Et tu Manmohan?

It’s election time in India and there is a veritable war on. The war is, mercifully, only of words but attacks on each other by the leaders of the two major parties – the National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – are becoming frequent and the skirmishes trifle more spiteful for comfort. Since “all is fair in love and war” accusations and counter accusations have been progressively turning acerbic and even unethical. What is worrying is that even those who are reputed to possess good and bright heads on their shoulders have been indulging in this kind of spewing of vitriol. The intellectual and cultured Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is an example who, while rebutting the accusations of LK Advani, made a statement that was certainly not honourable. In fact, it was eminently avoidable.

Advani, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (the Lower House in the Parliament), has been calling Manmohan a “weak” Prime Minister since much before the polls were announced. He had his reasons for doing so. Manmohan was neither elected the leader of the Congress Party in Parliament nor that of the ruling coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). An indirectly-elected member of the Rajya Sabha (the Upper House), Manmohan was nominated as Prime Minister by Sonia Gandhi, a plain MP in the Lok Sabha but who is also the President of the Congress and the Chairperson of the UPA.

The understanding that seemed to have been arrived at between Manmohan and Sonia Gandhi suggested that while he would run the government, she would manage the Party and the rainbow coalition of the UPA. The arrangement had weaknesses built into it. No prime minister in a parliamentary democracy can ever run a government with a reasonable degree of authority and freedom without the blessings of the party chief. This is more so in this country with its feudal orientation, especially in the Congress Party which forsook long ago its inner-party democracy. Overtaken by dynastic predominance of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the prime ministers belonging to Congress Party – even if it is the highly-rated academic, Manmohan Singh – have to pay their obeisance to Sonia Gandhi, who has been in control of the levers of power in the Congress for more than a decade.

That apart, as the political power flows from the Party chief, the ministers belonging to the Congress have been paying scant regard to the Prime Minister. Many senior ministers, on numerous occasions, bypassed the Prime Minister and reported to or took orders from the Party Chief. Politically, it suited both – the Party Chief and the ministers. The Prime Minister had no alternative but to keep his counsel. This weakening of the institution of the prime minister was further accentuated by the self-willed ministers of the motley group of regional parties that, in their attempt to claim pieces of the cake, allied with the Congress to enable it to form the government. While Manmohan had to overlook their corrupt and parochial ways, he also, seemingly, surrendered his prerogative to choose his ministers for specific portfolios. Some of the allies dictated their terms and demanded for their chosen party-men the most lucrative of ministries. Besides, the Left Combine supporting Manmohan’s government from “outside”, stifled his agenda for economic reforms. He couldn’t shake them off for the sake of sheer survival. His government’s survival became so important that he remained a mute spectator at the maladroit methods adopted by his coalition managers for buying legislators for garnering support once the Left decided to end its live-in relationship with the UPA.

Advani’s accusations about Manmohan being a weak and “nikamma” (worthless) prime minister, therefore, were largely true. His ceaseless barbs, however, somehow seemed to find the target and something snapped within Manmohan. The good Doctor, generally soft and mild-mannered, cracked under pressure. In an attempt to give it back to Advani, he recalled the 1999 hijack of IC 814 to Kandahar in the aftermath of which, failing to talk the hijackers into releasing the 167 passengers and crew held hostage, the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, with Advani as Home Minister, ended up releasing three dreaded terrorists, including Masood Azhar who has now assumed greater notoriety as the chief of the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Jaish e Mohammed. Further, to run down Advani and his NDA, Manmohan, rather gratuitously, made not quite truthfully an uncharacteristic egotistical claim that his government never entered into any negotiations with the 26/11 attackers of Mumbai. He asserted his government instead sent commandos of the National security Guards to deal with them.

The release of terrorists to secure the freedom of the scores of hostages has always been used as a stick by the Congress to beat the NDA with. Now that a ‘war’ is on all the biggies of the Congress, in a cacophony, have been harking back to it and attacking Advani. That the NDA government, inexperienced as it was then, was up against a tight situation and had to choose between the lives of innocent hostages and the terrorists held in Indian prisons, mostly without having been charged, while the relatives of the passengers kept baying at it for release of the terrorists with, reportedly, covert support of the Congress, has never been appreciated. Only recently, however, one man had the guts to admit the difficult situation that the NDA was faced with. P Chidambaram, Manmohan’s current Home Minister and another of his bright heads, honestly stated in response to a journalist’s query that he wouldn’t know what he would have done had he faced such a situation. After all, lives of 167 innocents were involved.

Then, to claim that the UPA never entered into negotiations with the Mumbai attackers was neither ethical nor desirable. The surviving attacker of 26/11 has confessed that he and his other murderous colleagues were given a clear mandate only to cause death and destruction and not to negotiate. No wonder, they never tried to negotiate for any trade-off. Curiously, Manmohan fictionalised the traumatic event merely to politically attack Advani, in the process exposing the deep inroads that partisan politics has made into his psyche that, otherwise, is brimful of intellect.

Water crisis of Madhya Pradesh - a lesson for others

The Congress the other day flayed the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh (MP), holding it responsible for the current water crisis in the state. Its spokesperson for the state-level committee alleged that while the state was reeling under an acute scarcity of water the chief minister was busy in strategising for the oncoming general elections. He also alleged that crores of rupees were sanctioned for water conservation and recharging of aquifers but all the schemes failed because of pervasive corruption. He, reportedly, cited statistics and claimed, inter alia, that 15000 villages in the state’s 175 tahsils (administrative units below the district level) were facing grave water crisis.
Although it made a political statement, the Congress was, not very much off the mark. The state has, indeed, become acutely water-scarce. Reports have been pouring in from almost all parts of the state, except its northern districts, about sufferings of the people on account of the shortage of drinking water. Shrinking water bodies, plummeting groundwater levels, desperate moves of several municipalities to restrict routine supply of water are indicative of the prevailing cataclysmic conditions in the state. Even the government reports speak of acute water scarcity in 41 out of state’s 50 districts. Besides, 38000 hand-pumps in 55000 villages have become non-operational. With ponds and other reservoirs slowly drying up, one shudders to imagine the severity of the conditions in rural MP in May and June when the summer peaks.

Urban areas, too, are not better off, the worst affected being those located in Malwa Plateau. In many of these places routine distribution has been disrupted with water supply being restricted to once in three days or even worse, as in Ujjain where it is supplied once a week. All the water sources of Ujjain, including the once-perennial Kshipra, having dried up the city, for the present, is entirely dependent on water-tankers, just as many other small and big towns on the Plateau.

Bhopal, the state capital, known also as “the City of Lakes”, is in as miserable a state. The entire city now depends for water on the nearby Kolar Dam and, very marginally, on the practically dried-up Upper Lake – hitherto the city’s lifeline. Its around 90 square kilometres spread has shrunk by 90%. Vast areas of the lake-bed now lie exposed. The municipality was forced to cut down normal daily supplies to alternate-day supplies from as early as the middle of last October – soon after the monsoon withdrew from the state.

The acute scarcity of water is being blamed on inadequate rains. One, however, suspects that mismanagement of sources of water and its distribution have been equally, if not more, responsible. This is exemplified by Bhopal where, for want of proper governance, public and private wastes are legendary. Although by last August it had become clear that despite rains water was not flowing into the Upper Lake, no conservational measures were taken and it was “business as usual”. Worse, it now transpires that the streams that feed the Lake were heavily silted, elevating their beds to spread rainwater laterally over the farms in the catchments instead of allowing it to flow into the Lake. There are also reports of erection of check dams in the Lake’s catchments. The free flow of rainwater to the Lake was thus hindered, apparently, without anybody, including the state’s multiple water-management authorities, getting wise about it. If this is what could happen in the Capital, things must have been as bad, if not worse, elsewhere in the state.

There, precisely, seems to lie the nub of the problem. The government has organised management of water through its several departments – the Public Health Engineering, Water Resources Department, Department of Environment, etc. and sundry autonomous bodies and agencies – and, yet, it has failed to achieve its objective. Profusely manned at great cost by the tax-payers’ money, the lumbering, top-heavy government, with its apathy and negligence, has failed the people.

Things have not come to such a sorry pass overnight. They have slid over a period of time. When the state came into being in 1956 it was reckoned as a backward, mostly tribal state. Tribes and forests being largely inseparable, the state was then one of the most-forested areas of the country and consequently relatively water-rich. With passage of time, however, it progressively started losing that advantage because of unchecked rise in population, thoughtless clearing of forests for agriculture, industrialisation, mindless unplanned urban expansion and reckless exploitation of groundwater for agricultural, industrial and urban use. To all these was added the lackadaisical way of functioning of the government that produced a deadly brew. It is, therefore, sheer politicking to blame the current government for the mess. It has been happening right down the last half a century. That water was slowly becoming scarce all over the state never ever registered with any of the governments, regardless of their colour. There has never been any planning and management of this precious fluid.

That the Planet has been using up fresh water faster than it can be replenished has been generally known for quite some years. The need for its wise use, checking wastes, its conservation, its recycling and proper management has been emphasised by international environmental and other bodies time and again. As late as in 2005, John Briscoe, a World Bank expert, had warned that India was facing an “extremely, extremely grave situation” as “rivers dry up, groundwater is depleted and canals are polluted”. Making matters worse, he perceptively added, “There is widespread complacency in the government”. To head off the grave situation Briscoe had urged India to dramatically change the way it managed water. Surely, suitable directives must have, accordingly, been issued by the Centre to all the states. However, no sign of any change in the way water was being managed in Madhya Pradesh has ever been seen. What has been visible is a “Band-aid” approach – like the recent decision to have water pumped up the Vindhyas from an already-depleted Narmada River 60-odd kilometre away.

Water scarcity in once heavily-forested Madhya Pradesh should be an example for others indicating the consequences of lack of foresight, planning and initiative in management of the life-sustaining fluid. What happened in China due to mismanagement of water and its sources is also well-known. Things are going to become more difficult with climate change-induced reduced precipitation, droughts and degradation of cultivable lands. Ever-rising demand due to rising population, rapid urbanisation and an exploding middle-class will throw up greater challenges. While water throughout the country is becoming scarce, cost of its supply to industries and households is becoming astronomical. Clearly the “Band-aid” approach like that of MP will not work. Local water bodies will have to be revived, conserved recharged and immaculately managed. Hopefully, state governments will show enough gumption to tackle the acute problem that has already made its presence felt. Better management of water and water-resources all across the country is imperative. In fact, our survival, to a large measure, would seem to depend on it.

Published by Indian News & Features Alliance, New Delhi on 2nd April 2009

Water-scarce Madhya Pradesh needs a "Water Authority"

The holy and ancient city of Ujjain, situated on the banks of the Kshipra River in the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh, is thirsting for water. All the water sources, including the once-perennial Kshipra, have dried up. Until recently water was being supplied once in eight days but things are going to get worse. The city may go without water until a 24-kilometre pipeline, connecting a barrage to the nearby Gambhir Dam, is commissioned sometime next April. Nothing, however, can be said for sure; the projects undertaken by the government can be interminably delayed.

Bhopal, the state capital and also known as “the City of Lakes”, is in as miserable a state. The entire city now depends for water on the nearby Kolar Dam and, very marginally, on the practically dried-up Upper Lake that was hitherto the city’s lifeline. Whether Kolar is going to be able to sustain the town during forthcoming summer months is open to question as leakages and wastages – public and private – have remained uncontrolled. One fears that this indifference might lead to the same scenario in Bhopal as was scripted in Ujjain.

Although the acute scarcity of water is being blamed on inadequate rains one suspects that mismanagement of sources of water and its distribution have been equally, if not more, responsible. This appears to be true, at least, in respect of Bhopal. Two statistics would seem to prove the point. The local Met office had put out that Bhopal had only 70% of the average rainfall during the last monsoon. However, the rainfall certainly was not so deficient as to make the Upper Lake shrink by 90% of its spread. Vast areas of the lake-bed now lie exposed. This did not happen even in 2002 when, apart from scanty rainfall and continued normal off-take, large quantities of water leaked through the centuries-old dam into the Lower Lake.

Last year by August it had become clear that despite rains water did not seem to be flowing into the Lake. It now transpires that the streams that feed the Lake were heavily silted, elevating their beds to spread rainwater laterally over the farms instead of allowing it to flow into the Lake. There are also reports of erection of check dams in the Lake’s catchments. The free flow of rainwater to the Lake was thus hindered, apparently, without anybody getting wise about it.

Likewise, the Lake itself had heavy accumulation of silt, so much so that 5000 truckloads of it excavated manually have been removed. And, yet the ongoing two-month long voluntary effort, it is widely felt, wouldn’t add up to much. The Lake needs much more than amateur labour. Not only deployment of heavy machinery is necessary for dredging the beds of the Lake and the streams that feed it, its catchments also need to be taken care of by way reforestation/afforestation to invite greater precipitation as also for rendering natural eco-system services. To do what all is required needs money, which, reportedly, the government is in no mood to cough up.

Evidently, it is not yet alive to the looming threat. Addicted to ad-hoc-ism, it has never had any forward-planning and has hardly ever taken matching steps to conserve and better-manage water supplies to meet the rapidly escalating demands. The resource is depleting faster than it is being replenished. No wonder, a major part of the state – once heavily forested and water-rich – has become water-scarce. As many as 41 out of 50 districts have become deficient in water. While hand-pumps in most of the 55000 villages of the state have either gone dry or spew only noxious fluids, most of the cities and towns, barring those in the northern fringes of the state where last monsoon was bountiful, depend on tankers ferrying water over long diatances. Most pitiable is the condition of villages and towns in the state’s Malwa Plateau which once was so water-rich that it used to grow cotton – a water-intensive crop. It is now acutely short of water as exemplified by the temple town of Ujjain – a major city on the Plateau. Fracases because of water have become common.

John Briscoe, a World Bank expert, had warned in a report in October 2005 that India was facing an “extremely, extremely grave situation” as “rivers dry up, groundwater is depleted and canals are polluted”. Making matters worse, he said, “There is widespread complacency in the government”. Briscoe went on to say, “About 15 percent of the country's aquifers are already in critical condition, a number that could increase to 60 percent by 2030”. Besides, heavily subsidised electricity for farmers also encourages them to switch to groundwater, which can be cheaply siphoned with electric pumps. To head off the grave situation Briscoe had urged India to dramatically change the way it managed water.

Surely, suitable directives must have accordingly been issued by the Centre to various states. There has, however, been no sign of any change in the way water is managed in Madhya Pradesh. It now needs to heed the recent warning of the UN contained in a comprehensive assessment in its World Water Development Report that “while water supplies are under threat, the demand for water is increasing rapidly because of industrialization, rising living standards and changing diets that include … meat, that require larger amounts of water to produce.” Add to these the declining rainfall due to climate change, rapidly rising population and increasing urbanisation and one gets a forbidding picture. Apart from hardships caused to people, the UN is concerned that water-scarcity could inhibit economic growth.

The government of Madhya Pradesh, however, seems to be unmindful of the looming threat and has so far not taken any step to reorganise management of the vitally important subject of water. It is dealt with by several departments and agencies, none of whom can be pinned down for the current predicament the state finds itself in today. Instead of attacking the problem head-on the government continues to adopt the “band-aid” approach which, in the current context, can no longer be effective.

A comprehensive overhaul is necessary. The all-important subject of water needs holistic treatment instead of fragmented attention from mostly diffused and unaccountable multiple governmental/civic agencies. The need of the hour is establishment of a financially, administratively and legally empowered pyramidal “water authority”, with linkages down to the lowest unit, that takes care of the whole gamut of issues relating to water – from management and regulation of water-systems, watersheds and surface and groundwater sources to management of its demand, treatment, distribution and conservation to exploring new sources, recycling of wastewater and so on.

World over, including in India, such authorities have been created for handling at one point this matter of utmost importance for human wellbeing. The state could emulate Kerala which has established such an authority for comprehensive handling of issues related to water. Establishment of such a dedicated authority is unlikely to cause any dent on the resources of the state as financial and manpower resources can easily be found by winding up the ineffectual MP Lakes Conservation Authority and redeployment from departments and other agencies that currently inefficaciously deal with this subject.

India's "Dark Underbelly" set to bloat

While it has swept away the Oscars and the Golden Globe awards, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” has offended some and hurt the sensibilities of many Indians. It has been exuberantly praised and has also been subjected to caustic criticism. Its technical qualities have been unreservedly extolled but its exploitation of the sordid life in Indian slums has come in for wholehearted denunciation. No wonder, it has been accused of purveying “poverty porn” and is alleged to have prostituted India’s “dark underbelly.

This is not a new phenomenon. Indians have always been touchy about depiction of the age-old poverty with all its ramifications. Even Satyjit Ray, the master film-maker, was accused of “exporting (Indian) poverty” through his much-acclaimed Pather Panchaali, “The Saga of the Road “. This sensitivity towards so pervasive a phenomenon is inexplicable. It is something which cannot be obscured from view – camouflaged or veiled. It is there for everyone to see, though it may not strike many of us as appalling – so thoroughly benumbed are we by its constant assault on our senses that we do not even happen to notice it. To us it is a part of the rural and urban landscape. Not so, however, for a Westerner, who finds such hopeless poverty curious and an object of enquiry.

Poverty generally resides in India’s myriad villages and rapidly multiplying urban slums. Time was when slums were virtually unknown in most of the towns except in the metropolitan cities. I, for one, saw a slum when I happened to visit Bombay (now Mumbai) more than half a century ago. And, slum-wise even Bombay was then considered to be no patch on Calcutta (now Kolkata). Our small town in Central India was free of them, though it indeed had areas where the impoverished lived. Those were the remnants of old villages which were overtaken by the town when it expanded. Today, slums are ubiquitous – visible in every urban Indian settlement, housing 20 to 30% or even more of the urban population. With their agglomeration of haphazardly built shanties they stick out like sore thumbs from every unlikely corner. If anything, they are burgeoning, fuelled by migrations from the depths of the rural hinterland that is devoid of economic opportunities. Rising population, fragmented uneconomic holdings, progressive impoverishment and absence of openings for making even a stark living have fostered a steady exodus from villages in search of livelihood. Drawn by the seemingly more affluent urban centres the poor and ignorant fall prey to the urban land mafia, who, backed by unscrupulous politicians, oblige them for a consideration to illegally build shanties on public lands. The politics of votes assuring grant of ownership of the illegally encroached public lands or rehabilitation in ready-built tenements, foster further influx. Thus the cycle goes on, promoting creation of massive shanty-towns of closely-built bare, unhealthy and unsanitary shelters that have become the hall mark of the Indian urban scene.

This is the Indian “underbelly”, with its nether universe of crime and criminals, illiteracy, hunger, mafia-controlled professionalized begging, prostitution, decadence and filth, the exposure of which by Boyle, with a touch of escapism, has offended the sensitive and the phoney-patriot. Although, dark and gloomy with desperately deprived and sometimes depraved souls, yet many slums have developed, despite severe handicaps, certain positivities of industry, enterprise and above all a “market”, a fact which caught the eye of the current Home Minister, which, he said, alone was reason enough for viewing Boyle’s film. What’s more, the inmates of some slums provide goods and services which, apart from being exported, are frequently the mainstays of middle-class homes. Nonetheless, it indeed is the Indian “dark underbelly” the candid display of which has embarrassed some of those who, pumped up by the country’s consistent 8%-plus growth, fancy it as having acquired a stature fit enough to occupy a place on the international high table.

Despite its frequent embarrassing exposure for viewers across the world it seems a trifle strange that nothing drastic has been attempted to redress the situation. Barring some cosmetic effort under the ongoing Urban Renewal Mission to improve sanitation and hygiene in the slums or to rehabilitate the “slumdogs” into indifferently built tenements nothing fundamental has so far been attempted. What, seemingly, needs to be done is to tackle the rural economy to make it attractive for the villagers to find a life of dignity in villages, discouraging them from looking for greener pastures in urban India that currently do not exist. Since Independence in 1947, billions of rupees have been spent for poverty alleviation and uplift of rural masses and yet it has not made any dent on rural poverty. The Central Minister for Panchayats (rural local bodies) recently gave out that while in 1994 as much as Rs 76 billion ($1.55 billion app. at current prices) was spent on rural development, anti-poverty schemes and social security, the outlay for the purpose in the last 15 years has gone up by 16 times and yet there is very little to show for results. All the money, seemingly, disappeared into a bottomless pit – enriching the rural political and bureaucratic elite, keeping the village folk destitute. The minister lamented that the expenditure “is not translating into human wealth” and blamed the bureaucracy for the failure. However, everyone, including the self-serving and scheming politician and the apathetic middle-class, must share the blame for glossing over the unremitting fraud that went on.

Pervasive corruption coupled with a still rapidly rising population are neutralising the governmental efforts in poverty-reduction. While there is scant legal or moral check on political and bureaucratic corruption, the National Population Policy does not recommend effective action for population control. According to 2004 estimates the population is still growing at the rate of 1.44% and the total fertility rate, at 2.85%, is way above the replacement level. No wonder, around 250 million people (a figure contested by many) live below the “poverty line” determined by the government on the basis of consumption of calories – 2400 calories being the basic minimum. Despite large investments on poverty alleviation the country, therefore, would seem to be “spot-jogging”, somehow managing to remain where it was during the past few years.

What is, perhaps, more disconcerting is that the current unseemly and sizable Indian “dark underbelly” is set to bloat. “India: The Urban Poverty Report 2009”, brought out with the assistance of the UNDP, predicts 50% of the country’s population, as against 27.8% in 2001, will be urban-based by 2030. Most of them will be rural migrants, mostly finding shelter nowhere else but in urban slums. Already, the illegal migrants, predominantly from Bangladesh numbering about 30 million, have raised numerous shanty-towns in metros, secondary and tertiary towns. And, the immigration continues unabated. Besides, India is going to be the likely haven for many poor environmental refugees from the neighbouring countries when global warming takes its toll submerging the precariously placed coastal areas and islands.

The slums are, therefore, likely to see exponential growth in the next few decades unless effective steps to forestall the process are taken. Some steps, basically illustrative, could be clamping down on the population growth and fertility rates by whatever democratic means possible, uplift of rural economy by revamping its communicational, educational and healthcare infrastructure, simultaneously creating in it openings for self-employment and job-opportunities, improving the urban infrastructure so as to be able to effectively handle migrations – progressive urbanisation being virtually unstoppable, preventing illegal immigrations, effective governance by states and the Centre and above all, eradicating corruption.

The governments alone cannot do it. Everyone has to chip in – the private sector, the non-governmental organisations and the people of all classes. Only then, perhaps, the country would be able to get rid of that obnoxious “dark underbelly” the exposure of which seems to shame it before the world.

Sunrise over a dying lake

The ongoing community effort to de-silt the 1000-year old Upper Lake in Bhopal does surely have some positive sides. While it could help deepen the Lake, it also displays some beneficial facets that have hardly ever been witnessed before. One must hand it to the chief minister for the initiative. He had the campaign launched and had an evocative slogan “Our Lake, our heritage” coined for saving the Lake.

Although belated, the initiative, surprisingly, has had some positive fallout and one sees, to use a cliché, some signs of a dawn somewhere on the horizon. The campaign seems to have galvanised all and sundry, enhancing awareness of the vital importance of the Lake and the dire need to save it. It has mobilised the chief minister’s ministerial and political colleagues, fostering in them – out of genuine concern or plain sycophancy – a kind of awareness of the existence of this vital water body and the need to nurture it. Hitherto their indifference was palpable.

More importantly, it has brought in senior bureaucrats to the Lake bed to wield pickaxes and shovels, a feat which has seldom been achieved. Their involvement is more important as they are the toughest lot to be sensitised. It is largely their unconcern which has brought the Lake to such a sorry pass. Politicians come and go, but the bureaucrats are permanent. The former, at least, have fear of votes; the latter have no qualms whatsoever.

For the last 14 years, during the execution of two back-to-back projects for “conservation and management” of the Bhoj Wetland, which includes the Upper and Lower lakes, two political parties happened to be in power. Both (one of which ruled for nine long years) showed utter disregard for this vital Wetland – that is, until recently when the water crisis appeared ominous for the fortunes of the party currently in power at the imminent general elections. During this long period it is the bureaucrats who should have been more sensitive and pro-active. But, they, cocooned in their cushy warmth, occupying positions of power and authority in two (failed) projects and in the state administration, did nothing for its conservation.

Apart from the officialdom, the campaign has been able to elicit huge support for the ‘cause’ from all sections of the society. Even the generally apathetic middle classes, mostly absorbed in the business of making a living, have displayed an unparalleled involvement. All the expenditure (if at all) made out of the project allocations for public awareness campaigns were, seemingly, wasted, as they never made any impact and educed responses of the kind being currently witnessed. It is a happy augury as the apathy of the general public even for the matters of their immediate concern is legendary.

The campaign may well set a trend – by far, a much needed one – of conserving the state’s water bodies which are largely in disarray. Already the feeder streams of the Upper Lake have been taken up for de-siltation and a similar campaign was launched at Ujjain, followed, though, by disconcerting reports of improper site-selection. Hopefully, water bodies elsewhere will be taken up for conservation after more prudent selection based on the advice of experts.

The current frenetic activity on the Upper Lake proves, if ever a proof was needed, the enormous power politicians wield in this country. They have only to appreciate that they are the movers and shakers, exercising enormous influence over their political colleagues and the bureaucracy. As things stand today, the faintest of cues from them could orient the entire administration towards providing succour to the generally deprived community.

It would be pity if the whole thing remains a one-off campaign and the energy that has been generated on the dry bed of the Upper Lake is allowed to ebb away. The good result that might be achieved needs to be sustained and followed up by the government making the Wetland generate resources for its own maintenance and upkeep or by allocating adequate funds for the purpose as also organising a constant well-ordered oversight to avoid the kind of denouement it has witnessed. For survival, heritage needs sustenance, not mere slogans or voluntary labour.

The need, in fact, is also of going much beyond – that of conserving water by controlling its consumption, plugging leakages, preventing public and private waste and arranging its recycling. Globally, water is the fastest depleting resource. It has to be conserved regardless of what it takes

Killing a once-thriving wetland

The dry exposed bed of the Upper Lake in Bhopal, capital of the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh, is witness these days to frantic digging. About a fortnight back the provincial chief minister woke up to the fact that the Lake was left with very little water. Ministers and officials, seldom seen around the Lake unless on a joyride on the motorised boats, are labouring along with common people to dig for all they are worth in a bid to deepen it. Not only voluntary labour is being elicited, even monetary contributions are being sought for conservation of the Lake. An evocative slogan “Our Lake, our heritage” has been coined to seek people’s participation.

Located at its heart, the Upper Lake is a veritable signature for the town. It was created in the 11th Century by the legendary Raja Bhoj by damming the then perennial Kolans River to provide drinking water to his subjects. Later, the Afghan rulers added in the 18th Century the Lower Lake to receive the overflow from the bigger Upper Lake. Together, the two lakes constitute the Bhoj Wetland, which was recognised in 2002 as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention of 1971.

It is these very lakes which now are under serious threat. Both have shrunk appreciably this year – the Upper Lake from its 30-odd sq. kms to around 8 sq. kms. and the Lower Lake to around 2 sq. kms. from its original approximately 8 sq. kms. Traditionally the source of drinking water, the Upper Lake served until recently, 40% of the local population. This year, with the progressive decline in its water level, the supplies have been restricted only to around 10% of the population and that, too, on alternate days.

While monsoons have turned increasingly fickle reducing precipitation, official negligence has played no mean part in divesting the lakes of their water. A Rs.2.5 billion project for conservation of the Wetland formulated by the government, with money borrowed from the Japanese Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC), commencing in 1995 ran, for want of adequate oversight, for 9 long years, instead of its pre-determined tenure of 5 years. At its termination in 2004 not only Rs. 600 million were left unspent, many vital objectives also remained unfulfilled. Whereas the main objective of “conserving and managing” the Wetland was not achieved, the goal of ensuring availability of water from the Upper Lake in an increased quantity and of satisfactory quality, as is now obvious, also remained unfulfilled. Even the sewers emptying into the two lakes could not be diverted to reduce their pollution levels. Another Asian Development Bank loan has since been negotiated to execute the work.

All this happened under the very nose of the government with its various agencies supposedly overseeing the Project. None was, however, held responsible. Worse, a large proportion of the money for the project was improperly spent on the works that should have been taken up by the state’s civil works department. For instance, a four-lane road along the northern shore of the Upper Lake, fallaciously intended to provide a barrier for human interface with the Lake waters, was constructed at the expense of the Project. Inevitably, it has increased human activity close to the waters facilitating people to dump into it all kinds of rubbish. The progressively increasing vehicular traffic on the road has also increased pollution of the waters by vehicular emissions. Besides, a bridge to connect the properties of the influential, too, was constructed out of the project allocations although it never figured among the intended civil works.

Instead of returning the unspent millions to the JBIC the government negotiated another loan of Rs 240 million out of the left-over funds for a 5-year project, again, for “management and conservation” of the Wetland commencing in 2004. MP Lake Conservation Authority (LCA), created on the termination of the earlier project, was contracted as the implementing agency. It has now transpired that none of the itemised worksslated for execution – important by any stretch of imagination for the conservation of the Wetland – was carried out. The project amount was “safely” kept in deposit in the state treasury and its interest is being used for paying for the establishment of the LCA. No periodical feedback on progress of the works, as mandated under the Project, was given to various authorities, including the JBIC, the Government of India and the Government of MP. Also, none of these authorities ever asked for progress reports from the implementing agency. No eyebrows, however, were ever raised. As usual, none has been held accountable for the non-performance.

Worse, even the report on economic valuation of the Wetland, bankrolled by the World Bank, carried out by an Environmental Economist of the prestigious Indian Institute of Forest Management located in Bhopal, delineating its economic benefits and recommending ways and means for garnering of resources for its conservation and upkeep was never considered for initiation of necessary steps.
The apathetic approach of the government is apparent from the toothless LCA it created, and that, too, for the entire state instead of, as projected, only for Bhoj Wetland. Having neither statutory backing nor finances it lacks the wherewithal to conserve any water body. Several of its CEOs have been non-professionals – officers of the Indian Administrative Service who generally wear several hats simultaneously – have so far made any consequential difference to any of the state’s wetlands.

Largely dependent on the waters of the Lake, people, individually and collectively, have for long been clamouring for government’s attention to the fast degrading Wetland. The local Citizens’ Forum, an informal pressure group of prominent citizens, filed a petition in 2007 with the State Human Rights Commission which brought all the issues relating to conservation of the Wetland to the notice of the government. And, yet there has been no action.

The goings-on during the 14 years appear like a primer on how to kill a vital Wetland that was once thriving. The credit for authoring the lessons goes to those who run the MP government and its various agencies so elaborately devised to conserve the environment, including its water bodies. While it now calls upon people to save the Heritage Lake the government has hardly ever spared any money or effort on its conservation. The unkind cut is that while it has wasted billions taken on credit from foreign sources for conservation of the Wetland, it is now asking people to contribute in cash and kind for the same purpose. That loans are being piled on them, with attendant burden of taxes in the future, in addition to the current misery inflicted on them of restricted alternate-day supply of the precious fluid is, seemingly, of no concern to the government.

Time to shun partisan politics

Ever since Liela Khaled of Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine hijacked a TWA flight in 1969 many planes have been hijacked around the world. India, too, has had its share of hijacks but the one which is never allowed to remain buried in the sands of history is the hijack on Christmas eve of 1999 of IC 814, the Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Delhi. What distinguished this hijack from others is the fact that, at the end of the tortuous hard bargaining, Jaswant Singh, the then Indian External Affairs Minister, travelled to Kandahar Airport with the three terrorists whom the Indian Government agreed to release in exchange for the freedom of the passengers held there as hostages.

With 177 passengers and 11 crew members the hijackers forced the pilot to fly to Kandahar via Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai. The passengers, one of whom was killed on the way and his body unceremoniously dropped off the aircraft at Dubai, became objects for a trade off against 36 terrorists held in Indian prisons. Unless that was done, the hijackers threatened, they would blow up the plane. The lengthy negotiations that ensued eventually ended with Indian government agreeing to release only three, though dreaded, terrorists, viz. Mushtaq Ahmed Zergar, Ahmed Omer Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar. While Masood Azhar was later alleged to be the mastermind of the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, Ahmed Omer Sheikh was widely perceived to be responsible for the kidnapping and, later, murder of Daniel Pearle, the Mumbai correspondent of the Wall Street Journal.

This hijack has been flogged ad nauseam by the Congress Party to run down and denigrate its opponent, the Bharatiya Janata Party. In the dog-eat-dog world of Indian politics politicians cannot let go of an opportunity to snap at each other. No sooner had the leader of the Opposition happened to accuse the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the last session of the Parliament of being soft on terror Congressman Kapil Sibal harked back to the 1999 hijack. In a classical instance of one-upmanship, he wanted that the Opposition, National Democratic Alliance (NDA), should apologise to the people for not only freeing three terrorists, some of whom later perpetrated even more vicious acts of terror, including the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, but also had them shamefully “escorted” personally by the country’s External Affairs minister. As is their wont, regardless of their assurances to the contrary given earlier, politicians started barking at each other.

Later, claiming firmness in handling of the Mumbai attackers, Digvijay Singh, another Congress biggy, a general secretary to boot, asserted that his party led-government refused to negotiate with the Mumbai attackers. He went on to claim that, yielding no quarter to the attackers, the government had them eliminated. The innuendo was clearly directed at the NDA. However, the question of any negotiations with the attackers never arose because they had never made any demand. During his interrogation the captured terrorist, Ajmal Amir Quasab, has also asserted that the mandate given to him and others with him did not include putting forth any demand.
In the highly competitive politics truth is often the casualty and bluff and bluster occupy centre stage. That the then fledgling NDA government was faced with an extraordinary situation was never so much as mentioned. The unseemly demonstrations by the relatives of the passengers, covertly stoked by some of those in the Opposition, sustained right through the better part of the week asking for total surrender, including ceding of Kashmir (to Pakistan) and the inexperience of the government which had just assumed power have never been referred to. Curiously, even Jaswant Singh’s unpleasant trip, undertaken only because of his keenness to ensure safe release of the hostages, was also given a malicious twist.

And, the fact that terrorists had earlier been released in exchange for hostages is conveniently forgotten. In the early 1990s five terrorists were released from Kashmir jails to free the abducted Rubaiya Saeed, daughter of the then Indian Home Minster, Mufti Mohammed Saeed. Sibal (or others of his ilk) have never made a mention of it as his Party not only ran until recently a coalition government with the Mufti’s party in Kashmir, the latter has also been one of its allies in the UPA until the other day. That is precisely what politics is about – to obfuscate, dissemble and misrepresent to keep the opposition down.

In their petty squabbles politicians tend to forget that the misfortune that befell the NDA government can chance upon any regime. Given our lackadaisical way of functioning, a bomb blast, a terror attack, a high-profile abduction or a hijack are eminently possible. A number of terrorists, including one captured alive on 26/11 and another in the death row, continue to languish in Indian prisons. An attempt to free them is very much on the cards. There were several attempts to get Masood Azhar out of the Jammu prison. Their failure led to the IC 814 hijack as we never woke up to the threat his incarceration posed.

Jihadies and their promoters in the Pakistani establishment do not distinguish between this regime or that. They seem to have an unqualified antipathy for India, an entity that they keenly desire to Islamise. India’s multi-culturalism, its pluralist society and its economic progress despite all its handicaps are what bug them. What is more, they simply hate India and could even launch attacks out of sheer hatred for it. Already a formation for promoting hatred for India has become operational in Pakistan.

If our politicians are really interested in doing good to the people – and they keep claiming all the while that they do so – they need to shun their narrow partisan agendas and cooperate with each other in devising ways and means to achieve what they claim. The need of the hour is ensuring security of life and property of the people. And, this is precisely what politicians of all shades neglected while they bickered all the time. To make itself secure the country needs to pull itself by its boot-straps. From plugging the porous land and sea frontiers to creation of a well-oiled internal security apparatus with all its concomitant paraphernalia – there is enormous amount of work lying ahead before the country’s political bosses.

With neighbours on its two flanks harbouring hostile elements the country cannot visualise a future without terror and/or devious attempts to bleed it and retard its progress. Unflinching vigilance is necessary – a price that has to be paid to ensure to the citizens freedom from fear and anxiety. It is, therefore, time politicians stopped playing politics with national security. People want no less, for the security disaster that “26/11” was has made them angry – yes, at none other than the politicians.

Published online by Indian News & Features Alliance, New Delhi, on 9th January 2009