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

Mumbai attack - the flip side

The carnage in Mumbai on 26th November 2008 caused senseless loss of scores of lives and damage of millions to public and private property. In its flip side, however, it triggered certain positivities, which if sustained and taken to their logical conclusion, could make India strong and capable of facing such eventualities in future with strength and fortitude. Signs of some of these positivities became evident as the stunned nation gradually recovered from the traumatic event.

The attack exposed the inadequacies of the internal security establishments, including those of the Mumbai Police. Devoid of appropriate weapons and training in countering terror the policemen became mere fodder for the terrorists’ Kalashnikovs. Despite some extraordinary instances of bravery, many, including police officers, stood no chance and were shot down. As the event unfolded over the 24-hour news channels, the saga of failure of the central and state establishments acquired classic proportions. The inaction of the state authorities, the Navy and the Coast Guard in the face of specific intelligence inputs, the avoidable deaths of the police personnel, delay in getting the National Security Guards (NSG) into the act for want of a dedicated aircraft when all the while death and destruction was being caused by the fidayeens, all incensed the stunned people.

Tempers running high, the generally apathetic people’s ire was directed first against the perpetrators of the heinous attacks and then, justifiably, at the political class. Mumbai has, over the years, suffered a series of bomb attacks in which numerous innocents were either killed, maimed for life or severely wounded and traumatised. And yet it was business-as-usual for the “establishment” – relaxed, lackadaisical and apathetic to peoples’ concerns and their safety. While the politicians had appropriated for themselves the cream of the security establishments – the well-trained and well-armed NSG – common people were left exposed and unprotected with a police force inadequate in their numbers and equipped with lathies (staffs) or with the antique 303 rifles.

Aroused passions led to candlelight vigils, mourning the avoidable loss of lives. Massive rallies held in urban India expressed solidarity with the distressed in Mumbai, asking for the heads of those who were at the helm. In their resentment people came together like never before. Religious divides disappeared, as did the differences of class and caste. From all walks of life, they, together, demanded security for their life and property.

Sensing the charged atmosphere, the chastened political class showed, in the ensuing Parliament session, a rare sense of responsibility. Deciding to shun their unruly behaviour causing frequent interruptions of the House proceedings, they – the government and the Opposition – showed unity of purpose seldom seen before. The usual mutual acrimony was, by and large, avoided and the members settled down to the sombre business of adopting measures to secure the country from similar attacks and enabling it to effectively counter them in the future.

Arming itself legally by enacting tougher amendments to the existing Unlawful Activities Prevention Act – a watered down version of the Prevention of Terrorism Act which it had earlier repealed in pursuit of minority votes – the ruling combine pushed through creation of a Federal Investigative Agency. The new Home Minister, who replaced his axed effete predecessor, set about the onerous task of revamping the internal security establishments. Striving to achieve better coordination and sharing of information among the various intelligence outfits at the Centre and in the states, he initiated steps to reinforce the elite NSG, de-centralise them and ensure their quicker deployment. The Navy and the Coastguard are also in for reinforcement and upgradation. The maritime borders are being brought under radar cover and the porous land frontiers are now going to be fenced.

Perhaps for the first time the inadequate numbers of our policemen and their want of preparedness became subjects of public discourse. Lack of leave and training-reserves and diversion of unduly large numbers for VIP security have rendered the force in every state overworked and ill-trained. Their archaic and obsolete arms –mostly ornamental –came in for scathing comments. The citizens of Mumbai were so outraged by the deaths of senior police officers because of their sub-standard bullet-proof vests that they raised funds for provision of proper protective gear for the city’s policemen. Many states now plan to fill the gaps in numbers and their weaponry.

Shaken out of its wits by “26/11” and the public anger that followed it the government, discarding its lethargy and general unconcern, has pulled up its socks and rolled up its sleeves. While some plan or the other is being announced everyday to strengthen internal security, the rumblings of strikes at terrorist camps across the borders are becoming louder by the hour. One can only wish that need for invasive action is obviated. What, however, would be needed is sustaining the tempo of preparedness to preserve the security of the country with internal unity, economic and military muscle coupled with an unwavering political will.

Mumbai attack: the way ahead

It took more than 60 hours to get over the mayhem caused by fidayeen attack in Mumbai on 26th November, popularly termed as India’s “9/11”. Nearly two hundred innocents lost their lives, two luxury hotels, including the iconic Taj Mahal Palace, identified by many as the very essence of India, have suffered such destruction that it will take billions of dollars to restore them.

The wanton killing and destruction, from all available evidences exported from Pakistan, the universally acknowledged “epicentre of terror”, had no credible cause. Yet none, including even the United States, has been able to stop the periodical carnage inflicted from there. Quite beyond its capability to stop them, India has to treat such attacks as something which it has to live with. The country had set much store by Pakistan’s democratically elected government. Predictably, however, it has drawn a blank. No help will ever be forthcoming from it as the formidable terror outfits in Pakistan are, virtually, integral to its polity. Even the US acknowledges them. CIA, reportedly, channellises funds to them through the ISI.

Hence, the talk of having a resolution passed by the Security Council against Pakistan for harbouring terror outfits along with their training camps is futile. The same would seem to be true of a proposal to bring collective pressure of the international community on Pakistan. Terror attacks on India are India’s problems. No country is going to come to its help. It is a jungle out there in the arena of international politics where everyone looks after one’s own interests. It is, therefore, the government and the people of the country who will have to rise as one man to forestall such attacks in the future.

The country has to put its act together, which, unfortunately, it has failed to do during the past sixty years. Its land borders continue to remain porous. The government has failed to seal them to make them impenetrable. The maritime security around the extensive coastline has gaping holes. Over the years the land and sea borders have been facilely breached and yet no lessons were learnt. In 1993 RDX was landed via the sea route as a prelude to the serial blasts in Mumbai. And, yet, in 2006 the investigative staff of an English language news channel, out to test the route the terrorists had taken in 1993, came across none of the checks and controls that were claimed to have been installed. In the pervasive indifference “26/11” was just waiting to happen.

Besides, percolating from the top, the endemic corruption has made the administration moth-eaten and listless. People in the government and its agencies suffer from a severe lack of commitment to the country and its interests. While the primary goal of politicians is capturing and retaining power, generally, to plunder public resources, the huge creaky and corrupt bureaucracy, collectively and individually, is committed to none but itself. Public institutions are politicised vitiating the entire administrative machinery. There is hardly any governance and the elaborate systems designed for delivery of public good have been oriented mostly to benefit the politicians, their lackeys and hangers-on. The anger that “26/11” has aroused among the people against the politicians is, therefore, nothing but welling up of their long-simmering discontent.

In such a situation the need is not of new institutions which the government is thinking of establishing. The country is already suffering from surfeit of them – mostly politicised and rendered ineffective. The need, apparently, is of giving a new direction to the existing ones and to make them functional for public good and not for the good of the politicians and political parties in power. The need is also of infusing into them a sense of purpose and commitment and of achieving among them an ambience of harmony with the singular objective of jointly making the country strong, secure and prosperous. It is needless to emphasise the imperative to develop economic and military muscles.

For all this to happen, however, the initiative has to come from the very top – the politicians at various levels, who are the rulers in our kind of democracy. Shunning political chicanery, corruption and nepotism, it is they who will have to be seen to be working for the country. Giving up the politics of “vote banks”, they will have to work up to the slogan of “Country first” that was so prominently visible during the recent American Presidential primaries. They will have to rework the approach to their job and devote themselves, as during the freedom struggle, to the good of the country and its people. With enemies lurking in the neighbourhood, they will have to inspire the security and other establishments as also the people to eternal vigilance against saboteurs within and marauders from abroad. Only then, perhaps, an impression will filter out that the country cannot be messed around with.

India's healthcare conundrum

Anbumani Ramdoss, India’s Health Minister recently had occasion to highlight the vast gap in the medical workforce in the country. According to him, while the country had around 700,000 doctors, it needed 800,000 more to meet the standards of the World Health Organisation. He added that the country needed 1.5 million more nurses to achieve, as the Indian Planning Commission has indicated, the nurse-patient ratio of 1:500.

In order to overcome the huge deficit, conditions for establishing medical colleges have been relaxed. Sensing an opportunity for making a killing, poliiticians, their financiers and other influential and powerful business interests have got into the act. Colleges have been and are being opened any and everywhere regardless of the availalability or otherwise of the necessary faculty, equipment, patients and/or hospital-beds. Faculty members of distant institution are hired for few days to meet the needs of inspections, which, too, are rigged. Even fake patients are sometimes made to occupy, on payment, beds lying vacant in the attached hospitals.

A member of the Medical Council of India recently lamented the absence of accredition of medical education in India, the efforts being concentrated more towards securing recognition. The main reason for this aberration, he said, was the “absence of sincerity and moral values in the society”. While the Delhi High Court recently ordered closer scrutiny of Indian medical students graduating from abroad, it is almost time for such a scrutiny even of those who graduate from the mushrooming medical colleges in the country. Being products of an ongoing con-game, they mostly emerge as quacks armed with medical degrees. Instead of providing health care they are more likely to effectively deal with the acute population problem of the country!

Training and education of nurses is no different. Because of shortage of a million nurses, to achieve the ratio of a nurse for every 500 patients colleges have been allowed to be opened with scant facilities of teaching and learning. Producing nurses possessing, at best, rudimentary theoretical awareness with little knowledge or training in clinical applications, such institutions are only fattening their promoters doing nothing for the country or for the noble profession. Only the institutions of excellence that the government proposes to open may redeem to a limited extent the ongoing compromise in the quality of nursing.

The proliferating diagnostic labs are also an area of huge concern. According to the Quality Council of India, although 70% of the modern medical care is based on diagnostic lab tests, 90% of medical laboratories have remained unregulated by any standard. Most of the pathological laboratories do not follow any quality benchmark for want of stringent requirements. Here again, accredition (by government or other recognised agencies) is virtually absent and, hence, quality control is non-existent. Leave alone hygiene or sanitation, even sensitivity towards the need for a sterile ambience is absent. Qualified pathologists or radiologists are frequently unavailable. Inspections are unheard of and the entire system is governed by the hardly relevant Shops and Establishments Act. If this is what happens in urban areas one shudders to imagine the plight of the people in the country’s rural recesses. It is nothing but mockery of healthcare.

Instead of tackling these vital issues, Ramdoss got into avoidable controversies. His personal feud with the former Director of the prestigious institution of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a cardiac surgeon of great repute, ended up with egg on his face and that of his government. Besides, to benefit a party apparatchik he banned production of vaccines by public sector labs, causing their widespread shortage that continues till date.

He, however, successfully imposed a ban on smoking in public places. He is now poised to move into the areas of drugs and alcoholism. Ramdoss’s strategy of mounting attacks on the lifestyle or habits or substances the pursuit and/or use of which cause deadly diseases necessitating heavy public investments for their treatment cannot but be appreciated. He however seems to be oblivious of the problem of food adulteration and use of toxic chemicals to ripen fruits and vegetables and to impart to them farm-fresh appearance. Health problems caused by water and air pollution are also nowhere on his horizon as yet.

India’s healthcare is a conundrum that would need much more than mere tinkering. To take care of health of a billion people, mostly poor, the immediate need would seem to be ruthless governance and rooting out of the prevailing rampant corruption in the health sector. And, the country is now at such a stage when penalisation of the states, the main instruments of healthcare delivery, for non-performance by blocking off their funding seems to have become necessary.

Vanishing tigresses of Panna

That the tiger in the Indian wild is critically threatened is a well-known fact. At the beginning of 20th Century 40,000 of these striped animals used to roam the jungles of the country. Wanton killings, rising human population, economic development followed by shrinking habitat brought their numbers to a perilous low of around 2000 towards the end of 1960s. That is when the country woke up to the need for protection of this magnificent beast.

It was at the initiative of the more pro-active of politicians, the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, that the Project Tiger was launched in 1973. Its objective was to, “ensure a viable population of tiger in India for scientific, economic, aesthetic, cultural and ecological values…” Succeeding for a short while, the Project helped in boosting up the numbers to around 3500 in the course of a couple of decades. However, lackadaisical approach to its protection coupled with a raging demand for its body-parts in East Asian countries saw their numbers plummet again. The last census, organised on a more scientific basis earlier this Century, pegged their numbers at around 1400 – a number which is in no way viable for fulfilling the Project objectives.

It is in this context that the reports circulating for sometime of vanishing tigresses in the Panna Tiger Reserve in the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh (MP) are disconcerting. Sariska, a popular tiger-reserve near Delhi, located in the touristy north-western province of Rajasthan, lost all its tigers to pachers in 2005 and two tigers – a male and a female have had to be introduced in it recently. And, now the same catastrophe seems to have befallen Panna.

Created in 1981, Panna National Park was elevated in 1994 to the status of a Tiger Reserve under the Project Tiger. Situated in the picturesque Vindhyan ranges, close to the World Heritage Site of Khajuraho, the Park is known for tiger habitat that is considered about the finest in the country.

All, apparently, was fine with the Reserve until around 2003 when the slide seems to have commenced. With declining tiger-sightings, the figures dished out of its tiger-population in 2004 were so hotly contested that a re-census had to be ordered. Although the fresh census revealed the presence of 35 tigers, the controversy about absence of tigresses in the Park never really died down. Even the Central Empowered Committee appointed by the Supreme Court, comprising inter alia the well-known Indian “tiger scientist” Valmik Thapar, had commented in 2005 on its mismanagement, predicting that the Park was headed the Sariska way.

The year 2007 saw fresh reports about the vanishing tigresses of Panna. Raghu Chundawat, the famous tiger-researcher of Panna, came out into the open in a national English language news-channel speaking about the absence of tigresses in the Park – an observation that, he claimed, was shared by Park officials. Clearly, poachers were active, as was soon proved by press reports.
The current year, too, witnessed no let up in the incidence of adverse reports. In fact, the prestigious Sanctuary Asia magazine published in its June 2008 issue vehement denials by a senior MP Forest Department official of the Park’s plummeting numbers of female tigers. Asserting that it had not become a “bachelor Park”, he maintained, it had a healthy population of 30-odd tigers.

The same issue of the periodical, however, carried a “Counterpoint” by Raghu Chundawat who, drawing from his technical knowledge acquired during his extended researches on Panna tigers, claimed that “breeding territories” – generally stable and constant in a secure (tiger) population – have appreciably declined in numbers. According to him, loss of seven such “territories” has been documented, suggesting disappearance of 80 to 100 % of Panna’s breeding tigresses.

Whatever might be the official projections, Chundawat’s contentions received support from the fact that in September 2008 the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), finding an unviable male-female ratio, advised the MP Forest Department to introduce more tigresses into the Park.

Quite obviously, lessons have not been learnt from the Sariska debacle where persistent wrong reporting of tiger numbers resulted in the animal’s disappearance from that popular Reserve. Repeating the same mistakes in Panna in an apparent effort to protect skidding reputation(s) well-meant inputs from experts were being ignored, even rubbished, overlooking the larger interests of the country and significance of tiger’s survival to it. Tiger, after all, is not just a feature in our jungles; it is much more than that – “a metaphor for our ecological foundation”, as Bittu Sehgal, a prominent Indian naturalist, has opined. It also happens to be a “metaphor” for the country’s water, food and economic security besides being its vehicle to fight climate-change with.

The need of the hour, therefore, is to set at rest all the controversies of the past and quickly initiate action to organise relocation of a few tigresses in the Park as advised by the NTCA. The best time to undertake relocation of animals, experts say, is winter, which is just round the corner and should be taken advantage of.

Unfortunately, Panna National Park has, of late, made news for all the wrong reasons. The only good news that came in about it was the recent rejection by the National Board for Wildlife of a proposal to further fragment the Park by laying a railway-line through it. Now that the proposed railroad is out of the way, the Central and the MP governments will do well to implement the stalled proposal of the Park’s extension over the, reportedly, “ideal” tiger country. Utmost care will, of course, have to be taken to ensure protection of the carnivore and its prey-base in the extended Park.

123 Agreement - of nuclear wastes and other risks

The controversial Indo-US Nuclear Deal has finally been signed. It was inked the other day by Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State and Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian Foreign Minister. Hugely controversial, it had a chequered progression to its eventual sealing after three long years.

During the protracted debate on the Deal whether in India or abroad nuclear power was touted as a clean source of energy though the West does not seem to reckon it as such any longer. In the US nuclear power plants have not been built for decades. France, too, has reduced the contribution of nuclear energy in its total power output. Yet, curiously, never for once was a mention made of the hazardous radioactive wastes that the nuclear power reactors generate. True, these do no emit greenhouse gases, but the wastes generated by them unless safely consigned can imperil life and the environment. Curiously, this was never touched upon even as the US and others are up against the unsolved problem of permanent interment and isolation of nuclear wastes.

Classified into three categories – low level, intermediate level and high level wastes (HLW) – disposal of nuclear wastes has to be managed with great care for protecting people and the environment from their lethal radiation. Around 95% of wastes generated by nuclear power plants are HLW which include uranium, plutonium and other highly radioactive elements. They are low in volume but high in their lethality, if allowed to escape into the environment. Some of these have thousands of years of “half life”, i.e. they take thousands of years to decay to half of their potency. Hence after being stored for around 40-odd years in leak-proof sealed cooling casks, these have to be permanently buried in deep underground geologically suitable repositories – by far an expensive proposition.

The nuclear wastes of the power plants of the US, having been stored above ground for around 40-odd years, are now due for permanent burial. A site in Yucca Mountains in Nevada has been selected for the purpose but the Nevadans are somewhat worried. After all, none can guarantee that the wastes will never leak out. The Yucca Mountains facility is likely to be ready by 2010. But, one doesn’t really know whether the site will ever be used for the intended purpose.

In India Waste Immobilisation Plants have been operating in Tarapur, Trombay and Kalpakkam. Vitrification, a complex technology possessed by only a few nations, has been successfully developed in the country and vitrified wastes are, reportedly, stored in a specially designed Solid Storage Surveillance Facility (SSSF) for about 30 years prior to their disposal in deep geological formations. No one knows whether any such geological formation has so far been identified. Speculations are, however, rife that scientists may eventually pitch in for a site in the deserts of the province of Rajasthan in north-west of the country.

Now that the Nuclear Deal has been sealed numerous nuclear reactors worth billions of dollars are going to be imported from the US, France, Russia and sundry others by an energy-hungry India. It, indeed, has big plans. Currently contributing only 3% of the electricity produced in the country, the government of Dr Manmohan Singh intends to take the share of nuclear power to 33% by 2020. There will naturally be corresponding increase in the waste generated, for permanent interment of which the country will have to find appropriate site(s).

Besides, although so far there have been no accidents like those of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, for which Indian scientists deserve all credit, yet chances of one occurring cannot be discounted with the rise in general sloppiness in every sphere of activity in the country. Proliferation generally breeds all round compromise in quality and that may well happen with the proliferating nuclear power industry. Besides, numerousness of atomic power complexes will act like magnates for the disaffected and the hostile elements in the neighbouring countries. If infiltration and exfiltration continue with such ease as at present, the country will never be short of prowling bombers.

The government, therefore, needs to prepare in earnest for handling various implications of the expected inrush of nuclear power plants over the next decade or so. Apart from looking for appropriate safe geological sites, the government will , inter alia, have to take care of at least two more serious implications: one is, of course, to ensure zero-tolerance of slapdash way of functioning and the other is about virtual sealing of the Eastern, Northern and Western borders to prevent their facile penetration by terrorists.

Since harnessing nuclear power in a big way for civilian use is a high-risk venture the country and its people would seem to need to pull themselves up by the boot-straps.