Bhopal Notes :: 55 :: Tale of two “cities of lakes”

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Proverbially, comparisons are odious but there are occasions when it becomes necessary to make comparisons. I just came across a report on the way the lakes in another “City of Lakes”, Udaipur, are being taken care of. Enough has been written about the way our own lakes, including the ones that fall into the category of “heritage”, are treated. We take pride in calling Bhopal a “City of Lakes” and market it as such. We also claim that the Upper Lake is the pride of Bhopal and it symbolizes the city, to boot. And, yet the treatment that the state government and the Municipal Corporation, the custodian of the Lake, give to it amounts to nothing short of trying to kill it as soon as possible. One might add both the cities are in the list of those which are being upgraded as “smart cities”. While Udaipur has included its lakes for being “smartened up” no such decision has been taken in respect of the lakes of Bhopal by the special organization created for making the city smart.

In a recent report in The Pioneer I came across a write-up on the way the lakes of Udaipur are being taken care of and how attempts are being made to “rejuvenate” them. The lakes obviously are held in reverence as these are now treated as indicative of “inherited smartness” of the town. With smart planning and implementation, the Udaipur Municipal Corporation has already made two of the city’s lakes, viz. Fateh Sagar and Gowardhan lake, free of sewage. Two other important lakes, Pichola and Swaroop Sagar, are next to be taken up for making them sewage-free.

The report also says that a Lake Patrolling Squad has been constituted and is in position in order to prevent illegal constructions around the lakes. The municipality has, in addition, devised a scheme of cash incentives for those who report instances of illegal constructions near the lakes or of sewer drains flowing into any of the city’s lakes through “Action Udaipur App”.

The report claims that Udaipur serves as a role model in regard to immersion of clay or plaster of Paris images of gods and goddesses in the lakes after every festival. Immersions are reported to be carried out only symbolically. Apparently, this has had the desired effect and people, no less religious than those of Bhopal, are cooperating. According to the report, people are very possessive about the lakes. They willingly involve themselves in shramdaan and other activities relating to maintenance of cleanliness, etc. Therefore, it seems, they are prepared to do whatever is necessary to conserve their lakes.

People here in Bhopal, however, are keen to make merry on the lake front but have displayed a “hands-off” attitude in so far as efforts to conserve them is concerned. People’s participation was noticed only once about a decade ago when the Upper Lake was in dire straits. The effort led by the chief minister to deepen the Upper Lake proved to be futile as the work involved was much beyond what five hundred-odd pairs of hands could achieve.

 In none of the aspects referred to in respect of the lakes of Udaipur has the Bhopal Municipal Corporation able to either initiate action for improvement of quality of the waters of the Upper Lake, a source of drinking water, or to prevent illegal encroachment/constructions around it. In fact it has turned a blind eye to these illegal activities and has itself commenced illegal construction within 500 metres of the Full Tank Level. There is no action seems to be in the offing and eight drains continue since one-does-not-know-when to empty their various contaminants, including sewage into the Lake. The Corporation does not seem to have even mooted the problem before the state government for diversion of the  drains or installation of sewage treatment plants.

Besides, the authorities are still struggling to prevent immersion of plaster of Paris images in the Upper Lake. Every year it is the same story. Either the orders are not disseminated clearly or artisans are resistant to change, being non-cooperative; control on the size and material to be used for the images continues to elude the administration. Somehow the Municipal Corporation of Bhopal has failed to elicit cooperation from general public in regard to conservation of the important water body. On the other hand, the Udaipur Municipal Corporation has incentivized reports/complaints from the common people regarding efforts to damage the eco-systems of the lakes.

Perhaps, our local body should draw lessons from the Udaipur municipality in respect of conservation of the lakes of Bhopal. Perhaps it understands that by simply calling the town “City of Lakes” and blazing it prominently in red on the Upper Lake neither conserves it or other lakes, nor does it make the town a city of lakes.

*Photo of Pichola Lake is from internet

Politics of votes - bane for Indian economy

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When the rupee hit 58.78 against a dollar earlier this year P Chidambaram, the Indian Finance Minister (FM), while talking to the media said that there was no need to panic as the currency would regain the losses and then stabilize. Among various other issues he talked on was “I am looking forward to more reforms…I expect a number of decisions in the next few days and weeks.” Among the decisions that he expected were on coal and gas pricing, coal allocation to power plants, FDI limits to various sectors including defense, etc. Ruling out any hike in import duty on gold, he appealed to people to resist the temptation to buy gold as that would immediately have positive effect on Current Account Deficit (CAD). Expressing satisfaction over the decline in the fiscal deficit to 4.8 in 2012-13, he said inflation had moderated and the economy was stronger than what it was last year. He ruled out any expenditure compression in the current fiscal and said that the government investments would continue.

While he tried in vain to put up a brave face it all seemed to be hollow. His efforts and those of the government proved to be futile as things kept sliding out of their hands. The rupee kept losing against the dollar and other major currencies, the current account and fiscal deficits kept mounting and the consumer price index spiraled out of control.

As the rupee declined and the stock market tanked the foreign, capital in debt and equity tapered off and the country lost the confidence of foreign investors. Added to it were the growing expectations that the US Federal Reserve would scale back its bond purchases soon enough slowing the flow of cheap money into higher yielding overseas assets. The rumours were a big blow as foreign money just gushed out of the country depressing the stock market hitting the rupee further. More bad  news came in with the GDP registering an alarming 4.4% growth in the first quarter of the current fiscal – slowest in four years. All the sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, power, etc. grew only at around 3%.

In the pervasive gloom France’s biggest listed bank BNP Paribas SA pegged down India’s growth in 2013-14 from its earlier prediction of 5.7% to 3.7% - perilously close to the pre-reforms much disparaged Hindu rate of growth of 3.5%. The brave front put up by the FM melted away in no time and the man who was asking the country not to panic, seemed to in the midst of a panic attack. As things became desperate he admitted that fiscal deficit and CAD were getting out of hand and exports had tapered off and the rate of inflation refused to climb down – putting a great squeeze on the poor and middle classes. Despite declaring himself earlier against expenditure compression there was talk of austerity in the government – without any signs of it anyway.

Playing the unusual ministerial blame-game, the FM blamed his predecessor, who is now the President of the country, for certain wrong decisions taken between 2009 and 2011 hinting at his budget speech of 2012 proposing amendment to the Income Tax Act enabling taxation on off-shore mergers and acquisition of Indian assets with retrospective effect (Raghuram Rajan, the new Governor of the Indian Central Bank, termed it a “capricious” decision) to overturn Supreme Court’s judgment. The foreign investors became suspicious of India’s intentions and avoided entering the country with investments big or small as established laws and policies could be changed overnight because of one man’s whims. Curiously the Prime Minister failed to foresee the implications and did not intervene.

Repeating ad nauseum that the fundamentals of the economy were sound and that the rupee would soon regain its loss did not help and the currency rolled down fast and hit the 68 mark. As it did so the three economists in the government went into a huddle to parley with the Prime Minister’s economic adviser. In the meantime, however, desperate actions like hiking of import duty on gold was taken, simultaneously imposing a ban on sale of gold coins, medallions, etc. was imposed. Desperately looking for foreign investments the government relaxed (with unwise conditions) FDI caps in 13 sectors including the telecom. The telecom shares promptly registered a rise.

Inheriting a fast growing and robust economy from the National Democratic Alliance government in 2004, the United Progressive Alliance, attempting something different, squandered the opportunity of taking it forward and messed it up by virtually taking a U turn in going in for “inclusive growth” which did not materialise in its nine-year rule, anyway. By its own admission, 87% of people need subsidized food in 2013. In 2004 the CAD was in surplus and the forex reserves were in surplus vis-à-vis net external debt. Today while the reserves have shrunk to around $270-280 billion the government has run up an external debt of $390 billion. The consumer price index (CPI) was around 3-4% and today it has hit 11% with food inflation at 18%. Many have been tempted to relate the current economic situation to that of 1991 with high fiscal and current account deficits, high interest rates and CPI, capital flight due to waning investor confidence, trade imbalances, burgeoning external debt etc.

The government played around with the riches it inherited in 2004 and indulged in profligacy. Not only it launched the MNREGA and JNNURM involving billions of rupees with nothing much to show for asset-creation – giving fillip to corruption. It also waived off farmers’ loans and bailed out the sick Air India. It even permitted massive outflow of dollars for buying property abroad by the rich.

Experts see the current economic predicament as the consequences of high profile corruption scandals involving mindboggling sums of money, eventual policy paralysis slowing down many key economic decisions and, of course, political gridlock. With nothing much achieved, the government continued to dither ruining the once-promising economy. With coffers full, it took the socialistic path to win votes forgetting that 50 years of socialism did not take the country anywhere – regardless of “garibi hatao” campaign. Poverty and hunger cannot be removed overnight by opiates. Only industrialisation can remove them as it did in the West two centuries ago, in Japan a century back and now in China. Even in India millions were lifted out of poverty during the years of high growth after its economic reforms in 1991.

FM recently announced a slew of inconsequential austerity measures like banning meetings in 5-star hotels, purchase of new vehicles, creation of new jobs and filling of vacant posts, restriction on foreign travels, size of delegations going abroad. Besides, ministries have been asked to reduce 10% of their respective non-plan expenditure. These are mere tokenisms and are not likely to make a dent on the current economic disaster. Unless subsidies, including on food, are taken care of nothing much will be achieved.

Chidambaram and Co. are too obsessed with votes and building vote banks. Country’s economy requires hard decisions keeping the country’s future prosperity in view and not the votes ruling combine can muster at the hustings. Political manipulation of the economy has been the bane of the country and, unfortunately, one hasn’t seen the last of it yet.

Sign of the times - contempt for rule of law

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/8/2012/sign of the times-contempt for rule of law

It is an open secret in this country that food articles are adulterated, contaminated and frequently treated with toxic chemicals. This is done to sweeten fruits, quickly ripen and enlarge sizes of fruits and vegetables and to lend to them a farm-fresh sheen. This has been going on for quite some time and the press and some TV news channels have been pretty vocal about it. But the authorities concerned of the food and drug administrations of various states have seldom taken action. The result has been that this has been going on merrily and those indulging in the practise never bother about either the law or the consequences of their deceit on the consumers. We have reached a stage today that virtually every item of food, be it vegetarian or non-vegetarian, milk or edible oils, is consumed with trepidation. A reputed physician in the local cancer hospital, when asked about enormously large waiting crowds of patients, told me it is all a result of pollutants in the atmosphere and contaminants in what people ingest.

Over the years governance has been so lax that adulterating or contaminating food articles seems to have become par for the course for those who trade in them. That is why when the local district and food safety officials got active late last month after a lapse of a couple of years there was resentment and those who took samples of some food articles from a well-known restaurant in the business district of Maharana Pratap Nagar, Bhopal, came in for some rough treatment. Not only were they gheraoed (a kind of wrongful and forcible restraint), preventing them from leaving the premises and they were subjected to some hooting and slogan shouting. Unused as they are to being checked in their wrong-doing, the offenders promptly collected a crowd of sympathisers from nearby eateries.

The bone of contention was “mawa”, Indian name for thickened milk, which is an essential ingredient of most of the Indian sweets that are made by confectioners. Many tons of adulterated thickened milk and other milk products were seized all over north India a couple of years ago and our own state was not far behind. Despite intensive action the illegal trade has continued and this year in Bhopal alone many quintals of adulterated mawa have been detected and seized before and after the fracas at MP Nagar. The illegal business picks up during the festivals occurring between August and October. No wonder, therefore the local authorities thought of carrying out checks and came up against aggressive offenders. The adulterants and contaminants are very harmful for health and lacing the food stuff with them should be treated as a serious offence.

Breaking law, resistance to law-enforcement – contempt for rule of law is what seems to be driving people. Lax, in fact, absence of governance has made the offenders bold enough to challenge the authority of the government. Those who unauthorisedly occupy public lands go after the squads of government officials who have the mandate to free them of encroachments. The auto-rickshaw drivers do not charge commuters by their installed metres, do not wear uniforms and do not display their names despite repeated orders of the district administrations. Basements meant for parking of vehicles have been sold or let out for shops, leaving no alternatives for the vehicle-owners but to park on the roads constricting the road-space for smooth movement of traffic. These are only illustrative; the malaise has gone viral affecting most of the socio-economic facet of current times.

Things have been happening like this for years but the administration has never shown any spine. Laws are weak and, on top of it, these are also sparingly enforced. And then, there is inevitable interference from political bosses rendering the bureaucracy helpless. A spunky sub-divisional magistrate had stood up to a minister when he interfered in her operations to penalise an adulterator of food stuff. She was promptly moved out and put in an inconsequential post in the Academy of Administration. (Please see “A spunky bureaucrat and an intemperate politician” http://bagchiblog.blogspot.com). No wonder, an era of lawlessness has descended in the state. Regardless of the claimed rise in the state’s GDP people are generally consuming what should be trashed away as poison.