Rising religiosity hurting Indian environment

The news that came out of Delhi recently was depressing. The water supply in the metropolis was disrupted as the supply lines were clogged. North, West, North-West and parts of South Delhi suffered severe shortages because of the pollution in the Hyderpur Canal which supplies water to the eponymous treatment plant. “The presence of paints, particulate matter, chunks of plastic and flowers from the idol immersions that were carried out have left our pumps choked”, said the Delhi Jal Board (Water Board). Despite there being eight water pumps water needed for treatment could not be lifted. The inevitable shortages occurred as the required amount could not be given the necessary treatment.

And, the pumps got clogged because of the thousands of idols that were immersed in River Jamuna after the recent festivities. This is a new sociological phenomenon which is becoming increasingly evident every year in the upcountry after Ganesh Chaturthi and Navaratri festivals. During the festivals Ganesh, the Elephant God, and Goddess Durga with her progeny are worshipped, respectively. Their clay idols lovingly made with piety and passion, finished with plaster of Paris, coated with toxic enamel paints, embellished by faux ornaments and decked up in colourful synthetic clothes are installed for worship in regular or temporary temples. At the end of the ten days’ festivities these are subjected to ritualised ceremonial immersions in the nearest water bodies.

Every year the numbers of idols installed in the urban and rural areas, particularly in the upcountry, have been on the rise. The ardour and devotion of the people disrupt normal life, upset the working schedule, cause traffic bottle-necks and (later) also pollute the very water that sustains the community. A couple of decades back the festivities used to be on a much lower scale and were not so disruptive or polluting. Lately, however, with a strong revival of religious traditions and an unprecedented surge in religious fervour, things are increasingly getting out of hand.

The way we have been going for some years now, the kind of mishap that happened in Delhi had to happen sooner or later. Clearly, the festivals have now started hurting the community. Whether it is the Hoogly River in West Bengal, the Arabian Sea near Mumbai or other inland rivers or water bodies, all have had the privilege of experiencing the unkindly, even malign after-effects of these festivities. Although, post-immersions, the idols are unceremoniously stripped of all valuables, yet what remains of them adds to the pollution of the waters that are already polluted with urban and industrial effluents. The Delhi Jal Board has only complained about the disruption of the supplies that it is supposed to make. That the River flowing through the Capital was being polluted is, seemingly, not any of its concerns.

This has been happening in all parts of the country where these festivals are observed with such vigour. And, the fate virtually of all the rivers and other water bodies in such parts is almost the same as that of the Jamuna. The Hindu community is, strangely, unable to appreciate the threats that it is posing to the country at large with its progressively magnifying religiosity. It seems to be killing the very environment that sustains the larger community. Whether it is land, water or air, the piety that is flaunted all over the country is polluting them all, though the Hindu religious tradition has always been worshipful of nature.

Take the periodical Kumbha Melas, for instance, when pilgrims in millions take bath every day either in the Ganga at Haridwar or in Kshipra (now on the brink of extinction) at Ujjain or near the source of Godavari at Nashik or at Allahabad where the Ganga, Jamuna and the mythical Saraswati meet. Extended pilgrimages of massive proportions which demand detailed planning and comprehensive logistics, they force the governments of respective states to step into the operations that essentially are religious. What happens to the rivers, howsoever holy they are considered to be, and their ecosystems have not so far been matters of concern for those who are behind the pilgrimages and the ritualised holy baths as also those who facilitate them.

Likewise, the annual pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave in the Himalayas has been the cause of damage to the delicate Himalayan ecology. Earlier, a pilgrimage of roughly a week with participation of a few thousands, it has now assumed enormous proportions. It now runs for around two month and is joined, by the last count, by around 500,000 pilgrims. While the affluent few take a helicopter ride to the mouth of the 14000 ft. high Holy Cave for a quickie darshan (obeisance), most are ferried by countless diesel-run buses to Srinagar/Pahalgam to eventually trek to the cave. Things are not much different with the annual trudge of millions to the Sabarimala temple situated in the midst of densely forested hills in Kerala. The pilgrimage, for that matter any pilgrimage, has become an industry with hoteliers and tour operators feeding them with their inviting offers. The hyped-up religious festivals, on the other hand, have become occasions for marketing of all kinds of merchandise – from cars, diamond jewellery to garments – and even holidays. The environment, however, is always a casualty.

There could be any number of reasons for this gush of religiosity. It could be because of a more pro-active role played by organisations connected with the Hindu religion; it could also be because of a reaction against frequent Islamic terrorist attacks in the heartland of the country. Even the political power captured by Bharatiya Janata Party, branded by the West as the “Hindu Nationalist Party”, in several states, coupled with the post-liberalisation rise in the levels of disposable incomes among the Hindu middle classes may have been factors in fuelling the heightened religious zeal. The electronic media, particularly, the TV with its outreach deep into the urban slums and rural homes telecasting gold foil-wrapped Hindu traditions, too, may have given a fillip to the rising tempo.

Whatever may be the reason(s), the whole thing, viewed objectively, appears to be sheer madness. Self-regulation and self-restraint being conspicuous by their absence, every passing year a new vigour, seemingly, is injected into the festivities. Religion and its practices being matters of very sensitive nature, no government would come out and cry a halt. Besides, there is that ‘small’ matter of votes. No political party would ever dream of alienating such a large community and losing such a sizable chunk of votes. Hindu religiosity, thus, would seem to be spiralling out of control with consequences that may, sooner than later, prove to be catastrophic for its pious and the devout.

Nonetheless, one can see a ray of hope. For the first time ever, Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment and Forests, has put a cap on the number of tourists travelling to Himachal Pradesh. Though inordinately late, it is a very wise step and needs replication elsewhere. World over natural assets are subjected to sensitive treatment, limiting the intrusions by humans in order to ensure their sustainability. The cap that the minister has imposed is surely based on a well-researched carrying capacity of the region. Similar caps need to be imposed for other natural assets, too, which happen to be tourism hotspots, as also those which, post-festivities, get the brunt of the idols. Such measures will be unexceptionable as they would be aimed at protecting the natural riches of the country and their vital ecosystems. If, in the process, the minister has to interfere with the peoples’ religious practices, so be it. After all, that will be for the larger good. What, however, would be needed are courage and the conviction to do the right by the country!

Nature Reserves and Tourism

All over the world, countries are creating nature reserves as more and more land, with all that nature has to offer, is harnessed for industry, agriculture or plain urban expansion. The intention is to conserve a slice of nature with its native biodiversity and other special features so that these are not lost to humanity forever. While study and research are generally permitted, efforts are made, by and large, to keep them insulated from human impact. Tourism, therefore, in such reserves is mostly “no no”. Yet, authorities permit treks on trails, either natural or specially created, imposing, generally, a cap on the number of trekkers consistent with the reserve’s carrying capacity. The idea, as is obvious, is to allow nature to thrive in all its magnificence undisturbed by the destructive and deleterious influences of humans.

India, too, has reserves of various kinds – from biosphere reserves, wild life reserves, dedicated tiger reserves, protected areas to nature reserves – where nature was supposed to play out its, shall we say, symphony to the script. That did not quite happen mostly because of human interference. Not only human settlements happened to be located within the reserves, tourism, especially eco-tourism of our malefic kind, did not allow nature full and unrestricted play. Pressures of rising population within the reserves and without, as also rising incomes fostering inordinate increase in footfalls of the well-heeled and insensitive coupled with lax and ineffective enforcement mechanisms, prevented the state from acting up to the objectives of conservation. Abandoning its earlier policy of conservation, the Government of India fell for the temptation of easy lucre that rising numbers of visitors bring. The consequences that followed were inevitable. Natural ecosystems were ravaged. The tourism industry in India has seldom exhibited restraint or the gracious traits of “responsible tourism”. Thriving on numbers, it is constantly in pursuit of “mass tourism” unmindful of the threat it might pose to the very goose that lays the golden egg.

The state’s inability to care for nature reserves has so tightened the stranglehold of tourism that without spin-offs from it such reserves, seemingly, cannot be sustained. A ready example is the new Dumna nature reserve which is, reportedly, being developed near the central Indian town of Jabalpore primarily as a tourist spot. Spread over about 900-odd acres of forested land with a healthy population of wildlife the Dumna reserve constitutes the catchment for a lake by the name Khandari. The Jabalpore Municipal Corporation, the owners of the land, had wisely handed over the work of developing the reserve to the state Forest Department who have made provisions of fishing and have developed nature trails. What, however, seems to be highly disconcerting is that the state Tourism Development Corporation has been asked to construct an eatery, a children’s park and other facilities including parking on a two-acre plot right inside the reserve. The Tourism Corporation is surely happy to spread its tentacles at Jabalpore which is the staging post for the world famous Kanha Tiger Reserve. Keen on numbers and, necessarily of an invasive kind, one never knows how far into the forest the tourism development outfit insinuates itself.

Once again, as it would seem, tourism has jumped ahead of conservation in priority. Soon the nature’s tranquillity and quietude at Dumna will be traumatised and shaken up. The mellow music of nature will be drowned by the harsh noise of vehicles of the picnickers (with scant respect or curiosity about nature’s offerings) and the shrieks and screams of their children at play. The intrusive humans will smother the freedom of nature to be by itself and thrive.
This is not why nature reserves are created and this is not how they are maintained. Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, defines nature reserves as a protected area of “importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research”. Nowhere tourism is given the pride of place in such ecologically important sites.

Even China, where mass tourism was virtually the rule in its extensive nature reserves, has now realised the benefits of proper upkeep of natural sites and sustainable tourism therein. As tourism in Sichuan, a province of diverse ecosystems and historical interests, grows, Chinese are restricting the numbers of tourists in accordance with its carrying capacity. “We want to put conservation first” seems to be the new watchword. The province’s Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve is a tourism hotspot which apart from being a World Heritage Site is also a World Biosphere Reserve. In 2006 two million people visited it and yet the number of visitors daily was not allowed to cross the imposed cap of 18000 and every effort is made to mitigate the impact of this sizable horde. A fleet of hop-on, hop-off bio-diesel buses shuttle the people around allowing them the freedom of walks on nature trails. Wardens and CCTVs infest the place. Tourist accommodations are kept away from the reserve and local people are encouraged to build guesthouses of traditional style to offer the visitor an exotic experience. Eco-tourism is nothing if it does not benefit the local community!
Chinese have learnt to conserve the environment the hard way. Over exploitation of their natural resources and break-neck pace of industrialisation wrought havoc with their air, water and the forests and resulted in increasing desertification. There were popular protests against the general environmental devastation. Frightened by the peoples’ fury and nature’s violence they had to pull back and they did do so from the very edge. Having done so, they are going the whole hog to preserve their environment. And, as in all other spheres, they will do all that is necessary whatever that takes.

No such fear, however, is in evidence in India. Here it is “business as usual”. Climate change may already be upon us, our air may be foul, water contaminated and our forests may be shrinking but environmental conservation is yet to register on us as a necessity. As in everything else, things will happen if only there is that ever-elusive political will. The new Central Minister for Environment, Jairam Ramesh is the only semblance of hope. Labouring to crank up the rusty machinery, he is like the distant light at the end of the tunnel. One hopes the best for him. If he, for any reason, happens to fail, redemption will be unlikely.

Kargil - as I remember it

The Tenth Anniversary of the victory in “Kargil War” somehow got soggy in controversy. Instead of commemorating a crisp, well-fought and spectacular victory achieved at great human costs against the Pakistani intruders on the snowy heights of Ladakh, India’s northern-most territory, the ruling coalition in India headed by the Indian National Congress quite unwisely happened to politicise it. Reckoning it as a war that was fought and won by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), now occupying the Opposition benches in the Parliament, it attempted to downplay the Anniversary. That the (surreptitious) diabolical Pakistani incursions through the icecaps of the Himalayan heights posed a great threat to the nation and its integrity happened to be coolly overlooked. But for the hype created by the Defence Forces, the media and sundry patriotic pockets in the country the ruling party at the Centre, in a display of uncamouflaged ingratitude to the guardians of our frontiers, had almost succeeded in giving the Anniversary a miss. It was virtually at the last moment that the Prime Minister seems to have decided to go and lay a wreath at the Martyr’s Memorial at the India Gate on 26th July, the date on which ten years ago Indian defence forces wrested back the last of the territories occupied by the Pakistani invaders.

Those who have not been to Ladakh may not be able to fully appreciate the significance of the Indian victory. A plateau with an average elevation of around 10,000 ft (about 3000 mts.) with most of the surrounding mountains above the snowline, Ladakh is an arid mountainous region of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) spanning the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges and the Upper Indus valley. In those rarefied heights where normal activities for a plainsman are a torture, waging a war would seem to be an impossible proposition. Known for its rugged beauty and quaint culture, it has now become a tourism hotspot.

I happened to visit Ladakh more than 40 years ago when it was still a restricted area. Outsiders were not allowed to enter without a permit. I, too, had to obtain one even though I was in the service of the Government of India. So, one beautiful September morning I left Srinagar, the capital of J&K, wangling a ride with an Army Signals major in his jeep proceeding to Leh as a part of an Army convoy, the then district headquarters of Ladakh. With a brief halt in the green and captivating Baltal valley, which now seems has been sacrificed at the altar of religious tourism, we laboured up the highway to the famed Zoji- la, the Pass on to which Gen Thimayya of the Indian Army, in a brilliant tactical move, had hauled Light Stuart Tanks to surprise the Pakistani intruders in 1948.

Once we crossed the 11575 ft high Zoji-la, the landscape underwent a dramatic change. Gone were the green Kashmir conifers covering the sides of the mountains and green grass over the meadows. It was now a series of rugged, bare seemingly inhospitable mountains with an occasional trickle of a stream in the plunging depths of the valleys, and the highway, arcing along the contours of the rocky mountainside, climbed up or went down in loops to cross over to interminable series of naked mountains. We travelled sometimes metres away from the Cease Fire Line, which post-1971 became the Line of Control (LOC),that was violated through 1998-99 precipitating the Kargil War. Stopping for coffee at Drass, reputed to be the second coldest inhabited place in the world and overlooked by Pakistanis occupying the heights on its north, we headed down the same highway that Pakistan attempted to cut off in 1998 to disrupt the logistics of Ladakh.

On our way up we stayed only for a while in Kargil. The local Brigadier was hosting a delegation of members of parliament to a lunch on the banks of the Suru River that flows through the town. We, too, were made to join in. It was a lovely setting by the side of the narrow stream in the generous shade of low hanging trees, a rare luxury in the midst of the surrounding dryness, coupled with the lavish Indian Army fare laid out.

However, the severity of the conditions in which the Army had to function became apparent a few miles away as we came upon a bridge guarded by three soldiers, two on one side and one on the other. With no habitation for miles around, they were by themselves for weeks without a change of scene. With several such crucial points to guard lonesomeness of the soldiers could only be imagined.

On our way back from Leh, as we rolled down from the heights of Fatu-la, at around 13700 the highest pass on this highway, we skirted what looked like a tallish hillock only to discern in the half light a huge a settlement down below. It was the Indian Army brigade at Kargil sprawled a few hundred feet below on a huge flat ground so unlikely in the hilly surroundings. Looking at it from that elevation one could imagine what medieval army encampments would have seemed like at dusk. Several thin wisps of smoke rising up in the air, scattered blinking lights and stray men moving around, almost ant-like, consummated the scene.

Back then Kargil was a small village, dusty, dirty and so dry that the cracked lips made smiling a painful exercise. With around a dozen shops, it was mostly dependent on the Army for supplies and provisions. It has now grown out of all proportions, more so because of the “War-tourism”. The “Kargil War”, somewhat like the Kuwaiti War, was a highly televised war bringing it to the bedrooms across India, raising among the people a curiosity about those rugged heights where the soldiers bravely fought, gave their lives and yet won the “War” for them. No wonder, the benefits of tourism, now a thriving industry, have trickled down giving the place, I am told, a prosperous appearance. One improbable blessing of the “War”!

It was during the day that I happened to realise that what had looked like a tallish hillock the previous evening was a tall, well-shaped mountain dominating the town. Known by its elevation as “13620” it had a forbidding presence and, worse, its heights were occupied by the Pakistanis who could watch every move of the supremely vulnerable brigade down below. Dislodged from it during the 1965 War, it was handed back to them as a sequel to the Tashkent Agreement. The Major, who had won it for the country, it seems, wept like a child when he heard of the hand-over. He had lost many of his brave men who, fearlessly facing enemy bullets, struggled up the feature and clawing their way up inch by inch. A strategic gain, achieved with super-human effort and endurance and at the cost of fresh young blood, was given up on the negotiating table! That dark sinister-looking mountain, as I saw it sitting out on the grounds in front of the Signals Mess, has remained so deeply imprinted on my psyche that the intervening forty-odd years have not been able to wash it away.

The 1999 “War” along the heights from Drass to Kargil would have been, if anything, fiercer. Having seen Kargil with the malefic “13620” towering over it, I wonder how a government can play politics with the sacrifices of the cream of the country’s youth. Surely, people wouldn’t allow it, as the courage, fortitude and the spirit of sacrifice displayed at Drass or Tiger Hill or Tololing are now the very stuff of the nation’s military folklore. Deeply embedded in the nation’s consciousness, efforts to dislodge them would be a futile exercise.

Indian bureaucracy -"slow", "suffocating" and spineless

Reams have been written in recent years about the Indian bureaucracy. Established by the British in order to consolidate their hold on the vast territories that they acquired in the country, its main component the Indian Civil Service (ICS) was once described as the “steel frame” of the Indian government. Post-independence, however, the Indian bureaucracy progressively got politicised and became increasingly sleazy and venal. The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) – the successor of the famed ICS – dominates the entire spectrum of Indian Administration, both at the Centre and in the states. Occupying virtually all positions of consequence, its members, lavishing on themselves generous perks, slowly and inefficaciously grind out, if at all, measly lumps of favours for the common folk.

A recent survey by the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy found the Indian bureaucrats “a power centre in their own right at both the national and state levels, and are extremely resistant to reform that affects them or the way they go about their duties". According to its report, while the Singapore civil servants were the most efficient among their Asian peers, their Indian counterparts were found to be “suffocating”, working with whom was a “slow and painful” process.

But that is not all that can be said about the Indian bureaucracy. There is another quality of it that seems to have been missed by the Consultancy, and that is it has progressively become spineless. The much-vaunted “steel frame” has become a frame seemingly made of fragile twigs that the sparrows use to build their nests. Attempting to feather their own nests they have sold their soul to their political masters. Those, whose raison d’être was aiding and advising their political superior, have actually ended up doing, for better or for worse, the latter’s bidding, thus becoming the latter’s foot soldiers.

The history of sixty years of the IAS is littered with instances that illustrate this attribute. But a recent instance from the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh (MP) lends a contemporaneous touch to it. Sanjana Jain, a spunky woman in the revenue and administrative services of MP, recently stood up to a bully of a politician, a minister to boot and was promptly let down by the senior bureaucracy of the state.

Until recently, a sub divisional magistrate in Dewas, a district headquarter in the state, Sanjana while functioning as the Returning Officer of Sonkutch constituency for the MP Legislative Assembly elections in November 2008 happened to have a confrontation with one Tukoji Rao Puar, a minister in the state government. He tried to browbeat her to cancel the candidature of the adversarial Congress nominee for this constituency. The minister, barging into her office, entered into an unseemly argument with Sanjana and, losing his equanimity, threw a bunch of papers at her. This was caught on camera and was telecast virtually by all the news channels. At the instance of the Election Commission a report was duly filed with the police and the minister was arrested, though, was bailed out later.

Post-elections, the officer was reverted to her administrative post and, under orders of her superiors, happened to be checking out a food-joint in Dewas – a city, currently, prone to cholera and other infectious diseases – when she fell afoul of the same politician who had again become a minister. The food-joint owner was found to be indulging in many irregularities and was operating without the necessary permissions. He, however, happened to be a lackey of the minster. Soon, he pulled his influence with the politician, who, true to his form, again entered into a lengthy argument with the officer charging her of bias against his party men. As the officer did not succumb to the minister’s pressure, the matter was taken right up to the chief minister.

That the lady took on this politician even after the earlier unpleasant incident speaks volumes about her guts, courage of conviction and commitment to her duties. Very few of her colleagues, including her seniors in the IAS, have seldom displayed the same. As expected by her and her colleagues, she was peremptorily transferred by the state administration under pressure from the political executive. That, however, is neither here nor there. She made her point and, hopefully, created a benchmark for official conduct, which many of her junior and senior colleagues might like to strive to work up to. The ruling party, on the other hand, came out in poor light. Surely, people will not easily forget this sordid episode of a minister preventing an official from taking administrative action to ensure public health and general wellbeing.

The most condemnable attitude, incidentally, was displayed by the state’s bureaucracy. It was sickening to see its lack of spine. It did not come to the rescue of a field officer who was literally stopped in her tracks from doing her duty. Not only was she bullied by a brash minister before a crowd of onlookers, she was also reported to have been insulted in front of a defaulter whom she had been able to catch breaching the relevant extant laws. The bureaucracy, members of which are called public servants, failed to put up a fight, forget the officer, even for the cause of the public, and caved in in the face of political pressure. Such brazen political interference in administrative work may have acquired run-of-the-mill character for the higher bureaucracy but it should have been the business of those who wield power over junior functionaries to sift chaff from the grain and be more judicious and circumspect before handing out decisions. What the needlessly penalised officer was attempting to do was, after all, of direct benefit to the people – trying to ensure their health and wellbeing. Besides, her efforts would also have saved public expenditure on maintaining public health. It is not unknown to the bureaucracy that it is largely the unscrupulous operators in the food sector who, generally, are responsible for choking up the public healthcare facilities, especially during the hot and humid season when adulterated and rotten stuff are often dished out to the unwary customer.
As it is MP is a state which suffers from a severe deficit of governance. By giving short shrift to the courage and righteousness of the officer, who happened to be the unwitting victim of crude exercise of power by a rash politician, the state bureaucracy has further demoralised the state’s official machinery, giving fillip to further non-governance. And, quite reprehensibly, it has left the people at the mercy of unscrupulous politicians and their crooked supporters.

(Published by Indian News & Features Alliance, Delhi, on 19th June 2009)

A spunky bureaucrat and an intemperate politician

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/6/2009/a spunky bureaucrat and an intemperate politician

One cannot but appreciate Sanjana Jain, a spirited woman in the revenue and administrative services of the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh (MP), who stood up to a bully of a politician, a minister to boot. For her straightforward way of functioning she has been penalised with a peremptory transfer.

Until recently, a sub divisional magistrate in Dewas, a district headquarter in the state, Sanjana was deputed as the Returning Officer of Sonkutch constituency for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in November 2008. It was while functioning as such that she was treated crudely by Tukoji Rao Puar, who was then a minister in the MP Government. He barged into her office and tried to browbeat her to cancel the candidature of the adversarial Congress nominee for this constituency. As the officer quite rightly expressed her inability to comply, the minister entered into an argument with her and, in a fit of rege, threw a bunch of papers at her. This was caught on camera and was telecast virtually by all the news channels. At the instance of the Election Commission a report was duly filed with the police and the minister was arrested, though, was bailed out later. The case is still under process.

Apparently, after the elections, the officer reverted to her administrative post and, as ordered by her superiors, happened to be checking out the other day a food-joint in Dewas – a city, currently, prone to cholera and other infectious diseases – when she fell afoul of the same politician who had become post-election a minister again. The food-joint owner was found operating without the necessary permissions and was found to be using illegally fuel meant for domestic consumers. He, however, happened to be a lackey of the minister. Soon, he pulled his influence with the politician, who, true to his earlier form, entered into a lengthy argument with the officer charging her of bias against his party men. As the officer did not succumb to the minister’s pressure, the matter was taken right up to the chief minister.

That the lady took on this politician even after the earlier unpleasant incident during the elections speaks volumes about her guts, courage of conviction and commitment to her duties. Very few of her colleagues, why, very few of her senior colleagues even in the superior Indian Administrative Service, have displayed such courage. As expected by her and her colleagues, she was peremptorily transferred by the state administration under pressure from the political executive and posted at the Academy of Administration in the Capital. That is neither here nor there. She has made her point and, hopefully, created a benchmark for official conduct, which many of her junior and senior colleagues might like to strive to work up to.

The ruling party, on the other hand, has come out in poor light. Surely, people will not easily forget this sordid episode of a minister preventing an official from taking administrative action to ensure public health and general wellbeing. What is, however, deplorable is that this politician, a former princeling of Dewas, after having been arrested and bailed out subsequent to the earlier incident, happened to have indulged again in this kind of ugly and unbecoming conduct. As a matter of course, there has been no action against him. After all, “a king can do no wrong”. Having suffered severe setbacks in the state in the recently concluded General Elections, one would have expected the ruling party to chastise the minister.

It is a pity that the senior bureaucrats of the state administration did not come to the rescue of a field officer who was literally stopped in her tracks from doing her duty. Not only was she bullied by the minister before a crowd of onlookers, she was also reported to have been insulted in front of a defaulter whom she had apprehended breaching the relevant extant laws. This is not a happy augury. Such instances of needless, in fact condemnable, political interference in administrative work may have acquired run-of-the-mill character for the higher bureaucracy but it should have been the business of those who wield power over junior functionaries to sift chaff from the grain and be more judicious and circumspect. What the needlessly penalised officer was attempting to do was of by far of great importance and direct benefit to the people by way of trying to ensure their health and wellbeing. Besides, her effective action would also have saved the state’s expenditure on maintaining public health, as it is largely the unscrupulous operators in the food sector who, apart from committing sundry irregularities, are generally responsible for choking up the public health facilities, especially during the hot and humid season. Surely, the state’s bureaucrats are aware of this basic fact.

That such penal transfers demoralise the officialdom at all levels, particularly the cutting edge, and that they also have their own inevitable pernicious impacts on the people at large hardly need any emphasis. What is more, in such a milieu the politicians and their crooked foot-soldiers, getting a field day, are likely to wreak havoc on the process of unbiased administration. Instead of properly appreciating the implications of the episode and standing up to the politicians the state’s senior bureaucracy collapsed in a heap before its political masters. In succumbing to political pressure in this case it cast abroad a baleful and sinister message for the people and the few remaining functionaries in its ranks who are sincere and honest. Clearly, henceforth none can expect straightforward honest and unbiased administrative action if it interferes with the interests of the politicians in power or their myriad supporters. Likewise no officer, even those who are committed to their job, would hereafter stick his/her neck out to take administrative measures in general public interests.

Both, the chief minister and the chief secretary of the state have done bad turn to the state and its people

Another environmental mishap of Madhya Pradesh

Environmental matters in India seldom get priority. This is more so in the states where they are mostly kept on the back-burner. The central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh, for example, once thickly forested and wetter than many Indian states, has had a series of environmental mishaps because of its governments’ lackadaisical ways.

The world is aware of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, known as the world’s biggest “Industrial Disaster”, when a lethal gas leaked out from the now-defunct Union Carbide factory on a cold December night in 1984 killing hundreds and maiming thousands. The local environment was so fouled up that the affected people are still suffering from the after-effects of the poison they were exposed to. The post-mortem of the disaster had revealed that the tragedy was eminently avoidable had the authorities been a little more proactive. “Whistle blowers” had blown their whistle repeatedly, and every time more and more loudly; and yet the government was not shaken out of its lassitude.

That was 25 years ago but things, apparently, haven’t changed in the meantime. Something similar happened in the case of disappearance of tigers from Panna Tiger Reserve. A long-time researcher of Panna tigers, Raghu Chundawat, had blown the whistle way back in 2005 about missing tigresses of Panna. His repeated public and, presumably, private pleas fell on deaf ears. The Wildlife wing of the MP Forest Department (MPFD) continually remained in denial mode, i.e. until October 2008 when the newly-created National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) advised the state to relocate a tigress from Bandhavgarh. Though two tigresses were relocated into the Reserve in quick succession from neighbouring parks, yet the revival of the big cat in the Reserve is uncertain as the lone tiger that was to be provided female company has now become untraceable – a sad denouement for a state that is known by its sobriquet “the Tiger State”. Needless to say, tiger is the flagship species of India’s wildlife conservational effort. Besides, on its survival depends survival of India’s forests and concomitant ecological, food and water security.

The NTCA has, lately, appointed a Special Investigation Team to investigate the reasons for disappearance of tigers from Panna. Not to be outdone, the Forest Department, too, wants an enquiry of its own. This, undoubtedly, is the right approach. Not only the professional wildlife administrators and the government should know the reasons for a disaster of such a magnitude, even the people have a right to know how and why efforts made over last few decades to conserve tigers at their expense have, in substance, come to nought.

What, however, appears intriguing is that there appears to have been no effort so far to investigate another disaster – the one that relates to drying up of the 1000-year old Upper Lake in Bhopal. This, too, is a major environmental disaster which could prove to be catastrophic for the city in the future. The Lake today is not even a pale shadow of what it was last summer. Its vast spread of water, once virtually like an ocean, has now been reduced to the size of a small pond. Having lost 90% of its water, huge expanses of its bed now lie exposed – bone-dry and looking increasingly sinister by the day. Once the lifeline for 40% of the city’s population, it has now ceased to be so, being unable to contribute to the city’s water supplies. This did not happen even in 2002 when it suffered a double whammy. Not only was the rainfall inadequate, huge leaks had developed in a dam designed to hold the water.

Although the authorities preferred to turn a blind eye, many had foreseen the oncoming calamity. Individually and collectively people of the town have been raising the issue of utter neglect of the Upper and Lower lakes, the two lakes which, together, make up the Bhoj Wetland, a Ramsar Site. Bhopal Citizens’ Forum, a socially-conscious group of citizens, had filed a petition in 2007 with the State Human Rights Commission on the neglect and lack of effort to conserve the Wetland. The Commission got all the connected departments/agencies to respond to the petition. While the petition is still pending, the government departments/agencies, seemingly, did precious little during the interregnum.

Before that, around the turn of the Century, a World Bank-funded study conducted for economic valuation of the Wetland by an Environmental Economist of the prestigious Indian Institute of Forest Management had predicted that unless enough care was taken of it, it could die in another thirty years. It, perhaps, did not take into account the indifference of the state government to such mundane matters. Although submitted to it, the government gave the report its coldest of shoulders, thereby whipping the Wetland to gallop towards its end faster than predicted.

Inadequate rains are being touted as the reason for the calamity. The local Met office had put out that Bhopal and its catchments had received only 70% of the average rainfall during the last monsoon. No one is buying the official line. Reports have since appeared of the Lake’s feeder channels being encroached upon and dammed. There are evidences which are now coming to the fore of official apathy and ‘non-management’. Currently the management – if at all it can be called that – of the Wetland is so diffused that it is difficult to pin-point responsibility. No one knows who is in charge. Although the local municipality has been designated as its custodian, it has not been administratively and financially empowered. Besides, its writ does not run in the areas that are in the Wetland’s catchments as they fall outside the municipal limits.

A feeling of fear pervades the city that the Wetland may ultimately disappear. If that were to happen, its implications will be enormous. The Lower Lake that it feeds, too, will disappear. Already, it has shrunk appreciably. Also, the underground aquifers will dry up causing much of the green cover of the town to wither away. While the micro-climate of the town will be adversely affected, the disappearance of the Lake will seriously impair water-availability for an ever-rising population. More importantly, it will broadcast to the whole wide world the inability of the state and central governments, despite running two back-to-back Japanese Bank of International Cooperation-funded multi-million dollar projects, to conserve a water body that they got recognised as a site under the Ramsar Convention.

As in the cases of other environmental disasters an enquiry is necessary to ascertain reasons for the current pathetic state of the Wetland. Only such an enquiry can establish whether it was caused by natural, human or systemic failure. Such an investigation by a body of experts may also identify the systemic shortcomings in management of the Wetland and suggest effective mechanisms, with clear demarcation of institutional and individual responsibilities, to prevent such mishaps of this scale in the future. Above all, such an enquiry will predicate the state’s resolve – so far unseen – to purposefully deal with matters relating to environment.

Citizen journalist - the new kid on the block

I had never imagined that I would ever come anywhere near the field of journalism. Having spent 30-odd years in the government I agreed with the assertions of many of my colleagues that I had, like them, become practically “useless” for all purposes. Destiny, however, seemed to have willed something else for me.

I established base at Bhopal (India) to spend the (post-retirement) home-stretch. With no pre-occupation and a mind still mercifully agile I progressively became conscious of my surroundings. The lack or, in many ways, total absence of civic amenities in this what-could-be-a-beautiful town irked me. With time available in profusion, I resurrected my Silver Reed portable typewriter and hammered away to churn out letters to the editors of local dailies. Some did seem to have impact, a majority did not. From civic issues I slowly graduated to topical, national and environmental issues and despatched my thoughts to national dailies. That venerable newspaper, The Statesman, highly regarded for its quality of content and language edited by the legendary CR Irani, would publish them, often, lo and behold, the title of my letter figuring as the headline for the “Letters” section. My life seemed to have been made!

Consumed by the obsession to express my views more effectively I took lessons in computing – along with kids old enough to be my grand-children. The computer, with its awesome capabilities, made things far easier. Egged on by my elder brother, I tried my hand at writing articles. Some of them, when finished, appeared good. Soon enough the City Supplement of the local edition of Hindustan Times started carrying my pieces, mostly on civic issues. Even Manuj Features, the erstwhile features agency spawned by the Makhalal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism, accepted my output and disseminated them to its subscribers. I had emerged as a casual columnist.

It was nothing intellectual that I wrote. I only gave expression to my reactions, positive or negative, to issues– local, topical, national or environmental – as an ordinary individual that I thought needed expression, generally, with relevant information culled from various sources. It was neither sycophantic, nor was it in any way “muckraking”. I wrote like a civic-minded non-professional within the given constraints of limited space seeking, as Sarah McClendon (1910-2003), the well-regarded American journalist, once said while claiming to be a citizen journalist, “To give more information to the people …for their own good”. Unknowingly, more than half a dozen years ago I, too, had become, somewhat of a “citizen journalist”, a term which, back then, was still far away from common parlance in this country.

Conceptually speaking, citizen journalism involves, as Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, so-called progenitors of “the golden age of journalism” said, in citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information…The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires". Citizen journalism has, therefore, been variously described as “public” or “participatory” journalism or even “democratic journalism”.

JD Lasica, a leading authority on “social media” and “user created media”, has broadly classified citizen journalism, inter alia, into (1) Audience Participation: with comments, blogs, photos or video footage, (2) Independent news and information websites: such as consumer reports etc., (3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (4) Contributory and collaborative media sites.

Although the idea that the average citizen could engage in journalistic effort has a pretty long history yet the professionals, with their training and corporate resources, seldom yielded any space to amateurs. Avid readers of newspapers would have noticed the progressively shrinking space for even readers’ views. And, of course, a non-professional can hardly ever break through the barrier of professionals who form into a coterie, monopolising news analyses in the corporate media.

However, with the progressive erosion of trust in the mainstream news-media, public journalism gathered strength. Technology gave fillip to it as an ordinary citizen could capture news and news-worthy incidents with photographs or video footage and distribute them globally. The journalism that was “by the people” began to flourish with the emerging internet and networking technologies. The audience of the conventional media, which so far had been harangued and sometime misled by partisan considerations, took it upon itself to report and project more objective news and views. In South Korea, OhmyNews founded by Oh Yeon-ho in 2000 with the motto "Every Citizen is a Reporter” became popular and even commercially successful. In this context mention must also be made of the Independent Media Centre (a.k.a Indymedia or IMC) that came into existence in 1999 during the anti-WTO protests at Seattle as a participatory network of journalists that reports on socio-political issues. Featuring as a milestone in the history of citizen journalism, Indymedia has pursued open publishing and democratic media process allowing all and sundry to contribute.

Not yet bound by any law, as perhaps professional journalists are in certain countries, the citizen journalists, ideally speaking, have to abide by some basic principles that demand a great degree of rectitude from them. To be purposeful and effective citizen journalism has got to be so. Hence, accuracy of facts, thoroughness, fairness of content and comment, transparency – the principle being “disclose, disclose, disclose” – and independence and non-partisan proclivities are attributes that generally are desirable and mostly insisted upon.

Technology having given a kind of head-start, citizen journalism has come a long way. Growing appreciation of its importance has fostered a mushroom growth of websites world over inviting and hosting content in the shapes of news, comments, blogs, photos or videos from the audience. Even the traditional media organisations – big or small, print or electronic – having gone online, have staff blogs and also invite audience participation in actual journalism. While a new phenomenon of “Mojo” – mobile journos – is on the horizon, using fast and versatile 3G networks, a prospective citizen journo would find umpteen hosts of his choice on a web-search.
Although a recent phenomenon, citizen journalism websites have become popular in India. Here, too, as elsewhere, citizen journalism was the result of “digital era’s democratisation of the media – wide access to powerful, inexpensive tools of media creation and wide access to what people created, via digital networks.” While whitedrums.com was launched in 2005, many popular sites like merinews.com, Mynews.in, Purdafash.com, Rediff.com etc. that came up around the same time seem to be flourishing. Their role-model being OhmyNews.com, they generally report on more serious issues like climate change, health topics, science, politics, environmental or social problems.

Regardless of what the sceptics think citizens’ reportage has gathered nothing but strength. World over – in the US, Europe, South Africa, Australia and South Asia – new start-ups are appearing by the day. Yet credibility of the reportage is what the progress of citizen journalism hinges on. At a conference in Seoul in 2007, hosted by OhmyNews, the hugely successful citizen journalism medium, certain preconditions were set forth for user-created content centring on credibility, trustworthiness, influence and sustainability. Like in traditional media run by trained professionals, that, perhaps, cannot always be ensured.

Besides, the question that is raised often is whether an ordinary citizen can be a reporter. Rory O’Connor of Guardian says why not. “After all, I've been a professional journalist for decades - yet I never took a course in it, received a license for it or got anointed on high. So here's my advice - if you don't like the news, report some of your own.”

I have, for the last few months, been doing just that – reporting to OhmyNews, GroundReport, HumanTimes, merinews, Mynews. The response has been encouraging and experience rewarding.