it ideal for all kinds of water sports such as swimming, sailing, fishing and scuba diving. Eulogised as the ‘Pearl of the Orient’, the island of Penang, is just as charming as Langkawi. It was the natural harbour that first attracted the British to Penang in the late 18th century, and the port is still one of the most important ones in the country. Though large tourist inflow has spoilt some of its beaches, many of them are still pristine with palm trees dotting the entire seascape.

Escape to the woods
We took a break from our “travel-trap” itinerary and escaped to the woods. Over 70 percent of Malaysia is forested and there are about 20 million hectares of forested land. Our destination was the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) — one of the leading institutions in tropical forestry research, both within Malaysia and internationally. Frim is located around 18 km north of Kuala Lumpur and is surrounded by the Bukit Lagong and the Bukit Hari forest reserve. It is a secondary rainforest and owes its origin to the British, who in 1918 replanted the area. The regeneration has been a success: Flying Lemurs, binturong, pangolin, civet, reptiles and amphibians have migrated back into the area. Among the rare species is a tree whose leaves never touch the other (the National Geographic put in on its cover) or the amazing leaf-eating tree. So it is not surprising then that Malaysia supplies 80 percent of tropical sawn timber to international trade and is the world’s second largest tropical timber exporting nation after Indonesia. The country is also fighting a fierce battle with the loggers who set off forest fires. They are said to be largely responsible for the haze that frequently envelopes the region. But the highlight of FRIM was the 150-metre canopy walk. Constructed with help from the Germans, it is literally a tightrope. After our guide’s safety instructions we walked on what seemed like the most breathtaking view of the forests, usually reserved for the resident lemurs, squirrels and macaques.

Meet the king
Located 64 km south of Kaula Lumpur, Seremban is the capital of Negeri Sembilan, which translated literally means “nine states,” so named because it comprises a federation of nine states. The city lies in a mountainous region, and with a population of just 1.6-lakh people, sports a sleepy look. It came alive though on February 20, the day we reached there. It was the opening of the Chinese New Year Open House Official Programme and more than 30,000 people had gathered at the Municipal Council field to take part in the celebrations. Our hosts — Tourism Malaysia and Malaysian Airlines — had arranged a meeting with the King of Malaysia, Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Syed Putra Jamalullail. Malaysia is the only country in the world to have a rotating kingship.
Unlike other monarchies, Malaysian kings change every five years. Although apolitical, the king serves as a symbol of national solidarity and a defender of the Islamic faith. Following a 1993 constitutional amendment, the king’s role has become largely ceremonial. We are told that rivalry amongst the sultans is non-existent. Each sultan has the ultimate authority within his state and is fiercely independent. Inter-marriages and close-knit family ties among the royal families reinforce these close bonds. Negeri Sembilan continues to practice its own customs, dating back to the 1700s. Traditionally a matrilineal society, property passes from mother to daughter. In families that still follow pre-Islamic laws, a bride doesn’t move in with her husband when she marries, but rather brings him into her family’s home as a guest. Watch out for the state’s Minangkabau-styled architecture, reflecting the influence of its first inhabitants from Sumatra. Some public buildings showcase the characteristics traits of Minangkabau architecture, recognisable by steep, pointed, curving roof gables.

Tailpiece: Uma Bharti in KL
Late one evening in Kaula Lumpur I was treated to a surreal experience. After a tiring day of sightseeing and shopping I decided to unwind with some television and light refreshments. But there was a problem — all channels were in Malay language. And the only Indian channel beamed was, lo and behold, Sahara-Madhya Pradesh. So sitting in my hotel room on the 24th floor of Times Square I sat glued to compelling television — Digvijay Singh declaring that Babulal Gaur was a better CM than Uma Bharti. And Uma Bharti declaring that she had no plans to return as CM. I decided to check out the Malay channels just in case, but it was quite mindless — soap operas and dubbed programming. I switched off the idiot box and opened the window. The skyscraper skyline of Kaula Lumpur was a welcome relief and made better viewing. I left the window open for the rest of my stay in Kaula Lumpur.

BANKING ACCESS: LIMITED

2009-07-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

Even 37 years after the nationalisation of banks, there are only 300 million bank accounts for over a billion people. India Today’s interactive forum ICONS came up with ideas to bridge this gap.

By S S Jeevan

Ironies are part of the Indian political and economic landscape. The spin maestros can’t decide whether India’s 8-plus per cent GDP growth should be dubbed ‘Shining India’ or ‘Rising India’. Yet, even as India gallops towards the promised position of an economic superpower, the reality of the flip side is stark. Thirty-seven years after the nationalisation of banks there are only 300 million bank accounts for a populace of over a billion.

Banks have made huge strides since nationalisation. The number of branches has shot up from 10,000 to a lakh with deposits shooting up. But coverage or financial inclusion is still a far cry from what it should be. Even if one takes into account the number of people holding savings accounts with cooperative banks, only four of 10 people in India have access to the banking system. It gets worse when one looks at the figures (see chart) on other financial instruments, including critical functions like insurance.

To make sense of this paradigm of GDP growth and a high percentage of the population excluded from the financial system, INDIA TODAY brought together bankers, industry, microfinance experts and planners under its interactive forum, ICONS (INDIA TODAY Council for News and Society) in Chennai. The objective, as INDIA TODAY’S Editor Prabhu Chawla said, was to explore the ways of making banking more “inclusive”.

C. Rangarajan, former RBI governor and chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (who also heads the Committee on Financial Inclusion) opened the debate with some startling figures. He revealed that while the national average is around 40 per cent in seven states, less than a third of India’s population is connected to the banking system. The picture is worse in the lower income groups and in the rural sector, where the proportional of institutional credit (to total credit) decreases, while noninstitutional credit (from moneylenders, for example) increases.

Studies have proved that lack of inclusion—or rather, exclusion—from the banking system results in a loss of about 1 per cent to the GDP. Some bankers believe that a huge chunk of cash transactions are not reflected in the national GDP analysis and calculations and, when brought into the system, could add to the overall GDP. Significantly, it is not just a statistical issue or one of getting the numerical picture. Financial inclusion is not just a socio-political imperative but an economic one as well. As Indian Bank Chairman and Managing Director K.C. Chakrabarty says, “There is a huge overlap between poverty and permanent financial exclusion.”

Both poverty and financial exclusion result in lack of choices and lower access to participation in the economy. Venu Srinivasan, chairman, TVS Motors, puts it in perspective: “The need for boosting financial inclusion or rather instituting measures to bring banking to all is both a challenge and a huge economic opportunity.”

As economic and management guru C.K. Prahalad says, “There is growth and gold at the bottom of the pyramid.” According to some studies, India could add as much as 1 per cent to the GDP growth if banking is accessible to all. The question that has dogged the government and the banking sector for decades is how to include the excluded. In fact, Puducherry will soon be the first place in India that can boast of financial inclusion. Under the National Pilot Project for Financial Inclusion launched on January 1, 2006, a number of banks will work to bring banking to every house in Puducherry. The hurdles range from access in rural areas where only 5 per cent of the villages can boast of a bank to literacy and cost of transactions.

Many speakers agreed on a societal problem associated with banking—attitudes of banks and society as a whole. Dr Sethuraman, founder president of micro-finance outfit Maha Semam Trust, said NABARD and RBI officials must live in rural areas for at least a month to understand the poor. Karti Chidambaram, director, CHESS Management Services, said there was acute “information shortage” about banking systems in villages. “Even knowledge on simple procedures like a student’s loan are yet to reach the masses.”

Venu Srinivasan says lack of penetration of banks may have to do with lack of cost-effective mechanisms and that a lot needs to be done on the “credit and lending ratio”. His prescription: “Work on delivery mechanisms and deliver products without subsidy but on a profitable basis and at the same time with a competitive cost.” Chakrabarty, whose bank is playing a lead role in making Puducherry the first place where “banking for all” will become a reality, said that technology and “attitudinal willpower” can play a vital role, and for this “society must be geared up to involve everyone”.

But it is not just about systems and attitudes. R. Srinivasan, member, Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission, says the most important thing is to “first create a capability for the individual to go to a bank”. What’s the point of a bank when the farmer doesn’t have enough to save or isn’t “credit worthy” for a loan? In a sense it is a Catch 22 situation. Without economic growth there is lack of affordability or need to be a part of the banking system. The flip side is that access to the banking system not just for check-in accounts but to tap into credit and financial instruments is a sine qua non for growth. It is this challenge that will determine the growth of banking.

The solutions on offer at the ICONS meet ranged from improving information systems to tailoring attitudes to using technology to make transactions affordable. The economic opportunity— which could enable the banking system to double its size in keeping with the superpower ambitions—is clearly worth the challenge. And the socio-political imperative critical.

(India Today, October 16, 2006)

In Democracy We Trust

2009-07-09T05:29:00.000-07:00

After 10 years of suffering elections that were at best a sham, an experiment with polls in some of Tamil Nadu's interior districts empowers Dalits to take control of their own lives.

S.S. Jeevan in Madurai

Families living on the margins in tiny villages of southern Tamil Nadu are just beginning to comprehend the price of an elected office. Here, people of lower caste communities have been getting bizarre offers for over 10 years. In 2001, when 71-year-old Karutha-kkannan of Keeripatti village was approached by caste Hindus to contest elections, he knew that if elected, he would have to resign immediately and be compensated with 25 kg of rice by the Piramalai Kallers, the dominant backward caste community comprising roughly 80 per cent of the population in these villages, that has consistently blocked Dalits from holding office.

As per the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution, the Tamil Nadu Panchayat Act, 1994, provided a three-tier Panchayati Raj system making democracy truly representative. One of its provisions was to reserve the post of panchayat president for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in villages like Keeripatti for 10 years and then rotate them. But since 1996, these villages vanished from the electoral map due to sham elections. Democratic processes stand paralysed in Pappapatti, Keeripatti and Nattarmangalam in Madurai district, and Kottakachiyendal village in Virudhunagar district. No Dalit would dare challenge caste hegemony and come forward to contest or withdraw their nominations.

That has changed. One of the first decisions Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi took after assuming office was to extend reservations for SCs and hold elections in these villages. During the October 2006 elections, Dalit candidates backed by most political parties and powered by the state machinery contested and won. "It was not just a caste issue, but a challenge to uphold the Constitution," says Madurai District Collector T. Udhayachandran. The Dalit presidents continue to hold office today and were even felicitated by Karunanidhi in Chennai. The Government and the DMK party have given Rs 25 lakh to each village for developmental activities. "Our colony has been electrified now," says P. Ganesan, Nattarmangalam panchayat president.

Since the Panchayat Act, 1994, successive governments have conducted elections over 15 times. In Pappapatti village, a Dalit candidate who dared file his nomination died mysteriously. The district has seen many violent caste clashes in the past but each time dalits have had to suffer.

In Melavalavu village panchayat, caste Hindus killed six Dalits in 1997, including panchayat president Murugesan. Most Dalits depend on the Kallers for their livelihood. "Dalits saw polls as a trap or a threat to their community," says Dinesh Oliver, a revenue divisional officer. In many panchayats, Dalits were glad to stand as puppets, like 65-year-old Alagumalai who won and resigned from Keeripatti the same day in 2005. "I got 25 kg of rice and Rs 1,000," he says.

Demarcations still persist. Dalits cannot enter temples controlled by Kallers and so have their own on the village outskirts. Chellamani, an advocate from Nattarmangalam, says he will file a case if the village is not de-reserved for the next polls. "We can ask the Dalit presidents to resign whenever we want," he adds. To counter such threats, the district administration has provided round-the-clock security for the Dalit presidents.

Nattarmangalam was the only village with a Dalit president for one term-in 1996-2001-but soon even this joined the election boycott creating a constitutional deadlock. Within a fortnight of taking over as district collector, Udhayachandran received a call from the chief secretary asking him to investigate. After approaching and understanding the grievances of the people, the election process was planned. Uncooperative officials were transferred; anti-social elements were kept under surveillance and no political leader was allowed entry during the electioneering period. Dalit Panthers party leader Thol Thirumavalavan was also told not to enter these villages.

Local elements were monitored and polling booths were made available in Dalit areas. "I conducted a detailed study on every village and evolved different strategies," he says. In Nattarmangalam, the administration generated competition by working closely with the Communist party to put up a dummy candidate, while it simultaneously evolved consensus among caste leaders to arrive at a compromise formula. In Keeripatti, nominations of other candidates were rejected and the state-backed candidate was subsequently the unanimous choice.

Unlike before, elections to all posts including vice-president were held this time, and this gave the state a chance to co-opt caste Hindu leaders. Kallers, who continue to wield power, are the vice-presidents of the panchayats. Even today, no decision can be taken without their approval, and Dalit presidents say all decisions are taken "collectively". Many believe that the elections have set the stage for opposing parties to find common ground. "The success of these elections shows, once again, that Dalits cannot save themselves. It is only the others (Kallers) who can save them," says G. Palanithurai, a professor at Gandhigram Rural Institute. "We need everyone's support to sustain this process," says Udhayachandran. For the Dalits in Keeripatti, the street lights in their hamlet remain the priceless perks of democracy.

(India Today, January 2007)

SOUTHERN EXPRESS

2009-07-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

The state that witnessed a growth rate of 6.3 per cent during the 1990s can today boast of a literacy rate of 73.4 per cent and an ever-increasing pool of skilled professionals. IT and ITES, hardware and real estate are key sectors wooing big ticket investors in to Tamil Nadu

By S S Jeevan in Chennai

In no state in India is politics as colourful as it is in Tamil Nadu. Congress, the only truly pan-Indian party, has been out of power for so long that without strategic alliances it cannot hope to be even a blip on the state’s political radar, which has been dominated by the DMK and its breakaway faction, the AIADMK. And in no state in India has the politics of vendetta been practised as rigorously as it has been in Tamil Nadu—whether it was the midnight arrest of DMK chief and Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi in June 2001 or the humiliation of his arch rival AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa in the Assembly, the state has often witnessed high voltage drama enacted by some of the former demigods of the film world. Prone to high antiincumbencies, Tamil Nadu has ruthlessly voted out the incumbent. Yet one thing has remained constant: the state’s delivery system. Be it electoral fluctuations or the vagaries of monsoons, they have had very little impact on the political economy of the state. Both Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa have extended populist schemes and claimed credit for the success the state has earned over the years.

Tamil Nadu benefited from favourable political dispensations in the past—whether it was the social reform movements of the 1960s or charismatic leaders like K. Kamaraj, C. Subramaniam and C. Rajagopalachari who gave the state an edge through their leveraging power in Delhi. Today, one of the largest contingents of ministers from any state in the UPA Government is from Tamil Nadu. And the dozen-odd ministers, led by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran, have worked towards driving foreign investment into the state. Out of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) that flowed into India last year, 9.12 per cent went to Tamil Nadu. The state registered an annual growth rate of 6.3 per cent during the ’90s, ahead of 15 major states. In terms of Human Development Index (HDI), the state climbed from seventh position in 1981 to third position in 2001. That apart, Tamil Nadu can boast of a literacy rate as high as 73.4 and an ever-increasing pool of skilled professionals. Also, it is one of the few states in the country to have surplus power supply. Little wonder, the flood of investments hasn’t stopped. In the past four months, over Rs 2,234 crore have been invested in the state. By August 2004, FDI into Tamil Nadu was a whopping Rs 22,582.64 crore. And the numbers are only increasing.

The global players to have invested here are Nokia, Flextronics, Hyundai, Dell, Ford, Royal Enfield and Samsung. According to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) estimates, over eight lakh jobs are expected to be created by 2011. Moreover, it is also becoming the preferred destination for the back offices of the world. Standard Chartered, World Bank, Citibank, Sutherland Technologies, ABN Amro are some of the leading banks that have their back office operations here. In Chennai alone, there are plans for four multiplexes, housing over 30 theatres, and half-a-dozen seven-star hotels, including the Hilton. Glitzy shopping malls such as the Chennai Citi Centre are showcasing this new-found prosperity. The police too zoom around in Hyundai Accent cars patrolling Chennai’s streets.

“Good infrastructure and the advantage of connectivity with ports, a well-laid road network and numerous airports are the key drivers of investment in the state,” says economist and member of the state Planning Commission K. Srinivasan. The state is witnessing a boom in sectors like automobile, IT and ITES, hardware and real estate. IT Secretary Chandramouli says that a new IT project can be ratified in just 72 hours by the state machinery. “It’s a place where entrepreneurship is respected,” says Sanjay Jayavarthanavelu, chairman of CII, Tamil Nadu. More than 345 IT firms came up in Chennai last year. Software exports from Chennai last year stood at Rs 14,115 crore. The state is also home to some of India’s biggest corporate success stories such as TVS, MRF and Ashok Leyland, as also public sector giants like BHEL and cement companies like Ramco. There are now proposals to create SEZs in many smaller cities like Tirunelveli and Salem, while IT giants are already opening centres in other places like Coimbatore and Trichy.

The state has the fifth largest economy in the country and ranks second in per capita income. When it comes to development, Tamil Nadu definitely scores a point. It is the first Indian state to have introduced the concept of universal midday meals and make computer education available in all government higher secondary schools. There are more than 252 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu that churn out 79,000 engineers every year. The role of women, too, has played a part in this transformation. There are more than two million women self-help groups which play a pivotal role in the administrative and financial sectors. Unlike other states, the delivery systems here have won praise, despite the fact that it has one of the largest bureaucracy in the country, not to mention an active Panchayati Raj system.

However, there are a few negatives attached to the state. While poverty levels in Tamil Nadu declined, the number of people below poverty line still stood at 140 lakh in 2004. The rate of unemployment is 5.25 per cent, against the national average of 3.77 per cent. Karunanidhi recently launched a monthly stipend scheme for the unemployed to cover more than 2,06,766 registered beneficiaries across the state. One of the reasons for a large number of people slipping below the poverty line is the fact that the backbone of the state’s economy—agriculture—has taken a beating. Yields have come down and total land area under agriculture has also dipped. “There is an overall decline and it is more acute in terms of productivity—both for food and non-food crops,” say J. Jeyaranjan, director, Development Alternatives and K. Nagaraj, a professor at the Madras Institute of Developmental Studies, in a recent study. The annual growth rate of the value of agricultural output was 2.4 per cent per annum between the early ’60s and early ’90s, which is lower than the national average of about 2.7 per cent per annum. Though the state still remains among the top producers of rice , it ranks tenth in agriculture among the 17 major states of India.

Water too remains a developmental challenge for the state. Not just Cauvery, Karunanidhi has locked horns with his Kerala counterpart V.S. Achuthanandan over the issue of water in the Mullaperiyar dam. As per a study of the dry regions of seven states, including Tamil Nadu, common property resources (CPR) have been vanishing since the early ’50s. Despite water problems, the setbacks in agriculture have been less felt— there was hardly a case of a “farmer suicide” in the state. This is largely due to the state’s diversified economy. From Chennai, now being called the “Detroit of India”, having become a manufacturing hub, or Tirupur being referred to as “Textile Valley of India” or even a small town like Sivakasi being called “Little Japan”, Tamil Nadu is today full of ingenious success stories. Sunrise sectors like biotechnology are mushrooming with companies like LifeCell strengthening their presence in the state.

Real estate has become the new calling card of growth and many believe that the IT-driven boom and large foreign remittances have led to an escalation of prices. R. Jeyakumar, one of the state’s top builders, says that land value in Chennai has shot up by 100-150 per cent in the past three years. Real estate consultants Jones Lang LaSalle estimate that 4.5 million sq ft of office space would be occupied in Chennai by the end of this year. Another sector flourishing in Tamil Nadu is tourism, as temple towns such as Mahabalipuram and other hill resorts cornered over 11 per cent of the tourist inflow in 2004. High-end medical care too is attracting a large number of foreign patients, and leading private players such as Apollo Hospitals are earning a fair share of their revenues from medical tourism.

The tremendous growth of cities and towns may have provided new means of livelihood for those equipped with professional and technological skills, but for millions employed in the unorganised and small-scale sector, this has meant loss of social security. There are wide differences in the per capita income across the state, even though it ranks second in the per capita income index. Of the 29 districts, only nine have a per capita income higher than the state average. For instance, Chennai has a per capita income of Rs 15,828 while neighbouring Villupuram district has Rs 6,013, the lowest in the state. “The underprivileged need to be empowered with professional skills to help them find a footing,” says agricultural-economist and architect of the Green Revolution M.S. Swaminathan, adding, “the agro-economy needs to be strengthened as our future is dependent on its revival.” While Tamil Nadu’s performance in healthcare is better than the rest of the country, it doesn’t match Kerala. In terms of access to maternal and child health, the state has done well, but as far as child mortality and nutrition is concerned, it is just about average. Significantly, it also scores quite low in sanitation. The Chikungunya virus affected thousands of people in the state. Also, there has been an increase in the number of AIDS cases. “The number of people infected with viruses is increasing, and this is largely due to mutating viruses and a polluted urban environment,” says Dr Suraj Balaji of Balaji Nursing Home, a clinic in south Chennai. Though access to healthcare systems in the state is quite good, the growth is taking place largely in the private sector, making cutting edge remedies out of the reach of the poor. The pattern of foreign funding is focused on communicable diseases and not much on common diseases like malaria. “The Government and the private sector must work together to arrest the growing epidemic of environmental diseases,” says Magsaysay winner and director of the Cancer Institute, Dr V. Shanta.

Such are the challenges for Karunanidhi—to be able to attract investments while bridging the ever-widening gap in the state and creating new stakeholders in the developmental cake at the same time. He was one of the leading stalwarts of the Dravidian movement—which enabled the lower castes to assert their rights and challenged the distribution of power—along with former chief minister C.N. Annadurai. In a sense, the scrapping of the Common Entrance Test last week can be seen as an acceptance of the growing urban-rural divide. And today, Karunanidhi may perhaps need to re-engineer a more common distribution system in an era of rapid economic globalisation.

(India Today, December 25, 2006)

Price of Life

2009-07-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

Amidst secrecy and confusion the Union government changed India’s drug laws. Does this mean you medical bills will shoot up?

By S S Jeevan

Unlike most teenagers, Vidya Kumari didn't find time to make a New Year resolution. This 16-year-old child of a middle-class family in south Delhi spent New Year’s Eve frantically running from pharmacy to pharmacy to check out the price of Gleevec, a cancer drug. Her mother, Gita, suffers from a rare cancer, and the cost of treating her was bleeding the family. The drug now costs around Rs 10,000, but some chemists warned Vidya that its price could soon spiral to Rs 50,000. ‘‘A new law is being passed,’’ she was told.

Beginning January 1 this year, India embraced a new world order and abandoned its decades-old drug policy. The Union government issued an ordinance to amend the Indian Patents Act 1970 to introduce product patent for drugs. In the past, the government would grant patents to companies only on the process used to manufacture them, and not on the final product.

The change is a result of India’s signing the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1994, when it was given 10 years to comply with World Trade Organisation (WTO) laws. With the new law, the government will now grant patents for all new products developed after 1995.. But there is little clarity as to whether the law will benefit or harm a sector that is viewed by many as the next big success story after IT, and worth more than $4.5 billion. And more importantly whether millions of patients like Vidya’s mother will have to pay more to stay alive.

The road to a new drug regime has been a long one, but not transparent. Between 1987 and 1994 when the WTO treaty was being finalised, there were hardly any discussions in Parliament on the issue. In fact, a committee headed by I K Gujral in December 1993 had warned of ‘‘the grave impact of the proposed patent’ on the drug prices in the country’’. But this didn’t fuel a debate. Even the Arjun Singh Committee report of the 1990s remains confidential till today.

When the patents act was amended - first in 1999 and then in 2002 - the government promised that the third amendment would address social concerns. But critics say no safeguards are in place in the latest ordinance. Worse, they claim that the government has resorted to a Presidential Ordinance that would have far-reaching changes in patent law without even a parliamentary debate.. Now even economists such as Jagdish Bhagwati and Michael Finger, who support the WTO, are questioning whether the TRIPS treaty should be in the WTO.

Rules of the game
The Indian pharmaceutical sector has enjoyed tremendous success for the past 30 years or so. Indira Gandhi’s bold step of abolishing the patent regime in 1970 (which it inherited from the British), and replacing it with the process patent spawned hundreds of Indian companies like Ranbaxy. Companies could produce medicines introduced by international firms via a different process and sell them at less than half the price, thus making huge profits.

This is also how pharmaceutical major Cipla managed to sell its anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS patients in African countries at less than half the drugs’ global price. There are more than 5,000 Indian drug companies in India today, and the country currently holds a 16 percent share of this $48 billion worldwide market.

But under the new rules, Indian companies will no longer be able to reproduce products that will be patented. Already some 12,000 ‘‘mail box’’ applications alleging patent infringement are pending with the government. And once these applications are awarded a patent, no Indian company can manufacturer them.

Estimates about increase in drug prices vary. According to a study conducted by the Centre for Study of Global Trade Systems and Development, prices of drugs for ailments like hypertension, stroke, ulcer, depression and osteoporosis will go up under the new regime to equal international prices. For instance, Prilosec, used to treat ulcers, currently costs $2.45 in India as against $105.50 in the US.

The government strongly denies any price increase. ‘‘The impact on prices will be minimal. Drug prices will not go up as 97 percent of the drugs are off patent,’’ says Union Industry Secretary Ashok Jha. ‘‘Totally misleading,’’ says former Union finance secretary S P Shukla. ‘‘What is this 97 percent the government is referring to? Is it the turnover, or the drugs in the market, or the patent itself?’’ he asks. Shukla says it was surprising that the government has given this 97 percent figure in 1995, and now 10 years later, is citing the same statistics.

Experts feel that Indian companies may get embroiled in litigations, unless the government specifies which drugs are off patent. There is no specific list of such drugs, adds Shukla. Moreover, doctors say the new law is less flexible.. Now they have a choice of medicines for the same illness in the market and can prescribe cheaper drugs for poorer patients. ‘‘Soon only patented drugs would be available and current drugs would be replaced within five to seven years by new drugs that would all be part of the product patent regime and prohibitively expensive,’’ says a doctor.

The government counters this claim. It says that it will empower its drug-pricing arm, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), to limit the price of a patented drug. The chemicals ministry and the health ministry are now having hectic parleys to reach a consensus on pricing policy. Experts say the criteria for negotiating the price of drugs is difficult so long as the patent holder chooses not to manufacture it in India. The state can decide on a reasonable profit margin only if it inspects the manufacturing plant and finds out the actual cost of production.

Fair game?
As India grapples with a new world order, it would be interesting to study how developing countries are coping up with the product patent regime. A case in point is that of Pakistan, where consumers could have saved over Rs 100 crore on just nine medicines in 1995, if the companies had offered Indian prices. These medicines constitute 14 percent of the retail market in Pakistan.

Or take the case of the anti-inflexilant cipro flexocine. Ten tablets of the drug cost just Rs 50 in India, whereas the same would cost Rs 400 in Pakistan. The anti-ulcer medicine ranitidine costs Rs 74 a packet in Pakistan, against Rs 5 in India. So countries like Pakistan are fighting a losing battle against monopoly pricing system.

One issue that concerns analysts is that of compulsory licensing. In the interest of producing cheap medicine, the controller of patents is empowered to grant a license to produce any product, even if the patentee has refused to do so. Countries such as Brazil, Canada and China have made provisions for compulsory licence if the patentee has refused to comply. This provision was also accepted in the Doha Declaration. But the ordinance is silent on this, even though this is permitted under the TRIPS Agreement.

On May 6, 1981, Indira Gandhi had said that ‘‘the idea of a better world is one in which medical discoveries would be free from patent and there will be no profiteering from life and death.’’ Much has changed since then. And as governments, multilateral agencies and pharmaceutical companies battle it out in the coming months for a free and fair drug policy, will life-saving medicines become out of reach of millions of patients like Vidya’s mother?

THE INDUSTRY: SEARCHING FOR THE MAGIC PILL
Multinationals such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Pfizer Inc, Novartis AG and Aventis, who have watched copies of their drugs being sold by Indian companies for too long, are gearing up to enter the Indian market. They say that Indian drug makers can reverse engineer (copy) a patented molecule within months. For example, copies of Pfizer's cholesterol drug Lipitor and Bristol-Myers Squibb's popular anticlotting drug Plavix were sold in India within two years of their global introduction. These generic drugs were then exported to markets in Asia and Africa, sometimes a whole decade before their patents expired in the United States.

Multinational drug companies argue that discovering a drug takes many years of painstaking research and, not to mention, huge funding. Such high costs cannot be recovered instantly and generic manufacturers cannot eat into their profits. For example, multinational companies invest 14-18 percent of their sales in research and development (R&D), while Indian companies, barring a few big players, hardly spend more than 2 percent. They say that if the domestic industry wants to look beyond generics, it must significantly increase its R&D spending and come up with new chemical entities and novel drug delivery systems.

The big drug makers in India aren't too worried about competition in the domestic market. Several of them, including Dr. Reddy's and Ranbaxy, earn huge revenue from the international generics market. For instance, in the first nine months of the year, Ranbaxy's revenues in the United States totalled $304 million, or 42 percent of the company's total sales.

But there are other problems in the international market. Dr Reddy's, a leading drug company, is fighting a patent case in the US for its hypertension drug against Pfizer Inc. Ranbaxy, which suffered a blow recently after its AIDS drugs were removed from the WHO approved list, has also said that it wants to become a cutting-edge pharmaceutical research company in its own right. Some Indian companies are gearing up for competition in a different way. They are diversifying their business and finding new revenue outlets. For example, Cipla and Ranbaxy are doing contract research for other pharmaceutical companies.

Moreover, some companies are looking at outsourcing of clinical trials to offset their generic loses. According to reports, German manufacturer Mucos Pharma had approached SIRO Clinpharm to find 750 patients to test a drug for head and neck cancer. In just 18 months, the company had recruited enough volunteers across five hospitals. The same exercise in Europe took double the time across 22 hospitals, and to find just 100 volunteers.

(New Indian Express, January 20, 2005)

DEADLY DIAGNOSIS

2009-07-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers Ram Vilas Paswan’s proposal to increase the number of drugs under price control could stifle the industry and affect medicine production

By S S Jeevan and Puja Mehra

Following the floods in Mumbai in July 2005, health centres were frantically looking for an antibiotic, Doxycycline, to deal with the outbreak of a waterborne skin disease called leptospirosis. The medicine, however, was just not available because all drug companies had discontinued production after it was brought under price control in 1995. Doxycycline is not a very expensive drug. After the prices were reduced by about 15-20 per cent, it cost Rs 3 per tablet. So why had the Government put it under price control?

The draft National Pharmaceutical Policy 2006, unveiled by Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers Ram Vilas Paswan on July 1, has left the industry in the cold and consumers searching for answers. The Government intends to increase control over drug prices— adding 354 drugs to the existing 74 in the National List of Essential Medicines. This, the industry believes, will make several of these drugs unviable and ultimately lead to cuts in production. Says Ajit Dangi, director general of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, “This is a retrograde step which can cripple the industry disrupting supply and availability.” Agrees D.G. Shah, secretary-general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), and says there could be shortages of essential medicines and lead to emergence of spurious and counterfeit medicines in the long run. And this in turn could lead to importing medicines at expensive prices in the long run. The policy also makes it mandatory for companies to put the maximum retail price (MRP) on every piece of medicine from October 2. “This is to ensure that there is no overcharging at any stage,” says G.S. Sandhu, chief vigilance officer, Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals. The policy will allow the Government to virtually dictate profit margins—8 per cent for wholesaler and 16 per cent for retailer in the case of price-controlled medicines, and for other drugs, 10 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively.

Analysts predict that the policy will reduce the net profit margins for most companies from the current 9.7 per cent to less than 5 per cent. The industry’s concern is that a cap on profits will dry up funds needed to develop the infrastructure for expanding the generics business (generic drugs are those that are not protected by patents and hence companies can mass produce them at low costs) and funding R&D to develop new drugs. “By expanding the span of price control, the Government will severely impact the sector’s ability to invest in R&D, hurt its competitiveness and retard its expansion in the global generics market,” says Wockhardt Chairman Habil Khorakiwala.

Estimates on the Government’s enhanced control over the affected proportion of the drug market vary. While the Government figures say it will be about 35 per cent, industry experts put it between 50 and 70 per cent. The draft is now being circulated among government departments and will come up for Cabinet approval later this month. Paswan’s proposals have, in fact, come as a bolt from the blue. His ministry was expected to give up its control over drug pricing, as it has done consistently over the past 30 years— from over 400 to just 74 at present. Two government committees had also recommended the same, which had led to the speculation that the list would be further trimmed to just 30 drugs. The trigger for Paswan’s populism appears to be the Supreme Court’s admission of an appeal on essential commodities. By bringing 354 drugs under fresh price control the Government might be successful in making them cheaper by 30-70 per cent, but in the long run this could drive out competition.

The rationale behind the alarming move is unclear. According to a study commissioned by the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance to ORG-IMS, most of the medicines brought under the latest price control are inexpensive, their prices have remained stable over the last three years in the face of intense competition. “The Government’s focus should be on improving infrastructure rather than killing the spirit of enterprise,” says Satish Reddy, COO, Dr Reddy’s. While Paswan admits that the industry may be unhappy with his policy, he says the measures are justified to bring down the “unjustified” increase in prices of drugs. “Some drugs extract 1,000 times profit, making them out of the reach of poor patients,” he says. The industry counters this. Says Kewal Handa, MD, Pfizer, “Governments in most other countries, including some African nations, bear 50-85 per cent of the healthcare costs. But 85 per cent of Indians pay for their healthcare from their pockets.”

If there’s any consolation for the industry, Paswan has revised the maximum allowable post-manufacturing expenses (MAPE), which are now 100 per cent over manufacturing cost, to 150 per cent in general and 50 per cent additional MAPE for R&D intensive companies. But even here, for the 74 drugs already under price control, MAPE would continue at 100 per cent for another year to prevent any sudden price escalation. And in a move widely welcomed by everyone, prices of anticancer and anti-HIV/AIDS drugs would be totally exempted from Central taxes and drugs that cost Re 1 per tablet would be out of price control.

A drug policy for India can succeed only if it makes medicines affordable and at the same time allows discovery of new drugs. The sector has made it to the top three pharma industries of the world by launching copycat versions of patented drugs at low costs over the last 30 years. This is because the Patents Act, 1972 allowed reverse-engineering of novel drugs under patent, as long as a different process was used. Indian companies now need to develop their own drugs instead of just mass producing cheap copies of those discovered by global majors. This can, however, no longer be the mainstay for the industry as India stepped into the product patent regime on January 1, 2005. But the real growth opportunity in new drug discovery needs heavy doses of investments. Price controls or caps on profit seriously hamper the industry’s ability to spend on R&D. Drug prices in India are among the lowest in the world, even lower than in most developing countries. Citing the example of Poiglitazone, a medicine for diabetes, which costs Rs 4,500 in the US but only Rs 240 here, Khorakiwala says, “Our industry has made prices the most affordable in the world. It has done more to make medicines accessible to wide sections of the Indian population than any government scheme.”

Consumer complaints over the rising unaffordability of some life saving drugs due to the new patents regime may have been at the back of Paswan’s mind during the formulation of the controls- heavy policy. A couple of years ago, the cost of an anti-cancer drug called Gleevec had suddenly jumped from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1,20,000 after a Swiss-based company, Novartis AG, got the exclusive marketing rights to manufacture the drug in India. Such developments will hurt consumers, but India’s commitment to the World Trade Organisation on patents means that they can not be wished away.

Paswan will have to deal with such paradoxes. On one hand, he has to ensure cheap medicines for the poor and on the other he must provide oxygen for the industry to grow and discover new drugs. Controlling prices may lead to shortages, and curtailing profits may sound the death knell for business. Maybe Paswan needs to leapfrog in a patent era and explore alternative mechanisms such as public-private partnerships like drug quotas for poor patients and improve the fundamentals of the healthcare system. Everybody needs to win in this politics of life and death. After all, it is a question of survival.

(India Today, August 7, 2006)

Frogs are falling silent…

2009-07-09T05:16:00.001-07:00

ARE THEY DYING TO SAY SOMETHING?

By S S Jeevan

HOP, skip and jump into extinction. That's what members of the amphibian family — toads, frogs, salamanders and newts — are doing. After dinosaurs, a serious problem of extinction now threatens the amphibian population. From the windswept Rocky mountains of the US to the pristine rainforests of South America; from the cold Andean ranges to the tropical forests of Australia and even temperate Europe, the frog population has been on the decline. And even those who do not look beyond their "bulging eyes, and warts' may have to listen to what the frogs are dying to say.

Reports suggest that, in Costa Rica, 20 frog and toad species — almost half the total — have disappeared over the past five years. In Australia, a frog species that has the potential to cure cancer is affected by a serious skin disease. In the US , one-third of the 230 native amphibian species are on the decline. No continent has been spared. The bad news is yet to come from Asia and Africa only because of the relatively low intensity of research in these two continents. For most of the 250-odd described species of amphibians in south Asia, the biological status is simply unknown.

However, the good news is that not all species are affected. The population of a species threatened in one locality may be thriving elsewhere. The degree of population decline of amphibians also appears to vary from region to region and within different species. Considered "sentinel' species, their permeable skin and ability to live both on land and in water makes amphibians more sensitive to environmental changes than any other species. As tadpoles, they live on water and eat plants, while in the adult stage they live on land and eat insects. Their eggs have no protective shells. Their skin is thin, moist and permeable.

Scientists believe that they are useful indicators of environment quality and the changes that are taking place in the natural world. Thus, the decline in amphibian population could be a precursor for what is going to befall humans, too. Moreover, members of the amphibian family are an important part of the food chain. "They form an essential part of the diet of many animals, such as snakes and birds, which, in turn, form the diet of other animals,' says Michael Tyler, a researcher at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Why are frogs dying? Scientists have zeroed in on three reasons that may be responsible for the amphibians dying — infectious diseases, chemical pollution and increased ultraviolet ( UV ) radiation (resulting from the thinning of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere). Besides these three reasons, some scientists also blame trade in endangered amphibians, acidification of the Earth's atmosphere and deforestation for the decline.
INFECTION: It is well-known that bacteria and viruses infect amphibians. But what has startled researchers is that a fungus is killing frogs. When microbiologists analysed some dead frogs, collected from Panama in the US and Queensland in Australia, they found that a new strain of fungus was responsible in both instances. The fungus covers the frog's skin, through which respiration takes place, then suffocates them to death.
UV RADIATION: In temperate regions, such as north America and Europe, UV radiation from the Sun has been reaching the Earth's surface during the spring spawning season. This is because of the destruction of the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere due to the use of chlorofloro carbons ( CFC s) and other human-made chemicals. Researchers at Oregon State University, USA , feel that UV radiation is affecting the eggs that amphibians lay in the shallow waters of lakes and ponds. In an experiment, the researchers shielded some salamander eggs against UV rays and exposed other eggs to normal sunlight. They found that the former hatched successfully, while the latter failed to hatch or produced deformed salamanders.
PESTICIDES AND FUNGISIDES: Many researchers believe that increasing use of pesticides and fungicides may be responsible for frog deaths. Spraying of pesticides not only poisons frogs directly, it also wipes out their food supply. Amphibians are known to be susceptible to at least 211 different pollutants. Organophosphorus insecticides, like malathion, are known to disturb the frog's development, distorting the growth of their limbs at the egg and tadpole stages. Frog deformities — such as multiple or missing limbs and body abnormalities — because of unchecked use of chemicals have already been reported in many areas in the US.

Donella H Meadows, professor of environmental studies at the UK -based Dartmouth College says that a Canadian researcher reported that along the St Lawrence valley fewer than two per cent of frogs in ponds that were away from any pesticide use had deformities. While 20 per cent frogs from ponds near areas of heavy pesticide use displayed defects, in one pond it was 100 per cent. Researchers in Switzerland have exposed developing frog eggs to the pesticide triphenyltin and have found deformities similar to some seen in the ponds.

Researchers at the US -based Scripps Research Institute say that S -methoprene, a popular ingredient in mosquito sprays and flea powders, breaks down into retinoids, which are known to cause birth defects not only in frogs but among humans. As this spray kills insects and interrupts their pupation it is bound to affect the development of embryos. Australia has banned the use of the weedkiller Roundup (gylphosate) around ponds and streams because of its effect on tadpoles and frogs. The problem does not seem to be the gylphosate itself, but an "inert ingredient' added to make the herbicide stick better to leaves.

GLOBAL TRADE: Uncontrolled international trade in amphibians is also threatening several species. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ( CITES ) or the Washington Convention, the main tool to control trade in wild species internationally, has already banned trade in two amphibian species — Hoplobatrachus tigerinus and Euphlyctis hexadactylus . This ban may help save the two species, but may drive many other species to the brink of extinction.
ACIDIFICATION: Another anthropogenic disturbance that is suspected to have a negative effect on amphibian populations is acidification. Widely reported in the industrialised nations, this is happening because of increasing sulphur dioxide ( SO 2 ) and nitrogen dioxide ( NO 2 ) emissions. SO 2 (in the presence of sunlight) and NO 2 reacts with water vapour to form sulphuric and nitric acids. The rain, contaminated with these acids, affects flora and fauna, both on land and water, adversely.

"All amphibian biologists are now convinced that something catastrophic is happening to amphibians,' says Ronald Heyer, chairperson of the declining amphibian populations task force, an international network of more than 1,000 scientists. "In the US alone, around US $8 million is needed to monitor and research amphibians,' says Bruce Babbitt, interior secretary, USA . "Since the scope of the problem is global, other countries need to fund similar research and conservation efforts,' says Heyer. In the UK, attempts are being made to save the last-known surviving male pool frog. The frog is being encouraged to breed with nine female frogs flown in from Sweden. The Swedish frogs have been chosen because of their close genetic makeup to the British variety.

Frogs are important particularly for a country such as India, where the agricultural sector plays a vital role in the economy. They devour pests which pose a threat to crops and prevent the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria because they consume parasites responsible for the disease. An adult frog devours its own weight of insects daily. Thus, if its population goes down, the insect population goes up. The extinction of frogs, on the one hand, means increasing the use of pesticides which is not only bad for agriculture in the long run, but poses a serious health hazard to all living organisms. On the other hand, the decline in amphibian population also means spread of diseases like malaria.

According to experts at the Bombay Natural History Society, in many parts of western Maharashtra, crops have been badly hit by proliferating insects as a result of large-scale slaughter of frogs. The Zoological Survey of India has also reported an increase in malaria in rural areas of West Bengal where 50 per cent of the frogs destined for export are captured. In India, trapping for export of frog legs poses a major threat (see box: With love, from India). However, not much is known about the commonest species of amphibians found in India. So far, 210 amphibian species are said to exist in India, making it one of the world's leading frog habitat. Most of these are said to be thriving in the Western Ghats, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the foothills of the Himalaya and the northeast. Worldwide, there are 53 species of amphibians listed in the endangered category, of which three are in India.

It is predicted that the number of amphibian species found in India will increase many fold if systematic studies are carried out. For instance, in Sri Lanka, Kelum Manamandra-Arachchi and Rohan Pethiyagoda of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Heritage Trust demonstrated — using both traditional morphological and acoustic data and molecular techniques — that the fauna includes over 250 species, a far cry from the 55 species listed till then. In the Indian context, over-extraction of groundwater for human use, which can dry up or decrease levels of water in ponds during summer and destruction of forests has led to either complete loss of forests or their fragmentation. This could isolate amphibian populations, and relegate them in smaller sub-populations that may no longer be genetically viable. Besides, certain forestry practices such as removal of leaf litter may also be working against biodiversity conservation.

So what impedes the acquisition of this information in India? What is rarer than amphibian species are people who can identify them. The science, called systematic, which deals with relationships between and within species, is not taught in India, and nearly all systematicists are self-taught. This explains why data on amphibians is still very sparse. Even the most comprehensive collections of India, such as those of the Zoological Survey of India and the Bombay Natural History Museum, do not have close to half of India's described amphibian species.

Several frog and toad species are known only from the original description, and no effort has been made to find these species since. It is possible that some of these species are common and widespread, but status information is generally unavailable. Data collection has been for the most part not with the view of providing quantitative information — rather, they are subjective evaluations of abundance. Today, one can only assume that amphibians native to India may also be facing what its brethrens elsewhere are going through. In ancient times, frogs were believed to be harbingers of prosperity and plentiful rains. This belief will get eroded along with their disappearance. And the extermination of frogs could well spell doom for the entire human society.

(Published in Down To Earth, May, 1999)

SNAPSHOTS OF INDIA'S ENVIRONMENT

2009-07-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

Had our forest policy not been so pathetic, Veerappan may have never happened. Behind every asthma patient in our polluted cities, there is a clueless administration unable to check air quality. Behind every case of pollution, water crisis, species extinction or even farmer deaths, the hand of the government is unmistakable. At the heart of the problem is India’s environment policies that suffer from a colonial hangover. They are horribly out of tune with the changing times. Paradoxically, they have come as a handy tool for the corrupt to abuse the environment. In some cases, a legitimate demand has become an unlawful act. As we celebrate World Environment Day on June 5, here are a few snapshots of things gone wrong.

BLAME IT ON PAYAL
When Payal Singh saw noxious fumes belching out of her brand new Santro, she was about to cry. She rushed angrily to the company’s office in Faridabad only to find that she was not the only one. Worse still, Maruti’s office in the same area had received similar complaints about their cars. It turns out that Payal’s problem, just like others, has its genesis at a makeshift garage located on the road to Faridabad. Here tankers from public sector oil companies stop over for a ‘quick refuel’ before they reach their respective gas stations. In a matter of a few minutes, hundreds of litres of petrol/diesel are pilfered and replaced with kerosene, cheap dry cleaning solvents or aromatics. The car company says the culprit is adulterated fuel. When Payal confronts oil companies, she is rudely told that their responsibility ends when the tankers leave the company gates. The fuel station owner says he cannot be held responsible for poor fuel quality. And the hoodlums at the garage are just part of a large network of fuel adulterators that exist all over the country. She dare not take on this well-connected dangerous cartel. Whether she likes it or not, the poisonous fumes emanating out of cars such as Payal’s, make Indian cities the most polluted in the world. Now shall we make Payal our scapegoat and blame her for the foul air we breathe?

PROBLEM MINE
Mining is a profitable business. But can mining be done in an environmentally sensitive area? Yes. Ask the criminal-politician nexus in Madhya Pradesh. Four years ago, the Supreme Court sent an expert team to investigate illegal mining near the reserved forest of Madhav National Park. The findings were so shocking that ‘several parts of the report were read in silence lest it shocked the court room’. Here’s what the team found. The law requires an environment impact assessment (EIA) and an environment management plan (EMP) for mining above five hectares of land. The MP government amended its Minor Mineral Rules in 1997 apparently ‘to allow poor people to mine’ in land holding that were less than five hectares in area. However, the team found that the real beneficiaries were only rich contractors. The team also found that in contravention of the rules, each contractor had more than 100 hectares of land under his control. How? The government had issued multiple leases to same contractor, with each lease giving permission to mine within five hectares. None of which would require an EIA or EMP. Howzzzat?

SCANDAL WOOD
Imagine this. You cannot grow a tree that can fetch you lakhs of rupees in the international market. You could land up in jail if you sell the tree, even if it’s growing in your backyard. That’s the strange story of sandalwood in India. And also the secret behind the success of forest brigand Veerappan, who has smuggled sandalwood worth more than Rs 100 crore. (Not to mention the Rs 300 crore governments have spent to nab him.) In many ways, Veerappan is the creation of India’s forest policy. A policy that forbids people to trade in a tree that will instantly make them rich. In the forests where Veerappan’s writ runs large, this law has alienated local people. That’s the reason why poor villagers are willing to become Veerappan’s foot soldiers because they stand to benefit from his illegal trade. Without this law, there wouldn’t be a Veerappan. A direct fallout of this archaic policy has been the loss of foreign exchange. Despite India’s huge potential for sandalwood trade, Malaysia and Thailand are today market leaders in Asia. ‘Why should I protect a tree if it is being culled by smugglers and why shouldn’t I assist Veerappan,’ asks Murugan, a villager in Satyamangalam forest. Even the forest bureaucracy will be at a loss to reply to Murugan.

NUCLEAR PUZZLE
Irony doesn’t get any more ironic. Nuclear power technologies are obsolete, environmentally hazardous and prohibitive. So it is not surprising why most European countries including Germany, England and Sweden are phasing out nuclear power. But India has warmly embraced it. There are close to 14 projects underway in different parts of the country. And these wherever the projects are located, they have been greeted with protests by local people who fear radiation. Recently, the Supreme Court was shown studies that allege that some 50,000 people in Jaduguda are at risk, many suffering from genetic deformities. At other places, people have demanded compensation for relocation. For example, in Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum district, irate villagers have stopped officials from mining uranium in their area. The problems don’t end there. New technology is becoming impossible to get as most countries have decommissioned their reactors. And to top it all, uranium stocks have almost run out in the country. So why is the Indian government persisting with nuclear power when it constitutes just 2 percent of the country’s power generation? There are no clear answers to this one.

PEST ATTACK
Don’t make the mistake of uttering the slogan ‘India Shining’ to Subbaiah. He will knock your head and throw you out of his house. Most of Subbaiah’s friends have committed suicide. But that’s not an unusual phenomenon in the parched district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh. Subbaiah is a farmer who believed pesticides were supposed to kill pests, not farmers. His friends consumed the pesticide to end their lives ruined by debts and crop failure. He can barely pronounce Methomyl, a highly poisonous pesticide banned in many countries but used freely in the state. ‘How am I supposed to know that it should not be used,’ he asks. Subbaiah is right. There are almost 13,000 retailers in Warangal district alone selling pesticides manufactured by some 93 companies. With very little information and awareness about their usage, indiscriminate use of pesticides is leading to crop failures and environmental nightmares. Subbaiah’s problem can be squarely placed at the doorsteps of the Central Insecticides Board, whose job is to certify and monitor pesticides. Under the rules, once a pesticide is certified and enters the market, there is no mechanism to either recall or ban it. So whether it is Methomyl in Andhra or the dreaded Endosulfan in Kerala, farmers like Subbaiah will continue to live dangerously.

FREE TRADE
Mohammed Gaine, a resident of Jammu & Kashmir, doesn’t consider himself an outlaw. He thinks it’s his birthright to weave and sell the banned Shahtoosh shawls. (A single shawl can fetch Rs 75,000 in the illegal market.) ‘Weaving Shahtoosh is a tradition that goes back to more than 600 years,’ says Gaine. Many environmentalists disagree. They argue that its wool comes from the endangered Chiru (only 70,000 are left in the world) and India is signatory to an international convention that bans trade in Shahtoosh. Gaine says that there are thousands of weavers like him whose livelihoods depend on Shahtoosh shawls. ‘What happens to us? Why doesn’t the government encourage captive breeding of the animal and legalise the trade.’ ‘That way weavers would have a selfish interest in the survival of the animal and the Chiru population could well increase,’ he adds. Gaine may have a point. A strict ban may make the trade even more secretive and lead to the quick extinction of the chiru. And that’s not what environmentalists as well as Gaine would want. Would they?

PASSING THE MUCK
As the Americans gets paranoid about losing their jobs to Indians, here is a different perspective on outsourcing in the Indian context. Image-conscious automobile companies will flash ISO 14001 certificates whenever they are asked to prove their green credentials. Sure, going by their proven track record it will be hard to pin them down. But a close scrutiny reveals a different picture altogether. Of the 15,000 parts that go to make a vehicle, over 80 percent is outsourced to the small-scale sector. Companies conveniently shift these polluting processes to keep their backyard clean. And the result: 80 percent of pollution is generated at the vendors’ site and only 20 percent at the automakers’ production plant. Little wonder then that the small-scale sector is always at the receiving end of environmentalists. And even the small-scale sector, which employs about 20 million people, has managed to manipulate the system. Small-scale industries get benefits from the government as long as they continue to remain small. Government policy discourages them to move towards medium or large sector, where they can invest on the pollution control technologies and better resource utilisation. So it is common to find one entrepreneur owning 8-10 small industries under different names just to get the subsidy. Welcome to the pollution chain.

BUSINESS SENSE
Tirupur sits on a huge paradox. On one hand it is the biggest export success story of India. And on the other, it is home to an ecological nightmare. This sleepy town in Tamil Nadu has grown rapidly in the past few decades. Textile exports have been increasing, and traders are confident of overcoming the Chinese scare as the quota regime is dismantled. But over the years, the water-intensive industry has sucked every drop of groundwater in the region. To make matters worse, the Noyyal river is nothing but a sewer with effluents being dumped indiscriminately. And industrial waste is piling up all around the town. As the demand for water increases, several private firms are getting water from nearby towns and a huge private initiative is underway. Tirupur has many lessons to offer. With the government doing little to improve infrastructure, the industry’s investments have increased drastically. Unplanned industrialisation can become a threat not only to local people but also to the survival of the industry. Now many foreign clients are checking on environmental performances to do business with these companies. As they say, sound environmental policies always make for good economics. A lesson Tirupur’s entrepreneurs are learning the hard way.

(New Indian Express May 30, 2004)

M S SWAMINATHAN: Our future depends on agriculture

2009-07-09T05:06:00.000-07:00

Only three Indians find a place in TIME magazine's 20 most influential Asians of the 20th century. Professor M S Swaminathan is one of them. The other two being Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. A plant geneticist by training, Professor Swaminathan is considered the architect of the Green Revolution. His advocacy of sustainable agriculture leading to an ever-green revolution makes him an acknowledged world leader in the field of sustainable food security.

Professor Swaminathan has won many awards including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the Albert Einstein World Science Award in 1986, and the first World Food Prize in 1987. Recently, the Union government appointed him as the head of the National Commission on Farmers.

Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

How big is the crisis facing Indian agriculture?
The nature of crisis varies from region to region. In the dry farming areas, there is a crisis of water and high rates of interest from money lenders. These farmers are not perceived to be credit worthy under the present system. Indian agriculture is in a crisis because the second and third generational problems were not addressed to the extent they should have been. Academicians and politicians knew these problems all along. But in the quest for urban boom, agriculture was not given adequate attention.

Is the situation changing?
Today there is widespread appreciation that farmers were bypassed in our nation's road to progress. We can ignore these people only at our peril ‘not just for food security, but also for the security of the country at large. For example, the recruits for the People's War Group in Andhra Pradesh are mainly poor and unemployed youth. We have to realise that there is a cry for change and attention, which we have to recognise without any delay.

What are the factors responsible for farmers committing suicide?
This can be due to many reasons. We will have to analyse each case separately. Many studies indicate that several of these suicides were related to debt burden and a sense of hopelessness.

What do you think went wrong since the Green Revolution?
Green Revolution was a term coined in 1968 when we achieved a quantum jump in food production. For the first time in the 1970s and 1980s, our growth rate of food production went above the population growth rate. But the challenge now is to look for ways that will sustain, deepen and expand this revolution. We must also look at the problems of ecology and work towards an ever-green revolution.
We have no more land available for agriculture. Therefore, we must produce more and more from less land and even less water. We must also extend the benefits of the ever-green revolution to dry areas, hill areas and coastal areas. (Nearly 20 per cent of our population lives in coastal areas.)
Farmers need three things: credit, water, and assured market. Depending upon how well these three pillars are developed, the nature of crisis will be circumscribed by these parameters. We must address these issues with the farmers. If we listen to them, we will understand that they know the problems and they will also tell you the solution.

Have farm subsidies contributed to this crisis?
I don't think so. A major portion of subsidy goes to fertiliser and food. Today the agricultural sector is crying for investment. I am not in favour of any perverse subsidy, but I will not recommend that we must take away the money meant for agriculture. Suppose I have to give Rs 200 crores for free electricity, I will use that money for constructing roads and godowns in rural areas and improve trade literacy and marketing infrastructure. Many things can be done with the same amounts of money. We must remove subsidy and divert the money to need-based services, which may vary from region to region.

What would you suggest to the government about subsidy?
The policy of appeasement like free electricity to farmers is adding to the problem. This policy will be detrimental to our future generations. It is just not sustainable. Of course, some subsidy may be needed -- like in the dry farming areas of Rajasthan where farmers are not able to pay for electricity. So there is a difference between trade-distorting subsidy or ecology-distorting subsidy and life-supporting subsidy. What we need is a life-supporting subsidy. This could be in the form of insurance -- both for the farmer as well as for his crops. Life insurance for farmers must be subsidised because only the private health sector is growing today. The public health system is breaking down. And health cost is going up in this country. Therefore, we must work towards low-transaction, corruption-free credit system, which is linked to health and crop insurance. Already a beginning has been made in the form of Kisan Cards and the SBI Life. This is the first step. But we must deepen and widen it.

We need to also think of a long-term policy because 50 per cent of our population is below 21 and over 70 per cent of them live in rural areas. Do we want them to migrate to town and urban slums? Or should we create infrastructure for them to take up farm and non-farm employment in the rural areas?

How critical is the water situation in India?
Exactly 60 years ago, I joined the Agricultural College in Coimbatore. At that time we were alarmed that the water table was going down to 10-15 metres. But now it has gone down to 1,000 metres. How much can we keep digging? When I was in the Planning Commission in 1980, I along with Manmohan Singh and Mohammed Fazal made water as the first priority in the Sixth Five Year Plan. But over the years, more and more irrigation has come under groundwater and our policy of free electricity has sucked every drop.

What policy changes would you prescribe to reverse the paradox of food insecurity amidst plenty?
We have come to a stage where we can have a food guarantee scheme. My concept is a combination of employment guarantee and food for work. The Maharashtra employment generation scheme is a good model. Food as a currency is very powerful because the needy can get food for their stomachs and farmers can market more if they produce more. The paradox of poverty amid plenty can be done away with imaginative food guarantee schemes. I hope that by August 15, 2007, when we complete 60 years of Independence, we will overcome this paradox.

Do you think it is time to take a re-look at pesticides?
The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) -- set up after the Centre for Science and Environment found pesticides in soft drinks -- has clearly recommended that we must look at our standards for pesticides in food and drinking water. We still use pesticides that have long-term residual toxicity. This is affecting our food chain. I hope the government will start looking at the recommendations of the JPC and take follow up action. We must not just revise standards, but we also set up more monitoring laboratories.

Do you think enough efforts have gone into what you call "monsoon management"?
I think we have not been pro-active. For some reason our agricultural administration has remained very archaic. Monsoon management means alternative cropping system. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University has come up with alternative crops depending on water availability. But what's the use of having these models only on paper. These must be put to use.
We must have a system of administration that is highly professional. But we hear about officers being transferred almost every other day. For example, an agricultural commissioner is suddenly transferred to a museum. In a country like China, even cabinet ministers are thorough professionals. In fact, two Chinese ministers have been awarded the World Food Prize. We need such professionalism. Unfortunately we have a system of administration where generalists are occupying technical posts.
We must also look at agricultural management, of which monsoon management is an integral part. I suggest that we train a male and female member of every panchayat as monsoon managers.

What steps do you think we must take to bridge the numerous divides that exist in India?
If we can bridge the agricultural divide in a country where 70 percent people live in rural areas, then we would be closer to bridging the nutritional, gender, technological and digital divides. We must simplify our rules on radio so that every community or panchayat can have its own radio. This will go a long way in making information location-specific and in giving market and trade-related news.

What safeguards would you prescribe as we experiment with biotechnology?
The reason why the Americans are not afraid of genetically modified (GM) food is that they have immense faith in their Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). If someone falls sick as a result of consuming GM corn, the fine is US $2-3 billion in the courts. We have recommended a national biotechnology regulatory authority that is professionally managed. We must work towards regulatory mechanisms that people can trust.
It is wrong to condemn or decry a new technology. We must study the use of the technology case by case. There cannot be any generalisations. We have recommended that the health and environmental safety must be the bottom line for any food security system.

What does the India's agricultural future look like?
The Green Revolution gave us self-confidence. Now we must shape our agricultural destiny. Because our future will depend on agriculture.

(New Indian Express, June 27, 2004)

WALDEN BELLO: The role of the South

2009-07-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Walden Bello , co-director, Focus on the Global South, a research institute in Thailand, has done extensive work on the East Asia Miracle Paradigm. Author of several books, Bello is associated with Greenpeace International and Oxfam America. On a recent visit to India, he spoke with S S Jeevan on the various issues that confront Southeast Asian countries.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/section.asp?sec_id=14&foldername=19971215

OVER TROUBLED WATERS

2009-07-09T05:01:00.001-07:00

The hastily launched multi-crore Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project is a scientific and ecological disaster in the making. Here's why. By S S Jeevan

It is a proverbial case of putting the cart before the horse. The Rs 2,427.40-crore Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project (SSCP), launched with much fanfare in Madurai on July 2, 2005 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is throwing up more questions than it set out to solve. The SSCP aims to provide a route linking India's eastern and western shores, doing away with the current need to circumnavigate Sri Lanka. But scientists and environmentalists have voiced concerns of constructing the canal in an ecologically sensitive region as well as the way the project has been "rushed" without even a detailed scientific study.

Ironically, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) sounded the first alarm in March 2005. The PMO note asked for the project to be put on hold till a proper evaluation of specific issues was made. The note severely criticised the "rapid" study by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, whose report was cited to get the quick approval.. The institute -- which comes under the Union government -- has been associated with several controversial environment studies in the past and has reportedly limited experience in marine issues.

"The canal project faces the problems of sedimentation, cyclonic disturbances and dumping of the dredged sediments which have not been effectively tackled in the NEERI study. NEERI neither considered the sediment contribution from the rivers flowing into the Palk Bay nor from the previous cyclones, with the result that the study did not pinpoint the source for 99..4 per cent of the sediment volume in the region," the PMO note said. But strangely enough, within three months of having drafted the note, the Prime Minister and the entire political establishment gathered in Madurai to launch the 150-year-old dream.

150-YEAR-OLD PROBLEMS
The idea to build a canal was originally conceived by British Commander A D Taylor of the Indian Marines in 1860. After Independence, the government constituted a committee headed by A Ramaswamy Mudaliar in 1955 to examine the feasibility of connecting the Gulf of Mannar with Palk Bay. The committee recommended that the canal project be linked to the Tuticorin Harbour Project. The report was put in cold storage, and in 1963, only the Tuticorin port project was sanctioned. A number of committees were set up since then and each of these committee reports "further validated" the earlier reports. It is significant that Taylor's idea was conceived on a different route where there will be no turbulent sea or churning water currents. However, the present route is through one of most volatile regions in the world. The canal project area is dangerously located in a cyclone-prone region. According to Current Science, between 1891 and 2000, around 64 cyclones have known to have hit the Tamil Nadu coast. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) too considers the coastal stretch between Nagapattinam and Pamban (the canal project area) as a "high-risk zone".

Meteorological records reveal that 23 storms have crossed the project area in that period. For instance, the super cyclone in 1964 devastated Danushkodi, a coastal town near Rameshwaram and part of the SSCP area. Reports suggest that an entire train was washed away during this cyclone, taking along with it hundreds of students. And even today one can see the battered Danushkodi railway station invaded by seawaters. "A large part of the old Danushkodi town lies buried under the sea," Pavalam, a 50-year-old fisherman in Danushkodi told the New Indian Express.

What is worrying is that the NEERI report completely ignored the impact of a future tsunami on the SSCP. Says Dr C P Rajendran, one of India?s top geologists, who is with the Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram: "The open question is that whether the deepening activities would 'create a new deep water route' for a future tsunami to reach the west coast with a devastating impact." The PMO, in fact, found the information furnished by NEERI about the effects of tsunamis and cyclones "incomplete" and there were huge gaps in the knowledge about "the sedimentation regimes existing in the various micro regions of Palk Bay". "Had the Sethusamudram shipping canal been operational at the time of this (December 2004) tsunami, the currents in the Palk Bay and the associated turbulence would have damaged the canal considerably and would have caused a wide dispersal of the dredged material placed at seas," the PMO note says.

"In terms of expertise on marine issues NEERI's credibility is wanting. The fact that NEERI had only done a "Rapid" Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and not a comprehensive EIA and that the area and period of primary data collection was little or nothing accounts for an unscientific EIA being passed off by the Ministry of Shipping and MEF," says Ossie Fernandes, co-convenor of Coastal Action Network (CAN), an organisation spearheading the campaign and fighting for the rights of fisherfolk. Scientists point out to India's lack of understanding of complex geological phenomenons. Sethusamudram is the part of an ocean that is being constantly bridged by natural sedimentation processes, and nature has been at this work for hundreds of thousands of years. "The current tsunami crisis in the Bay of Bengal makes us to rethink the whole issue? The SSCP is not feasible technically at the present moment, with the current level of understanding of the sedimentation and meteorological regimes of the project area," says journal Current Science.

It is also a mystery then that how project officials convinced the Prime Minister without even doing a tsunami-impact study. Officials at the Tuticorin Port Trust (TPT) -- the nodal agency to implement the project -- are yet to respond to a questionnaire sent by this newspaper on these issues.

MARINE THREAT
Ecologists say the impact of the project on this unique and fragile ecosystem will be disastrous. The Gulf of Mannar (GOM) falls in the Indo-Pacific region and is considered to be one of world's richest marine biological resources. The Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve is the first Marine Biosphere Reserve not only in India, but also in South and Southeast Asia. The GOM thus constitutes a live scientific laboratory of national and international value. It has 3,600 species of plants and animals that make it India's biologically richest coastal region, according to CAN.

Says Commander G V K Unnithan of Indian Navy (Retd), who as part of the anti-Tamil insurgent operations during 1995-96 spent considerable time watching the ecosystem of this region: "During that time I have closely watched the sea from helicopters and boats. I have seen colonies and coral reefs. It is shocking that NEERI says there is only sand." It is interesting to note that the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation is engaged in a unique promotion of alternative options for livelihood security in the region, including community-owned small industrial units and a community-managed artificial reef programme.

Experts say that India has had the experience of dredging navigation channels near the shipping ports, but it will be the first time we are going to dredge a navigation channel, located 30 to 40 km away from the coast. The SSCP involves massive dredging -- an estimated 84.5 million cubic metres of sand -- that will need safe disposal. Statements from the environment and shipping ministries reassure that the project will pose no threat to the coral reefs and the marine wealth of the GOM. However, it is still not clear as to how and where the dredged material will be dumped for safe disposal. "The question is how would the cyclones rework the dredged material to be dumped at various sites, although fortified with embankments," asks Rajendran.

The migration of birds in this region is natural and limited due to the two different ecosystems prevalent and generally separated by the Adams Bridge. The dredging will certainly disturb the system and large-scale forced migration will take place, says Unnithan. But when it happens from the shallow Palk Bay to deeper GOM, the fish will be lost forever due to the proximity of the much deeper Indian Ocean.

Unnithan, who is now a member of the Bombay Natural History Society, says, "They (NEERI) should have collaborated with institutes such as NIO, CMFRI, ZSI and GSI and come up with first-hand scientific work. Instead, they have depended heavily on secondary published data." He adds that the Indian Navy was given a sub-contract by NEERI for hydrographic studies. But there is no evidence to show that they were carried out. Unnithan says that if it (the study) was in favour of the canal, why was it not made public? Another threat arising out of the project is the pollution that would be created by ships in such a narrow channel. The prospect of their grounding or even a collision of ships containing coal or oil will lead to an ecological disaster.

MAROONED
The Sethusamudram project is also set to affect the livelihood of millions fisherfolk in the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu. But very little has been done to prepare a roadmap for rehabilitation and re-location of the affected people. Fishermen in Danushkodi, for example, say that they had heard of the project but had no clue if they would be asked to relocate or offered compensation. Many NGOs working for these fishing communities say that the public hearings for such projects are a farce. "The first series of public hearings were scrapped. Then in November 2004, another series were scheduled which were compartmentalised. Then the TPT went to court and got the project cleared," says Unnithan. "Most often the public hearing panel is not constituted with persons of integrity and scientific credibility,? says Ossie Fernandes. And public hearing reports by the state pollution central boards are shrouded in secrecy -- the anti thesis of a public hearing, he adds. "Big projects usually mean that poor people like us will be promised compensation and then asked to relocate," Muniamma, a fisherwoman from Danushkodi.

India's tryst with big projects has usually thrown up the same problems: they are hurriedly conceived and even poorly implemented. As we have seen with the Sardar Sarovar Project the rehabilitation of the affected people still remains a distant dream. In the case of the SSCP, there has been a mindless hurry to launch the project, without adequately addressing the core scientific and ecological problems. The project is plagued by other problems as well: many experts are now beginning to question the economic and technical validity of the project and the issue is threatening to boomerang into a diplomatic stand-off with Sri Lanka, which has also voiced its protest against the project. "We believe that the Tamil Nadu government can still step in as the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has not given a 'No Objection Certificate' to the project. And one of the grounds for granting clearance by the MEF is the report of the public hearings," adds Fernandes.

Meanwhile, the Union government has belatedly constituted a monitoring committee to assess the environmental impact of the SSCP. Its members include Dr S Kannaiyan of the National Biodiversity Authority, Dileep Biswas, former chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board and S C Sharma, additional director-general (Wildlife). Moreover, some 15-odd committees have also been constituted by Union Ministry of Shipping and Port Trust to look into the other aspects of the project. But whether these efforts are just to please the project's critics or can they lead to a real change in the developmental mindset of the political establishment, only time will tell.

(New Indian Express, July 31, 2005)

FISHING FOR BETTER OPTIONS

2009-07-09T05:01:00.000-07:00

Children of fishermen in the tsunami-hit areas are trying to do something more profitable on land

Often, it takes destruction to show the path to development. On a fateful December morning two years ago, the tsunami invaded 19-year-old Elamparithi’s fishing village in Kanchipuram. “Though we lost our belongings, we felt lucky as my father had not ventured into the seas the previous evening,” says Elamparithi, a school drop-out who used to accompany his father. The destruction kept playing on his mind. “That day, I decided to give up our traditional occupation—fishing,” he says. Subsequently, he met some volunteers at the local community college and today he is about to complete a course in catering and hopes for a job in a “more secure” profession.

Hundreds of children of fishermen in the area have benefitted from an initiative called the Loyola Empowerment and Awareness Programme (LEAP) that covers the nine fishing hamlets of Kanchipuram panchayat. Many of them are now studying in premier colleges. Started in 2000, the programme has launched many initiatives including the Kanchipuram Community College that offers courses such as publishing and catering. “We realised the importance of providing technical education for the marginalised,” says Father Vedam Xavier, Loyola’s vice-principal and director of the project. And the large-scale displacement of fisherfolk during the tsunami only heightened the need for alternative livelihoods. In collaboration with the Tata Relief Committee, the college infrastructure was strengthened and it is now affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Open University. Students say the programme has provided a window of opportunity and empowered them with “life-coping skills”. “High input costs like that of diesel and competition from mechanised boats has forced us to abandon fishing,” says Kalil Rahiman, a student, who also broke away from the family tradition.

LEAP also includes community programmes such as health camps and welfare schemes for women, who are taught embroidery and other crafts. It has a tie-up with the Loyola College where it is mandatory for post-graduate students to do social work, such as spreading awareness about sanitation and hygiene. “The project has boosted self-belief of students,” says Father Xavier. While the tsunami might have battered Elamparithi’s family boat two years ago, it has put him on a new course today.

(India Today, December 25, 2006)

Winds of change

2009-07-09T04:57:00.000-07:00

El Niño, a weather phenomenon caused by a complex interaction between atmospheric and oceanic conditions has ushered in drought, forest fires and devastation. In 1982-83, El Niño caused worldwide destruction. But the present one, scientists say, is the worst this century. Interestingly, commodity brokers and construction material firms stand to gain from this weather phenomenon

It has caused a severe drought in Australia and Papua New Guinea. It has led to a famine in South Africa. Hurricanes in Mexico are said to have been caused by this phenomenon. Floods in Peru are due to its movements. It has fuelled the forest fires in Indonesia and the Amazon. It has affected marine and wildlife. It has killed thousands and has rendered millions homeless.

Ironically, it is the “Christ child” which is causing all this devastation. El Niño, which means “the little one” in Spanish was first recognized by fisherfolk off the coast of South America as early as the 19th Century. A warm current in the eastern Pacific brought in its wake the inexplicable death of thousands of fish. Since it normally became optimal around Christmas they called it the Christ child. The tiny micro-organisms which fish depend upon for food were the first to die. The fish followed suit. Sharks retreated to the bottom of the ocean where the temperature was cooler. But worse was to follow.

Devastating rainstorms and floods would become the order of the day. In some areas the rains would cease and wind patterns could turn green pastures into deserts. Scientists today believe that the Atacama Desert in Peru is the result of atmospheric activity associated with El Niño. In some regions there would be more than abundant rainfall. The rainforests of Borneo and Indonesia are supposed to owe their existence to this phenomenon. Social behaviour and eating habits of animals are also affected: from mating patterns between sea lions to eating patterns for marine iguanas, to the death of penguins and other flightless birds by starvation.

Cropping patterns also do not escape the wrath of El Niño, whether it is the corn harvest in Zimbabwe or the rice bowl of Asia. The weather patterns created by El Niño threaten food supplies in many Asian and Pacific rim countries. Already a drought grips most areas of Southeast Asia and threatens to bring down the production of commercially important crops like coffee and palm oil. Mining activity dependent upon hydroelectric power has been suspended and weather patterns linked to El Niño could lead to a decline in the wheat yield in Australia which is at present leading to bushfires there.

Misinformation about the phenomenon could also end up costing businesses and consumers a lot of money in terms of cancelled vacations, a drop in tourism and even speculation on energy pricing in the hope of a mild winter. El Niño winters on the contrary can be brutal.

Satellite imaging and data gathering computers have shown that the tentacles of El Niño spread from the Pacific to vast areas in Australia, Africa and Asia which become susceptible to drought. In the North American continent specially from California to Florida heavy torrential winter rains can be expected. Memories of the arid tornadoes and torrential winter rains caused by the 1982-83 El Niño are still fresh in the minds of residents of southern California.

The planet is warming
Warm conditions have persisted in the tropical Pacific since July 1997. According to the World Meteriological Organisation (WMO), sea surface temperatures throughout the equatorial east-central Pacific increased during April and May, when temperatures normally decrease in this region. During August and September ocean surface temperatures reached near-record levels in many sections of the equatorial Pacific. Temperatures increased by four degrees along the Equator east of 120° w and increased by five degrees near the Galapagos Islands along the coast of northern Peru. Exotic warm water species of marine life such as the swordfish have been found as far north as in the state of Washington. Much to the delight of anglers a 130 kilogram goldfish was caught in Seattle and giant rainbow-striped anchovies and crabs are adding to the quality of the fishing there.

This delight is not mirrored in California where mass hysteria with regard to El Niño has gripped the populace at large which is readily lapping up quick-fix remedies promoted by unscrupulous marketing agents. As Californians prepare for an unusually brutal winter the demand for roofing material like gutters has gone up by more than 20 per cent. Manufacturers are doing roaring business in the selling of roof repair products.

According to Michael R Smith, the president of Weather Data Inc. a weather forecasting company located in Winchita in Kansas in the US, the situation has gone out of hand. “This is the best publicised potential disaster in history,” he says. “People are drawing a very close parallel to 1982-83,” he adds. “Some of the precautions like cleaning out flood control channels will pay off handsomely if there are problems,” he nevertheless concludes. Meanwhile, the weather is still dry.

The flip side
As things stand the world is soon going to be divided into two groups, those who benefit from El Niño and those who don’t stand to benefit from it. The President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, has cast off his bullet-proof vest after having disposed off the terrorists at the Japanese embassy. He has now decided to take on “the little one” to boost his sagging image. Construction work is in full swing reinforcing the nation’s dams and bridges as Peru prepares for a showdown with nature.

There is also a growing realisation that El Niño’s adverse effects on the sugar crop will be limited in the current crop cycle. According to the International Sugar Organisation in the UK, the unseasonal rains have only marginally affected Australia’s sugar crop. On the other hand, the phenomenon is expected to boost the yield in Brazil’s north and northeast region bringing prosperity to Brazilian farmers. It is also hoped that the weather conditions will benefit farmers in the Philippines.

While there is bad news for cocoa farmers in Malaysia and Indonesia, the output of these countries is meagre compared to the Ivory Coast. Merrill Lynch in its commodity market trends report has stated that rain after a long dry spell in the Ivory Coast could lead to a bumper cocoa crop more than offsetting the losses sustained in these two countries.

While the Christ child has brought luck to Australian fisherfolk resulting in a bumper tuna catch, it has meant bad luck to Papua New Guinea where the catch has been much lower. Sea water temperatures that normally range between 23° c to 29° c have climbed to 37° c forcing many fish to migrate north in search of cooler water. The western Atlantic and Caribbean have also been uncharacteristically quiet in view of the fact that it has been dubbed the “hurricane alley”. The eastern Pacific, however, has seen heightened storm activity.

The full picture is yet to emerge. According to Glenn McGregor, climate expert at the University of Birmingham’s school of geography in UK: “The current El Niño is still in its early stages. It’s certainly some months off its peak.” That El Niño definitely means good fortune for some is evident from the satisfied smiles of futures brokers who operate in the commodity market. Coffee futures soared and dropped creating ripples of hysteria in the market. A few days ago coffee beans were worth their weight in gold in the international market. Now that it is raining in Sumatra they are worth just beans.

Global havoc
Changes in the weather patterns due to El Niño have resulted in a flood of natural disasters across the globe. Agriculture is the worst hit

Scientists have been struggling to come up with conclusive answers on the extent of damage El Niño would cause on the entire world. Since March 1997, they have been observing significant warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of South America.
The phenomenon usually peaks around late December and is often associated with important changes in temperatures and precipitation, which may positively or negatively affect agriculture and water resources. The change in sea surface temperatures also affect marine ecosystems.

El Niño has occurred twice in the last fifteen years. In 1982-83, El Niño caused severe flooding and extensive damage in Latin America and drought in parts of Asia. In 1991-92, the effects of El Niño led to a severe drought in Southern Africa. Scientists believe that this year’s El Niño will be the most severe this century. Meteorological organisations around the world also indicate that this phenomenon will continue throughout 1997 and possibly extend into 1998. The worst effects of El Niño are expected to be felt over the next few months.

In recent months the FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System has been closely monitoring weather anomalies and assessing the possible damage these may cause on crop production and the food supply. Researchers working at the FAO have observed significant deviations in weather patterns in Asia which they say is a cause for concern.

Raising a storm
Cambodia is witnessing serious weather anomalies affecting agriculture. Heavy rainfall and floods have affected the early rice crop in several parts, specifically in Kratie province in the east. The 1997-98 target for paddy production has been set at 3.6 million tonnes, slightly higher than estimated output of 3.39 million tonnes in 1996-97, from an area of 2.17 million hectares.

China experienced its worst drought in 20 years in July and August. This is seriously affecting crops, particularly in the provinces of Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Hubei, Liaoning and Jilin in central and north eastern parts of the country. Officially, it is estimated that up to two-thirds of the country has been affected by prolonged dry spells. In the central and southwestern regions drought conditions continue to affect some 3.1 million hectares of crops along the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze river. This may affect the autumn harvest. But unseasonal rains have improved conditions for planting winter wheat, normally sown from the second half of September, in central parts of the country.

The current drought in Indonesia is reported to be the worst in half a century. For the remainder of 1997 and into 1998, dry conditions are predicted to continue over southern Sumatra and Kalimantan, on the Island of Borneo, Java and eastern parts of the country. In these areas, although monsoon rainfall normally begins in September the first rains only came in November. The impact of this will be most noticeable in the second season of rice and maize in Java, the country’s largest producing area. It will also affect soil moisture conditions for maize planting in November and December in eastern parts of Java and southern Sumatra. Insufficient rainfall and dry conditions may also affect the output of coffee in key growing areas of Lampung and Benkulu in south Sumatra, cocoa and rubber. Overall, official estimates indicate that the drought would affect some 300,000 hectares of rice.

Prevailing dry conditions have also exacerbated the forest fires which have affected agriculture and forest plantations and reduced water supplies. In August and September, there have been various reports of falling water reserves in wells and rivers in parts of Sumatra and Java.

In North Korea the prolonged drought has worsened. This is expected to have serious and far reaching repercussions on the country’s already grave food supply situation in the year ahead, especially as its population has already been severely affected by a shortage of food over the last two years.

Although the 1997 season began favourably with rainfall appreciably above normal in May, subsequently precipitation fell sharply. Consequently, rainfall in the critical months of June, July and August fell to between 20 and 30 per cent of the long term average. Crops were also adversely affected by significantly above normal temperatures at critical stages of growth.

Global havoc
The food outlook for North Korea in 1998 is worse. Domestic production of cereals, even under the most optimistic scenario, will meet less than half the country’s minimum food needs, whilst imports are likely to become increasingly strained due to growing economic difficulties. Further, as imports last year were highly dependent on barter trade with neighbouring provinces of Jilin and Liaonning in China, the fact that the drought this year has seriously affected crop production in these provinces too, may reduce surpluses and the volume of trade next year. This, therefore, may exacerbate food problems.

Malaysia, which suffered the haze from forest fires in Indonesia due to El Niño’s induced wind patterns, has had below normal rainfall. But, coffee, cocoa and sugarcane crops are reported to be in a satisfactory condition so far. However, in areas affected by severe dry conditions, production is predicted to decline. The government had to declare a state of emergency in eastern Sarawak due to the haze emanating from forest fires in Indonesia.

In the Philippines, various parts of the country have been devastated by the worst drought in years. In northern parts of the country, rainfall has been below normal since May affecting major rice and maize growing areas. Elsewhere, large portions of the country, including eastern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, experienced little rainfall throughout August and the number of tropical storms across the country, which bring significant amounts of rainfall, has been fewer than normal.

Disasters galore
In October this year, hurricane Pauline in Mexico tore apart houses, washed out roads and killed around 230 people. Again in November, another hurricane, Rick struck the southern coast of the country. Hurricane Rick did little damage, compared with the destruction caused by hurricane Pauline and no deaths were reported. In the Chiapas region, flooding of the coast in upland river valleys, has been saturated by three previous storms. The hurricane season in Mexico has been particularly intense, which some blame on El Niño.

In Papua New Guinea the government declared a state of emergency in response to a devastating drought, the most serious in over fifty years, allocating us $14 million in aid to 19 of the country’s 20 provinces as concern over food shortages increases. In the coming months, there is going to be a shortage of water, both for agriculture and for human consumption. Large numbers of people living in the mountains, who rely on home gardens, are reported to be deserting villages in search for food as drought has resulted in widespread bushfires destroying homes, crops, grasslands and forests. Rivers and dams have also been severely depleted in highland areas, which have been the worst affected by a combination of four months of drought and serious frosts.

The areas most affected include Enga and southern and western highland provinces, where extensive damage to the sweet potato crop has left the communities with severely reduced food supplies and planting material. These regions are also the most vulnerable to food shortages as there are limited alternative foods available and no cash crops to generate income. In addition to these areas, communities in the upper Fly River, especially those around Kjunga, are experiencing difficulties in meeting food needs as the main river supply line is no longer functioning due to the drought and seriously reduced water levels.

Although there is a possibility of some rainfall later in the year, overall serious drought conditions are likely to continue till December or January 1998 and possibly March. The food supply and water situation, therefore, is likely to deteriorate significantly. So far official reports indicate that between 700,000 to one million people have been affected by extreme weather conditions and face food shortages. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the country’s 1997 coffee crop, a key export item, will be reduced by up to 50 per cent by the drought, while damage to cocoa and palm oil is also expected.

In Australia, a severe drought threatens the livelihood of thousands of farmers. According to the WMO, the region has been very dry since June, with large-scale wildfires and drought. Many areas have already experienced rainfall deficits of 400-500 mm (16-20 inches) in the last several months. Due to the shortage in rainfall, thousands of cattle have starved to death. In many areas farmers are abandoning their farms and are coming to the cities in search of employment.

Africa is also facing the wrath of El Niño. The southern part of West Africa received abnormally low rainfall since July. WMO says that the region also received an extended period of suppressed rainfall during the 1982-83 El Niño. The onset of the rainy season has not begun for most of southern Africa. As of the first part of November, eastern Africa experienced abnormally intense rainfall along the coast, and generally higher than normal precipitation.

Target India
There is no preparedness in India against El Niño, the Indian government does not even have an action plan

There is still confusion among Indian scientists on whether El Niño will strike India. However, weather experts from the West have predicted severe drought conditions and a shortage of foodgrains in 1998. Despite these warnings, Indian scientists are either ignorant or playing down this effect.
Some fear that publicising its effects on India could lead to panic in the market and speculation and hoarding of foodgrain.

As yet, western forecasts have not proved true. A forecast issued on June 26 by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had said that India would be drier than normal. Also, Ants Leetmaa, director of the Climate Prediction Center of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had said that El Niño would bring drought to India. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that although the overall rainfall situation in 1997 has been normal, poor temporal and spatial distribution of rains adversely affected crops in southern states where reductions in the output of winter foodgrains and oilseeds are expected. As a result, the output of winter grains is expected to be some two million tonnes below target and to fall from 105.1 million tonnes in 1996-97 to around 103.5 million tonnes in the current marketing year. Overall output of rice is projected to increase, by some 1.6 million tonnes, compared to 1996-97, though production of coarse grains and pulses are both expected to fall. The 1997-98 target for rice production, from the kharif and rabi crop, has been set at 83 million tonnes.

Government apathy
So far, no alarm bells have been sounded to face an impending crisis. No contingency plan has been worked out to face the calamity. “The last time India had drought was in 1987, which is said to have been caused by El Niño,” says Devinder Sharma, who is with the Delhi-based Biotechnology and Food Security, a research institute. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), New Delhi, had not predicted that drought. In fact, the government was caught unawares. Nevertheless, it acted quickly.

Following the failure of the south west monsoon, the government of India set up a cabinet committee on drought (CCD) which was headed by the then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi. Among the steps the CCD undertook were:

• Appropriate contingency measures and supply of adequate power in the agricultural sector to minimise crop losses

• Preparation of water budgets to optimise the use of water available in the reservoir and utilisation of ground water.

• Effective steps to provide drinking water to the drought affected population.

• Strengthening of the public distribution system

• Public health measures and providing supplementary nutrition for the young and the needy children in the drought affected areas.

While other countries are taking measures to meet the shortage in food supply, India in the second week of November exported wheat and rice. The government in Ecuador has stopped the export of foodgrains without debating over the authenticity of the prediction.

“The government does not even think it fit to appoint a committee of scientists or agriculturists to study the impact of El Niño on India. The government, whenever questioned, takes recourse in the fact the monsoons have been normal and there is no cause for alarm,” adds Sharma.

Well-known scientist M S Swaminathan while speaking to Down To Earth said that it is difficult to predict whether El Niño will affect India as the Indian monsoon is a very complex phenomenon. However, he says, “Keeping in mind the predictions of the FAO and the WMO, the Indian government should be prepared with a contingency plan”.

View from India
Indian weather experts believe that El Niño will have no impact on India. “Despite what the prophets of gloom in the West are predicting, our observations from meteorological centres across the country indicate a normal monsoon,” says N Sen Roy, director general, IMD.

The Indian monsoon has a direct impact on the Indian economy. A normal monsoon has great importance for India, where the agriculture sector accounts for more than 34 per cent of the country’s net domestic product. It provides employment to about 64.8 per cent of the country’s total work force.

IMD officials insist quantity and distribution of rainfall in the current monsoons has been normal so far. According to Roy, 29 of the country’s 35 meteorological sub divisions have received normal or excess rainfall. Most of the other regions have suffered only a marginal deficiency, which could be made up as the season progresses. He explained that the weather pattern is too complex, with far too many variables involved for a simplistic reading of weather to come by. “There is no correlation between El Niño and the state of the monsoons,” experts say.

Sources at the IMD said that the department had taken the El Niño into account while making the monsoon forecast. “There is no direct evidence to link the Indian monsoon with El Niño and how it affects the crops,” says P S Datta, a scientist working with the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. “It is too early to predict whether El Niño will strike India,” says S K Dubey, Centre for Atmospheric Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

In his book, “The history and economics of Indian famines (1914)”, A Laveday, a British drought and famine expert, wrote that it is towards the middle and the end of each century that most of the calamities have struck India. However, it is to be noted that it is only recently that scientists have linked disasters in various parts of the world with El Niño. Therefore, whether disasters in the past were related to El Niño, remains a debatable question. Richard Grove, professor of environmental history at the Australian National University, who has been doing major research on El Niño, feels that El Niño will have a direct effect on the monsoons in India. He told Down To Earth in a recent interview: “When you get a strong El Niño, the Indian monsoon fails. You can demonstrate that historically. The biggest famines in Indian history were directly linked with the El Niño effect.”

Indirect impact
At the same time there are a few scientists who see some connection between El Niño and the monsoons in India. D R Sikka, former director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in an interview with a fortnightly magazine said that the El Niño effect occurred when the pressures over the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean were out of phase. According to him, whenever the El Niño phenomenon has occurred, 60 per cent of the time India has had a bad monsoon. He says that it, however, has been different this year, and added that “regional or other factors” may have offset the El Niño effect.

J Srinivasan, chairperson, Centre for Atmospheric Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, says that whenever there was unusual warming or cooling of the east Pacific, global circulation patterns changed and hence rainfall in India was affected. “However”, he says, “We are not ready for a conclusive prediction.” While it cannot be said that sea warming will produce a serious drought, all the four serious droughts that have occurred in India over the last 120 years have been El Niño years.

Unending confusion
Though us weather experts have warned that a severe El Niño factor could badly affect the monsoons, Vasant Gowarikar, who is working with the IMD and is the creator of the 16-parameter monsoon prediction model in India, rejects this opinion. According to him, El Niño is just one of the parameters taken into account while preparing a long range forecast by the Indian Monsoon Prediction Model. He adds that US scientists consider only three to four factors. Gowarikar believes us scientists have been consistently wrong for several years while predicting the Indian monsoons.

According to K S Sivasami, a professor at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), “Indian monsoon prediction is currently based on an empirical 16-parameter model which the IMD has been successfully using since 1988 to predict monsoons. If we analyse monsoon rainfall data since 1951 onwards, it is clearly seen that there is no direct relation between El Niño and the Indian monsoon. There are many years in the past when El Niño has occurred, but India has witnessed good monsoons.

Weak forecasting
Some scientists acknowledge that there is something wanting with monsoon prediction in India. “Monsoon prediction in India is still at an empirical stage. Widespread droughts occur due to fluctuations in the monsoon. If the good monsoon period is longer, the subsequent decade may face drought,” says Sivasami. This means the drought may occur over large areas. It is mainly due to the fluctuation of monsoon and El Niño may be one of the factors. But in what way it is linked is still unknown. Moreover, it is still difficult to predict what will happen in the entire monsoon season and definitely not day-to-day or region-to-region variations. Till then India has to wait. If El Niño strikes, the government machinery will be caught napping and the worst hit will be the people.

(Down To Earth, December 15, 1997)

WHOSE WORLD IS IT AFTER ALL?

2009-07-09T04:49:00.000-07:00

Can multilateral banks usher in equitable and sustainable development in South Asia?

I know many who can read words and many, like me, who can only read the land. Both are important. We are not backward or less intelligent: we live in exactly the same up-to-date year as you. I was going to say we all live under the same stars, but no, they're different, and there are many more in the Kalahari. The sun and moon are the same.”
— Roy Sesana, acceptance speech, The Right Livelihood Awards 2005.

When Lalani Chandrika cries, her tears say it all. Chandrika was chased out from her ancestral home in Sri Lanka. And along with it she lost her children, as well as her identity. The reason for her condition is not the ethnic strife. But a project of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that has displaced thousands of people in the country. She was promised compensation, but ended up getting little. She believes that the bank did not follow its own guidelines while disbursing compensation. Her children are now scattered across the country.

Chandrika is not alone. Local people in Nepal have also been opposing many projects due to various reasons. “The World Bank pulled out of a hydroelectricity project because the inspection panel found gross violations with regard to the environment and the rights of indigenous people,” says Prabin Man Singh of Water and Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal. Many projects in the kingdom have since been abandoned. Not surprisingly, the cost of water and electricity has shot up in many areas. In Bangladesh, projects to embank the country’s many rivers have led to breaches and heavy loss of life and property. The experience of multilateral projects in India has also been the same. Whether it is the Sardar Sarovar or Tehri dam, they have been greeted with protests and have led to the displacement of millions of local people. Stifled voices such as Chandrika's made a refreshing appearance at a recent meeting of the Bank Information Center in Delhi, where participants made some interesting observations on the developmental effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) in South Asia.

Growing inequities
Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South, once said that MDBs believe that development can best take place in a free market economy where governance systems are weak. “They (MDBs) have slowly tuned the bureaucracy — the permanent arm of the government — and trained them,” says Ravi Revapragada, of Samatha, an Andhra-based NGO. The displacement of people due to such projects is because of an insensitive bureaucracy, which has allowed itself to become an agent for a new paradigm of development. A model that is throwing up more inequities in developing countries and is clashing with traditional and time-tested local economies. Soon there could be a ground swell against such projects, adds Ravi.

The conflicts are primarily over access for natural resources — land and water. In the rural economies of South Asian countries, land and water play a critical role in the livelihood of marginalised communities. When communities are displaced due to big projects, they not only lose their lands, but also their livelihoods. Not surprisingly the buzzword for compensation packages of MDBs is relocation, not rehabilitation. Maybe that’s why Chandrika cannot stop wailing as she feels like an orphan in her own country.

Poverty of ideas
“MDBs usually have one development model for all countries. But they must understand that every country is unique. So they need to sensitise their developmental models to suit local concerns. They also need to create open spaces for people to create their own models,” says Neil Tangri, who is with the Center for Economic Justice.

In their attempt to eradicate poverty, many projects in Asian countries have widened the rich-poor divide, maybe unwittingly. Some experts believe that MDBs have been moving community resources from the poor to the wealthy sections of society. And that’s what makes local people hostile to any developmental idea. “MDBs cannot claim credit for reducing India’s poverty. India has been slowly reducing poverty since Independence. If you look at countries like Kenya, Argentina, they have reduced poverty without much help from MDBs. The same is the case with China, South Korea and Taiwan. MDBs have been moving resources from the poor to the wealthy sections of society,” says Tangri. This has also led to a crucial shift in power.

The problem with MDBs is that they are not directly answerable to the government. In some cases, the banks have acknowledged how their own rules have been violated at the ground level while implementing projects. There is also the issue of corruption: funds meant for projects often siphoned off by implementing agencies. According to some estimates, the World Bank has lost around 25 per cent of money since 1944 due to inadequate monitoring mechanisms. Analysts say that while governments and civil society must work closely with MDBs, local institutions and voices of the marginalised must also be understood. Panchayati Raj institutions in India, for instance, can make development and governance more participatory and equitable. Maybe MDBs need to listen to the voices such as that of Chandrikas to make development truly sustainable.

(New Indian Express, February 23, 2006)

What’s your poison?

2009-07-09T04:47:00.000-07:00

IT’S there in your your water, milk, fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, wheatflour, bottled water and now...soft drinks. For some time evidence has been mounting against pesticides—from brain damaged infants in Rajasthan to cancer cases in Kerala. The latest report on pesticides in Coke and Pepsi is just another grim reminder that much of what we eat and drink is contaminated. There have been sporadic reports from across the country — in February this year, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based NGO, blew the whistle on the bottled water industry when it found high levels of pesticides in almost all brands. It has now followed up with its tests on soft drinks.

Food for grave thought
• There are no safe limits for pesticides in food products • Almost all food commodities in India are contaminated with pesticides • Pesticides cause long-term harm. Cancer, hormone disruption and immunity loss are linked to them • All that exists in regulations is some friendly advice to companies Earlier, a seven-year study conducted across 12 states by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) found dangerously high residues of pesticides (HCH and DDT) in milk products. ‘‘Almost all food commodities in India are contaminated with residues of pesticides, particularly DDT and BHC,’’ says N P Agnihotri of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. Ahmedabad-based CERC found pesticide residues in wheatflour. Fruits are not far behind. ‘‘Grapes, bananas and apples sold around Bangalore carry intolerably high levels of pesticides,’’ says T N Prakash of Bangalore-based University of Agricultural Sciences.

The question then is why is the government not stopping pesticides from becoming a part of our dinner table menu? Not only are there no standards for pesticide limits in soft drinks in India, there are none even for drinking water. Even more alarming — the limit for deadly arsenic and lead in soft drinks has been set 50 times higher than the permissible standards for bottled water or drinking water. Where is all this pesticide coming from? When India was busy increasing its food production by four times, correspondingly the pesticide consumption increased nine-fold.

Today, the pesticide industry in India is the fourth largest in the world and second largest in the Asia-Pacific region, after China. Estimates of its market value vary between Rs 3,800 and Rs 4,100 crore. It also has the dubious distinction of producing more than a dozen pesticides and insecticides that have been banned the world over. Adding to this mess is India’s unregulated food industry. Food products are licensed under the Food Products Order and further regulated under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954. The BIS standards (Bureau of Indian Standards), are largely voluntary. With multiplicity of agencies, even these standards do not get enforced.

And if you want to go to the courts to tackle pesticides, you might as well give up. A pesticide cannot be de-registered even if there is scientific proof that it is harmful. The pesticide industry’s strength lies in a large and cultivated network of scientists, agriculturalists and officials who spring to its defence whenever it’s caught on the wrong foot. ‘‘Pesticide companies don’t adhere to the same standards in India,’’ says Ravi Agarwal of Shristi, an NGO fighting pesticide companies. After the CSE findings on pesticides in colas, people are now waiting for the government to act.

(Indian Express, August 10, 2003)

Nature strikes back

2009-07-09T04:40:00.000-07:00

2005 will go down in our memory as the year we faced the maximum number of natural calamities

By S S Jeevan

The images were stark and stunning - gushing waters entering houses. Streets flooded. Electricity cut off. Carcasses floating around. Angry residents screaming for help. People frantically trying to reach makeshift relief shelters. A non-existent state machinery. And stampedes at relief centres. You could be forgiven for imagining that this is a scene from a flood-ravaged developing country. But this was Katrina - one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the US in a very long time. The hurricane not only made the world’s only superpower look like a helpless Third World country, but it was also a wake up call to the world that something is terribly wrong with Mother Nature.

2005 will be best remembered as the year of disasters. Beginning with the heart-wrenching images of last year’s tsunami, disasters broke all geographical barriers this year - earthquakes in Kashmir, Iran and Indonesia, hurricanes in USA and Brazil, floods in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and unprecedented torrential rains in China. The mayhem broke all barriers, both for developed as well as developing countries. If 1998 was the hottest year, 2005 was the costliest ever, with over US$ 200 billion dollars in economic losses as a result of weather-related natural disasters. This year’s record onslaught of disasters seems to corroborate what scientists have been saying for some time now: destructive weather patterns of recent years are due to climate change. And this could well be just the beginning.

Climate chaos
Earlier this year the scientific journal Nature said that hurricanes in the Atlantic and North Pacific had roughly doubled over 30 years. Scientific analysis also shows that storms have become more intense in the past several decades. Recently Science reported that the frequency of hurricanes had significantly increased over the past 35 years - the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, and the most powerful ones, had increased by over 80 percent over that period.

The situation was no different in India: Mumbai recorded 944 mm of rain in 24 hours, the greatest and most intense spell of rainfall ever recorded in India. Chennai is witnessing its worst floods in the last 25 years. And according to the United Nations Environment Programme, the number of tropical storms in 2005 surpassed all records - there have been 26 storms, five more than the previous record of 21. Of the 26, 16 reached hurricane force. Research across the world reveals that rapid urbanisation - and the huge amounts of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases that come with it - are responsible for this situation. In fact, Katrina and other hurricanes have belatedly galvanised the US public towards the burning issue of global warming, since the country is the biggest stumbling block towards ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty to arrest greenhouse gas emissions.

Triggering disasters
Scientists also believe that apart from climate change, increasing population and rapid development, especially in vulnerable areas, may be fuelling this crisis. For instance, one reason being cited for the flood devastation this year in Tamil Nadu is that of encroachment of catchment areas such as ponds and tanks.

According to one estimate, nearly 3,000 tanks in the state have been lost over the years, and now exist only on government records. The Madurai corporation office, for example, is located in a tank area. Such water bodies would not only have stored water, but also prevented large-scale flooding. According to a study conducted by Dhan, an organisation working towards regenerating water bodies throughout South India, many tanks have gone completely defunct due to various reasons such as heavy siltation, urbanisation and encroachments resulting in extremely poor storage capacity.

In some cases, tanks have been destroyed due to effluent discharge from tanneries and factories. It is well known that tanks are the most important sources for storage of rainwater; they retain ground water, besides preventing large-scale flooding. ‘‘Unplanned development, especially in vulnerable areas has turned natural disasters into major calamities resulting in heavy loss of life and property,’’ says Dhan’s executive director, M P Vasimalai.

Coping with calamities
Experts say that climate change is a larger problem that would require sincere and long-term commitments from rich countries to reduce carbon emissions. But in the short run, disaster preparedness and disaster management need urgent attention from governments, especially in developing countries. Because it is mostly the poor people, living downstream, who face the wrath of every natural calamity. Whether it was the floods in New Orleans or the earthquake in Kashmir, the deprived are the worst affected, even when it comes to relief - the death of over 40 flood-affected people at a relief centre in Chennai last week is a powerful reminder to this reality.

Environmentalist Anil Agarwal once said, ‘‘Disasters come and go but our government has become a permanent disaster.’’ It is not that India doesn’t have the scientific expertise to predict, prepare and contain a natural disaster. Just that there is a shocking lack of political will among governments to implement policy decisions. ‘‘We need to empower the stakeholders to face every disaster and minimise the response time. A vulnerability map must to be prepared for disaster-prone regions,’’ adds Vasimalai. Moreover, developmental planning must take into account simple logic like the fact that earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do. And town planners must make earthquakes less devastating. Just like protecting the vanishing mangroves in South India could have, to some extent, reduced the impact of the tsunami.

We also need to rethink whether diluting the coastal regulation zone rules for construction work can become counter-productive, as the threat of a future tsunami looms large over South Asia. In a year dominated by unending news of disasters, it was but appropriate that Parliament passed the Disaster Management Bill, 2005. Among other things, the bill mandates the setting up of a National Disaster Management Authority under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister. But the success of its implementation can only be gauged when the next calamity strikes.

(New Indian Express, December 25, 2005)

Out of gas?

2009-07-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

The World’s oil reserves are drying up. Are we headed towards an energy crisis?

By S S Jeevan

In 1956, legendary geophysicist King Hubbert predicted that US oil production would peak in early 1970s and then slowly decline, in something resembling a bell-shaped curve. At that time, governments scoffed at him and experts rubbished his theory. But his prediction came true in 1970 and following the Arab oil embargo in 1973, prices of oil quadrupled. Forty-five years later, Kenneth S Deffeyes, another geophysicist and professor at Princeton University, used Hubbert’s methods to make fresh forecasts in 2001. It is a scary one: global oil production will ‘peak sometime between 2004 and 2008, and the world’s production of crude oil will fall, never to rise again’.

Is the world running out of oil? And is the 100-year petroleum era nearly over? Two recent developments give credence to this theory. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that oil major Shell had over-estimated its proven oil reserves in Oman by as much as 40 per cent. The scandal led to the sacking of Philip Watts, Shell’s head of exploration and development. Shell may not be alone. Most oil companies and even governments are known to notoriously hype estimates of how much oil they have.

On March 31, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided to cut oil production by 1 million barrels per day, pointing towards a new era of higher oil prices, particularly as demand has increased sharply, especially in Asia. Even the respected New Scientist magazine recently said that peak production year is 2004. Virtually all experts believe that we will certainly be staring at an oil crisis much before the end of this decade.

A growing number of geologists and energy analysts say that global oil reserves may be dangerously exaggerated. “An amazing display of ignorance, deliberate ignorance, denial and obfuscation by governments, industry and academics on this topic,” as geologist Colin Campbell puts it in his award-winning book The Coming Oil Crisis.

In 2000, global production stood at 76 million barrels per day (MBD). By 2020, demand is forecast to reach 112 MBD, an increase of 47 per cent. But additions to proven reserves have virtually stopped and it is clear that pumping at present rates is unsustainable. With oil prices currently at around $38 a barrel, the highest for nearly 15 years, and the threat of diminishing supply, the question of reserves has assumed a greater importance than ever. Especially for a country such as India that is pitifully dependent on imports to take care of its energy needs.

Oil’s not well
India is one of the top six oil-consuming countries in the world. But it has just 0.4 per cent of the world’s petroleum reserves. More than 70 per cent of the country’s oil requirement is met by imports -- 45 per cent of which is from politically volatile countries in the Middle East. Between 1990 and 1999, net imports of crude oil and petroleum products more than doubled. So even a slight increase in international oil prices has huge repercussions on the economy. Consider this: if oil prices rise by US $1, India’s annual oil bill can increase by US $600 million. The International Monetary Fund estimates that every rise of US $5 in the cost of crude oil lowers India’s Gross Domestic Product by 0.5 per cent, raises inflation by 1.5 per cent, and leads to an outflow of Rs 18,000 crore.

Oil also fuels the transportation industry -- 75 per cent of transportation runs on oil. So the cost of transport fuel has a greater impact on the price line since trucks transport many goods. The volatile global oil market has had a telling effect on India. Since April 2000, the price of diesel has gone up by 40 per cent and that of petrol by 23 per cent. And this trend is only bound to get worse.

Estimates suggest that India’s GDP will grow at an average of 5.2 per cent per year till 2025, and oil demand will grow by 4 per cent a year. This translates to oil demand shooting up to 274 million tonnes in 2025. Now it is 115 million tonne a year. India did made some feeble attempts to procure gas from other sources. But these efforts came a cropper. Unocal of USA, which discovered gas in the Bibiyana field of northwest Bangladesh in 1998, wanted to build a 1,363-km pipeline to export gas. But the Bangladeshi government has been unable to decide if it wants to allow export of gas to India. Now officials are negotiating with Myanmar for its oil and gas reserves in the hope that Bangladesh will sign the agreement.

The pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan has been discussed for over 10 years. But nothing much has happened. An undersea pipeline fetching gas from Iran or Qatar is yet to take off. Another project to fetch gas from Oman has been shelved after eight years of study and expenses of Rs 330 crore. An undersea pipeline is anywhere between two to ten times as expensive as one over land. The process to deregulate the oil sector has been going on for some time now. But experts are quite pessimistic about the NELP (New Exploration Licensing Policy), which they say will not be able to meet the rising demand. Privatising the sector too could well be a stopgap arrangement, nothing short of buying time. Sooner or later oil reserves are going to dry up the world over.

A renewable crisis
It is fashionable to talk of renewable energy, even for the oil cartel bigwigs. Substitutes for oil exist: fusion, fuel cells, high-powered batteries, electric, solar, hybrid etc. But none of them are worth a thing because nobody has prototyped it to be sold on a large scale. The nexus of governments and oil industry is far too strong for even those wanting to make earnest efforts at renewable energy.

There is one other reason why renewable energy sources are at a disadvantage: subsidy. In most countries, taxpayers’ money is used to subsidise the price of fossil fuels, keeping them artificially low. Because of this renewable energy options remain uncompetitive. And cleaner-fuel cars are prohibitive to say the least. So any possibility of a transition to cleaner energy options like solar and wind power or fuel cells remains elusive. Is there a way out?

In 1987, the Indian government’s Renewable Energy Development Agency set up a number of programmes to reduce oil-based electricity usage. Today, we are the largest user of photovoltaic systems in the world. China too adopted a nationwide energy efficiency programme in the 1980s. Within a decade, overall energy intensity fell by 50 per cent even as its economy grew rapidly. As Hubbert’s predictions threaten come true in a fuel-guzzling world, we need to realize that we are heading towards a slippery future.

(New Indian Express, May 2, 2004)

WATERSHED AWARD

2009-07-09T04:26:00.000-07:00

Tamil Nadu is elated but the discontent in Karnataka over the Cauvery Tribunal order means that the last has not been heard in the long-drawn-out battle over sharing of the river’s water

By S S Jeevan and Stephen David

It’s a dispute that has fanned political embers in two southern states for over 50 years, testing the patience of the best of negotiators and making a mockery of attempts to arrive at a settlement by different parties. It has frustrated the efforts of successive chief ministers and widened the differences between the two states, leading to emotional outbursts and violent clashes. But as the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) gave its final verdict on February 5 after a wait of over 16 years, Tamil Nadu had reasons to feel relieved. “Justice has been done to the state,” said Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

Across the border in Karnataka, emotions ran high as politicians and the public cried foul. Cauvery, which originates in the Brahmagiri hill range in Karnataka and winds 780 km through three southern states before emptying into the Arabian Sea, is not only dear to farmers—it is also a big stepping-stone to wannabe politicos who find it easy to whip up passions on the politics of water.

The CWDT, comprising Chairman Justice N.P. Singh and members N.S. Rao and Sudhir Narain, in a unanimous award asked Karnataka to make available 419 tmcft to Tamil Nadu and 7 tmcft to Puducherry. This is better than what Tamil Nadu could have expected. In an interim award on June 25, 1991, the tribunal had directed Karnataka to release 205 tmcft each year to Tamil Nadu at Mettur, of which Tamil Nadu had to release 6 tmcft to Puducherry. Though the state had argued for 562 tmcft of water to meet irrigation, domestic and industrial requirements, most people seem satisfied with the verdict.

Experts believe that the final award eliminates the possibility of disputes over claims and counter-claims of quantity and quality of water. The CWDT has also fixed monthly release schedule and the award will come into effect within 90 days of its notification by the Centre. For Karunanidhi, the decision has come at the right time. Having been unable to achieve a breakthrough in the Mullaperiyar Dam with his Kerala counterpart, he has lost no time in taking the credit. “I have been discussing the issue with 11 Karnataka chief ministers since 1968. Only now a favourable decision has been arrived at,” he said. The Opposition in the state has, however, come out against the verdict. AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa said the state should move the Supreme Court to get more water.

In Karnataka, the tribunal’s order is not seen as the last word in the dispute. The last interim order by the tribunal in 1991 saw riots breaking out in south Karnataka after it was felt that the order weighed heavily in favour of Tamil Nadu. This time, 16,000 policemen were out in Bangalore alone. Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy called for an all party meeting to take a decision on going for appeal against the “black Monday” order even as the Akhila Karnataka Gadi Horata Samiti, an umbrella organisation of pro-Kannada groups, announced a Karnataka bandh on February 8. Samiti president Vatal Nagaraj called the order a death sentence for the state. “You will have no drinking water in Bangalore if we follow this order,” he said.

But more than looking at the Cauvery as a source of water for cities like Bangalore, some fringe Kannada groups like Kannada Rakshana Vedike and many self-styled native saviours are going around parts of the state showing off their strength by forcing the Government to shut down schools and colleges.

But both Kumaraswamy and Karunanidhi feel that only a political dialogue can find a solution to the order. “It is a very bitter award for the state,” says Kumaraswamy, who is planning to cash in on his pro-farmer image and go on a statewide tour to talk about the Centre’s alleged ill-treatment to his state.

Cauvery is an emotive issue in Karnataka. That is why the late Rajkumar, the king of Kannada cinema, came out in public to lead a rally over Cauvery in September 2002 on behalf of the Kannada film and TV industry. The “silent” rally, dubbed ‘Cauvery nammadu’ (Cauvery is ours) featuring Kannada stars like Shivrajumar, Upendra, Ravichandran, Ramesh, Srinath, Devraj, Sudeep, Jayamala, Umasri, Sriraksha and Pramila Joshi had also brought Bangalore to a halt.

The plus side to the February 5 order is that the CWDT has accepted Karnataka’s argument for a distress formula and said that when the yield is less, the allocated shares will be proportionately reduced among all the states. It also lifted the 11.2 lakh hectare ceiling imposed on Karnataka, which means that the state is now free to make judicious use of the excess water when the monsoon is good. It has also given the green signal for taking up hydro-electric projects in the common reach boundary provided the specified water releases are ensured. An independent regulatory authority to monitor the monthly releases is also a welcome move by Tamil Nadu, but Karnataka is hoping that it will not be there when it appeals in the Supreme Court against the tribunal’s order. While making political capital is one thing, the ground reality that can help the Kumaraswamy regime now is blessings by the rain gods. Good rains in the intermediate and lower catchment areas result in an abundance of water that could help keep Kumaraswamy out of trouble. Meanwhile, the finalé to the dispute is yet to flood in.

(India Today, February 19, 2007)

MISSION THIRST AID

2009-07-09T04:21:00.000-07:00

Restoration of traditional water tanks has rejuvenated life in parched areas and helped revive agriculture

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But the seemingly dead calmness that greets you in Vellinipatti, a village in Madurai district, belies the intense struggle of the local people for water. For years the 1,500 people of this village, who primarily depend on agriculture for livelihood, had to fight with each other over every drop of water available. Over 30 years of encroachments had turned their 1000-year-old, 27-acre water tank into a ruin and choked water supply. But today all that has changed. Their tank is overflowing with water.

Similarly there are hundreds of such tanks in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherri that have been renovated through an initiative by NGO Dhan Foundation. “We have realised that reviving surface water through community efforts is probably the only way to take the pressure off from groundwater and restore livelihoods,” says Dhan’s executive director M.P. Vasimalai. Water tanks, one of the oldest man-made ecosystems, have irrigated about 6.5 million hectares of land since the early 1950s. But over the decades, their numbers had declined.

The road to their revival was meticulously planned. For instance, the organisation conducted a detailed survey of the water table with the help of local people, civil, hydraulic and irrigation engineers and then devised a restoration strategy. With inputs from government agencies and local communities, the tanks were renovated within a timespan of two-three months. The cost of the whole renovation project—Rs 20 lakh—was shared between the Government, the funding agency as well as the village community.

“As a social system, tanks have served and benefitted various groups of the village community, such as farmers, fishermen and especially the women who had to trudge long distances to fetch water,” says A. Gurunathan, a programme leader of the project. The support that the local people are giving to this initiative is also commendable. Earlier, encroachments in Athigarikulam tank in Andipatti of the Theni district had forced farmers to migrate to other villages due to the non-availability of water for irrigation. But with the initiative of the local people and with the assistance of the district collector, the tank was revived.

Courts too have stepped in periodically, giving a muchneeded fillip to these community initiatives. “The efforts have not just triggered a water movement, but given back the management of water in the hands of the community, as has been the case for centuries,” adds Vasimalai.

(India Today, May 7, 2007)

BEAT ABOUT BUSH

2009-07-09T04:11:00.000-07:00

He may not have a clean environmental track record. But as president, George W Bush will have to tread carefully

AS GEORGE W BUSH heads for the White House, a wave of scepticism greets this former Texas governor. Bush arrives in Washington with a weak public mandate and a divided congress. What that will mean for the environment, is a question that is as riddled as the unending recounts and court cases that preceded his ‘victory'. One thing is certain: Bush will not be able to take a hardline stance on any issue, even if he wants to.

Judging from his past, Bush has shown little interest in environmental issues. "He has displayed no normative commitment to matters of the environment or international equity,' says Jeff Romm of the University of Berkeley, USA. There is a fear that he may dismantle the ‘environmental legacy' of the Clinton administration. "There will be a hardening of the US position on issues such as landuse and forest ‘sinks' and a stronger emphasis on flexibility mechanisms such as emissions trading,' says Ujjayant Chakravorty of Emory University, USA.

Bush has often said that he seeks further scientific evidence of climate change before pursuing significant policies. Since there is substantial scientific evidence, many interpret Bush's position as one of denial or ignorance. His environmental record in Texas is abysmally poor. When he was governor, the state led all others in total emissions, note analysts. Environmentalists point to an upward spike in ozone violations since Bush became governor in 1995. Data from the US Environment Protection Agency and the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission show there were 679 eight-hour ozone violations in Texas' eight major metropolitan areas in the 1995-99 period, up from 508 in 1990-94.

As for the negotiations associated with the Kyoto Protocol, Bush has said that he would not sign it in its present form, and many are sceptical if he will ever fully support a multilateral treaty that privileges ecological health over economic growth. Additionally, the US congress is on record saying that it will not ratify the protocol unless developing nations take on immediate commitments. This hamstrung the Clinton administration and will provide justification for foot-dragging by a Bush administration. "I think a Bush administration will drag its feet on climate change arguing that any significant movement on the issue will come at the expense of economic costs that he thinks the country is unwilling to endure,' says Paul Wapner of the American University. It would also mean a lower degree of enthusiasm for securing substantial funding for projects such as the clean development mechanisms (CDMs). The US private sector has shown interest in CDMs, as they stand to make a lot of money. They were disappointed that the CDMs did not materialise in the recently concluded climate talks at The Hague.

Speaking at a presidential debate at Wake Forest University on Oct 11, 2000, Bush said: "I'm not going to let the US carry the burden for cleaning up the world's air, like the Kyoto treaty would have done. China and India were exempted from that treaty.' He was only echoing what his father, former President George Bush, said at the Rio Summit in 1992, that the US "standard of living is not subject to negotiation.'

Therefore, a radical change in climate change policy is certainly not on the anvil.On the contrary, there may be a concerted effort to reduce the US dependence on foreign oil and increase drilling activity in the US. Incidentally, both Bush and vice president-elect Dick Cheney have been closely associated with oil companies in the past. The federal reserve economic models are heavily impacted by assumptions about oil prices, so whether it is a US $35 a barrel or US $22 barrel will make a significant difference on the US economy in the coming months. For Bush, US energy needs are about tapping more sources for oil. This is why he campaigned on opening up the Tongass Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil exploration. "He may try to drill for oil, but Democrats will be able to stop this as polls indicate popular opposition to such a policy,' feels Armin Rosencranz, professor at Stanford University, USA.

Some analysts believe that climate negotiators under a Bush administration cannot be much worse than the Clinton-Gore negotiators — both in terms of exploiting loopholes in the ‘trading' and ‘sinks' proposals and in violating US diplomatic commitments by insisting on developing country participation during the first round of the Kyoto protocol. "I would expect about the same level of intransigence from a Bush administration which will result only in intensifying the sense of diplomatic fatigue among the various delegations to the talks,' says Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-Up, The Prescription .

One group that will benefit from the Bush presidency is the large US NGOs such as the Sierra Club and the World Wide Fund for Nature. "Their best days were when Reagan and Bush were in office. Since then their funding campaigns have gone down. They stand to gain once again,' feels Adil Najam, assistant professor at Boston University, USA.

Endangered Act!
The fate of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 also hangs in the balance. Over the past 25 years, the ESA has been a critical tool to protect species and habitats across the country. The Clinton administration worked hard in a defensive mode over the past few years to protect the Act from being gutted. Many members of the Republicans, however, tried consistently to undermine the Act's provisions. The Democrats were largely successful — although funds were cut that compromise full implementation of the Act — but it will be a much different situation with a Republican administration. "Bush will probably try to gut ESA, and anything remotely green,' warns Tom Athanasiou of EcoEquity, a non-governmental organisation based in California.

Bush may take power away from the federal government and place it in the hands of local governmental officials. This spells bad news for the ESA, as the act depends upon federal agencies to investigate petitions to place certain species on the endangered list and to oversee the implementation of regulations that actually protect species at risk. Some observers believe that Bush may not make a dent on the ESA within a four-year term. "A conservative Congress failed to undermine it, so a divided Congress is less likely to do so,' says Romm. He might, however, undertake strong efforts to share ESA responsibilities with the states. "That may be advantageous to some regions like the Pacific coast, but could destroy all hope in others like the Gulf states and Alaska,' Romm adds.

Another aspect of this is that Bush strongly believes in the rights of property owners to do what they want on their land. The ESA has provisions for reducing the choices landowners have for landuse and this Bush feels is ‘anti-American.' That is, private property is a sacred notion for Bush and it trumps federal environmental protection efforts.

Down to Earth, January 2001

SMALL TOWNS, BIG MESS

2009-07-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

Something terrible is going on in India's small cities. There are warning signals from whatever data is available — and that is not much, as the Central Pollution Control Board is yet to publish data for 1997. The latest data would provide a more accurate picture of the present air quality status. Visits to a couple of small towns in India overwhelmingly point to a growing menace of air pollution. S S JEEVAN reports from Dehradun and Gajaraula

Dehradun
It is a sight which Suresh Rawat, a hotelier in the hill station of Mussourie that overlooks the town of Dehradun in Uttar Pradesh, could do without. Every winter, thick blue smoke envelops this town, casting a shadow on one of the most picturesque valleys in Asia. "Doon is a broad valley. This sometimes gives rise to a lateral inversion that does not allow hot air to rise from the valley. As a result the smoke settles over the valley," says Hugh Gantzer, resident of Mussourie and a member of a monitoring committee set up by the Supreme Court to restore the "natural normalcy of the Doon Valley".

Down in the valley, Tarun Pal, a resident of Dehradun, is wary of the first rains of the monsoon. "They leave scars on my car," he says. "I am sure that the rains here are acidic, although no studies have been conducted," says Anoop Kumar, editor of Doon City Chronicle, a local magazine.
Air pollution in Dehradun has been in the headlines for some time now. More than a decade ago it was limestone mining, but this was banned in 1986 by the Supreme Court in response to a public interest petition. "Although the SPM levels have shown a downward trend over the years, they are still above the prescribed limits at all the monitoring sites in Dehradun," says Shobha Chaturvedi, assistant scientific officer with the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB). In 1997, the city's annual average SPM level was more than twice the permissible limit and the maximum spm level was more than thrice the standard. Moreover, SPM levels were higher in residential areas compared to industrial areas.

Today, vehicular emissions are the main reason for air pollution. According to the road transport authority, only 10,000 vehicles were registered in Dehradun between 1937 and 1967. There are more than 126,452 vehicles plying on the roads at present, more than 100,000 of these are two-wheelers. However, the length and width of roads have increased only marginally. Result: traffic congestion. "Air pollution is concentrated in the middle of the town. The Saharanpur road, Gandhi road and the Railway station areas are the most polluted areas," says Kumar.
A study by the Dehradun-based People's Science Institute (PSI), a non-governmental organisation, says, "The abnormally high levels of SPM in Dehradun are mainly due to natural dust and particulate-laden smoke from diesel-fuelled vehicles, especially Vikrams, trucks, buses and three-wheelers." The impact on public health has been telling. PSI functionaries say the prevalence of respiratory diseases has risen alarmingly over the past decade and most cases are linked to air pollution. The institute conducted a study in which it selected a few plants and monitored the growth of their leaves at four sites in the town and one control site far away from the town. "We found that the growth of the bougainvillaea, lantana, litchi and mango was severely hampered by air pollution. However, some pollution-tolerant plants like jambolan (jamun) were not affected," says Anita Dutta of PSI.

"Vikrams are petrol-driven, but the replacement rate of petrol engines by diesel engines is about 99 per cent," Kumar says. Officially, about 2,050 Vikrams are registered in the town. "But there are several Vikrams registered in nearby towns like Saharanpur plying in Dehradun," says Ravi Chopra of PSI.
Another cause for concern are two-wheelers. "In the absence of a public transport system - and Vikrams being the only alternative - most middle-class people prefer scooters," says Gantzer. "There is also a class distinction attached with Vikrams. Most people prefer their own vehicles," adds Kumar. He points out that a survey conducted in the late 1980s revealed that on an average, each Dehradun family owned two vehicles. In some cases it was even three. "This number must have increased considerably by now," Kumar comments. Till a viable alternative is found to Vikrams, the sight that a tourist will behold from Mussourie, will not be a pleasant one.

GAJARAULA
There is no evidence more conclusive about the state of air pollution in Gajraula, a sleepy industrial town in Uttar Pradesh, than the air itself. As one enters the town, breathing becomes difficult. "The residents of the town have got used to the air quality. But visitors generally have difficulty in breathing," says an engineer who works in one of the polluting industrial units. CPCB data for 1997 show both the maximum and average levels of SPM way above the prescribed limit.

Gajraula was declared an industrial town in 1981-82. Within a few years, a number of industrial units - mainly chemical and pharmaceutical factories - sprung up. "After the setting up of these units, air pollution has increased at an alarming rate. We do not know what the pollution control board officials are doing. I am sure that these officials are fudging the data, because if an independent study is conducted, the figures would be higher," says Jitendra M Shukla, president, Nagrik Suraksha Samithi, a local organisation campaigning against industrial pollution.

A visit to the office of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) in Moradabad can be quite revealing. Although admitting that industrial units are polluting the air, the regional officer, R C Chowdary, says pollution is only to be expected in an industrial town. "The industrial units have installed pollution control equipment," he justifies. "We have all the requisite pollution control equipment," says Ajay Jain of J K Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Then why is the air polluted? "Poor enforcement," explains Shukla. Repeated visits by the Down To Earth reporter to the UPPCB monitoring station in the town proved futile as there was nobody at the office. CPCB officials in Delhi reveal that of the 20 large- and medium-scale industrial units in Gajraula, nine are classified as polluting.

The health of the residents is in jeopardy. There has been a steep rise in prevalence of asthma, respiratory problems and lung diseases after the industries have come up. Says N Mathur, superintendent of the government hospital in Gajraula: "Sixty-seventy per cent of my patients complain of respiratory problems. Cases of chronic lung problems are increasing. In 1985-86, I used to get an average 5-10 patients every month with respiratory problems. Now it is 30-40 patients," he says. Many of his patients are employed in the industrial units.

Cultivable land has undergone a change after the setting up of the industrial units. Mango, that was extensively cultivated here, has now been replaced by sugarcane and rice. "My mango trees were affected by air pollution from industrial units," says Tirath Ram, whose fields lie just outside the town, and who has now given up growing mango trees. Surely, if scientific studies are conducted on the state of air pollution in Gajraula, the results will be alarming. Till then, the town continues to suffer in silence.

(Down To Earth, Oct 1999)

WTO: DOHA ROUND

2009-07-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

Neither a Victory for the North, Nor a Loss for the South

By Anju Sharma with S S Jeevan

The choice of venue was clever and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center added to the security paranoia. The result was that it combined to give trade negotiators somewhat of a breather when they met in Doha, Qatar, for the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The massive street protests that marked the Seattle round were non-existent at the Doha ministerial. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks against the US, anti-globalisation protesters were suddenly disoriented, and several plans for protests at Doha were cancelled. "Are we talking about anti-capitalisation, anti-globalisation or anti-Americanism? It didn’t matter before September 11; now it does," says Tom Spencer, director of the European Centre for Public Affairs.

Besides, the organisers were not taking any chances, and the conference venue looked like a fortress. The perceived threat of terrorism was used as an effective way of stopping anyone opposed to the WTO — out of sight, and perhaps out of mind.

With the debacle of Seattle looming large, the negotiators were under pressure to come up with results. And at the end of the six-day marathon meeting, a deal was struck. It was agreed to start negotiations on a new trade round to culminate in 2005. For the North, which was keen to bring issues of investment and competition into global trade negotiations, it was a "given". Most importantly, they got an agreement for a new round of negotiations. The South lost most battles, but was relieved to still be in the reckoning. Most gains were in the backroom "bilateral deals" — a euphemism for arm-twisting.

Give and take!
The biggest gain for developing countries was on patents and drugs. Countries were granted the right to break the monopoly over patented drugs in case of health emergencies like epidemics. Analysts feel that the issue was clinched only due to the US’ predicament over anthrax drugs. But the drug industry has dismissed Doha as a political statement and not legally binding. The European Union (EU) brought an agreement within reach by making a concession on agricultural subsidies. It agreed to "reductions, with the view to phasing out", of agricultural export subsidies — something it had always resisted. However, a qualifying phrase was included in the agreement, which said the EU’s concession was made "without prejudging the outcome of the (final) negotiations". "It was clear from the very beginning that we have to give and to take also something," said European agriculture commissioner, Franz Fischler. In return, WTO members accepted EU demands that investment, competition and environment rules be put on the agenda.

The US agreed to relax some import curbs. And it got an assurance on the anti-dumping issue. The US has given assurance of greater discipline in imposition of anti-dumping provisions. But on the issue of greatest concern to the South, textiles, the US refused to advance the deadline for quota reduction from January 2005. It has, in fact, threatened to impose non-tariff barriers on other imports if pushed.

In return for the concessions made by the EU, negotiators wanted stronger language on trade and protecting the environment. Developing countries, however, did not want the environment to be linked to trade rules. They felt that environmental concerns would be used as an excuse for renewed protectionism. For now, the issue has been put on the backburner. The EU has won the right to talks within two years on how to improve the investment climate for international companies abroad, and how to introduce competition policy into trade law.

The Indian act: deal breaker
India made all the right noises at the meeting, but came back with very little. Indian commerce and industry minister Murasoli Maran, who called WTO "a necessary evil", was seen as the champion of developing countries. He was also the biggest stumbling block during negotiations. India, which has just a share of 0.7 per cent of world trade, was wary that a clause on competition would allow foreign companies too much freedom to operate in the country. India’s intransigence led to the extension of the conference by a day. Till the last day, the minister seemed to block a declaration. In an effort to reach an agreement, many trade ministers held several closed-door meetings with Maran. But nothing worked. Media reports suggest that the issue was clinched only when the Qatari chief negotiator Yousef Hussein Kamal held a one-to-one meeting with the minister. That meeting changed everything. India finally fell in line. What transpired at that meeting, however, remains unknown.

Maran is being showered with encomiums for holding his ground at Doha. In reality, he has only bought more time with regards to issues such as investment and competition. The delay is being seen as a victory — typical of Indian bureaucracy’s shortsightedness. The strategy is to block a proposal without proposing a new one. But as countries tighten the noose in the forthcoming negotiations, India will be forced to accept what it fought all the while.

TRADE AND ENVIRONMENT
Can green mean free? The debate reached a boiling point in Doha, but remained inconclusive

Midway through the Doha meeting, EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy visited Rainbow Warrior, the mascot ship of the international environment activist organisation Greenpeace, anchored in the Qatari seawaters. "Some balance between the trade rules and environmental protection is to be struck, that is why we are here," Lamy said on board his high-visibility platform. The gesture might have struck a chord back home in Europe, but most countries from either side of the economic divide did not agree.

The EU had made it abundantly clear even before the ministerial that inclusion of environmental concerns was in effect a sine qua non for the EU’s agreement to ambitious negotiations on cutting back state supports for agriculture. The EU move is perceived as a means to retain some green barriers to its agriculture markets when its agricultural subsidies are eventually phased out as envisaged in the Doha declaration. It is pushing for recognition of the ‘multifunctionality of agriculture’. Under this concept, agriculture does not just serve the purpose of providing food but also helps in maintaining rural communities, protect the environment if non-intensive methods are used, preserve culture and promote sustainable development. This possible connection between agriculture and environment is seen as one of the reasons why the EU is pushing environment at the WTO.

The South opposes bringing the issues related to environmental protection into the mainstream of multilateral trade talks, saying their potential abuse as green protectionism cannot be ruled out. In the past, the demands for linkages between trade and environment have come not only from Northern non-governmental organisations (NGOS), but also from Northern industry and labour unions, which stand to benefit if environmental standards are applied to trade.

Developing countries also fear the huge costs associated with greener technologies, which will be unbearable by their domestic industries. It could make their goods uncompetitive in western markets. This unequivocal opposition to greening of trade is what brings the motley crew of poor countries together. "If there’s one thing that unites developing countries, it is opposition to negotiations on trade and environment," said a developing country official before the meeting. "If the EU says it’s a deal-breaker, so be it. There are just too many people against it." The Republican Bush administration shares these views (unlike the democrats), and would rather the green issues remain outside the purview of the WTO, as they could harm the interests of US industry. For instance, US biotechnology firms stand to lose out, due to the wariness against genetically modified (GM) food.

Despite this opposition, the EU threat that it would negotiate on liberalising agricultural trade only if other WTO members agree to talk on trade and environment, eventually worked. The final ministerial declaration controversially proposes negotiations to enhance "mutual supportiveness of trade and environment". The declaration reiterates the EU demand seeking clarification on the relationship between the WTO rules and "trade obligations set out in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAS)" instructs the WTO’s committee on trade and environment (CTE) to give special attention to, among other things, ecolabelling suggests reduction and even elimination of trade barriers to environmental goods and services, a move that has been mutely welcomed by developing nations seeks to further strengthening the links between trade and environment by proposing negotiations on "procedures for regular information exchange" between the relevant MEA bodies and their counterparts in the WTO.

Indian industry minister Murasoli Maran dismissed the environment provisions in the declaration as "the price we have to pay for something in agriculture". "We have marginally agreed on environment, which to a large extent, is a political acknowledgement of its importance rather than rebalancing of rights and obligations," he said.

The environmental measures listed in the Doha declaration are not new. They have been part of the discussions at the CTE for several years now, and have been discussed in by the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism before that. CTE was set up in 1995 and is composed of all WTO members and a number of observers from inter-governmental organizations. It functions with the understanding that "it does not modify the rights and obligations of any WTO member under the WTO agreements." A ten-point agenda forms the basis of the committee’s work, which includes decisions on environment measures for trade, ecolabelling, environmentally unfriendly subsidies and intellectual property rights.

CTE has not reached any conclusions due to the controversial nature of the issues. In 1996, it presented an inconclusive report at the Singapore ministerial due to the fact that its members had failed to reach agreements on most of the issues under discussion. The ministerial made note of the "the breadth and complexity of the issues covered by the committee" and "further work needs to be undertaken on all items of its agenda". The committee was directed to carry on its work.

Although CTE discussions have been unfruitful, the trade and environment debate is being addressed in other fora. As the pressure from Northern civil society to take on board environmental concerns increases, the dispute settlement mechanism has come out more and more in support of green issues. In a recent ruling on the shrimp-turtle case, a WTO appellate body (AB) endorses a US ban on shrimp imports from countries that do not use turtle excluder devices to prevent harming sea turtles (see box: In through the backdoor). These judgments cannot be taken lightly, since they are making law by setting precedents.

In October 2001, an appellate body set up under the WTO ruled that the US was justified in banning shrimp exports from countries that do not use ‘turtle excluder devices’ (TEDs) to prevent sea turtle mortalities while catching shrimp. Through this ruling, the WTO has endorsed unilateral, extrajurisdictional action by nations. Moreover, it has endorsed discrimination between products based on their process and production methods (PPM).

The shrimp-turtle issue goes back to 1996, when the US banned shrimp imports from countries that did not use TEDs. India, Malaysia, Thailand and Pakistan took the matter to the WTO, contending that the US was trying to dictate the environment policy to be followed by other countries, and imposing its unilateral decision on other countries. They said the US ban amounted to disguised protectionism.

In 1998, the WTO dispute settlement panel (DSP) dismissed the US ban on grounds that it was discriminating among the exporters. The DSP stated that the US action was arbitrary and inconsistent with article XI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which does not allow WTO members to impose import restrictions. Although the ruling did not go to the extent of rubbishing the unilateral nature of the US ban, the WTO’s dispute settlement body won new respect amongst developing countries for this ruling.

But in response to a US appeal, a WTO appellate body (AB) partially overruled the DSP ruling. The AB ruled that the US law did not violate the WTO obligations and was covered under an exception to the GATT (article XX (g)) rules for measures relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources. However, the AB felt that the US ban resulted in unfair discrimination between exporting nations, since the process of certification was to be decided by the US agencies alone. Hence there was a lack of transparency and participation in the process. Also, the US guidelines gave exporting countries little time to implement the mandatory use of TEDs. In August 1998, the US changed its guidelines to accommodate the WTO ruling. Instead of an outright ban on shrimp exports from the four countries, it made certification that TEDs were used essential on a shipment-to-shipment basis.

Malaysia and India were not satisfied with these changes, and wanted a complete lifting of the shrimp import restriction. Malaysia filed a complaint in late 2000, and sought a review of the whole issue and requested the re-establishment of the original panel to examine whether the US had, in fact, complied with the appellate body findings. A compliance panel, set up to look into the case, in May 2001 ruled in favour of the US, concluding that the US was not obliged to lift its import ban to implement the 1998 appellate body report, which requested the US to bring its import ban into conformity with WTO trade rules.

The latest ruling indicates that the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism is giving in to pressure from environmental groups, and protests by Southern governments to keep environmental concerns out of the trade agenda may eventually prove futile. Morevover, as the EU faces pressure from its civil society on the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the Union is unlikely to let go of issues such as the primacy of public health, the precautionary principle, and process and production methods (PPMS).

In June 2000, seven months after non-governmental organisations demanded that the WTO look beyond trade concerns at the doomed Seattle ministerial, a WTO dispute settlement panel (DSP) ruled in favour of public health and against free trade for the first time, in a case involving Canadian asbestos exports. WTO representatives lost no time in announcing that the decision "disproves charges by radical environmental and human rights bodies that the organisation works in favour of big business by giving free trade interests preference over other concerns".

Canada is the world’s largest exporter of chrysotile (white) asbestos — in 1999 alone, its four mines based in French-speaking Quebec produced 345,000 tonnes of chrysotile, worth roughly US $110 million. But health concerns lead several European countries to ban the import and use of this material in many countries that had, until then, been strong import allies. The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists asbestos fibres as carcinogenic. France was the first among the EU countries to implement such a ban, starting in January 1997. Other EU nations followed, and as of late 2000, most EU member states, excluding Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Luxembourg, had similar bans in place.

Canada filed a complaint with the WTO against the French ban in May 1998. A dispute settlement panel (DSP) was set up in November 1998. The DSP first decided that imported Canadian asbestos and domestically produced substitutes (polyvinyl alcohol or PVA, cellulose and glass) are ‘like-products’, since they are similar in properties, nature and quality and had similar end-uses. Therefore, the panel first decided that the ban was not a question of health, but rather a question of GATT article III on national treatment, or equal treatment of foreign products and their domestic equivalents. Following the DSP’s ruling that asbestos was indeed a ‘like product’, France was required to justify its ‘violation’ through article XX (b), which allows for specific general exceptions to the WTO rules, in support of health and environment. In September 2000, the DSP ruled in favor of France, setting a new precedent by allowing a WTO member to use article XX (b) to impose trade measures for the first time. Canada decided to appeal, but the WTO’s appellate body (AB) ruled again in March 2001, to once again uphold the decision in France’s favour.

This case could also have an impact on interpretations of the scope of the agreement on technical barriers to trade (TBT), which explicitly rules against discrimination of final products based on the process of their production. Canada had asserted that France’s ban on asbestos was effectively a regulation of the characteristics and process of production, while the European Community (EC), representing France, asserted that the ban was not. The DSP agreed with France, and ruled that the French ban was not based on the characteristics and process of production, and thus not covered by the TBT agreement. The AB reversed this finding, taking the view that product characteristics could be presented in a positive or negative light.

In this case, France had specified that imports shall not contain asbestos fibres. "The effect of this ruling is that countries can circumvent a product and production method (PPM) analysis, at least as it relates to goods containing a banned product, by simply outlawing the hazardous substance as a whole," says London-based trade and environment analyst Kevin Gray.

Developing country concerns over green protectionism are legitimate, but they cannot simply continue to oppose negotiations on the links between trade and environment — they have to take them head on to make sure their concerns are addressed through legitimate multilateral negotiations, rather than through the back door, by a few people on a dispute settlement panel or appellate body.

Conflict with environment treaties
For instance, the discussion on the relationship between trade rules and MEAS has been uneasy to say the least. While the WTO currently allows importing countries the freedom to choose their own standards in the interests of public health and the environment in their own countries, they are not allowed to impose standards aimed at improving health or environmental practices of exporting countries. But can environmental standards be imposed on another country if a multilateral treaty has been signed to this effect? The EU considers it necessary to ensure that when there is dispute concerning environment-related trade measures, linkages between trade and environment are taken into account so that one does not jeopardise the fulfillment of the other.

Developing countries see the debate on MEAS as a non-trade issue, but it is in fact in their interests to sort out the issue once and for all, rather than leave the issues open for interpretation by the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism. Several feasible options have been suggested in the past, such as moving environment-trade conflicts to tribunals provided specifically under MEAS; or moving such disputes to the International Court of Justice. But even before agreeing to a venue, developing countries must insist on clarification on a set of overarching rules. For instance, they should insist on a provision that forbids the use of trade sanctions to conserve the global environment, since such sanctions can only be used by the more economically powerful nations against the less economically powerful. Extra-jurisdictional and unilateral action should not be possible even within a multilateral agreement.

Northern green activists were not entirely happy with the outcome at Doha, though for reasons other than those troubling developing countries. The declaration states that negotiations on the relationship between trade and MEAS shall not prejudice the WTO rights of any Member that is not a party to the MEA in question. Greenpeace fears that this phrase would prove a powerful disincentive for countries to sign the MEAS. The declaration also states that negotiations on the effect of environmental measures on market access and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) accord shall not add to or diminish the rights and obligations of Members under existing WTO agreements. These environmental activists feel that the final outcome of the negotiations on these points could end up as footnotes rather than effect any change in the WTO rules.

Marks of shame?
Ecolabelling started out as a consumer awareness aid to help them make better choices. The EU penchant for ecolabelling was on full display in all the pre-Doha drafts. Ecolabelling is a way to ensure that all exports are harmless to humans and the environment — in itself a rational and benign idea. However, its practice could erect new insurmountable barriers to exports from the poorer countries.

Ecolabelling requires that products be marked environmentally friendly not just because they do not directly harm the environment but also indirectly. At the centre of the debate is the ppm criterion which looks at the environmental-friendliness of the technologies used to make a product rather than the superficially judge the product, the final outcome of the process. Life cycle criterion is another specification applied for ecolabelling. This looks at the ppm, the product and how the product will be eventually disposed, making ecolabelling an even more stringent requirement. This has raised hackles in the developing world where state-of-the-art green technologies are seldom considered for their prohibitive costs. Insisting on ppm for labelling would bar most of poorer countries’ exports from the northern markets. At the moment this agenda has only been put on a fast track, but it is not for negotiations.

Pragmatic investment
Developing countries must try and use global investment rules for their benefit

Attempts by a few developing countries, including India and Malaysia, to keep investment out of the Doha declaration failed. The declaration calls for ‘clarifying elements’ of a possible multilateral investment framework, and recognises the need for a multilateral framework to secure transparent, stable and predictable conditions for long-term cross-border investment, particularly foreign investment that will contribute to the expansion of trade. A decision will be taken at the next ministerial conference on modalities of negotiations in this area.

Addressing a press conference in India after the Doha conference, minister for commerce and industry Murasoli Maran took solace in the fact that "nothing would happen immediately" and the negotiations would take their time "during which we have to be watchful". But rather than simply saying and then hoping that nothing will happen, the Indian government would do better to start thinking about what they would like out an investment treaty, which now seems inevitable. Otherwise, they will find themselves at a disadvantage, as industrialised countries jump a readymade pro-industry model such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on them. NAFTA gives foreign investors the right to sue host governments, which do not have the right to appeal once a decision has been reached. Such a multilateral framework can have deep repercussions for developing countries.

Civil society around the world has also been wary of attempts to establish global multilateral investment rules since the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tried to secretly negotiate a Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) that would vest MNCs with the power to question the decisions of national governments. These groups, based mostly in Europe and Canada, opposed the OECD MAI draft, but many believed that global multilateral investment rules were needed to stop the exploitation of developing countries through poorly negotiated bilateral investment treaties (BITs).

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of BITs signed from 385 at the end of the 1980s to 1,857 at the end of the 1990s. Often, BITs do not reflect a balance between the desire of developing country governments to attract FDI, and their domestic developmental concerns. At a meeting on foreign investments and their development dimensions organised by UNCTAD in 1997, some developing country governments considered themselves ill equipped to draw up balanced BITS, given the unequal bargaining power between industrialised and developing countries. Some contend that a global set of established guidelines could ensure the parameters of accountability, social and environmental responsibility. Others disagree.

In any multilateral negotiation on investment, industrialised countries will hold the aces, and are likely to have an inherent bias towards protecting the best interests of their companies, while developing countries will continue to play the role of desperate investment-seekers. There are no precedents to indicate that developing countries can expect anything but an unfair deal out of such an arrangement, particularly if the negotiations are conducted under the already biased WTO. Therefore, while an overreaching investments agreement may help developing countries out of having to compete with each other for investment, they will have to take care to ensure that the negotiations take place at a forum that is capable of taking on their development concerns.

Precautionary principle
The EU locked horns with the US by banning American beef exports on the ground that the beef was laced hormones that could cause cancer and other health problems. The ban was not upheld by the WTO because it was not convinced with the scientific evidence the EU had provided to prove its case and that it was imposing its higher standards on health and food safety on others. The EU insisted that it was acting according to the precautionary principle. This better-safe-than-sorry principle lets a country take a similar action like the one the EU took even in the absence of supporting scientific rationale.

The WTO had judged the case by the 1996 agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS), which favoured a more scientifically demanding risk assessment to the precautionary principle. The US also proved that its beef hormones met standards set by Codex Alimentarius Commission, a world body that develops standards for food additives, pesticides, chemicals and contaminants. The precautionary principle has since become pet issue that the EU pushes in every WTO meeting. Doha was no exception. On the fourth day of the talks the EU broached the subject, but intense opposition kept it out of the final declaration.

At the insistence of the Philippines, the US and Iceland the Doha text pushes for negotiations on clarifying and improving WTO disciplines on fisheries subsidies. Fisheries subsidies have been seen as a major cause for the depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing. Apart from the environmental impact the subsidies-caused depletion also undermines the livelihood of those dependant on fishing. This is particularly the case in many developing countries as the text also points out.

Though fisheries subsidies have figured in the WTO debates and in its predecessor GATT, no agreement was earmarked to cover the issue during the Uruguay Round. At the Seattle 1999 meeting a proposal was made to tackle environmentally harmful and trade-distorting fisheries subsidies but disagreements over which WTO body should cover the subject halted progress. The EU is one of the leading providers of subsidies to its fishermen and hence has been shying from bringing the issue into WTO forum. The presence of the subject vindicates the view that much give and take has transpired to prevent Doha ending up as a disaster.

(Down to Earth, December 15, 2001)

Why the project to link India's rivers is a mindless dream

2009-07-09T03:55:00.000-07:00

By S S Jeevan

When Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared his government's commitment to linking all major Indian rivers in Parliament in November last year, there was great jubilation. All parliamentarians, including Leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi, promised him full support. The project would be an insurance against droughts and floods, Vajpayee thundered. It would divert water from flood-hit areas to drought-hit areas. Following the Supreme Court's directive, the government set up a Task Force headed by Suresh Prabhu, the former Union minister of power, to implement the plan. Projected at a cost of Rs 560,000 crore (and a 15 year deadline), the plan envisages the largest man-made water network in the world.

But today the jubilation has ebbed and reality is slowly sinking in. India's grand plan to link rivers is throwing up more problems than it set out to solve. Experts now believe that the project could lead the country towards environmental disaster, create regional discord, sour relations with neighbouring countries, degrade water and soil quality and bleed the exchequer. Above all, the greatest threat could to the community-based water management initiatives across the country, as this project seeks to centralise control over water.

A grand plan
The idea to link India's rivers is not a new one. K L Rao, then irrigation and power minister, first mooted it during the 1960s, at the height of Nehruvian socialism. But the proposal did not find favour with successive governments.. The present one — with a Himalayan and a Peninsular component — seeks to redraw the hydrological map of India, taking flood waters from 14 Himalayan tributaries of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers in northern India and Nepal and transferring them south via a series of canals and pumping stations, across the Vindhya mountains to replenish 17 southern rivers, including the Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery. Around 300 reservoirs will be constructed, and more than 1,000 kilometres of canals would be dug.

The impact too would be equally huge: the project would flood an estimated 8,000 square kilometres of land and leave 3 million people homeless, according to Sudhir Vombatkere, a retired military engineer who is now with the Mysore Consumer Action Forum. A similar project was proposed in the Soviet Union under Stalin, when rivers flowing north were to be diverted to its dry central region. But even Stalin's scientists decided ultimately that the project would cause too much ecological damage.

Ecological disaster
Environmentalists say that the plan will spread pollution from rivers like the Ganges to cleaner rivers. Inter-linking a toxic river with a non-toxic one will have a devastating impact on all our rivers and as consequence on all human beings and wildlife. "How can one even think of linking for instance, the mercury contaminated Par river of Gujarat or the poisonous waters of Yamuna river with any other uncontaminated river? The proposal is ecologically destructive," says Ravi Agarwal of Srishti, a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation. So when rivers are linked, pollution control will be even more difficult and many more rivers will turn into sewers.

Experts believe that there has not been much analysis as to how flow-irrigation affects soil health and the river health. For instance, every river's water properties are different. And the survival of a number of aquatic species, insects and birds depends on these unique properties. What impact the linking of rivers will have on them, nobody knows; and very little study has been done on regional variations.

Potential conflicts
It is assumed that the states that are not riparian will have no claims to the water of the rivers. Therefore a transfer of water from one region to another would be done only by consensus. But as the Cauvery experience shows that there is no easy solution to sharing river waters — even when the two warring states were both riparian. Since there is no agreement on the transfer of river water from a surplus region to a deficit one, conflicts between could increase thousandfold.

Already, Punjab has objected to the interlinking of rivers and earlier raised a hue and cry when Rajasthan — as a non-riparian state — was being given water from the Indus river system. There are other problems also. West Bengal, which is also objecting to the proposal, fears that any linking of the Ganga and the Brahmaputra might ease the flood situation in Assam, but worsen it in Bengal.

The linking of rivers could also seriously jeopardise India's relations with its neighbours, especially Bangladesh, which gets much of its waters from the Ganges and Brahmaputra after the rivers leave India. When India completed the Farakka barrage in the Ganga in 1974, it diverted the crucial dry-season flows into the Indian irrigation canals. The relations between the two countries have not been good since then. So far, there has been no comment from Dhaka on this project. It also remains to be seen as to how the cash-strapped government is going organise funds for the project. There are reports that Indian engineers in the US are lobbying President George W Bush to persuade the World Bank to back the scheme. Sources also reveal that the Centre might impose a one-rupee cess on every litre of petrol to raise the resources.

Future fears
One issue that is disturbing environmentalists is the control over the waters. One scenario being discussed is that rivers would be nationalised where the Centre will have control over the river waters. This could mean trouble for communities living on the banks of rivers, who could lose their rights they traditionally had over the river. It could spell doom for many communities who have helped to revive several dead rivers.

There is also a fear that with privatisation of water being discussed aggressively, rights over the river may shift from the hands of communities to multinational companies. The haste with which the government is proceeding with the project (including drawing up a timetable for implementation) without doing its homework on the project's feasibility and impact nor arriving at any consensus among the states concerned is worrying analysts. In the end it could just turn out to be an eyewash to derive some electoral gains. Another fear is that the only beneficiaries of this project could be the contractors and consultants and not the water-starved people of India. In truth, it cannot be more ironic: Every politician sitting inside Parliament applauded Vajpayee's commitment towards the project, but not one politician would want to share his state's water with the other.

(New Indian Express, June 15, 2003)

La conspiración del Endosulfan

2009-07-09T03:47:00.000-07:00

(English version: http://www.cseindia.org/html/endosulfan/endosulfan_index.htm)

Una cruda exposición por la CSE, de cómo la industria de los plaguicidas intriga con los oficiales del gobierno y científicos en Kerala para levantar la prohibición de un plaguicida mortal. En juego está aquí la integridad de las decisiones del gobierno que impactarán las generaciones en el futuro. No solo crearán daños irreparables a los residentes de Kerala, sino que también hace una burla a lo que tiene que ver con la salud publica.
Fue en febrero del 2001 que Down to Earth denunció la historia.

Se pudo establecer una relación entre una extraña alta incidencia de deformidades y enfermedades en Padre – una pequeña población en el distrito de Kerala Kasaragod— y el endosulfan, un insecticida organoclorado. La “Plantation Corporation of Kerala” (PCK) ha estado asperjando endosulfan desde mediados de los 70 en sus plantaciones de marañón ó nuez de la india. La gente de Padre ha estado batallando sola durante mucho rato contra la aspersión de este plaguicida. Análisis de laboratorios conducidos por el Centro para la Ciencia y el Ambiente (Centre for Science and Environment, CSE), en Nueva Delhi, revelaron que todas las muestras colectadas en el pueblo contenían niveles muy altos de endosulfan, el cual ha sido irónicamente prohibido ó restringido en muchos países.

Una vez que la noticia se dio a conocer en los medios nacionales, la presión pública forzó a muchas decisiones. La Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos solicitó a las agencias gubernamentales incluyendo el Consejo Hindú de Investigaciones Médicas (ICMR), tomar acciones. Se inició un estudio del Instituto Nacional de Salud Ocupacional (NIOH). El gobierno de Kerala también estableció un comité dirigido por un ingeniero eminente: A. Achyuthan para evaluar el asunto. Tanto la Union como el gobierno estatal prohibieron las aspersiones aéreas de endosulfan. La cruzada parecía dirigirse hacia su lógica conclusión.

En vez, se abrió el “lobby” para el plaguicida ya que se lanzó una ofensiva para luchar por su permanencia. En juego estaba la suerte de una industria que vale Rs 4,100 crore (un crore=10 millones de rupias). Fue así como se inició una campaña virulenta que involucró altos funcionarios oficiales, científicos y agricultores. La agenda tenía dos objetivos: desacreditar el estudio de la CSE y probar que el endosulfan era seguro e inocuo. La estrategia de la campaña tuvo tres componentes: desinformación, fabricación de datos e influenciar a las agencias gubernamentales para levantar la prohibición.

Muy pronto artículos, entrevistas y anuncios empezaron a aparecer en los medios de comunicación mostrando al endosulfan como un insecticida seguro. Mientras tanto, un informe patrocinado por la industria se estaba preparando — PCK había comisionado al Fredrick Institute of Plant Protection and Toxicology (FIPPAT) en Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, para conducir un estudio. Sin sorpresas, los resultados absolvieron completamente el endosulfan. Activistas que se oponían al endosulfan fueron amenazados con acciones legales, este fue solo el comienzo. A través de socialización de la empresa del insecticida con los científicos invitándolos a fiestas de cinco estrellas y lograr así el envío de emisarios o acompañantes oficiales a las reuniones. El “lobby” al plaguicida usó cada regla en el libro y fuera de ella para acabar con la campaña del público.

En muchas formas la batalla por el endosulfan es una prueba crucial para la industria — una derrota aquí podría no solo herir las ganancias, sino también animar más comunidades para salir al aire y colocar más plaguicidas en la lista negra.
Hasta el momento parece que su estrategia está funcionando. En marzo de este año, la prohibición del endosulfan se levantó bajo circunstancias misteriosas. El informe confidencial del NIOH — que Down To Earth posee — claramente implica al endosulfan como el agente causal de las enfermedades. Se ve con claridad cómo los clamores silenciosos de los residentes de Padre por una justicia ambiental han caído en oídos sordos.

KUSHAL P S YADAV, quien estuvo encubierto para socavar las suciedades y S S JEEVAN descubrieron las triquiñuelas que la industria utiliza para favorecer sus beneficios económicos sobre la salud del pueblo.

Fue una amenaza velada que Padma S Vankar nunca esperaba. Como consultora del laboratorio del CSE para monitorear la polución, ella había supervisado las pruebas de las muestras colectadas en Padre. Vankar está también encargada de las Facilidades para Pruebas Ecológicas y Analíticas en el Instituto Tecnológico de la India (IIT) en Kanpur. La amenaza vino en la forma de un inesperado visitante al IIT en septiembre del 2001. Conozca a M Raghavender.

Raghavender trabaja para EMFA (Endosulfan Manufacturers and Formulators Association= Asociación de Fabricantes y Formuladores de Endosulfan). Él fue al IIT con una agenda muy clara: distanciar el IIT del estudio del CSE y hacer que Vankar admitiera que sus hallazgos eran errados. En resumen desacreditar la credibilidad del estudio. “Él -me aconsejó- mantenerme lejos de estas controversias ya que era una mujer”, dijo Vankar. Pero Raghavender falló en ambos intentos, él era solo un pequeño peón en una bien orquestada campaña que había sido lanzada nacionalmente. La poderosa industria de plaguicidas se había enfrentado a su más duro desafío.

El poder de una industria
La industria de plaguicidas en India es la cuarta más grande en el mundo y la segunda más grande en la región Asia – Pacífica, solo después de la China. Estimativos del valor total de su mercado varían entre Rs 3,800 y Rs 4,100 crore. De acuerdo con la Asociación India de Productores y Formuladores de Plaguicidas (PMFAI), existen cerca de 55 productores básicos y 300 formuladores de plaguicidas. Además, hay un gran número de pequeños cerca de 200 que formulan productos genéricos en India. Los insecticidas solos son alrededor del 75% de este mercado y el cultivo del algodón consume casi la mitad de los plaguicidas producidos en el país. Las exportaciones de plaguicidas ascienden a Rs 1,600 crore (un crore=10 millones de rupias) en 2000-2001 y la industria confía en que llegue a Rs 1,800 crore durante este año.
La India es el productor más grande de endosulfan en el mundo, de acuerdo con EMFA. Las tres compañías más importantes que producen endosulfan en la India son: Excel Industries, Hindustan Insecticides Limited (HIL) y EID Parry.

De estas, Excel es la líder en el mercado en cuanto a endosulfan se trata. Por consiguiente, no es sorprendente que muchos de sus funcionarios hayan estado visitando Kerala durante el último año tratando de que el gobierno estatal levante la prohibición. “S Ganesan y otros funcionarios de Excel Industries han gastado una gran cantidad de tiempo en reuniones en Kerala con funcionarios del gobierno y científicos,” dice Sridhar R, un activista que trabaja con Thanal Conservation Action and Information Network, una ONG localizada en Thiruvananthapuram.
El Director General de Excel Industries, Ashwin C Shroff, rehusó hablar con Down To Earth aduciendo que el periódico tenía un cierto punto de vista. Pero él no pudo negar que endosulfan dicta los intereses de negocios de su compañía. “Estamos muy conscientes de nuestra dependencia del endosulfan. Es así como en los últimos 6-7 años de una muy alta dependencia de más del 60-65%, hemos llegado a un nivel de menos del 40%. Pero es como el producto bandera,” él le dijo a Business Line (Enero 21, 2001). Las ganancias tienen que protegerse a cualquier costo y así empezó la campaña.

El arte de la desinformación
En mayo del 2001, un anuncio aparentemente inocuo apareció en el diario de Bangalore. PMFAI había emitido una “clarificación sobre el endosulfan”. Los problemas de salud en el distrito de Kasaragod no se debían al endosulfan y que este era un plaguicida “registrado” y seguro”, decía. Esta clarificación se hacía para “el beneficio de los usuarios y del público en general y para aclarar la impresión incorrecta creada por los medios informativos”.

El anuncio fue un ejercicio para controlar el daño. Todos los periódicos y canales de televisión importantes habían cubierto extensivamente la tragedia del endosulfan en Padre. Las súplicas de los aldeanos en Padre con casos de parálisis cerebral, retardos mentales, cáncer y otras enfermedades capturaron la imaginación del público. Endosulfan había llegado a ser una mala palabra para todos. “El anuncio se distribuyó a los periódicos para educar a la gente (sic). “No le pusimos mucha atención al informe durante los primeros tres meses. Más tarde nos dimos cuenta que debíamos intervenir ya que estaba errado“, argumenta el presidente de PMFAI Pradeep P Dave. La Asociación organizó varias conferencias de prensa en Kerala aduciendo que el endosulfan se utilizaba en más de 60 países. Ambientalistas en Kerala cuestionaban el motivo detrás de la organización de tantas conferencias de prensa en un periodo de tiempo tan corto. “Esto fue claramente para desorientar a la gente,” dice Jayakumar C, coordinador de Thanal.

En junio, artículos que retomaban el caso del endosulfan aparecieron en revistas como Agriculture Today. Uno de estos artículos escrito por E V V Bhaskara Rao, Director del Centro Nacional de Investigaciones del Madroño (National Research Centre for Cashew) en Puttur, Karnataka, dijo: “Primero condenar el sospechoso luego conducir la investigación”. Obviamente refiriéndose al estudio del caso. Esta cita llegó a ser la más preferida para el “lobby” al plaguicida. Ganesan llegó a ser el seguidor más grande de la cita y escribió una carta con unos elogios desproporcionados: “Es una obra maestra, una mezcla perfecta de información científica y habilidad literaria”. En otro artículo, S K Handa, antes jefe de la División de Química Agrícola del ICMR, alegó que el estudio del CSE era “cuestionable” y “seudocientífico”. Es otro asunto que estos expertos no pudieran encontrar ninguna inexactitud científica en el estudio del CSE (ver ‘Pesticide Plot’, Down To Earth, Vol 10, No 10). Dave asentía cualquier cosa que Handa decía. Hablando a Business Standard, Dave decía que “el tema del endosulfan había sido exagerado”. Un miembro de PMFAI fue a implicar la endogamia como la causa de las “enfermedades extrañas” — “muchos de los afectados por estas enfermedades se reportan que están muy emparentados”. Teniendo en cuenta la radiación, esta Asociación ofrecía muchas explicaciones, “podrían ser contaminaciones microbiales en las corrientes de agua. O contaminaciones con metales pesados. O niveles nutricionales muy bajos”. En otras palabras, cualquier cosa bajo el sol pero no endosulfan.

La ciencia de fabricar datos
La campaña de desinformación trajo solo dividendos limitados para el “lobby” del plaguicida. Ellos aún necesitaban un estudio “científico” para contrarrestar el caso de CSE, y no tuvieron que esperar mucho. En febrero del 2001, un grupo de la Universidad de Agricultura de Kerala (Kerala Agricultural University, KAU), dirigido por M Abdul Salam, decano asociado del Colegio de Agricultura de esta universidad condujo un estudio en Kasaragod. Los resultados fueron sorprendentes. No encontraron residuos significativos de endosulfan en ninguna de las muestras. La industria no podía haber pedido más y se fueron a la ciudad con los resultados. Pero hubo pocos que lo tomaron. El estudio de KAU había llegado a ser algo como un chiste entre los círculos del conocimiento.
Las diferencias en el grupo de KAU habían lanzado una sombra sobre su credibilidad. Thomas George, quien analizó los residuos, se había lavado sus manos en lo concerniente al proceso del muestreo. “Yo nunca visité ese lugar (Kasaragod), por lo tanto no conozco como se colectaron las muestras ni dónde se colectaron. Simplemente hice el análisis de residuos para el grupo”, dijo George. El también fue muy claro indicando que solo estuvo vinculado con el grupo de KAU en la primera ronda de los análisis. “Yo no estuve involucrado la segunda vez,” dijo. Pero otros científicos del grupo juraron que George estuvo involucrado en ambos análisis — los documentos claramente mencionan su nombre en ambos trabajos.

Los activistas alegan que Salam y Samuel Mathew, otro miembro del grupo de KAU, fueron muy complacientes con los representantes de la industria. “Yo me reuní con ellos solo para realizar el estudio científico con endosulfan”, se defiende Mathew. La situación de Mathew es similar a la de un juez solicitando al acusado evidencias para salvarlo. Salam dice que él no fue influenciado por nadie. Más aún, aunque el grupo de KAU admitió los problemas encontrados durante la investigación en su informe “No disponibilidad de métodos rápidos y confiables para evaluar el nivel de contaminación del endosulfan en las muestras del ambiente, animales y humanos”, los activistas y la gente de Kerala habrían rechazado el estudio de KAU.

La conspiración del endosulfan tomó un nuevo rumbo cuando el PCK comisionó al Fredrick Institute of Plant Protection and Toxicology (FIPPAT) en Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, para conducir un estudios a un costo de Rs 7 lakh, de acuerdo con el PCK . La controversia se armó desde el comienzo del estudio. Los aldeanos de Padre y otras áreas rehusaron cooperar con este grupo para tomar muestras ya que ellos sabían que era un estudio patrocinado por la industria. “Nosotros no supimos siquiera cuando ellos tomaron las muestras,” dijo Shree Padre, un periodista agrícola quien junto con Mohana Kumar Y S, un doctor en medicina en Padre, había protestado contra las aspersiones durante muchos años. “Más tarde supimos que las muestras fueron colectadas de trabajadores jóvenes de PCK, y no de los aldeanos”, dice Sripathy Kajampady, un doctor en Kasaragod quien ha estado luchando por las víctimas. El Director de FIPPAT, Balakrishnamurthy refuta estas alegaciones: “Nosotros realizamos una colección científica con la ayuda de las autoridades apropiadas”. Los miembros del comité Achyuthan — constituidos por el gobierno estatal. — están sin embargo poco satisfechos. Ellos han criticado el informe por inadecuada toma de muestras y también la falta de chequeo cruzado de los resultados con un laboratorio diferente.
El “lobby” al plaguicida fue rápido en cuestionar el estudio del CSE diciendo que había usado ácido sulfúrico concentrado y por esto debía ser verificado por personal independiente experto en residuos. Es otro tema a discutir que mientras el estudio del CSE no utilizó ácido sulfúrico en muestras de sangres, el estudio del FIPPAT, que la industria condujo si lo utilizó.

Es increíble. CSE colectó las muestras unos pocos días después de la aspersión y encontró altos niveles de endosulfan en todas las muestras. “El estudio de FIPPAT, aunque se inició un mes más tarde que el de CSE, muestra justo los resultados opuestos, esto es, completa ausencia de residuos de endosulfan en las muestras de sangre, leche de vaca y agua”, dice el informe de NIOH.

Más aún, NIOH, que hizo su estudio casi 10 meses después de la última aspersión, encontró residuos de endosulfan en muestras de agua colectadas en Kasaragod. NIOH también encontró residuos en las muestras de sangre de niños de la escuela de Vaninagar. “La detección de endosulfan en las muestras de sangre y agua, 10 meses después de la última aspersión de endosulfan, significa una exposición continua al endosulfan”, dice el informe. Aunque el estudio de FIPPAT fue comisionado al PCK, este fue presentado por Dave de PMFAI en una conferencia de prensa en Kozhikode y Thiruvananthapuram, donde apartes seleccionados se reprodujeron para la prensa. “Esto claramente señala los nexos entre la industria- PCK y FIPPAT,” dice Jayakumar. Activistas en Kerala y gente de Kasaragod habían marcado el estudio de FIPPAT como “un esfuerzo bien orquestado de la industria”.

Un incidente interesante que prueba el nexo entre la industria y los laboratorios privados ocurrió cuando la industria hizo una presentación ante el Comité de Achyuthan. El científico de FIPPAT, A Ramesh, acompañó al grupo de la industria que incluía a Dave y S Ganesan de Excel Industries. “Irónicamente el científico de FIPPAT no acompañó al grupo de PCK, que había solicitado el estudio,” dice Achyuthan. Cuando Down To Earth preguntó al Director de FIPPAT que negocio tenía el científico al acompañar al grupo de la industria a una reunión con un Comité del gobierno, él dijo: “Él podría haber ido en el mismo carro, pero no estaba con ellos”. Cuando se le dijo que las criticas de Ramesh del análisis del CSE se registraron en el informe final del comité, él dio una respuesta contradictoria, “No es un gran crimen (acompañar el grupo de la industria), pero no estamos asociados con ninguna industria.”

La intimidación ingeniosa
Los próximos blancos de la industria fueron científicos y funcionarios que estaban en los comités que podían decidir sobre la suerte del endosulfan.
Némesis de la industria
Un informe del Instituto Nacional de Salud Ocupacional se pregunta sobre el endosulfan. ¿Por qué los productores de plaguicidas lo quieren mantener a toda costa?
En agosto del 2001, la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (NHRC) solicitó al Consejo Hindú de Investigación Médica (Indian Council of Medical Research, ICMR), someter un informe sobre los riesgos a la salud debidos a las aspersiones con endosulfan en las plantaciones de marañón en el distrito de Kasaragod durante cuatro meses. La ICMR a su vez solicitó al Instituto Nacional de Salud Ocupacional (NIOH) en Ahmedabad, que enviara un grupo a Kerala.

Un grupo de tres miembros del NIOH — conformado por el Director del NIOH, H N Saiyed, el diputado Aruna Dewan y H R Rajmohan del Centro Regional de salud ocupacional (Regional Occupational Health Centre, ROHC) en Bangalore — visitaron el distrito en agosto 9-11 y de nuevo en septiembre. Ellos tenían un mandato claro: un estudio epidemiológico ambiental a través de las zonas para investigar el patrón de la enfermedad en las villas afectadas y en una población control.

El grupo fue conducido por Saiyed y estaba conformado por miembros de NIOH, ROHC y el Departamento Pediátrico del Kasturba Medical College en Mangalore. El estudio de campo fue conducido entre septiembre 24 y octubre 7. En la primera fase, muestras de sangre de 262 niños de escuela (170 expuestos y 92 control) se colectaron para detectar residuos de endosulfan, análisis hormonal, hormonas de la tiroides, hormonas sexuales y estudios citogenéticos.

Es significativo que el grupo del NIOH decidió seleccionar un grupo control. Un grupo control es comparable con el grupo expuesto en todos los aspectos, excepto por la exposición al insecticida en este caso el endosulfan.
El informe de NIOH indica que endosulfan es la causa de un buen número de problemas de salud entre los niños de escuela que viven en las zonas expuestas. Estos niños tienen significativamente un menor nivel de inteligencia que el grupo control. Ellos también tienen una alta incidencia de varios desordenes sexuales cuando se los compara con el grupo control.

El informe finalizó en marzo del 2002, pero ha sido mantenido en secreto. Solo unos pocos tienen acceso a sus resultados. Down To Earth se las arregló para conseguir una copia, del cual solo hay disponibles unas pocas copias. Muchos activistas y los medios periodísticos no tienen una sola información de los hallazgos. “Este maldito informe se ha mantenido en secreto debido a que claramente implica la industria de los plaguicidas”, pregunta Jayakumar C de Thanal, una ONG de Thiruvananthapuram.

El negocio del envenenamiento
Endosulfan constituye solo una pequeña porción del mercado de plaguicidas. ¿Entonces por qué la industria esta paranoica?
La protesta contra el endosulfan en Kerala ha sido un símbolo de lucha contra plaguicidas en la India. La industria de plaguicidas está preocupada con el endosulfan así como con otros de sus productos. Como Dave orgullosamente lo pone, “Yo no defiendo solo una molécula, soy el presidente de 200 moléculas. Nosotros no prohibimos cualquier cosa solo sobre la base de que esté prohibido en otros países”. Si endosulfan se prohibe en Kerala, esto podría tener un efecto de cascada en el resto del país.

Una campaña exitosa para prohibir un plaguicida en particular alimentaria el fuego para otros movimientos también en la India. Más plaguicidas deberían estar bajo escrutinio. Más comunidades deberían sentirse animadas a protestar. Y más plaguicidas deberían estar en la lista negra. Esto es algo que la industria no puede permitir que ocurra. Hay informes de que un problema similar ocurre en Karnataka.
La Corporación de Desarrollo de Karnataka del Marañón (The Karnataka Cashew Development Corporation) ha estado asperjando el endosulfan sobre sus plantaciones en los distritos de Dakshina Kannada y Udipi desde 1987. La gente en estas áreas está también sufriendo de enfermedades extrañas (ver ‘Double Trouble’, Down To Earth, Vol 10, No 11).

Un plan de un juego largo
La mira de la campaña de la industria es, de hecho, mucho más grande. Es estrangular todas las voces que están abogando por una prohibición de los plaguicidas. En el ámbito mundial, la concientización acerca de los efectos dañinos de los plaguicidas en humanos así como en el ambiente está incrementándose. Los gobiernos están amarrados a la presión de los grupos civiles de la sociedad para prohibir plaguicidas y químicos dañinos. El año pasado, Colombia prohibió el endosulfan. Filipinas reinstaló la prohibición del endosulfan después de una larga batalla con la industria. Otros países están restringiendo el uso de este insecticida ó prohibiendo su uso completamente. La industria está sintiendo el calor por más de una razón. Recientemente, la India firmó la Convención de Estocolmo, un tratado global para proteger la salud humana y el ambiente de polutos orgánicos persistentes (POPS). Los Pops son químicos que permanecen en el ambiente por largos periodos de tiempo. Al implementar la Convención, los gobiernos eliminarían o reducirían la liberación de Pops en el ambiente. En la primera fase, 12 Pops se han identificado para ser eliminados. Endosulfan no está aún en esta lista, pero tiene todos los ingredientes para hacerlo en la próxima ronda.
A medida que la presión de los consumidores aumenta, las organizaciones corporativas se están alejando voluntariamente de los plaguicidas. “Los representantes de la industria me dijeron que el endosulfan para las plantaciones de marañón es solo un mercado pequeño. Ellos están más interesados en el uso del endosulfan en algodón y en otros estados, dicen que si se prohibe en Kerala, tendría repercusiones en toda la India”, comenta Salam. Cuando a Dave se le preguntó si ellos se sentían amenazados por estas campañas (como la de Kerala) él respondió: “Es solo que tenemos que proteger nuestros intereses y presentar nuestro lado de la historia”.

Reglamentación y Renegados
Las regulaciones de plaguicidas en la India son laxas. La industria ha aprovechado todas las oportunidades para corromper el sistema y el gobierno se ha hecho el ciego ante el problema. Los plaguicidas son regulados bajo el Acta de Insecticidas de 1998 y la reglamentación de los Insecticidas de 1971. En mayo del 2000, La ley 2000 de Insecticidas (Enmienda), se pasó bajo la sombra de muertes suicidas de los agricultores debido a plaguicidas adulterados. Esta enmienda hizo que la penalización por plaguicidas adulterados fuera más estricta. Pero hizo muy poco para limpiar las regulaciones de registro de los plaguicidas y monitorear esta industria del veneno. El Acta de Insecticidas regula la importación, manufactura, venta, transporte, distribución y uso de insecticidas para prevenir cualquier riesgo a la gente y animales. El Comité de registros, constituido bajo la Sección 5 del Acta, registra un insecticida después de verificar su eficacia y seguridad a humanos, animales y el ambiente. La Oficina Central de Insecticidas (Central Insecticides Board, CIB) localizada en Faridabad, Haryana, aconseja a la Union y gobiernos estatales sobre asuntos técnicos. En el 2001, un total de 2718 solicitudes se recibieron para registro, de las cuales 1439 se aprobaron, de acuerdo al gobierno.

Básicamente, hay dos tipos de registros bajo la Sección 9 del Acta de Insecticidas — primaria y secundaria. Cuando una molécula nueva se registra en India consigue un registro primario. Solicitudes subsecuentes para la misma molécula logran el registro secundario. Para registrar una molécula nueva se requiere generar estudios — información dependiente del ambiente bajo las condiciones agroclimáticas de la India e información independiente del ambiente. Los datos independientes del ambiente se pueden tomar directamente de la información existente en otras partes del mundo. Pero la generación de información dependiente del ambiente por lo general toma entre 4-5 años. La información sobre varios sujetos que incluyen toxicología y fitotoxicología es necesario generarla para el registro de cualquier molécula nueva. Una vez que un registro primario existe, otros que solicitan registros nuevos pueden solicitar un registro secundario. Por supuesto estas son solo reglas prescritas por el gobierno pero rara vez se cumplen.

Sistema infestado por plagas
El primer paso para registrar un insecticida nuevo es la generación de información. Este es también el primer paso donde la corrupción se inicia. Una compañía tiene la opción de ir a un laboratorio del gobierno ó a laboratorios privados comerciales aprobados por el gobierno “Las compañías por lo general prefieren los laboratorios privados comerciales ya que ellos pueden generar los resultados y muy rápidamente. Los trámites burocráticos en los laboratorios del gobierno pueden causar grandes demoras”, dice N G Waghle, antes vicepresidente, de Pest Control India Limited. “Los laboratorios privados son los primeros en satisfacer las demandas de la industria”, él adiciona. Donde todo tiene su precio.
“Los procedimientos hindúes para el registro son desconsoladores. Es un gran tamasha,” dice P D Deshmukh, un funcionario antiguo de una industria de plaguicidas. Con una experiencia en la industria de 30 años, Deshmukh tiene anécdotas asombrosas para contar. “Yo conozco un laboratorio que promete generar datos toxicológicos para un producto en un día. Generar estos datos normalmente toma entre un año y año y medio. El director del laboratorio me dijo que él arreglaba el intercambio de cartas por un año — haciéndolas aparecer como si la solicitud se hubiera hecho hace un año. Muchas compañías multinacionales e Hindúes son parte de esta patraña,” alega Deshmukh. “Es tenebroso imaginar cuantos plaguicidas peligrosos han podido llegar a los agricultores sin pruebas adecuadas”, se asusta Waghle.

Recordando sus 35 años de experiencia en la industria, Waghle, recuerda historias chocantes de cómo las compañías han corrompido altos funcionarios de los organismos de registros de plaguicidas. “Las compañías están atentas a contactar directamente los funcionarios del CIB, para que ellos usen los servicios de un negociador”, él dice. Los agentes actúan como un enlace entre la industria y el CIB. El soborno a los funcionarios de bajo y alto perfil en los CIB se hace a través de estos agentes designados. La industria ha convertido estos sobornos en un arte y el agente ó negociador es una parte integral de este juego.

Fea interfase
El negociador es por lo general una cara regular en el CIB, dice Waghle, por lo que los funcionarios se sienten cómodos interactuando con él. La industria paga este agente por todo el trabajo sucio que ellos quieren que se haga — el registro de una nueva molécula, ó robar información de una molécula previamente registrada, ó aún sobornando los miembros del Comité para influenciar la toma de decisiones a alto nivel. Pero el soborno no es siempre dinero.
Muchos altos funcionarios del CIB, incluyendo los miembros del Comité de Registros, regularmente reciben invitaciones a viajes de recreo, dice Waghle. La compañía paga todos los gastos — tiquetes aéreos, acomodaciones en hoteles de cinco estrellas y aún gastos de compras en almacenes. De nuevo no hay una relación directa con la industria, todo es hecho por el agente.
Reglas y renegados
“El funcionario simplemente tiene que informar al agente, con quién tiene después que entrar en contacto la compañía. La compañía paga al agente por todo el trabajo sucio”, él adiciona. Waghle le ha proporcionado a Down To Earth los nombres de unos pocos de los legendarios agentes y de sus clientes.
Las leyes están hechas para proteger a la industria. La industria del endosulfan ha utilizado estos agujeros para su gran provecho. Por ejemplo, el PCK violó muchas regulaciones mientras conducía aspersiones aéreas. El Acta de Insecticidas hace mandatorio que una compañía informe a la gente acerca de las aspersiones aéreas de plaguicidas. Todos los reservorios de aguas en el área deben estar cubiertos durante la aspersión. Pero esto no fue hecho por el PCK. “El CIB ha prescrito que las aspersiones con endosulfan deben ser hechas a una altura no mayor de 2-3 metros sobre el follaje. Pero aún esto no se cumplió en las plantaciones del PCK”, dice L Sundaresan, antiguo Director del Departamento de Agricultura de Kerala.

“Las aspersiones aéreas de endosulfan no fueron permitidas por el CIB después de 1993. El CIB había dado aprobación para las aspersiones aéreas de endosulfan al PCK solo hasta diciembre de 1992. Pero el Departamento de Agricultura en Kerala y el distrito han autorizado aplicaciones aéreas aún hasta enero del 2001”, alega Jayakumar.
La Union del gobierno hizo muchos esfuerzos para hacer el uso de los plaguicidas “seguro”. Esto apuntó hacia los comités. Estos comités permitieron el uso de endosulfan con una palabra de precaución: los plaguicidas deben usarse muy cuidadosamente y especificar las áreas donde no deben ser usados. En 1991 la Union del gobierno organizó un comité liderado por S N Banerjee, anteriormente Consejero del Gobierno en Protección de Plantas, para revisar si algunos plaguicidas, incluyendo endosulfan, deberían ser utilizados en la India. El Comité dijo que el Comité de Registros del CIB no debería permitir el uso del endosulfan cerca a ríos, lagos, mar o pantanos. El Comité también recomendó que se colocara un anuncio de advertencia en todos los rótulos y folletos de los recipientes. En relación con otros anuncios, las compañías despliegan esta advertencia en una letra tan pequeña que es difícil leerla.

Otro Comité liderado por R B Singh, hizo recomendaciones similares en 1999. El reenforzó el hecho de que el rótulo debería ser obligatorio en letras en negrilla para evitar el uso del endosulfan cerca a fuentes de agua. La 195ava reunión del Comité de Registros del CIB, conducida en diciembre de 1999, acordó implementar las recomendaciones. Pero nunca fueron realmente implementadas. El CIB ha escogido sentarse en estas recomendaciones. Endosulfan aún se utiliza indiscriminadamente, como la tragedia de Kasaragod lo muestra.
A la industria de plaguicidas no le gusta las regulaciones del Acta de Insecticidas diciendo que los procedimientos engorrosos para el registro están estrangulando su crecimiento. Pero, viendo la forma que la industria tiene para sortear estos procedimientos, ciertamente, saltándose sobre todas las normas de decencia en el caso del endosulfan, queda muy claro que este negocio “sucio” necesita más y no menos controles. Pero esta vez necesita monitores que tengan un control público. De otra forma, esta industria de muerte llegará a ser aún más mortal en los próximos años.

(Down To Earth, July 15th 2002)

Can I have my cola now?

2009-07-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a classroom on the truth behind the Coke-Pepsi-pesticide controversy in India

By S S Jeevan

Is my soft drink free from pesticides?
No. Both studies -- by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) as well as the government's Centre Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore -- found pesticide residue in all samples tested. The difference was only in the levels.

What's this thing about pesticides above/below EEC standards?
There are no standards to measure pesticide residue in India for soft drinks. So CSE used the European Economic Community (EEC) norms, and found that all 12 samples had higher levels. CFTRI found pesticide residue above EEC limit in nine samples and below that limit in three samples. So that settles it, your cola has some amount of pesticide.

Why just EEC norms, why not US norms?
Only the European Union has norms that have quantified pesticide residue levels. Even the Indian Government studies have used the same standards.

Will pesticide contaminated colas affect my health in any way?
Pesticide consumption, even in lower levels, cause long-term harm. That's what scientists worldwide say. You'll never know how and when they will trigger a cancer or disrupt your immunity and so on. There are many studies to show how pesticide exposure causes diseases. But till now there's none to link pesticides in soft drinks to diseases.

Why did CSE single out Coke and Pepsi in their campaign? Why not target other soft drink companies?
Believe it or not, almost the entire soft drink market in India is monopolised by these two companies.

Can I sue a company in India which sells me a contaminated product?
No. There are no norms, no binding laws. The industry has not flouted any rules. The rules just do not exist. That's why the cola companies have been given a "clean chit" by the Health minister Sushma Swaraj.

But what about food products that are contaminated with pesticides? Why target only MNC cola companies?
CSE director Sunita Narain calls it a "shock therapy". It is not surprising that today people have started talking about groundwater contamination only because of the soft drink expose.

Then why accuse cola companies when India's groundwater quality is so pathetic?
Years of neglect by the government to the indiscriminate use of pesticides has led to the problem. The other issue is that of corporate responsibility. Cola companies cannot pass the buck saying that the raw water is bad. They need to invest in cleaner technologies to make their products safer. Product stewardship is a concept Indian companies need to get familiar with.

Did the cola companies' campaign strategy to counter the CSE study boomerang?
To a large extent yes. Especially when one saw the cola chiefs sipping tea (not their colas) on television on August 5 (when CSE released its findings) and claiming that their products were safe. Then by questioning the credibility of the CSE study, the cola majors seemed to have lost the trust of some of their consumers. No wonder, soft drinks sales have dipped since then. Then Pepsi went a step ahead. It selectively quoted Sushma Swaraj's speech in Parliament in its huge advertisements to say that their products were safe. Never mind that it had to withdraw the advertisement and issue an apology. If their products do not contain pesticides, why haven't the companies sued CSE till now?

Did the government look like it was favouring the cola companies in the way it responded to the crisis?
The government is under tremendous pressure -- both from the corporate world and from civil society groups. Sushma Swaraj's reply in Parliament reflected only a part of what the government's report had noted. The CFTRI report said that CSE's report and its own cannot be compared as the samples were different. That was not revealed to the media. Also that the pesticide, Lindane, was found in all samples tested at CFTRI. Now, it looks like the government is moving in the right direction. It has notified norms for soft drinks, which prescribe stringent pesticide residue limits.

What's the purpose of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC)?
The JPC doesn't have the credibility to sit in judgement over a purely scientific issue. More so when the commercial interests of corporate houses are involved. Are you as a consumer going to trust a scientist or a parliamentarian to tell you whether the soft drink you consume is safe or not? The setting up of a JPC is also a trusted strategy to let matters cool down. Today, no one in the government will talk to you about the controversy. "I will not reply to such questions," says Swaraj. "The matter is in front of the JPC and I respect its sanctity."

Can stringent norms check pesticide contamination in soft drinks?
Having some norms is better than having no norms. Legal norms help instill a sense of fear in companies. It also enables ordinary citizens to fight back. The important thing now is that of enforcement.

Will strengthening of norms solely benefit the MNCs, as only they have the financial muscle to invest in cleaner technologies. Aren't the smaller players (read Indian) going to suffer?
As we've said earlier, most of the cola market is dominated by MNCs. Strengthening of norms can also help Indian companies compete in the global market, especially as we enter the WTO regime. The basic issue is that of health, not who's going to make more money.

(New Indian Express, September 7, 2003)

Red Heat

2009-07-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

In their most decisive campaign yet, Naxalites are preparing to unleash a new wave of terror by targeting political leaders and disrupting elections. S S Jeevan reports

Somewhere deep inside the forests of Dandakaranya in Andhra Pradesh, top leaders of the dreaded People’s War Group (PWG) met in mid-December last year. This was the time when news of early Lok Sabha elections was making the rounds and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had almost decided to cash in on the attempt on his life. The meeting was urgently convened to counter the Andhra government’s intense combat operations as well as the Union government’s strong support to Orissa in curbing Naxalites. But what ultimately emerged out of the discussions took even many veteran comrades by surprise.

In its latest strategy to “annihilate the class enemies”, the top leadership decided to selectively target the TDP-BJP and spare the Congress. They renewed their fatwas on political leaders like Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and Naidu and vowed to actively prevent candidates from contesting. Possibilities of blowing up government buildings also came up for discussion. The leaders then took stock of their growing areas of influence outside Andhra, making crucial changes in their power structure wherever necessary. They also unanimously decided to support the separate state of Telengana. A new wave of terror was being meticulously planned.

Intelligence officials are taking no chances with this latest development. Recently, Naxals shot dead several activists of the TDP, including P Shankar Reddy in Medak just two days after he returned from the United States. Between 1999 and 2002, Naxals killed as many as 74 political functionaries, including 43 belonging to the TDP. In the same period, 122 policemen lost their lives, mostly in landmine blasts. Naidu is believed to be on the PWG hit list ever since the state police killed three of its leaders including Nala Adi Reddy in an encounter in Karimnagar district in December 1999.

Intelligence failure
Officials in Andhra Pradesh are gearing up to thwart the PWG’s latest threats, but the problems they face are too many. The ban on the PWG exists only in Andhra Pradesh but not in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa where Naxals are active. Naxals often slip into neighbouring states after committing a crime. In some cases, Andhra has taken the extreme step of getting clearance of the Chhattisgarh and Orissa governments to send the Andhra police to chase militants across the border.

The creation of the Special Security Force (SSF), known as the Greyhounds, has helped the state to take on the militants to some extent. But Naxals have always been a few steps ahead of the police. In the case of the attack on Naidu on the way to Tirupati, police had failed to detect a well laid-out trap, which would have involved considerable digging by the side of the road. What is disturbing is that the spot is barely a kilometre from the Alipiri gate police station and on a road where some 30,000 pilgrims pass by every day. Analysts say that the police machinery has been unable to infiltrate the PWG cadre. It has little grassroots intelligence and banks heavily on a poor network of informers, often fixing responsibility on them after the attacks. Efforts to share and exchange information among the Naxalite-infested states have also come a cropper. Though police chiefs of these states meet occasionally, they have made little headway in devising a long-term strategy.

A recent confidential note from the home department reveals how intelligence bodies were focussing excessively on ruling party (TDP) requirements and that most documentation done by the intelligence had little or no analytical content. Some ruling party legislators concede privately that the intelligence machinery in the state is used to keep a watch on them rather than the militants. Worse still, the recent spate of attacks targeting the industry is becoming an embarrassment for Naidu, and a disincentive for investments in the state. In the recent past, Naxalites have attacked several businesses including blasting a Coca Cola bottling plant in Guntur and a milk foods factory owned by Naidu in Chittoor district. Naxals also blew up two export-oriented units in Medak district not far from Hyderabad and destroyed an instant coffee powder processing plant of Tata Coffee in Toopran. This has forced many companies in the state to review their own security in the state.

Rich harvest
But Andhra isn’t the only state bearing the brunt of Naxal violence.. Starting from a small village in West Bengal 35 years ago, the Naxals today control an area two and a half times that of Bangladesh. While the PWG was always active in Andhra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa, its recent inroads in the south is worrying security forces. Their pockets of influence has spread to Shimoga, Kodagu, Hassan, Chikmagalur in Karnataka and Erode, Namakkal, Sivaganga, Madurai, Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu. The outfit also has significant presence in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. According to intelligence reports, their counterpart in Bihar — the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) — has helped them form a “revolutionary corridor” that stretches across the border into Nepal. Reports also reveal that MCC and PWG have established links with the LTTE and Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence to receive arms and training. Gone are the days of crude bombs and country-made pistols, Naxals are said to be now operating with sophisticated weapons like AK 47s and AK 57s, besides being proficient in landmine operations. Despite security forces mounting an offensive over the years, PWG cadres have continued to swell. The outfit primarily relies on a large reservoir of school dropouts of the poorer families in villages and small towns. It has capitalised on the disadvantaged communities in rural areas who are yet to be touched by development machinery. It also banks on its vast network of sympathisers who act as recruiting agents.

For instance, in Jharkhand, the police stumbled on a unique recruitment drive in the Parasnath Hill range of Dhanbad district. Here the MCC was forcing tribal parents to send at least two of their children to makeshift schools where they are taught to use guns. Reports also suggest that for the first time the MCC has recruited, apart from poor Dalit and tribal youth, young girls who are fully trained to use sophisticated arms. “It is a long-term plan that seems to be working,” admits a senior police official. The Central government, meanwhile, has a counter plan. The Planning Commission is busy evaluating its Rs 1,980 crore Rashtriya Samvikas Yojana, a 100 percent Centrally-funded programme, for 132 backward and extremist-affected districts (read Naxalite-affected). The programme aims to focus on agricultural growth, better forest management and to create employment. The urgency stems from intelligence reports pouring in from the home ministry that Naxalites were getting ready to disrupt elections in Andhra, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Orissa — states where the NDA prospects are brightening. The Commission has also issued full-page ads in national newspapers to showcase its seriousness in curbing Naxalite activities. How determined the government is, will be known only if the elections in these states are not scarred by Naxalite violence.

New Indian Express, February 29, 2004

TIRUPUR WEAVING MAGIC

2009-07-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

Tirupur’s success story was knitted by the ingenuity of its entrepreneurs who put Indian on the global textile map. Today it is at crossroads. With crumbling infrastructure and an environmental nightmare in the backyard, it is gearing up to face a free market future. Can Tirupur’s weavers pull it off?

You cannot miss the contrast as you enter Tirupur, a nondescript town 60-km from Coimbatore. The narrow roads are dusty and it remains hot and dry throughout the year. The rains rarely make a guest appearance so water is the most precious commodity. The hotel owner informs you that there will be no electricity during the day, thanks to the frequent power cuts the town has got used to. As you make your way through the narrow lanes, you stumble upon the dilapidated O K Senniappa Mudaliar Textile Technology Hall. A faded inscription informs you that C Subramaniam, the former finance minister, inaugurated it on August 18, 1957. It looks haunted — the doors are locked and the walls have decay written all over them. And you begin to wonder whether this is the town that breeds millionaires by the dozen.

It’s then that the contrast becomes visible: Flashy cars zip past the town’s narrow and dusty lanes. We are told that there are perhaps more millionaires per square kilometre here than anywhere else in the country. A quick glance at the growth of the town’s textile industry makes you understand why. Tirupur recorded a growth rate of 12 percent in the past five years, the highest among all industrial clusters in India and has a turnover of Rs 5,000 crore. In 2000, it accounted for about 50 percent of India’s knitted cotton exports. It is only the infrastructure that has failed to keep pace with the town’s amazing growth.

And today it is faced with its toughest challenge: As the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules come into effect in 2005 — when the ceiling on exports are lifted and competition will come to domestic markets — it hopes to double its turnover by 2010. And that’s not too ambitious a target for a community of traders who created a large industry purely out of their entrepreneurial skills. “The fittest will survive”, says N Kandasamy, general secretary, South India Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (SIHMA). Superhit formula Paradoxically, Tirupur’s growth as well as its state of pathetic infrastructure has to do with government policies. Its road to success was marked by what some analysts call “abuse” of government policies. The garment sector comes under the category of small scale industry SSI. There is an investment ceiling of Rs 5 crore for SSIs. A company wanting to invest above this ceiling could do so only at its own peril: It would lose lucrative government incentives like tax rebates and duty exemption. “It is common to find an entrepreneur owning 8-10 SSIs instead of one large unit,” says Mahesh Vyas, executive director of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy in Mumbai.

So industries continued to benefit from this policy so long as they remained small. “There is an inbuilt policy bias towards deliberately staying small,” says Bibek Debroy, director-research, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi. “The economic logic behind this kind of reservation is a fraud,” adds Shreekant Gupta, Reader, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. The government policy therefore discourages them from moving towards medium or large sector, where they can invest in infrastructure and better resource utilisation. It is not surprising then that Tirupur has bad roads, power shortage, poor communication and a severe water crisis. The industry blames the government for this situation. “Government support for infrastructure has been inadequate,” says Mohan P Kandasamy, former MLA and president of SIHMA.

The government refutes this. “These industries amassed wealth due to favourable policies. It is their duty now to invest in infrastructure,” says G Venugopal, of the Union Ministry of Textiles. He explains that incentives such as import exemptions and income tax rebates and the cash compensatory scheme should have prompted the industry to invest in infrastructure. Industry sources throw up figures to support their stand: They invested Rs 4 crore in the internal container depot and “gifted” 10 acres of land to the state electricity board to start a new sub-station. They have also contributed to the water pipeline project (see box: Privatised water the solution?). Affluence and effluents As industries and the government pass the buck, the ecology of the region in under severe stress. Sample this: The industry uses 90 million litres of water and discharges 87 million litres of wastewater into a dry riverbed, from where it percolates into the underground water system. The groundwater in Tirupur is undrinkable because it is very saline and polluted with chemical dyes.

Above all there is the problem with solid waste (50,000 tonnes) that lie in heaps in and around the city. To treat the wastewater, around eight common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) were set up by the industries. “But most CETPs are not functioning properly because of the huge pollution load from an ever-growing industry,” says Archana Dange, a scientist with the Centre for Environment Education in Tirupur. There was a proposal for a landfill to take care of the sludge problem, but even that hasn’t taken off. Despite all these problems, Tirupur’s traders remain unfazed. “We will overcome all these problems,” says Mohan P Kandasamy, who recently led a 35-member delegation to China to study their markets. Kandasamy’s confidence is understandable. There is greater awareness about waste minimisation and some companies have invested in cleaner alternatives like Reverse Osmosis. One company even owns its own wind mill power plant. “A clean environment in the long run makes for good economics,” adds one industrialist.

A few months ago, Tirupur’s traders sent a proposal to the Union government to set up a warehouse in Rotterdam. The logic was simple: Since it is close to Amsterdam, it would showcase Indian products in Europe and increase exports.. The traders even found a person in Rotterdam to handle the logistics. But after months of its usual procrastination, the government rejected the idea saying that it was not feasible. The traders have since then gone ahead with the project on their own. Just as they did many decades ago and created wealth out of nothing. Method to success Tirupur is the creation of the World War II. Though the first hosiery unit was set up in 1925, it was the war that created a sudden demand for cheap cotton wear, which industrial clusters in Ludhiana alone could not meet. Labour unrest in other areas where cotton industry existed — Kolkata and Kannur in Kerala — resulted in units being shifted to Tirupur. Today, the town is India’s undisputed leader in the exports of cotton products. Most industrialists here boast of a rags-to-riches story. Like A Sakthivel who began his business in a 800 sq ft rented room. The son of a police officer he began exporting in the late 1970s. Today he is not only a millionarie but also the president of the Tirupur Exporters’ Association. There are many more like Sakthivel in Tirupur.

The town also has a huge floating population, estimated to be around 150,000. Most of them come from poor families from rural Tamil Nadu in search of livelihood. “Due to insufficient rains we abandoned our agriculture,” says Malaisamy, who works in one of the industrial units. “My wife and child are also employed here,” he adds. In fact, as much as officials and the industry would like refute, child labour is Tirupur’s best-kept secret. Tirupur is also a unique case where modernisation of technology has not affected labour as old machinery ready for disposal is bought by a small producer who takes along the labourers who were working there. But there is more to Tirupur’s success than meets the eye. Industry observers believe that Tirupur's owes much of its status to the Gounder community, which raised the initial capital relying on family networks. Those with capital in the Gounder community transferred it to others in their community through long-established informal credit institutions and rotating savings and credit associations.

These networks were viewed as more reliable in transmitting information and enforcing contracts than the banking and legal systems that offered weak protection of creditor rights. The intense competition in the garment industry ensured quick growth and attention being paid to the needs of customers. There are of course non-Gounders who have now entered the industry. These traders did not have access to community funds. Yet starting with just around one-third as much capital as the Gounders, have outperformed them, developing larger-scale and better-integrated production capacity and making up more of the complicated export business. Many believe that community-based industrial clusters such as Tirupur hold the key to India's future.

(New Indian Express, November 2, 2003)

PURGING THE NIGHTMARES

2009-07-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

A committed organisation is braving the odds to erase trauma from the lives of terrorised children

By S S Jeevan in Madurai

Malaisamy was 15 when his father died in police custody in Usilampatti, a small town in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai district. His mother was sexually abused and, with relatives and friends deserting him, Malaisamy had nowhere to go. In 1998, a fact-finding team from a human rights organisation, People’s Watch, came to his house to enquire about his father’s death. It changed Malaisamy’s life forever. Today he is studying law in Mysore. Thanks to People’s Watch, he completed his school education from St Mary’s, Dindigul, and then graduated from the Arul Anandar College, Madurai.

Established in 1995 to provide legal recourse to victims of sexual abuse, police excesses and caste violence, People’s Watch has been helping children like Malaisamy find their feet. During its fact-finding missions, the NGO found that children of tortured parents require psychological help for having been witness to scenes of violence at a tender age. “These children are scarred for life. Left to themselves, they would turn vindictive and violent when they grow up,” says co-ordinator C.J. Rajan. It was to address such needs that People’s Watch set up its Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims in 2001. Today, over 1,000 children have benefitted from summer camps organised by the NGO, where they get medical help and training apart from a chance to participate in fun and games, art and craft. Psychiatrist Dheep, who has used various therapies to help the children, says such camps act as “ventilators” as children share their experiences and thus unburden themselves. As one of them says, “We are not alone here as we make friends easily and feel strengthened by others.” Many like Prabhakaran, 22, who was booked for murder when he was 17, also receive financial assistance to complete their education. Some 25-odd children are today studying in colleges, thanks to the efforts of People’s Watch.

The going hasn’t been all that easy for the NGO, which is facing a financial crunch and allegations of sheltering fugitives. But battling against all odds, it has two relief camps today—one in Madurai and the other in Mettur—providing shelter and education to these troubled children. And, more important, returning to them their childhood.

(India Today, June 12, 2006)

SCRIPTING VICTORY

2009-07-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

In a watershed election, Karunanidhi comes back to power as his sops, personal charisma and caste arithmetic prove invincible

By S.S. Jeevan

Muthuvel Karunanidhi began his career as a scriptwriter for Tamil films in the age of hyper melodrama. The lines he wrote created winners in reel life. Much later he replicated that talent in real life. Now in the sunset of his political career, he has scripted a victory again. The calculations were right and his shrewdly crafted manifesto for the DMK, promising rice at Rs 2 a kg and freebies like colour TV sets, managed to checkmate his opponent and win over the electorate. However, it was not just the freebies that did the trick. In a war between arithmetic and chemistry, Karunanidhi got both the arithmetic and the chemistry right.

Sure he had history on his side. The state has voted out incumbents unfailingly for 15 years. But there is a twist in the script. The victory is not one sided. J. Jayalalithaa's AIADMK has gained in Chennai, long heralded as the bastion of the DMK. It won seven of the 14 seats there. Karunanidhi has called this loss a "setback". Also, contrary to the state's history of landslide victories for a single party, no party has managed a majority on its own this time. Actor Vijaykanth's Desiya Marumalarchy Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) and cine icon Karthik's Forward Bloc may have helped Karunanidhi by cutting into the caste bastions-between them the duo spoiled the AIADMK's chances, taking south Tamil Nadu away from it-but largely, the state's watershed election has cut its demigods to size and sublimated democracy. In defeat Jayalalithaa said, "I accept the verdict of the people and thank all those who voted for the AIADMK alliance."

Within a couple of hours of counting, it had become clear that the DMK chief, who will celebrate his 83rd birthday next month, was on his way to heading the state's first-ever coalition government. His party has won 96 of the 234 seats and emerged as the single-largest party in the Assembly. This will be Karunanidhi's fourth term as a chief minister. His allies, particularly the Congress, which have performed beyond expectations, helped his Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) get 163 seats. The Congress, though nowhere near its 1960 tally of 61 seats, notched its highest number in 20 years by winning 34 of the 48 seats contested. The PMK and the communists won 18 and 15 seats, respectively.

For once the election script had no villains. If one were pressed to point out one, it was poverty, and both parties tried to outdo each other by offering a series of sops. Jayalalithaa walked into Karunanidhi's trap when she first criticised the sops and then topped the DMK's offer. Attacking an offer of sops is not a smart political strategy. Voters may or may not believe the politicians' promises but they do take offence if the opponents try to deny them a promised gift horse.

If Karunanidhi did well to convert his promises into votes it was because he boosted the arithmetic of caste coalition with personal chemistry. His opponent, though praised for her improved governance, chose to be aloof, hardly ever getting off her Tempo Traveller to make contact with the voters. She addressed people at road junctions, street corners and impromptu sessions on the highways, but the people could see her only through the windshield or the window glass. It was almost as though she were on television. Indeed, a last-minute request by MDMK chief Vaiko for rallies in big towns was turned down by the AIADMK supremo. Karunanidhi, in contrast, struggled up the steps of numerous podiums to reach out to the masses. Many suggest that this might have helped the DMK get sympathy votes.

The DPA won evenly across the state. If the Congress swept Sivaganga and Vellore districts, the communists restored their grip over Thanjavur and made impressive gains in Kanyakumari. The PMK asserted its influence in north Tamil Nadu, while other allies bagged the coastal districts of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam, where the incumbent lost heavily despite the AIADMK government's much-talked-about tsunami rehabilitation programme.

The DPA's victory has much to do with Karunanidhi's statesman-like approach towards his allies and his serene style of campaigning. He was able to connect with the masses at well-attended public meetings. Even though he spent only about 15 days campaigning, the recurring images on the Sun Network made up for his absence. It also helped that the dozen-odd Central ministers, including the prime minister and the Congress' star campaigner, Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, toured the state, underscoring the alliance's proximity to the Centre.

In a sense, Karunanidhi made compromises to conquer as he parted with a large number of seats. In a break from the past, he indicated he was not averse to forming a coalition. In electoral politics, the promise of sharing power works like a tonic. What's more, even in victory, Karunanidhi said he would consult his allies on forming a government. The DPA could withstand the "money wave" unleashed by the AIADMK because of the dedicated work by cadres and leaders of all partners, he added. While Congress leaders privately talked of sharing power, they refrained from issuing any statement of power-sharing as the decision has been left to the party high command. The PMK also does not seem to be averse to joining the government. Only the communists have categorically stated that they would support it from the outside.

History will analyse Jayalalithaa's defeat at leisure but prima facie the AIADMK failed to reckon the force of caste mathematics. It also underestimated the threats. For instance, the AIADMK believed that Vijaykanth was on its side as he criticised Karunanidhi and the DMK at every rally. Though his nascent DMDK contested in almost all constituencies, it could win only one seat-Virudhachalam, which was won by Vijaykanth. But his thondar padai (volunteer army) played havoc with the AIADMK's votes, particularly in Jayalalithaa's strongholds in the southern and western districts by cornering about 8 per cent of the votes. In some constituencies the DMDK got over 20,000 votes. "The Vijaykanth factor tilted the scales in favour of the DPA," says political commentator Cho Ramaswamy.

Using the former actor's vehicle for campaigning, Vijaykanth worked on the MGR appeal and lured the rural poor. His younger compatriot from Kollywood, Karthik, too cut into the trusted Thevar vote bank of Jayalalithaa. They converted the bipolar elections into a triangular contest in many constituencies, denying the AIADMK a return and delivering to the Karunanidhi's alliance a crucial edge in many closely fought constituencies. Take, for example, the case of DMK General Secretary K. Anbazhagan, who won the Harbour constituency in Chennai by a mere 400 votes. Even the outgoing industry minister Nainar Nagendran lost the Tirunelveli seat by just 780 votes. The record voter turnout of over 70 per cent also went against the incumbent. Significantly, the minorities have also backed the DMK alliance. And despite Jayalalithaa's rollbacks, government employees and minorities have voted against her, says a poll analyst. The AIADMK seats have largely come from Coimbatore and Tuticorin.

In terms of strike rate the DMK did much better-it won 96 of the 129 seats contested-than the AIADMK, which won only 61 of the 182 seats. The AIADMK's much-vaunted ally MDMK won only 6 of the 35 seats, while Thol Thirumavalan's Dalit Panthers of India won two of the nine seats it contested. The defeat, though, has not been as bad as it was feared given the difference in vote share. "Compared to the 2004 Lok Sabha elections the current election only indicated a downward trend in the DMK vote bank," says Vaiko. To win 69 seats is no mean recovery. Jayalalithaa herself has done well. She won the Andipatti seat by over 24,000 votes.

When Jayalalithaa took over as chief minister in 2001, the statue of Kannaki suddenly disappeared from the Marina Beach in Chennai. Some astrologers are rumoured to have found it inauspicious. Kannaki is the heroine of a Tamil classic who forgave her husband for leaving her for a beautiful courtesan, but fought for him even after his death. "To Karunanidhi, Kannaki epitomised the Tamil woman's character," says writer Vaasanthi in her recent book.

Karunanidhi's first statement after winning was that he would reinstall the statue of Kannaki at Marina Beach. It is symbolic that after ousting the puratchi thalaivi (revolutionary leader) he will restore the original revolutionary to her pedestal. He also declared that the DMK will not be "politically vindictive". Given the history of vendetta politics in Tamil Nadu, it is difficult to believe that adversaries can live and let live. It may be an unintended dividend but Tamil Nadu could yet see the dawn of a new era of tolerance.

(India Today, May 22, 2006)

SRI LANKA: YESTERDAY ONCE MORE

2009-07-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

The Sri Lankan refugee issue no longer evokes the passion of the past as mainline political parties say it is for the Centre to take adequate steps

By S S Jeevan

Dorairanjan left his village in Mannar district in northern Sri Lanka along with his wife Anjali and three children, two of them girls, in a small dhow and arrived at Danushkodi near Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu on June 20. “I couldn’t continue to live there, and did not want to leave my family behind,” says Dorairanjan, who used to run a grocery shop. All along their difficult journey, his family had a twin objective. While each member took turns to “pump out” the water entering their small boat with “bare hands”, they also kept a vigil for the Sri Lankan navy patrolling the volatile seas. Dorairanjan says his journey to India was quite a tightrope walk, just like it has been for over 4,000 Tamil refugees who have arrived in Tamil Nadu over the past couple of months.

History will bear witness to the fact that every time refugees landed in Rameshwaram, most political parties in the state became overnight torchbearers for the “Tamil cause”. They would challenge Delhi’s foreign policy with regard to Sri Lanka and give shelter to extremist groups in the state. State Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi even resigned from the state Assembly once to express solidarity with the “freedom struggle” of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. But today, most political parties have moved away from their earlier positions, and are beginning to talk a new language. Karunanidhi himself is closer to Delhi than ever before. “I leave it to the Centre to decide on the Sri Lankan issue,” he said last week.

At a hurriedly convened meeting of the ruling alliance partners that was held last week in Chennai, the political shift was evident. For the first time six parties spoke in unison asking the Centre to take “adequate steps on the issue”, thereby drifting from their earlier positions.

Karunanidhi, in fact, was forced to hold that meeting as his alliance partner, the PMK, had threatened to join forces with Pan-Tamil politicians— Vaiko of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) and Thol Thirumavalavan of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI)—to stage a rally on June 16 if Tamil Nadu remained a mute spectator to the refugee problem. Though Karunanidhi managed to pull back the PMK and pre-empted a political crisis in the state, PMK President S. Ramadoss has come down heavily on the Centre for its proposed sale of radars to Sri Lanka and said India must play a role to “ensure equal rights to Tamils as well as Sinhalese”.

The chief minister also set up a committee to ascertain the conditions of the refugee camps. And their report, which was presented at the meeting, recommends improved amenities, including providing electricity. There are around 60,000 refugees in over 100 relief camps across the state. Karunanidhi also said he had given “clear instructions to the state police to allow only genuine refugees” into Tamil Nadu.

Perhaps the most vocal support for the Sri Lankan Tamils comes from Vaiko and Thirumavalavan, both of whom have been holding rallies with fringe parties. “We should extend support to them (Tamils) as they are our blood brothers,” says Vaiko, while Thirumavalavan adds, “Karunanidhi needs to clarify his stand—whether he supports the Sinhalese or the Tamils.” The AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa has consistently taken an anti-terrorism stand. Local body elections are due in a few months, and the last thing a defeated alliance needs is a disunited face. But she too said it was best to leave the issue to the Centre. “The Centre should take immediate steps to bring peace in Sri Lanka,” she said.

Karunanidhi, once the champion of the Tamil cause, is today reluctant to use the word “Eelam”. His predicament may be the result of the political exigencies of the time. The Tamil issue does not evoke as much sympathy as it used to, especially after the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. His party was, in fact, wiped out in the elections that followed. Now, with the Congress supporting his minority government in the state, and the DMK ministers part of the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre, Karunanidhi’s hands are tied. So, like Dorairanjan in Danushkodi, Karunanidhi too is walking the tightrope in Chennai.

(India Today, July 10, 2006)

TONGUE TWISTER

2009-07-09T01:10:00.000-07:00

Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s decision to make Tamil the language of the high court has left the state’s legal community divided

By S S Jeevan

In no other state in India is language as much an emotive issue as it is in Tamil Nadu. In the 1960s, the state witnessed unprecedented riots opposing the imposition of Hindi as the national language by the Central government. Over the years, a number of theatrics involving language— including tax concessions for films with Tamil names—have taken place.

Now, the language politics in the state has taken a new turn. Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s decision to introduce Tamil as the language of the high court in the state has sparked fresh controversy. Citing Article 348(2) of the Constitution, the state Assembly passed a resolution and quoted Section 7 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, which provides for all proceedings of the high court to be in the state’s official language. The move requires the consent of the President. “Let the Tamil lamp glow bright in the high court’s portals,” Karunanidhi said. But for the past four months, the attempt has been met with several roadblocks. And now even the Union Government is yet to respond to Karunanidhi’s plea.

The judiciary in the state was the first to react, as a large section of it raised a banner of revolt, with Chief Justice A.P. Shah writing to Karunanidhi, cautioning him that “the switchover to Tamil would not be fully effective for the purpose of delivering justice”. While many accepted the decision “in principle”, they also insisted that a comprehensive project would be needed to translate enactments and laws.

However, when the request was forwarded to the Centre for its approval, the Union Law Ministry politely turned it down. Karunanidhi immediately wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj, arguing that Tamil Nadu be treated on par with the northern states where the use of official language of the state is permitted in the high courts. “In Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, high courts have been authorised to conduct all proceedings in Hindi. Thus, in case of Tamil Nadu a different stand cannot be taken,” he said. Every state has the right to invoke the said provisions for the use of the official language in the high court, he contended.

Tamil Nadu among other states has the highest number of cases pending in the country. Till 2006, 4,43,656 civil and 4,13,153 criminal cases in subordinate courts were left to be looked upon along with 3,72,973 civil and 38,985 criminal cases in the high court. To expedite matters, however, the state Government has proposed to start 50 fast track courts in 2007-2008. It has asked the Centre to allocate funds in the current financial year to take up a Rs 213-crore project to construct court buildings for judicial officers.

Many experts have voiced concerns as to how the attempt to change the language of court can delay the judicial process. Moreover, the appointments of non-Tamil speaking judges to the high court may have its own problems. India follows the Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence, and translations from English to Tamil will take many years. However, it remains to be seen whether the Centre responds to Karunanidhi’s penchant for Tamil.

(India Today, April 30, 2007)

THE RISING SON

2009-07-09T01:06:00.001-07:00

Karunanidhi starts his fifth term, partially fulfilling his election pledges, even as his son Stalin’s induction into the Cabinet signals the DMK chief’s carefully crafted plan to pass on the baton

By S S Jeevan, in Chennai

If you thought a man touching 83 would take time to settle into a new job, think again. The elections to the Tamil Nadu Assembly were held on May 8. Three days later, when the votes were counted, Muthuvel Karunanidhi’s DMK belied predictions of a close fight and emerged as the overwhelming winner. Two days later, the new chief minister and his 30-member Cabinet— which included his son and heir apparent M.K. Stalin—were sworn in at a public function at the Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai. Minutes later, amidst cheers from a large gathering inside the closed arena and lakhs of DMK cadres, Karunanidhi partially fulfilled his campaign pledges: rice for the poor at Rs 2 per kg, waiver of loans for the cooperative sector and an extra egg in the midday meal-scheme for schoolchildren. “I am signing the orders in front of you,” he told the audience. Chief Minister Karunanidhi had put his money where his mouth is. And in one stroke, he made the DMK’s dramatic victory look even more spectacular.

Till the morning of the counting day, a close finish was what everyone had predicted and it looked as if the state was readying for its first shot at a coalition government. For a man on the wrong side of 80, Karunanidhi appeared to be doing things at breakneck speed. Just hours after he took the oath, he effected a smooth transition of almost all top bureaucrats and police officers, including a few who had been suspended or shunted to the bureaucratic doghouse by the previous AIADMK regime of J. Jayalalithaa. Even the state Government’s website wore a new look.

It was not without reason that Karunanidhi did not overtly project his son during the run-up to the polls. “It is a strategy to malign me,” he told INDIA TODAY, dismissing questions regarding the anointment of his son. But the list of ministers submitted to Governor S.S. Barnala left little to the imagination. Stalin’s name is right after those of his father’s and of the party vanguards’, General Secretary K. Anbazhagan and Treasurer Arcot N. Veerasamy.

Stalin’s rise within the party has been largely silent. That’s because the campaign launched by Vaiko and Jayalalithaa on dynastic rule always put Karunanidhi on the backfoot. He knew the more he projected his son, the lesser would be Stalin’s chances of succeeding him. But pushing his son is just what he’s been doing. Stalin’s control over the party has been increasing over the years. Ever since he was made the DMK’s deputy general secretary two years ago, Stalin has made a conscious effort to emulate his father—going to the party headquarters at 10 a.m. and meeting the cadres every day. He has also been working on his oratory skills—a fact that came to light in this election. About six months ago, he began writing columns in the party organ Murasoli, just like his father.

Stalin may face stiff opposition outside the DMK world, but inside the party he is the king-in-waiting. After Vaiko’s the DMK. Most of Karunanidhi’s Cabinet is filled with new faces—19, including Stalin, who are adding political strength to his future. And the old guard will not revolt. He shares a special relationship with Dayanidhi Maran, whose father Murasoli Maran was unflinchingly loyal to Karunanidhi. The generation-next leaders hope to follow in their father’s footsteps. Rarely does one witness both father and son together in a cabinet. Stalin has emerged as the undisputed leader in the party and a new power centre at Fort St George.

Stalin is not just in power, he is in absolute control too. He holds the crucial local administration portfolio that includes municipal administration, panchayats, rural development and indebtedness and urban and water supply. Karunanidhi has played his part to strike a fine balance in his Cabinet— there’s a fair representation of castes, minorities and women. He has given special emphasis to the southern districts, from where the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) made inroads into the AIADMK belt.

In keeping with a tradition peculiar to the state, Jayalalithaa has said she will not attend the Assembly, unless “it is important”. “Nobody can forget how I was attacked and humiliated in the Assembly on March 25, 1989 and some of those who humiliated me that day will be back as ministers in the new DMK ministry,” she said. She has deputed former chief minister O. Pannerselvam to lead her party in the Assembly. Karunanidhi too had kept away from the Assembly when the AIADMK was in power.

Experts have expressed fears that Karunanidhi’s populism could bleed the state’s economy in the long run. During the previous DMK regime, the state’s revenue deficit had gone up from 2.94 per cent in 1996 to 26.95 per cent in 2000. The AIADMK government, with some creative measures, had brought it down to 2.47 per cent. The waiver of cooperative loans, some believe, could lead to problems, as people will start believing that there is no need to pay their debts. Even the promise of two acres for poor landless farmers is bound to become a contentious issue as far as land availability and eligibility are concerned.

Karunanidhi’s populist policies have gone beyond the economic. In a progressive order of far-reaching implications, the Government has ended the monopoly of Brahmins over temples in the state. This was DMK ideologue Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s last wish, Karunanidhi said. As if in acknowledgement of the recent close ties between the DMK and the Congress— never mind that it was a Congress government that had dismissed his during the Emergency—he announced that the enhanced midday meals would be given to children from July 15, the birthday of the former Congress president and Tamil Nadu’s last Congress chief minister K. Kamaraj. That was the only concession he would make to the Congress, which as an alliance partner was hoping to grab a few ministerial berths for itself. The logic behind this unfriendly act was not difficult to understand. Having just anointed his son as minister and heir apparent, Karunanidhi, who, at 83, is certainly serving his last term as chief minister, is hardly keen to give the Congress a chance to groom a leader who could one day pose a challenge to his son. In Delhi or in Chennai, political dynasties always think alike.

(India Today, May 29, 2006)

SMALL IS POWERFUL

2009-07-09T01:05:00.000-07:00

With most pollsters predicting a photo-finish, smaller parties and allies may hold the key to government formation in Chennai

By S S Jeevan

Ever since the state came into being in 1953, Tamil Nadu, formerly Madras, has been a fanatical believer in single-party rule. While the Congress ruled for a little over a decade, regional parties have held sway since 1967. But now the state is witnessing a phenomenal rise of caste-based parties and marginal players. Their importance can be gauged from the fact that they have managed to wrangle a significant number of seats from the big Dravidian parties that are leading the two alliances. While the M. Karunanidhi-led Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) has had to part with over 100 seats out of the 234 seats up for grabs, even the tightfisted J. Jayalalithaa's All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) had to grudgingly give away over 50 seats to its allies. Both parties have been forced to accept the growing reality of coalition politics. And with pollsters predicting a photo-finish on May 8, the allies may well be the ones holding the key to Fort St George, the seat of government in Chennai.

Though discontent has been simmering among communities for quite some time, till a few years ago, caste polarisations were hardly reflected in the electoral results. The dynamics, however, changed in 1998 when the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a party of Vaniyars, walked away with four of the five Lok Sabha seats it contested in alliance with the AIADMK. It also got 6 per cent of the total votes, which it consolidated to over 8 per cent in 1999. Now with its influence spread in over 80 constituencies across 10 districts, S. Ramadoss' party, in alliance with the DMK, has fielded candidates in 31 seats.

The Dalits have traditionally voted for the AIADMK, but have enjoyed little space in the power matrix. The emergence of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) gave some fillip to the community's aspirations in the northern districts. Party chief Thol. Thirumavalavan, who fought along with the DMK in 2001, has now joined the AIADMK and is expected to boost the Jayalalithaa-led alliance in the northern districts of the state.

Poll analysts believe that due to the absence of a third front in the state, parties such as the PMK and the DPI switch loyalties in every election in order to get the best deals. For someone who is testing the waters for the first time, actor Vijaykanth has managed to get remarkable appreciation for his off-screen performance. Putting to rest months of speculation over which alliance he would join, Vijaykanth, a Naidu by caste, says his Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) will play an important role in the event of a fractured mandate.

The spotlight, however, is on his caste mate Vaiko, who provided the shock value to the poll battle with his dramatic poll-eve U-turn. The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) leader seems to have realised the perils of fighting alone and analysts believe that his joining hands with Jayalalithaa was nothing more than a desperate attempt to reinvent and reposition himself for a future in a multi-party system. Vaiko's party is contesting in 35 constituencies, and his votes in the other constituencies in the southern districts are bound to strengthen the AIADMK alliance. This region is also home to a large section of the Thevar community, a caste to which Jayalalithaa's close friend Sasikala Natarajan belongs.

According to poll estimates, the religious minorities, who hold over 10 per cent of the total vote share, are largely with the DPA, though sections of the Muslims and Christians have thrown their weight behind the AIADMK. The Federation of Minorities faced a vertical split recently when 10 organisations broke away to support Jayalalithaa. In response, Catholic archbishops met Karunanidhi to reaffirm their support to DMK. Some Christians also find it hard to believe that the Anti-Conversion Bill has been withdrawn, as, they say, it is technically in force. They have sought job quotas in government institutions as well as a constitutional amendment to extend reservation to Dalit Christians.

Muslims, who have traditionally stayed with the DMK, have asked for reservation too. Some groups have even called for the release of all the accused in the Coimbatore serial blasts, including Abdul Nasser Madani, the chairman of Kerala's People's Democratic Party. "Let the court give its judgement. But why are you denying them bail?" says M.H. Jawahirullah, president, Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK), which is supporting the DMK-led front. The Muslims are concentrated in many regions of the state, including Chennai, Tirunelveli and Coimbatore. However, one faction of the Muslim League has joined the AIADMK.

Election 2006 could well mark a turning point in the politics of the state. The Dravidian parties no longer look invincible. In many ways, they are being slowly edged out by relatively smaller groups and individuals. The dynamics of caste polarisation have also become pronounced, with every group becoming vocal in a bid to foist its community agenda. And in any close contest, these groups could well end up separating the winners from the losers. Perhaps the only positive fallout of a fragmented polity could be a respectable Opposition strength in the state Assembly, which has so far been a rarity in Tamil Nadu politics.

(India Today, May 8, 2006)

Southern Shifting Sands

2009-07-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

The dramatic polarisations in the neighbourhood are bound to affect the Union Territory which shares an umbilical cord with Tamil Nadu

By S.S. Jeevan, in Pondicherry

Sleepy Pondicherry is sipping a funny Congress cocktail. A strong bastion for decades, it is today plagued by intense infighting, somuch so that there are as many leaders as the number of seats in theAssembly— 30. The party received a record number of applications (nearly 400) for the 17-odd seats it is contesting this time. As the Union Territory gets ready for a two-phased poll on May 3 and 8, it looks like the ruling Congress might just about retain power. That’s because the opposing parties in the last assembly polls, the DMK and the PMK, have joined hands with the Congress this time.Andthey are taking on, ironically, another former Congressman, P. Kannan, whose Puthucherry Munnetra Congress (PMC) has forged an alliance with the AIADMK.

While PCC President and veteran leader P.Shanmughamassures there is no infighting, seat sharing has led to heart-burns among alliance parties, as the DMK asked for more seats. The Vanniyar-based PMK, which got the lone Lok Sabha seat in 2004, much to the consternation of Congressmen, had also to be accommodated, adding to the unrest among alliance party workers.

Chief Minister N. Rangasamy seems to be sitting pretty. His Government’s sops are being projected as the party’s campaign strategy. The growing economy is reflecting on the Government’s performance. But what will determine the poll outcome is the choice of candidates and also how seriously party cadres work as the campaign gains momentum.

The opposition alliance, however, has got a head start. It finalised seat sharing even as the ruling alliancewas struggling to find common ground. J. Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK is contesting 16 seats, while Vaiko’s MDMK and the Dalit Panthers have two seats each. Kannan’s PMC has 10 seats and it will contest on AIADMK’s election symbol. Interestingly, Election Commission figures reveal that the number of women voters has increased this time, while that of men voters has come down.

Pondicherry shares an umbilical cord with Tamil Nadu. Electoral results in Tamil Nadu have often had a spillover effect in Pondicherry—the Congress-AIADMK alliance in 1991 and the DMK in 1996. The recent dramatic polarisations in Tamil Nadu and the born-again Amma might add to that effect. “But this spillover will be offset by the first ever Congress-DMK-PMK alliance in the Union Territory,” says D. Sambandhan, a professor at Pondicherry University.

An issue dominating the electoral scene is unemployment, as there is growing disenchantment among the locals over losing jobs to “outsiders”. Another issue is that of elections to local bodies, which haven’t been held for over 35 years. Though most parties talk about it, there seems to be a quid pro quo among them to not hold the elections. “This is because they stand to lose power, as the size of constituencies is very small,” says Mannar Mannan, a Tamil scholar.

In many ways, Pondicherry only mirrors the scene at the national level, where multi-party coalitions have become the mantra. And multiple personalities are jostling to create individual space. But they also realise—like Kannan, who has a sizeable following—they cannot win without strategic partnerships with large parties. In this tourist haven where booze comes cheap and almost nothing gets taxed, no politician is resting easy at the moment. And they would rather wait till May 11—the counting day— before the champagne is uncorked.

(India Today, April 10, 2006)

PROMISES KEPT

2009-07-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

Voters repose faith in Karunanidhi in the local and municipal body elections after he delivers on the pledges made in the 2006 assembly polls, strengthening his and the party’s position in the state

When the DMK was virtually wiped out in the 2001 assembly polls, most people had declared the party a “spent force”. With less than 30 seats in the 234-member Assembly, the party took the fancy of obituary writers. Allies, too, were in short supply. Today, even his opponents concede that Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, who has completed 150 days in office, has consolidated his party’s position in the state. In the municipal corporation elections last week, his alliance secured three-fourth of the local body seats. The DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) won five of the six municipal corporations, over 110 of the 152 municipalities and 28 of the 29 district panchayats across the state. In the Chennai Municipal Corporation Council elections, the alliance won in 150 of the 155 wards. In the process, it has broken into the AIADMK strongholds in western and southern districts winning a majority of wards in Madurai, Coimbatore, Virudhunagar and Tirunelveli districts.

Now every political party wants to be a part of his alliance. The Dalit Panthers, earlier with the AIADMK, joined his alliance recently. And the battle seems to be for the opposition space, with actor Vijaykanth’s DMDK also strengthening its position in the local body elections. Karunanidhi set the tone on the very first day he assumed office. By implementing schemes like rice at Rs 2 a kg and free colour TVs, he managed to silence his critics on one hand, and widened the support base for his party on the other. It was a shrewd strategy based on pure arithmetic. His party’s vote share had showed signs of dipping during the last elections. That could have been because he had to concede more seats to his allies, but Karunanidhi at 83 knows all too well that his immediate task is to strengthen the party and raise the equity for his son and successor M.K. Stalin.

So whether it is extending reservation for OBCs in private unaided educa- tional institutions, giving concessions to government employees or taking steps to ensure reservation for Muslims and Christians in the state, Karunanidhi has adopted an inclusive approach to reach out to every vote bank and secure the party’s future. For instance, he touched a chord with the Dalits in southern Tamil Nadu recently when he extended reservations for SCs in villages. He also went out of his way to co-opt the influential Tamil film industry that had deserted him during the previous elections. All new films with a Tamil name will now be exempt from entertainment tax and rates for shooting in government buildings have been cut by half. And to appease the party ideologues, a governmentfunded film on Periyar is on the anvil.

The irony, however, is hard to miss. Karunanidhi is heading the state’s first minority government. Though his large cut-outs that dot the state’s landscape may loudly proclaim his arrival as a ‘maximum’ leader, he has been able to shrewdly keep his allies within the coalition. The Congress MLAs find themselves in a gridlock. While Karunanidhi may still cobble a majority without Congress support in the state, the same may not be true at the Centre where the DMK-led alliance is lending strength to the UPA Government. So while the Congress has openly demanded power, it still remains an unwilling partner. Though the PMK has periodically tried to raise a banner of revolt, like on the Sri Lankan refugee issue or when it stalled a decision on an satellite town near Chennai, it too has little option but to stay with the flock.

But, Karunanidhi has been more than willing to humour his closest allies, the Left parties, who too have reminded him they could not be taken for granted. For instance, when the CPI(M) General Secretary N. Vardarajan said, “Armed professional rowdies were engaged by DMK across the state,” referring to the violence-marred local body elections, Karunanidhi was quick to pacify the comrades the next day. He also took the extreme step of challenging the UPA Government on the Neyveli Lignite Corporation issue due to the Left parties’ pressure. This was to thwart the Opposition that had built up a campaign in the state. By stalling the divestment process, Karunanidhi not only turned a potential crisis into a political victory, but stole the thunder from the Opposition and reminded Delhi of his bargaining power.

On the economic front, Karunanidhi inherited an economy in good shape and the 8 per cent plus GDP growth is reflecting on governance in the state. A new industrial policy is on the anvil. Special tax concessions will also be granted to companies that set up shop in the SEZs. A second Tidel Park will be set up in Chennai and another in Coimbatore.

Karunanidhi’s style of governance too has found many takers. He has given a free hand to his ministers, mostly new faces. He himself is easily accessible. “He may appear to have sobered down with age, but his mind is as sharp as ever,” says a political commentator. That reflects in the assembly too where he has consistently denied a strong Opposition bench a chance to lead the proceedings, while being also gracious to admit their constructive role. The Opposition, in fact, has failed to find a foothold in the state. The emergence of Vijaykanth, many believe, may only be working to his advantage as he is believed to be splitting the opposition votes. Also, he seems to have realised the perils of overtly going after AIADMK CHIEF Jayalalithaa. It is a strategy that bombed during his last tenure. A couple of cases against the AIADMK loyalists, however, have kept tongues wagging.

Clearly, Karunanidhi is shouldering a larger-than-life responsibility and doing a balancing act amidst compulsions and contradictions of coalition politics. His son Stalin is gradually stepping into the father’s shoes, touring the state in a bid to strengthen the party. The violence in local body polls may be the only scar in the reign of the final arbitrator of Tamil Nadu.

(India Today, November 6, 2006)

DECIPHERING THE INDIAN MALE

2009-07-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

A unique roundtable discusses the hypocricy behind gender stereotypes in the Indian society. Excerpts from India Today's S.S. Jeevan.

Adithya, 32, is an established actor in Tamil and Malayalam films. S Anwar, 41, is a documentary filmmaker. Vikram Chaudhary, 26, is a student at the Asian College of Journalism, and Prathap Kumar, 21, and Ignacy Arockiyaa, 27, are students at Loyola College. They got together in Chennai recently to decipher the Indian male. Excerpts from the discussion:

How would you define the Indian male?
Adithya: I disagree with the idea of trying to pin down the Indian male to a single entity. The Indian male is going through a sort of a metamorphosis. You have different types of men: those trying to follow the old rules of grandparents, which are common in rural areas, and then you find a completely different bunch of males who live in cities. These people have had more education, have traveled abroad and have greater exposure. I define myself as one who is stuck in this metamorphosis. As far as thinking is concerned, these people are neither with the old generation, nor are they into the next generation, like how people in the US are. But the aspirations are like how people are in the West – they need a car, house, want to travel, have good wine, food etc.
Vikram: Due to the resurgence in Indian society in the past few years, the growth of the younger generation (between the ages of 20-30) is at a much faster pace than what it was in the 1980s or even earlier. This has brought about an attitude changes in the mindset. The changing environments are affecting his personality, and not necessarily in the wrong sense.
Anwar: I agree with Adithya that we can't generalize. India is a land of diversity and attitudes will differ from place to place and even within communities.
Ignacy: The Indian male in cities is well tuned towards Western sensibilities. In today's fast-paced life, they tend to kill themselves to achieve something. There is a sort of challenge in which each one is trying to prove himself. The society is growing fast. I also feel that there is a growing tendency for people to go back to their roots and discover their heritage.
Prathap: I hail from a village in rural Tamil Nadu. I find that there is little difference between a literate and an illiterate person.
Today, people might be earning more but I don't think they are behaving responsibly.

Do you believe that men are being forced to make room for women as compared to the past?
Anwar: Women have acquired more economical freedom today. Girls have become more assertive, and when they have economic freedom, they will not take things lying down. Also, tolerance levels have come down because of economic freedom. Because of which the Indian male is no longer able to call the shots at home anymore. The power is slowly shifting, and it is moving towards the women.
Adithya: In most rural households, the wife looks after the house, but she doesn't have a say at home. I have many friends who brag about their hegemony at home. Then you have the educated urban male, who aspires for a wife who is educated; can accompany him for a party; can be seen at a disco; and, can still look good. And this is where the conflict begins for the Indian male.
Because you want the old system to continue, because some of your friends might be following it, but at the same time, you want to be more modern. However, the urban male is no longer calling the shots. They can't. Things have changed. What Anwar said is right, because if we look at history, when women have had more rights, they are no longer dependent. If we look back in history, women in India had more rights than the man. Today they are financially competent and have more say. Even children are no longer an issue for women to save their marriage.
Vikram: The Indian male is confused. A friend of mine who was working in the software industry wanted to get married to a girl equal to him.
But once he got what he wanted, the problems began. The wife started earning more than him and that hurt his ego. Then he got to know about the wife's previous relationship. That kept playing on his mind and he went crazy.

So is virginity an issue with the Indian male?
Ignacy: The idea of chastity or purity exists everywhere. It is male chauvinism that cannot be changed. Personally, I have no problem. But when you consider family and comments from friends, I might say no. So there is a dilemma.
Adithya: There are lots of men who don't really care. I know from my experience that there are men who might just get married and take the girl to a different place and settle down. They might cut off old friends. Virgins are extinct, as far as I am concerned.
Vikram: The only thing that should affect the couple is whether they are possessive about each other and are in love. The problem comes when the girl confides in her husband after marriage. Even if the man accepts it, there might be a lurking feeling about it.
Ignacy: I have apprehensions that virgins are extinct.
Vikram: "Bus mohabbat honi chaiye" is how I would counter chastity.
Adithya: From my experiences in Dubai where I grew up, I learnt that a repressed society throws up more chances for incestuous relationships.
There is less morality in a repressive society. And the fact that you are forbidden to do something makes it all the more exciting.

So does this argument hold true for rural areas?
Adithya: In rural areas, parents still control their children's way of life. They take pride that they don't let their daughters go astray.
They keep a tight leash. But having said this, your own survey showed last time that lots of girls below the age of 16 had had a sexual experience. But this may not be true for urban areas. This shows that repressive societies actually force people to find ways to express themselves.
Vikram: I have seen this in rural Punjab, where I come from.
Promiscuous behavior is rampant. So if a relationship lasts for one year in urban areas, it lasts for just three months in the rural.

What about paid-sex?
Adithya: Paid sex is falling out of fashion. Internet has mellowed down the Indian male tremendously. You don't have to pay for a visual treat of a nude woman.
Vikram: I went to a red light area in Delhi called G B Road. It was nothing more than a desire to know the place. I also feel that this is not happening as much because of fear of disease and access to other avenues.
Ignacy: I too went to a place in Pune meant for sex workers. It was out of curiosity and when we were confronted by the girls, we just ran away. Because it was very difficult for me to reconcile since I am a devout Catholic.

How do you look at alternative sexuality?
Anwar: Even today, nobody can come out and say confidently that "I am a gay".
Adithya: A lot of people are still unaware of homosexuality; but in this information age, more people are getting to know of it and more people are willing to experiment. If you go to a chat room for instance, there are separate enclosures for gay people.
Anwar: It has been there in our ancient texts. It has been part of our tradition. It is just that we don't talk about it today.
Adithya: In Chennai, for example, it is dangerous to openly profess that you are a homosexual; people might ridicule you or worse, they might target you. In Calicut, gay relationships are common. But in Chennai if they come out, they will get hit. There is also fear of hate attacks.
Vikram: It is true. A group of friends once came across gays in Connaught Place. When one of them made a pass at us, my friends – who were from small towns, wanted to get out of the car and hit them.
Ignacy: It happens everywhere. I was shocked when a group of gays confronted me in a public toilet in a small town like Tiruchi.

But would you accept gay relationships?
Adithya: I may be homophobic, but I will not harm anyone. I would say that it should be legalised.
Anwar: I am against the Western model for "acceptance" for something.
The Western model for persecution does not exist here. It is not a disease, just a habit.
Ignacy: I won't say no, and I won't say yes.
Vikram: The Indian male is accepting everything
Adithya: The Indian male has not choice.

Is it dangerous to voice opinions on sex today?
Anwar: The Khusboo episode was politically motivated. I think everybody is aware of the facts and everyone agrees with her. The same things have been said by so many people, but nobody attacked them.
They attacked her because she was someone who was well known; and they wanted it to make her an example. In a democracy we have the right to speak about what we want.
Adithya: A lot of our ideas about morality has been thrust on us.
There are some people who want to dictate what is right and what is wrong. Some people want to define culture. Nobody can. There will be a Sushma Swaraj who will say you cannot have the model's skirt becoming shorter when half of Bastar is walking with little or no clothes. This country is not singular. There are too many cultures here. What she thinks is her culture today, was not culture 200 years ago. If you go to Kerala, it is in our culture to wear a blouse today. But 200 years ago, women did not wear a blouse. So what is culture? And who defines it?

(India Today, November 13, 2006)

MOUNTING A CHALLENGE

2009-07-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

The DMK and its allies promise freedom from Jayalalithaa’s “dictatorship”, while triggering a freebie contest to woo voters

By S S Jeevan

Less than two months ago, the DMK took offence at the statement of Union Minister of State E.V.K.S. Elangovan to the effect that the Congress is not in politics just to put “others in the saddle”. The minister was suggesting that the DMK share power in Tamil Nadu. Not satisfied with his subsequent apology, the DMK demanded action against him. But on April 17, a softened DMK chief M. Karunanidhi admitted candidly, “It does not matter whether a single party or a coalition comes to power in Tamil Nadu. My janma sabalayam (purpose of birth) is to get rid of the Jayalalithaa Government.”

Earlier in the day, surrounded by a massive crowd at the Chennai Collectorate, the leader of the Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) filed his nomination, hoping for a hattrick of wins from the Chepauk constituency. Accompanied by Union ministers Dayanidhi Maran and T.R. Baalu, Karunanidhi appeared confident as his party-workers tried desperately to make room for the four-time chief minister. The same day, not far from Chepauk, Karunanidhi’s son and DMK Deputy General Secretary M.K. Stalin also filed his papers from the Thousand Lights constituency.

With just over two weeks to go for the elections, the DMK campaign blitz is nearing a crucial phase. Karunanidhi has completed over a third of his travel and his target, like that of his alliance partners, is Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. Addressing a meeting in Chidambaram, he asked, “How can someone who is embroiled in court cases make Tamil Nadu the No. 1 state?” At another rally he told the crowds that the choice before them was between “democracy and dictatorship”.

With some opinion polls predicting a slender advantage for Jayalalithaa, DMK allies too have upped the ante. According to an opinion poll conducted by a TV channel, Jayalalithaa has a 2 per cent advantage in terms of voteshare over Karunanidhi. Congress leaders and Union min- isters P. Chidambaram, Elangovan and G.K. Vasan are camping in the state and so is Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) chief S. Ramadoss to drum up support. At a meeting in Chennai, finance minister Chidambaram charged the AIADMK with undermining democracy and legislative practices. “They passed 15 bills in 15 minutes,” he said and urged people to elect a government that “co-operates with the Centre”. The Congress, however, is facing dissent from within, with some rebels deciding to contest in constituencies allotted to allies.

The DMK’s manifesto has generated much debate in this election and the politics of rice has already had its impact. In response to the party’s offer of Rs 2 per kg, the AIADMK has presented a counter-offer: 10 kg free rice for every 10 kg purchased. Ramadoss calls it “a sedative-laced biscuit”. Actor Vijaykanth of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) has chipped in with an assurance of 15 kg of rice free. Not to be outdone, the DMK has now come up with the offer of free colour TV sets. The economic impact of such promises, if implemented, will be marginal, says V. Chandrasekara Naidu, associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, adding, “The real problem will be implementation as siphoning off could defeat the purpose.”

At an election rally in Chennai, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) chief Vaiko took a dig at Chidambaram’s backing of the DMK’s offers. He asked if subsidised rice would indeed be provided throughout the country. The real surprise is Vijaykanth. Captain, as he is popularly called, is contesting from the Vriddhachalam and his party has fielded candidates in almost all constituencies. Experts, however, believe that Vaiko and Vijaykanth may only be successful in cutting into the votes of the DMK and AIADMK alliances, and may end up with only a handful of seats.

Jayalalithaa, on the other hand, has kept her campaign relatively low key. She described Karunanidhi’s promise of distributing 50 lakh acres of wasteland as “misleading”, pointing out that the land was not in the government’s possession. Spending a considerable time in her constituency Andipatti last week, she met actor Sarath Kumar, who quit the DMK to join the AIADMK.

One of the key deciding factors in this poll could be rural votes. “The DMK is strong in urban areas, while the AIADMK has traditionally banked on the rural vote,” says historian K. Rajayyan. Adds M. Swamy, a teacher at a village near Tenkasi: “The rural people will face a tough choice: whether to vote against the callous attitude of Jayalalithaa in her first three years of governance, or for its performance in the last two years.” Maybe it is the consumer lurking within the voter who’ll decide. As a tea shop owner in Chennai says, “We got free bicycles during Jayalalithaa’s tenure, so why not go for Karunanidhi’s colour TVs this time?”

(India Today, May 1, 2006)

PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE?

2009-07-09T00:51:00.000-07:00

Classical music is shifting from the sabhas to catwalks, as Indian classical musicians try to find a new mantra for space and survival. But in doing so, are they cheapening the art form?

One night recently, Pandit Umayalpuram K Sivaraman ended his 60-minute mridangam recital in Chennai with a grand flourish. You could be forgiven for thinking that it was just another day and another Kutcheri (performance) at one of the innumerable sabhas that are synonymous with Chennai. But that wasn’t the case: the percussionist wasn’t playing to a hall packed with sari-clad matrons well-versed with the intricacies of Carnatic music. For Sivaraman was only providing the backdrop for an evening of haute couture with models sashaying down the catwalk modelling Satya Paul's latest creations. The performance outraged many in Chennai. Was it a fashion show or a music recital? Was Sivaraman denigrating the classical art form in any way? Traditionalists bemoaned the ‘commercialisation’ of Carnatic music; several questioned whether musicians should stoop to this level. Welcome to what looks like the emerging new trend in Indian classical music, as musicians move from the confines of staid sabhas to the worlds of high fashion and entertainment.

Umayalpuram Sivaraman is not the only one to do so; take Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, the flautist, who performed at a fashion show in Mumbai. Or vocalist Shubha Mudgal who recently played at a jewelry show in Delhi. Or sitarist Shubhendra Rao and his wife Saskia on cello who have performed at product launches. Or vocalist Nityashree Mahadevan who sings for TV serials. It’s a trend that has been luring classical musicians for some time now - both Carnatic as well as Hindustani. The younger musicians make no bones about it; they’re not defensive in the least about venturing into the worlds of fashion and entertainment. “A classical musician isn’t the kind of entertainer youngsters are looking for. So you need to make them feel that we can be ‘cool and trendy’ too,” says percussionist Bikram Ghosh, who has composed music for fashion shows.

Not surprisingly, the purists are shaken. “It is an insult to classical music and is only a gimmick to promote oneself. In the quest for fame, musicians are ready to make any compromise and in the process our classical music will suffer,” says rudra veena player Ustad Asad Ali Khan. Master percussionist Karaikudi R Mani is even more blunt. “The new trend is eroding the purity of classical music. If it continues, I won’t be surprised if Carnatic musicians start performing at striptease and cabaret shows,” says the mridangam player, who once refused to play at a dinner concert in Australia even when the tickets were sold out.

Trendde mari poiduchu. (The trend has changed.) It’s a lament that’s heard every now and then. A violent debate raged in the 1930s and 1940s was to do on whether musicians should use microphones. When some of the most celebrated names in Carnatic music - M S Subbulakshmi, G N Balasubramaniam and M L Vasantakumari - acted and sang in films, there was an uproar. Should they be diluting on the screen what is considered sacrosanct on the stage? “This discussion is linked to the blinkered perspective on the role of music itself,” says Sadanand Menon, a cultural commentator. Those who talk about a certain kind of puritanism in style have not been able to sustain it over time - with respect to changes in society, training, financial sustainability and stage practice.

Historically, classical music has always been determined by the structure of patronage and the availability of space. Today the patrons are no longer temples and maharajas or the feudal landholders. The patrons today are the corporate sector or a middle class that wants to listen to music while it is dining at five-star hotels. It feels doubly ethnic, consuming Indian food and Indian music together. Sociologists believe that such a trend is indicative of the changing mindset unleashed by the twin forces of liberalisation and globalisation. And the musicians are not complaining. Along with corporate patronage comes the big bucks. Top businessmen and big companies think nothing of forking out Rs 5 lakhs for a recital -the going rate for a top musician. Lesser lights of the music world get anywhere between Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. “Many corporations have supported musicians over the years, so the relationships also matter. Depending on the scope of the event, it could go up to a few lakhs of rupees,” says Punnet Nanda, creative director at Satya Paul Design Studio, whose fashion shows often feature classical musicians.

The music sabhas, by contrast, pay a pittance. Till a few years ago, some music sabhas in Chennai used to pay artistes just the bus fare and Rs 250 for a recital. In local parlance, musicians referred to it as the thenga mudi performance (meaning they were paid peanuts for their efforts). It is only now that some sabhas have loosened their purse strings; top musicians can command up to Rs 10,000 depending upon the season and the venue. “So why wait for the logic of a gharana when the hotel next door is summoning you,” asks Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist working on science and other forms of popular culture

As the culture industry casts its web on the classical musicians - to the consternation of the traditionalists - some experts have a word of caution. “Today musicians have no staying power. The market is running and ruining all established classical arts and making them cheap entertainment,” says Ashish Khokar, a cultural historian. Experts say that those who are taking up the cudgel of purity of classical music must first improve their own systems. “I don't know why the top 50 Carnatic musicians cannot take a stand and say that they will not perform unless the music sabhas improve the systems. That would be looking into the purity of music,” says Menon.

“Purists always worry about prostitution. I am worried about innovation, hybridity, improvisation which combine the classical and the popular,” says Visvanathan. The controversy over Sivaraman and others of his stature playing at fashion shows is not the only one plaguing Indian classical music. Another bugbear of the purist is so-called fusion music, especially when it involves radical experimentation and innovation. “There is no harm in experimentation, as long as one does not compromise on the style and form and maintains one’s identity,” says vocalist Aruna Sairam, who has done a series of fusion concerts with French musician Dominique Vellard. Sivaraman has a similar opinion. “If I have to play with Michael Jackson, I will adapt my technique to bring out the best,” he says. Shiv Visvanathan puts it succinctly. “Given the family monopolies in the musical arena, new musicians are searching for new avenues, while willing to co-exist with the paler imitations of musicians such as Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pandit Jasraj and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. It’s a live-and-let-live model.”

So when Sivaraman tunes his mridangam for what will probably be another round of fashion shows, the question once again arises: is he diluting the classical form? It’s not an easy question to answer. Perhaps we should take a cue from the Hindu religion itself, which, just like music, is gloriously pluralist. Over the years, it has assimilated so many foreign influences without losing its core identity; in fact one may say it’s been enriched by the currents and cross-currents that it has had to encounter over the millennia. For the lovely thing about music is that it is redolent of the milieu and culture around it. As Bismillah Khan once said, “My music must smell of kebabs.”

New Indian Express, May 2, 2003

MOZART IN THE MOUNTAINS

2009-07-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

For over 100 years music has been an integral part of this school, with training starting at kindergarten level

By S S Jeevan, in Kodaikanal

How do students from over 40 countries strike a chord at 7,000 feet above sea level? Ask Kumseok Jung, a soft-spoken 18-year-old from Korea, who can just about speak English. But as he begins to play the prelude of a Mozart composition on the piano, his fellow students get the cue. The violins, the cellos and the clarinets fill the background. And soon the trumpets and percussions join in, as the sound of music reverberates the Palani Hills of the Western Ghat Mountains.

For over 100 years, the Kodaikanal International School (KIS) has celebrated music. “We are probably one of the few schools to have institutionalised music,” says Geoffrey Fisher, principal. In addition to a full orchestra, band and choir facilities are offered to students as part of curriculum at elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. The KIS band has performed at innumerable concerts over the years in India and abroad, including at the prestigious International Honours Band and Choir Festival held annually in Europe. This year, its acclaimed String Chamber Ensemble and Advanced Choir will perform at two concerts in Mumbai on February 23-24 and another in Pune on February 25.

Training begins from kindergarten where children have a choice of instruments. “At KIS, music classes are held together with the curriculum,” says Christopher Ostrander, concert pianist, who along with seven full-time and four part-time music teachers trains over 500 students. The Music Department houses 45 pianos, 50 individual practice and teaching rooms, as well as recording and music studios among other facilities. In fact, those who take the Royal Schools of Music (London) examination in music and theory have a success rate of 96 per cent. “Some of us also sing in the Chapel Choir,” says Faraz Usmani, a student.

KIS was started in 1901 as a Christian boarding school for children of missionaries in Asia. It is only the second school in Asia to have adopted the International Baccalaureate Diploma programme and in 1981, it was recognised by the Association of Indian Universities, Delhi, allowing direct entry of KIS graduates to the universities. But its uniqueness remains its emphasis on music. “It is not easy to maintain a sense of community for people of different cultures, religions and languages. And music is perhaps the best channel to blend a perfect harmony,” adds Fisher.

(Published in India Today, February 5, 2007)

THE SCIENCE OF LOYOLA

2009-07-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

Loyola College retains its top slot while Mount Carmel zooms into the ranks

By S.S. Jeevan

The year 2006 is significant for Loyola College, Chennai. It marks the 450th death anniversary of the founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius of Loyola; the 500th birth anniversary of Loyola's first recruit, St Francis Xavier, and the platinum jubilee of the College Church. Add to this the fact that it has been ranked the best science college in India.

But that shouldn't come as a surprise. Loyola was at the top last year too and the shuffling is evident only in the other positions. St. Xavier's, Mumbai, has moved from No. 4 to No. 2, while Presidency College, Chennai, has inched up from the fifth to the third slot.

Started by a group of dedicated Jesuits in 1912, Loyola enrolled its first batch of 75 students in 1925, offering English, economics, history and mathematics. It added the chemistry and physics departments the following year. Today, there are more than 7,000 students pursuing an array of disciplines that include computer science, visual communication and foreign languages. It was given the College with Potential for Excellence title by the University Grants Commission in 2004 with a grant of Rs 1 crore and has been accredited with five stars by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council.

Over the years, the college has restructured the curriculum to underline the importance of skill-based programmes. "In the first year, we develop the personality of the student and in the second, we try to inculcate social consciousness-students have to put in 60 hours of social work," says Father A. Albert Muthumalai, principal of Loyola College. In the third year, students have to spend a month working in top companies and institutions. "In many ways, we are only implementing the policy and mission statement of the Jesuits," adds Father Muthumalai.

Loyola boasts of an outstanding faculty. More than 40 faculty members of the college contribute to leading scientific journals while some are engaged in research projects for premier institutions such as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Defence Research and Development Organisation. A few even serve as advisors on government bodies. Loyola houses the Entomology Research Institute, which is one of the country's top 10 places to study biotechnology and is headed by renowned biotech expert Dr S. Ignacimuthu. In the recent past, half a dozen foreign universities, including London's South Bank University, have tied up with the college to offer greater exposure to students. And the Loyola Institute of Frontier Energy, which organises seminars and training programmes, is fast becoming an umbrella for the best scientific minds in the country.

"We are constantly trying to reorient our focus to meet the demands of our times and impart quality education," says Vice-Principal Xavier Vedam, adding that a Master's degree in corporate governance was introduced this year. Some of the new features in the college include a digital library, language and environmental labs and an instrumentation centre. Loyola has also incorporated a unique Internal Quality Assurance Cell which, says its coordinator, Joe Jesudurai, "helps students and the faculty to maintain high standards in the teaching-learning process". Over the years, Loyola has produced many stars. Among its famous students are Union ministers P. Chidambaram and Dayanidhi Maran and tennis star Vijay Amritraj.

The college has traditionally shown commitment to the poorer sections of society. And it shows-more than 24 per cent of the students are first generation learners who study almost free of cost. They also become financially self-sufficient by taking part in the "earn while you learn" programme of the college and benefit from special training in computer skills and spoken English. The college has adopted 18 slums in the city, where students regularly teach and conduct health camps. It is one of the few institutions which educates physically challenged students in large numbers-79 this year, 48 of whom are visually impaired. With a community fm radio service, the college is reaching out to more people than it ever has.

Innovative programmes are also introduced every now and then at other top colleges like St. Xavier's, Mumbai. The same is the case with Presidency College, Chennai, whose calibre can be judged by alumni like Nobel laureates C.V. Raman and S. Chandrasekhar. What gives these colleges the edge is the fact that they are not content to sit on their laurels. Every passing year brings with it its own value addition.

(Published in India Today, June 5, 2006)

LIFELESS: On the fast lane

2009-07-09T00:27:00.000-07:00

Why the urban young are at risk from New Age diseases. By S S Jeevan

Even in a city swelling with computer engineers, Pradip was an exception. Well-known for his quick software solutions he earned the sobriquet of ‘terminal solution’ in Hyderabad circles. Solving the most complex problems over the phone was his favourite pastime. But that was then.

Today most of the telephone numbers in his diary are those of doctors — experts, who occupy the spaces in his life vacated by friends, colleagues, contacts and family. He manages his time according to scraps of papers — prescriptions. So if it is 6 O’ clock, it must be the red pill. This is now. Pradip, all of 25 years, is a shocking victim of adult-onset diabetes. He spends most of his evenings taking a walk to stay alive. “Sometimes, I am not even allowed to sleep as blood sugar levels could rise to dangerous levels if my body is left inactive,” he says.

It wasn’t that Pradip was unaware of his diabetic pedigree: Both his grandparents suffered from what is now known as the “silent killer”. They lost their kidneys, eyes and had their legs amputated. Just that he wasn’t prepared to confront the disease this early. A disease that would cripple him beyond imagination, and so quickly, too. By his own admission, his eyesight is fading and he’s already become an infamous figure at the local dialysis centre.

In many ways Pradip is on the cusp of a diet and lifestyle-induced epidemic.. His is not an uncommon story. Urban life is taking a rich toll on the quality of life of young people. From Bangalore to Thiruvananthapuram the story repeats itself. Not just diabetes. Diseases once the preserve of the old and the rich — obesity, blood pressure and ulcers — are ravaging the young like never before. No longer caring about class distinctions or age. The numbers are staggering. India is already the diabetic capital of the world, with an estimated 32.7 million people with the disease, most of them in their 20s and 30s. Current projections suggest that by the year 2020 India will shoulder the largest cardiovascular disease burden in the world. Heart disease, as it is, occurs 10 to 15 years earlier in India compared to the West. Over 30 percent of urban Indians suffer from blood pressure. But then ultimately statistics convey just cold numbers, and do not the pain of those affected.

Fat people
“Have you ever looked closely at family photographs,” asks V Mohan, India’s leading authority on diabetes. The older people will always look thinner while the younger ones would be trying to hide the bulge, he says. Or say, compare school photographs of today’s students with those of the last generation. Today’s children have fatty waistlines, he adds.

Mohan should know. As chairman of the M V Diabetes Speciality Centre in Chennai, he has seen a stunning change in his patient profile. “Many of my patients are in their 20s, some even in their teens.” The statistics bear him out. In the early 1970s, India’s diabetic population was just 2 percent. Now it is around 12-16 percent — a dramatic increase of 800 percent in just 30 years. “Don’t blame your genes for that,” says Mohan. For the culprit could well be the nearest fast food joint or the friendly pizza delivery boy.

Today, the death of the family meal has coincided with an explosion of fast food restaurants and smart marketing of “junk” foods to children. Cases of heart disease, hypertension and obesity have shot up as lifestyles have become more sedentary. For kids, the demise of the neighbourhood playground has now given way to computer games. And for those working in call centres and software parks, affluence has brought in the ‘car-elevator-office-computer-TV’ lifestyle. This has inevitably translated into wider waists, higher cholesterol and even higher loads of stress. Fun foods like fries, burgers and colas, for example, are now a daily staple among many youngsters, leading to high salt consumption and even high blood pressure.

This trend is akin to the pattern being observed in developed countries. A WHO study in fact shows that poor food intake and sedentary lifestyle is one of the 10 leading global causes of death and disability. Statistics from India support this claim. Data from the National Sample Survey Organisation on nutritional intake suggests that the average calorie consumption in India — which was already low by international standards — has actually declined despite amazing economic growth.

Dietary transition
“It’s a dietary transition that developing countries are passing through in an era of fast-paced urbanisation,” console nutrition specialists. Today there is a surfeit of high-fat, refined carbohydrates and low-fibre foods in the supermarkets. These foods are energy-dense, which means that people get most of the calories their bodies require from fewer foods. The diet then becomes rich in fats and sugar, but deficient in complex carbohydrate foods the body requires.

For India the situation can be much worse. Western countries too went through this dietary transition, but the process took around 100-150 years to settle. For developing counties this change is happening at a very rapid pace. Maybe even a few decades, some say. And that could be a cause for concern. So what is the way out? Consumer organisations in the West are tackling this problem in a different way. In what is called as a “nutritional movement” activists are slapping lawsuits against fast food companies for not informing people about the fat content in their products. The movement recently got a shot in the arm when a New Scientist study claimed that fast food was addictive. In New York, there is a proposal of a 1 percent tax on junk food to generate money to fight child obesity.

But for youngsters like Pradip, getting back to basics would be wiser. Says Mohan: “Re-emphasising the importance of a balanced diet, increasing levels of physical activity and quitting smoking would be crucial in containing the rise of risk factors for new age diseases.”

(New Indian Express, January 24, 2004)

Redefining the farm economy

2009-07-09T00:19:00.000-07:00

INTERVIEW; M P VASIMALAI

One of South India’s biggest non-governmental organisations, Dhan (Development of Humane Action Foundation), has done pioneering work in natural resource management. It has trained professionals who work with the poor in villages and urban slums. One of its biggest achievements has been the regeneration of thousands of traditional tanks in the Deccan plateau with active community participation. The organisation is also involved in community banking programmes and IT in rural areas. In an interview with S S Jeevan, Dhan’s executive director, M P Vasimalai, spoke on some of the issues that confront the developing world.

Do you feel the on-going efforts to privatise water and the increasing role of multinationals in the water business poses a serious threat to poor people’s access to water in the long run?
There is no need of multinationals in the water business in our country. The multiple experiences across the country could reveal the fact that decentralised management at local level alone would provide better performance of the water resources apart from reducing the burden on the government. The better performance could be achieved through effective supply and demand management. This could be done only by the local people and not by the distant bureaucracy. It is quite true that there exists a need to restore a balance between the role of the state and that of communities. Encouragingly, in recent years, the government efforts are aimed towards participatory management of water resources combined with decentralised maintenance and management plans. More than a decade of our experience in Tank rehabilitation across South India reveals that local management of tanks and ponds is very much successful provided enabling environment is set for democratic practices for water sharing, and conflict resolution at the grassroots.

The appropriate use of water in conflicting situations can be tackled at the community level rather than through a centralised bureaucracy. Private participation in the conservation of tanks and ponds need to be encouraged, provided the management rests with the local communities and civil society organisations. Privatisation may not be the only solution for increasing the efficiency of the system. Our communities have been very successful in managing these tanks and ponds for several centuries. Fixing of water rates is a politically sensitive issue and therefore the responsibility of the collection of water charges will have to remain with the local bodies.

In this context, how would you analyse the controversy surrounding the Coke bottling plants in Kerala and the role of panchayats in rural India?
Any exploitative venture that disharmonizes the peace and ecology of the land needs to be strongly condemned. We are seeing the issue of Coke bottling plant in this way. The problem is now emerging out in our state also. The land is already suffering by the man made disasters like indiscriminate exploitation of ground water. From the very beginning we have been advocating for enacting and implementing stringent laws against encroachments in water ways, water bodies and ‘preserving’ water resources with new ‘water preservation Act’ as that of forest protection Act; even we are insisting on banning use of water bodies for any development purposes of state for buildings by deforming and destroying the water source. Our stand is same for any such threatening act, whether it is by a private or government.

We are now telling that these water bodies, monuments of our civilisation and indigenous wisdom need to be preserved like endangered wild species of the forest. Panchayats have a great role to play in this regard. Panchayat Government should be a focal point for future partnership of water conservation. Corporates and NGOs with panchayats may show a new way of Public - Private Partnership at grassroots level. The corporate should do this as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. The local institutions should be empowered to implement such projects; the corporates should not make profit out of it. Because of small size and constitutional autonomy, there is a social, economic and development space for Public-Private partnership, more so for conservation and development of small-scale water bodies like tanks, ponds, streams and springs.

How do you think urban India, especially a city like Chennai, can tackle the severe water shortage?
We need to derive lessons from the recent floods at Mumbai. The small-scale water bodies are not only the source of irrigation and drinking but also they function as flood moderators. Urbanisation is a phenomenon affecting the tank ecosystem in the fringes of the towns and upcoming towns. The expansion of human settlement poses a big threat to the common properties like tanks and they fall prey to the process. The tanks are taken over by various departments for construction of government offices, housing colonies, bus depots and other common utilities. The agriculture lands are converted into urban settlements. It is a common scenario in towns that most of the major bus stands, government buildings including courts and major dumping yards are located on tanks. This process kills the tank ecosystem and in the long run affects the groundwater of the entire area. It has been found beyond doubt that the cities like Chennai have faced major groundwater drought due to the total elimination of water bodies which existed in the middle of urban settlements. In one of our studies it is revealed that there are about 250 water bodies still alive in the corporation limit. But they are completely dysfunctional due to collapse of the catchments.

Also flash floods and severe drainage problems have become a common feature in the cities like Madurai due to the death and decay of tanks in the urban areas. The tanks in urban areas play a crucial role even if they cease to exist as irrigation sources. As the tanks are located in chains spread across a geographical boundary maintaining their hydrological linkages is necessary. Therefore the tanks in urban areas have to be preserved and used for alternative uses such as groundwater recharge mechanisms, recreational facilities and drinking water storage. The tanks adjoining the major cities such as Chennai, Madurai, Trichy, Coimbatore, Salem and other major district towns should be preserved as sources of drinking water storage, groundwater recharge and recreational facilities.

Do you think centralised thinking like the project to link India’s rivers will throw up more problems, or do you see it as a part of the larger solution to water shortages?
Small-scale systems that are truly community managed are in existence for centuries in many parts of Asia. Among those surviving systems, tanks are one of the largest in terms of numbers. An estimated number of around 40,000 small and big structures had originally served close to a million hectares of paddy in Tamil Nadu. The changes brought in the recent past, had a crippling effect on the structures and communities which they served. The centralised administration introduced by the British colonial rule had almost wiped out the role of the community in conserving and developing them. Even in free and independent India it is continued to be even more retrogressive in keeping people and locals away in matters related to the tanks.

The fantasy of linking Indian rivers is being debated widely by different sections of the society for its pros and cons. This is another example for centralised thinking. We strongly believe in the concept of ‘Catch the water where it falls’. Efficiency of the minor irrigation structures like tanks and ponds is higher than the Major irrigation structures. Any foreign solution to the local problem without considering the economic, social and ecological consequences will lead to a great disaster. We have to learn from the wisdom of our forefathers in finding local solutions to the local problem.

Tell us about the Kalanjiam Community Banking Programme?
We have initiated the Kalanjiam Community Banking Programme in 1990. Over the last one and a half decade these efforts resulted in developing an ‘enabling model’ of micro-finance with emphasis on member ownership, self help and mutuality. The primary purpose of this model is to empower the women and address poverty by going beyond ‘micro-finance’. Promotion of nested institutions (groups, clusters and federations) is the core aspect of this model with greater emphasis on sustainability through establishing linkage with the mainstream and covering the costs of operations. The Kalanjiam community banking programme is able reach to about 2.60 lakhs families and spread its operations to more than 5000 villages of 25 backward and drought prone districts of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Pondicherry.

What were Dhan’s experiences in the tsunami relief initiatives?
There was a spontaneous response from the members and leaders of federations of ‘Kalanjiams’ and ‘Vayalagams’ promoted by Dhan Foundation. They mobilised truck loads of relief materials containing rice, grocery items, clothes, bedding items etc. Dhan Foundation ensured the involvement of the community in the process of identification of beneficiaries, their needs and in the distribution of relief materials.

Do you think Indian agriculture is facing its worst ever crisis?
Our farmers have always been the victims of the economic reforms. They are vulnerable for not only the natural calamities but also for the man made disasters. There is a huge impact on the farmers due to globalization and macro economic change in the country. Profitability is a major issue in farming. While the costs of inputs are increasing rapidly there is no much impact on the price available to the farmers. We need to redefine the farm economy. Trade margin should be included in the farm economy, even the processing to be included in it. The present agrarian market is most favourable for the middlemen and traders, not for the farmers. Debt is a serious issue in the rural areas. Large scale migration is also a major concern for everyone.

The younger generation shows least interest towards agriculture. The growing inequalities between rural and urban areas attract them towards cities and aggravate the problem further. China’s experiences show that for poverty levels to come down significantly the economy has to be on a high growth path that too based on good growth rate in Agriculture and Industry. In such a scenario the poverty gaps as between regions, between rural and urban areas, between ethnic groups, genders, etc.. also come down. However in the early nineties when the growth rates continued at a high level, but were led by exports, poverty scenario worsened considerably.

Do you feel the present paradigm of development in India will give rise to more inequities?
According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the number of hungry people in India is increased by 19 million between 1997 and 2001. Nearly half of our children remain chronically malnourished. India has the highest percentage of anaemic pregnant women in the world. Reports of starvation deaths and suicides by farmers abound the media. If these were the outcomes of the present paradigm of the development in our country, we need to look closely to the impacts that it has created on the millions of the poor households. We should note that although growth rates accelerated in the eighties and nineties, the biggest spurt came from services, rather than agriculture or industry.

This is contrary to the development experience of most countries where a predominantly agricultural economy has first changed to a predominantly industrial economy and then to a predominantly services sector based economy. In India however, the services sector overtook not only the agricultural sector but also industry in a rather early stage of development. Now, while certain sections of the services sector like information technology, biotechnology, telecommunication and financial services may continue to grow very rapidly for some time, they would eventually all be subject to the law of diminishing marginal returns. Thus, in the long run there has to be some sort of balanced growth between the commodity and service producing sectors.

Do you think the institution-driven knowledge is losing out to corporate-driven knowledge?
The recent trend shows that the private source knowledge (Corporate driven knowledge) is taking over the open source knowledge. Everything cannot become private source knowledge in the name of patenting. The government has to play a major role to balance this. The private source knowledge can be applicable only in certain areas, where it is not available but imperative for advancement and the places wherever the quality is poor.

(New Indian Express, August 14, 2005)