The Outlook magazine, a popular national weekly, has been publishing excerpts from the taped conversations of Niira Radia, the now (in)famous lobbyist of, inter alia, the House of Tata, with several individuals, including the former Indian Telecommunications Minister, A Raja. In one of the tapes published in the issue of 14th February 2011 of Niira Radia’s conversation with one Manish, an employee at Vaishnavi Communications (another corporate communication consultancy firm) Radia says “In the middle of the night (Raja, the Minister) called Anil Ambani to come and collect his LoI (Letter of Intent) for a dual technology license” and “...when you ask Mr. Raja why are you doing this, his view is ‘what do you do, I have a party to run”.
The last bit of what Raja said is not only significant but also carries the nub of what has now come to be known as the “2 G scam” (the scam related to frequency allocation for mobile telephony to favoured parties) of the Ministry of Telecommunication & IT that he headed as also of many other scams. That Raja was required to, through his acts of omissions and commissions in the Ministry, ensure that the party coffers are filled as much as possible has now become somewhat of a standard political practice. He, most probably, had the same mandate before he was re-nominated for the Telecommunications Ministry in 2009. And, likewise, before him even Dayanidhi Maran, again of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), may also have had to work according to the same mandate. Clearly, DMK was keen on Telecommunications Ministry only for the reason that it could be milked for the benefit of the party and, of course, its patriarch M Karunanidhi. If, in the process, the ministers involved made some billions on the side the party bigwigs would, seemingly, have no objections.
Whether Raja, in his previous avatar as the head of the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), did not do the same is open to question. After all, during his tenure in MoEF in UPA I government the epithet “rubber stamp” was largely used for the ministry. It would clear each and every project that came its way for environmental clearance regardless of the adverse impact that they would have on the country’s environment. Maybe it is hearsay, but the e-mails that are circulating in the country with photographs of his palatial modern-looking residence with extensive grounds could not have been inherited by a person who claims to be a dalit (a member of former depressed class). How it was built and what the sources of his resources are still a mystery.
Obviously, Raja’s party, the DMK, a regional outfit, has imbibed what its senior alliance partner, the Indian National Congress, has been adept in for a long time. The latter has, according to credible reports circulating for years, has been creaming the government decisions taken during its decades in power at the Centre and in the states to fill its own coffers. In the early years, Soviet money found its way not only to the Communist Party of India but also to the Congress. The thriving rupee trade between the two countries, particularly big-ticket imports of defence equipment, facilitated the illegal transfer of funds. That the Soviets had infiltrated into the Indian establishment within the country and abroad is, of course, another story. The Mitrokhin Archives threw generous spotlight on it and is now a part of history. It, inter alia, made a mention of the Soviet money getting to India with minsters like Lalit Narain Mishra, the then Minister for Foreign Trade, as conduit. His corrupt ways were legendary but in no way comparable to what happens today. Tales about his accepting briefcases full of currency used to be rife in Delhi during the early 1970s. Not only did he enrich the Congress, he enriched himself, too, but, unfortunately, to no avail. He was, reportedly, bumped off in 1975. He was, after all, “the man who knew too much”.
If the Soviets transferred funds to the Congress, the US could not have been left behind. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a one-time US ambassador to India, in a collection of personal letters and journal entries edited by Steven R Weisman, a public policy fellow at Washington-based Peterson Institute, in a book “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary”, asserted that US had paid money through the CIA to the Congress Party. The charge was later taken advantage of by the late Jyoti Basu, a former communist chief minister of West Bengal, who speculated that the money was, probably, disbursed in the early 1970s to contain Naxalism, a violent and rabid movement of the Left, which had spread like wild fire in West Bengal. Although, the current Congress spokesperson rubbished the allegations, he wouldn’t know what transpired forty years ago between two hardnosed politicians like the late Indira Gandhi and the then all-powerful US secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger.
Last year the octogenarian eminent lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, accused the Congress of receiving payments from the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) after the Bhopal gas tragedy and demanded that all the correspondence between the Union Government and the company should be made public. He said that the then Union Government enacted a legislation abrogating the rights of thousands of dead and grievously injured victims to sue the company for compensation and appropriated the same to itself without the victims’ consent. It then promptly filed a suit for payment of adequate compensation the results of which are well-known. Not only a measly sum of $ 470 million was settled as compensation in an in camera sitting of the Supreme Court in the chamber of the then Chief Justice to which the UCC lawyers, reportedly, had come straight from the Prime Minister’s Office then headed by the late Rajiv Gandhi, the settlement also extinguished all financial liabilities of the UCC and the rights of the victims to file civil and criminal cases against the corporation – a very favourable turn of event for it.
Apparently, the quantum of compensation to be paid by the Corporation was also treated like a deal like the ones struck during those very years for import of Westland helicopters, HDW submarines and the (in)famous, though very effective, Bofors howitzers. However, the intense public resentment that was aroused as a sequel to the farcical judgement of June 2010 in the criminal case against the Indian bigwigs of Union Carbide India Ltd. the current coalition government led by the Congress at the Centre was forced to file a curative petition in the Supreme Court against the 1989 compensation settlement –generally branded as “collusive”. Agreeing that there had been an error in settling for the very meagre amount of compensation, it has now sought enhancement of compensation to the victims from Rs 750 crore (75 billion) to Rs 7,700 crore (770 Billion). That and the chain of events that followed the tragedy made it amply evident the collusive arrangement between the then Union Government and the UCC. In the aftermath of the tragedy, an overriding desire, among other things, on the parts of the state and Union governments, both then ruled by the Congress, to protect the interests of the company was clearly discernible. Jethmalani may well be right in making his accusation.
In our kind of democracy, which has progressively assumed an aberrant form, priorities of the political participants in the act of governance have got mixed up. Political parties seek power to exercise it not on the basis of Jeremy Bentham’s “Greatest Happiness Principle” but to ensure their own happiness and well-being as also of their members. This is true both, at the Centre and in the states. The ministers, like Raja, who are in a position to swing deals, direct their efforts towards enriching their party as also themselves. The basic idea is to enable the party to have enough means to swing elections in its favour by buying votes or managing polling booths or even buying legislators, if it came to that, for garnering support when it fails to get a clear majority. Having enough cash in party coffers is very essential as the going rate of a legislator could be in billions. All major national and regional parties are guilty of this sin.
Hence, it would seem as if governments in India exist only for the political players who happen to capture their reins. Milking of the state by way of foul means permeates the system spreading an environment that is utterly unethical. No wonder, party men like Raja who are pushed to head ministries for their proven record of venality indulge in massive scams, stoking further the already pervasive corruption in the Indian administration.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Environment Minister's "no-go" areas under attack
In India systems that are installed are seldom worked. There are numerous examples but, in the immediate context, the example of the Ministry of environment & Forests (MoEF) should suffice. According to Wikipedia, “the Ministry is responsible for planning, promoting, coordinating and overseeing the environmental and forestry programmes” of the country. Its main activities being conservation and survey of flora and fauna of India, forests and other wilderness areas, prevention and control of pollution, afforestation and land degradation mitigation.
It is a comprehensive charter and if the minister in-charge takes up his duties sincerely India would be a “green” country in most respects. However, that has not been so, at least, until now. Before the current Minister, Jairam Ramesh, took charge, the Ministry under the now-discredited Andimuthu Raja of the DMK party, an ally of the Congress in the United Progressive Alliance government, was known as a “rubber stamp”. The “system” was hardly ever worked for the larger good. Environmental clearances for industrial, power and other projects submitted by other ministries were freely given without any questions being asked regardless of what impact they were to have on the country’s environment. The “greens” kept shouting but there was none to hear them.
Ramesh, on the other hand, has taken his job far more seriously. He has given the ministry a direction and, some say, even teeth, it had lacked before. Barring a few gaffes, his performance has been so good that the country’s environmentalists thought that the ministry and the country’s natural assets were in safe and competent hands, perhaps, for the first time. Unlike Raja, he subjects all the proposals for setting up projects, particularly in the midst of the country’s dwindling forests, a very close look. No wonder, the environmental clearances take more time than what they used to take earlier, inviting the wrath of several ministries.
Working in accordance with his ministry’s mandate, Ramesh adopted a suggestion of Coal India Ltd, a Public Sector Undertaking, made at a meeting with the Minister for Coal. The suggestion was to conserve India’s fast-diminishing rich forests and segregate them into mineable and non-mineable areas. Accordingly, his Ministry released a series of maps of coalfields superimposed over forests on its website, identifying ‘go' and ‘no-go' zones for mining. It showed 35 per cent of the area of nine coalfields in six States, including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa – the mining hotspots – as “no-go”, including them in Category A. These areas are mostly dense forests where mining is unviable because of the environmental damage it would cause. The remaining 65 per cent of the coalfields are in forests, falling in Category B, that can be mined – the “go” areas – but only if environmental and forest clearances are obtained. This has led to the cancellation of many proposed mining areas by the Coal Ministry.
Most of the coal resources in India are beneath the generally good forests, which according to the Forest Survey of India are just 40% of the country’s total forest cover, which is only 21% of the country’s geographical area. There are 206 coal blocks spread across 4,039 sq km in nine coalfields, involving a production potential of 660 million tonnes, which have been designated as no-go areas. Currently, around 70% of the energy used in India is sourced from coal.
Feeling deeply uncomfortable with adoption of a suggestion that emanated from his own minions, the Minister of Coal reacted sharply. He used the vital linkage between coal and economic growth with great aplomb. His chant that already there was a gap of 83 million tonnes between demand and supply of coal and that it was projected to rise to 200 million tonnes in 2013-14 became shriller. He not only took the matter to the Prime Minister but also mustered support from, inter alia, other core sector ministries of power and steel and argued that the non-availability of coal from no-go areas would seriously hit the projections of growth at 9% per-annum. While Dy. Chairman, Planning Commission, agreeing that growth would be seriously hit, desired a “sensible” definition of the no-go areas, Finance Minister asked Ramesh to be more “lenient”. The Law Minister said that such categorisation of forests would be illegal. Even the Prime Mister’s Office was upset and warned that these no-go areas could deprive the Central and state exchequers of several billion rupees and, worse, could turn into Maoists’ strongholds.
Several ministries had been banking heavily on the coal from the proposed no-go areas for ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) of 4,000 MW to meet the perennial power crisis. The Eleventh Five Year Plan had recommended power generation target of 78,577 MW by 2012 through these UMPPs. All those plans were seemingly being stymied by Ramesh. A chorus went up for unlocking of the coal in the no-go areas so that the growth projection could be met. With a high-decibel fracas developing, the Prime Minster, as is his wont, appointed a Group of Ministers to sort the matter out.
None, it seemed, realised the implication of what they were screaming for. India has already a very small area under forests – a measly 21% of its geographical area against the Government’s own goal of attaining 33%. Of this total, only around 7% is of the dense variety. If these, too, are exploited nothing short of an environmental disaster will ensue. Not only the country would suffer water shortages and face progressive desertification, it would also witness decimation of forests, land degradation, soil erosion, air pollution etc., and more so because of coal industry’s proclivity for opencast mining.
A prime example of such an eventuality is Singrauli in east Madhya Pradesh, adjoining the states of Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which has emerged as the “energy capital” of India. Its rich coal deposits made it what it is today. Once covered with dense natural forests that were seemingly impenetrable, the generous deposits of coal and limestone proved to be its nemesis. Its cement factories and coal-fired power plants necessitated large-scale deforestation, converting forest ecosystems into savannahs and marginal croplands. The rainfall has become erratic and meagre, the soils are highly weathered and impoverished with widespread signs of desertification. A rapid depletion in the biodiversity, too, has occurred. It has become a critically polluted area. Its five super thermal power plants, which supply 10% of India’s power, are responsible for 16% or 10 tons per annum of total mercury pollution through power generation. Singrauli, reportedly, accounts for 10% of total Indian and 0.3% of global carbon dioxide emission.
Likewise, in the district of Raigarh in Chhattisgarh state its coal deposits are playing havoc. Half of the state’s coal is estimated to be in Raigarh. Only forty-odd years ago the district, then in Madhya Pradesh, was known for its pristine forests and tussar silk produced by its tribal community. With a current coal-based thermal power capacity of 1420 MW the district is planning to increase it to 16155 MW. Forty-odd power projects are in the pipeline which will push up the district’s capacity to 20000 MW – 23 % of the country’s coal-based power capacity. Ubiquity of fly-ash has prompted the Regional Director of Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board to say that Raigarh’s future will be covered in toxic fly-ash spewed by the chimneys of its coal-fired power plants. “Everyone makes power and takes away our coal to leave behind waste and pollution”, he says – a price the state is going to pay for its break-neck pace of development.
With the world seriously contemplating decarbonisation, the insistence of the ministries of the Government of India to unlock the “no-go” forest areas seems a trifle out of sync. One can appreciate the dilemma that Ramesh is in. Neither can he be a “growth-maniac” nor can he be an out-and-out environmentalist. For some time to come, as Ramesh says, the centrality of coal-based power will remain unquestioned, yet it’s time the country begins to strike a middle path. After all, the Earth’s commons are involved. One tends to feel that it’s time the ministry for coal is considered for disbandment as it, naturally, will work only for its own perpetuation even if that happens to be at the cost of the country’s forests. As, there is already a separate department for atomic power, a ministry of energy, that includes renewable and non-renewable sources, would seem to be more in line with today’s needs, which, progressively, could plan for a judicious mix of power from the two sources, progressively reducing the dependence on the latter.
It is a comprehensive charter and if the minister in-charge takes up his duties sincerely India would be a “green” country in most respects. However, that has not been so, at least, until now. Before the current Minister, Jairam Ramesh, took charge, the Ministry under the now-discredited Andimuthu Raja of the DMK party, an ally of the Congress in the United Progressive Alliance government, was known as a “rubber stamp”. The “system” was hardly ever worked for the larger good. Environmental clearances for industrial, power and other projects submitted by other ministries were freely given without any questions being asked regardless of what impact they were to have on the country’s environment. The “greens” kept shouting but there was none to hear them.
Ramesh, on the other hand, has taken his job far more seriously. He has given the ministry a direction and, some say, even teeth, it had lacked before. Barring a few gaffes, his performance has been so good that the country’s environmentalists thought that the ministry and the country’s natural assets were in safe and competent hands, perhaps, for the first time. Unlike Raja, he subjects all the proposals for setting up projects, particularly in the midst of the country’s dwindling forests, a very close look. No wonder, the environmental clearances take more time than what they used to take earlier, inviting the wrath of several ministries.
Working in accordance with his ministry’s mandate, Ramesh adopted a suggestion of Coal India Ltd, a Public Sector Undertaking, made at a meeting with the Minister for Coal. The suggestion was to conserve India’s fast-diminishing rich forests and segregate them into mineable and non-mineable areas. Accordingly, his Ministry released a series of maps of coalfields superimposed over forests on its website, identifying ‘go' and ‘no-go' zones for mining. It showed 35 per cent of the area of nine coalfields in six States, including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa – the mining hotspots – as “no-go”, including them in Category A. These areas are mostly dense forests where mining is unviable because of the environmental damage it would cause. The remaining 65 per cent of the coalfields are in forests, falling in Category B, that can be mined – the “go” areas – but only if environmental and forest clearances are obtained. This has led to the cancellation of many proposed mining areas by the Coal Ministry.
Most of the coal resources in India are beneath the generally good forests, which according to the Forest Survey of India are just 40% of the country’s total forest cover, which is only 21% of the country’s geographical area. There are 206 coal blocks spread across 4,039 sq km in nine coalfields, involving a production potential of 660 million tonnes, which have been designated as no-go areas. Currently, around 70% of the energy used in India is sourced from coal.
Feeling deeply uncomfortable with adoption of a suggestion that emanated from his own minions, the Minister of Coal reacted sharply. He used the vital linkage between coal and economic growth with great aplomb. His chant that already there was a gap of 83 million tonnes between demand and supply of coal and that it was projected to rise to 200 million tonnes in 2013-14 became shriller. He not only took the matter to the Prime Minister but also mustered support from, inter alia, other core sector ministries of power and steel and argued that the non-availability of coal from no-go areas would seriously hit the projections of growth at 9% per-annum. While Dy. Chairman, Planning Commission, agreeing that growth would be seriously hit, desired a “sensible” definition of the no-go areas, Finance Minister asked Ramesh to be more “lenient”. The Law Minister said that such categorisation of forests would be illegal. Even the Prime Mister’s Office was upset and warned that these no-go areas could deprive the Central and state exchequers of several billion rupees and, worse, could turn into Maoists’ strongholds.
Several ministries had been banking heavily on the coal from the proposed no-go areas for ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) of 4,000 MW to meet the perennial power crisis. The Eleventh Five Year Plan had recommended power generation target of 78,577 MW by 2012 through these UMPPs. All those plans were seemingly being stymied by Ramesh. A chorus went up for unlocking of the coal in the no-go areas so that the growth projection could be met. With a high-decibel fracas developing, the Prime Minster, as is his wont, appointed a Group of Ministers to sort the matter out.
None, it seemed, realised the implication of what they were screaming for. India has already a very small area under forests – a measly 21% of its geographical area against the Government’s own goal of attaining 33%. Of this total, only around 7% is of the dense variety. If these, too, are exploited nothing short of an environmental disaster will ensue. Not only the country would suffer water shortages and face progressive desertification, it would also witness decimation of forests, land degradation, soil erosion, air pollution etc., and more so because of coal industry’s proclivity for opencast mining.
A prime example of such an eventuality is Singrauli in east Madhya Pradesh, adjoining the states of Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which has emerged as the “energy capital” of India. Its rich coal deposits made it what it is today. Once covered with dense natural forests that were seemingly impenetrable, the generous deposits of coal and limestone proved to be its nemesis. Its cement factories and coal-fired power plants necessitated large-scale deforestation, converting forest ecosystems into savannahs and marginal croplands. The rainfall has become erratic and meagre, the soils are highly weathered and impoverished with widespread signs of desertification. A rapid depletion in the biodiversity, too, has occurred. It has become a critically polluted area. Its five super thermal power plants, which supply 10% of India’s power, are responsible for 16% or 10 tons per annum of total mercury pollution through power generation. Singrauli, reportedly, accounts for 10% of total Indian and 0.3% of global carbon dioxide emission.
Likewise, in the district of Raigarh in Chhattisgarh state its coal deposits are playing havoc. Half of the state’s coal is estimated to be in Raigarh. Only forty-odd years ago the district, then in Madhya Pradesh, was known for its pristine forests and tussar silk produced by its tribal community. With a current coal-based thermal power capacity of 1420 MW the district is planning to increase it to 16155 MW. Forty-odd power projects are in the pipeline which will push up the district’s capacity to 20000 MW – 23 % of the country’s coal-based power capacity. Ubiquity of fly-ash has prompted the Regional Director of Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board to say that Raigarh’s future will be covered in toxic fly-ash spewed by the chimneys of its coal-fired power plants. “Everyone makes power and takes away our coal to leave behind waste and pollution”, he says – a price the state is going to pay for its break-neck pace of development.
With the world seriously contemplating decarbonisation, the insistence of the ministries of the Government of India to unlock the “no-go” forest areas seems a trifle out of sync. One can appreciate the dilemma that Ramesh is in. Neither can he be a “growth-maniac” nor can he be an out-and-out environmentalist. For some time to come, as Ramesh says, the centrality of coal-based power will remain unquestioned, yet it’s time the country begins to strike a middle path. After all, the Earth’s commons are involved. One tends to feel that it’s time the ministry for coal is considered for disbandment as it, naturally, will work only for its own perpetuation even if that happens to be at the cost of the country’s forests. As, there is already a separate department for atomic power, a ministry of energy, that includes renewable and non-renewable sources, would seem to be more in line with today’s needs, which, progressively, could plan for a judicious mix of power from the two sources, progressively reducing the dependence on the latter.
Friday, February 18, 2011
In India mafias flourish and eliminate the honest
The other day something very unusual happened in the state of Maharashtra. Almost all its officers, numbering around 150,000 went on a day’s strike. They were protesting against killing of Additional District Magistrate of Nashik, Yeshwant Sonwane. Sonwane, an uncommonly upright and courageous district officer, was burnt to death by members of the oil mafia when he caught them on camera pilfering kerosene from a tanker. The protest was organised under the aegis of the Maharshtra Gazetted Officers’ Mahasangh. Its President said that the Mahasangh’s members were not really on a strike but were “shunning work” to protest against the gruesome act which had shaken the employees.
This was neither here nor there as, given the current ethical standards of government employees, many of them are corrupt and may even be in league with or are in the payrolls of several mafias for whom the state has been a happy hunting ground. This is further corroborated by the fact that Sonwane was building a case against one Popat Shinde, who has since died of third-degree burns and was the main accused in Sonwane’s killing. Sticking his neck out, Sonwane had conducted raids on Shinde’s dhaba (roadside eatery) – not an eatery, in fact, but a site for pilfering oil from tankers – earlier in 2010 and had seized 4000 litres of kerosene and 3000 litres of petrol. He had filed a report in this regard and had asked the Police to seal the seized oil and take action against Shinde under Essential Services Maintenance Act. Nothing was, however, done and Shinde was merrily roaming around free, indulging in his illegal business until he got severely singed while attempting to burn Sonwane alive. Obviously, he had friends in the government in the departments concerned, including the Police and, maybe, even in the political establishment. Reportedly, as many as six First Information Reports lodged with the Police and an “externment” order issued against him were never acted upon The indignation of most of the officers “shunning work” was, therefore, either out of sheer shock or totally spurious.
Further proof in this regard came soon after Sonwane’s death in the shape of a crack-down on the oil, land, milk and sand-mining Mafiosi by the government. All these mafias seem to have been having a free run of the state and, apparently, the state government had knowledge of them. More than 200 locations were raided in several districts of the state and as many as 170 were held. Until now, it seems, the government was a mute witness and the Mafias operated with considerable freedom to make money, cheat the government and the people. The new chief minister, chastened after the brutal killing of Sonwane, has assured the staff and their unions that security will be provided to those who do risky jobs. What, however, is needed immediately is to improve governance and ruthlessly eliminate the mafias who have become bold enough to even kill those who interfere with their nefarious activities. Simultaneously, severe action is necessary against those in the government, including politicians, who assist the mafias or are in league with them.
Sonwane’s sacrifice was extolled by the Indian Petroleum Minister as “heroic”, which, in fact, meant nothing. Sonwane was the second honest and courageous man who was audaciously killed by those who live by adulterating petroleum products. In November 2005 Shanmugam Manjunath, a much younger man, a management graduate to boot, was severely beaten up and riddled with bullets by a petrol-pump owner. A product of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow, Manjunath was a popular student and was known for his sincerity and integrity. He had joined Indian Oil Corporation as a manager at Lucknow soon after he graduated out of the Institute in 2003. A no-nonsense and honest-to-the-core young manager – a rarity in these days of corrupted values – he had ordered closure of two IOC petrol pumps in Lakhimpur in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh (UP) for selling adulterated fuel. When he ordered closure of the third he was mercilessly beaten up and then shot. His body was found forced into the backseat of his small car. The culprits were nabbed but would not have been brought to justice had it not been for his friends in the IIM. Their efforts, in view of the government’s utter inaction, ensured a quick trial which was completed in nine months – uncommon in the annals of Indian judicial proceedings. All the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment. Strangely, while his friends and colleagues treated Manjunath as a martyr the Government of India remained a detached spectator. Afraid of the violent mafia of that region, Manjunath’s own company failed to take any action to provide security to its honest employees. The UP government made some noises but their action soon petered out.
Apart from sporadic attempts to check adulteration of petroleum products nothing much has been done over the years by the government or its agencies. That adulteration has been promoted by the skewed prices of petrol, diesel and their adulterants spawning mafias all across the country has been common knowledge for long. Despite knowledgeable circles’ repeated indictment of the pricing and taxation policies of petro-products and subsidies attached to the sale of adulterants, the governments at the centre never reacted positively. Outlook India published in April 2005, six months before Manjunath was brutally gunned down, an interview with KLN Sastri, Executive Director of the Oil Coordination Committee (OCC), the country’s top oil policy body, in which he mentioned that in the 1980s the “range and availability” of adulterants was around 10% but in the late ‘90s the same had climbed up to 40 to 45%. Around the same time Tata Consultancy Services came out with an astounding disclosure that 40 to 45% of subsidised kerosene channellised through Public Distribution System was being diverted for adulteration causing a loss of 5000 crores (Rs.500 billion) of subsidy. At current prices, it should be a mindboggling sum, not counting the increase in percentage of PDS kerosene being diverted due to further fall in ethical standards as also of governance. The fact remains, despite the exposures the governments at the Centre and in the states did nothing and an honest young life was lost.
According to Sastri, all major oil PSUs, including Gas Authority of India and Oil and Natural Gas Commission, “played no mean part, more often knowingly, in abetting adulteration”. It seems, under political pressure they were colluding in adulteration of even petrol by naphtha. Besides, when on OCC’s report about a major private player, presumably Reliance Industries limited, releasing super Light Diesel Oil and other products for adulteration, the then conscientious Secretary Petroleum set up an industry group for a thorough investigation, he was promptly moved out. The then minister petroleum from a southern ally of the National Democratic Alliance government, found him inconvenient.
The massive operations of adulteration in which the oil mafias have been involved across the country could not have been possible without the blessings of politicians at different levels. The highly regarded “The Hindu” recently reported that Rs. 25,000 crores (Rs.2500 billion) were paid in bribes in January 2011 by the oil mafia for issue of a government resolution excluding furnace oil tankers from the monitoring system. The report even named two men who paid the bribe to some ministers, including one from the Centre. The furnace oil business in Maharashtra is reported to be of the order of Rs. 100,000 crores (Rs.10000 billion).
The Prime Minister has been talking off and on about the need to eradicate corruption. Recently, he asserted “Corruption strikes at the roots of good governance... It dents our international image and it demeans us before our own people. This is a challenge which has to be faced frontally, boldly and quickly.” This happened to be one of his many statements on this menace during the last few years. Yet, so far, he has not displayed any gumption to meet the menace “frontally” or “boldly”. Strangely, under the rule of an economist of his stature and credentials of integrity mafias flourish and eliminate the honest.
This was neither here nor there as, given the current ethical standards of government employees, many of them are corrupt and may even be in league with or are in the payrolls of several mafias for whom the state has been a happy hunting ground. This is further corroborated by the fact that Sonwane was building a case against one Popat Shinde, who has since died of third-degree burns and was the main accused in Sonwane’s killing. Sticking his neck out, Sonwane had conducted raids on Shinde’s dhaba (roadside eatery) – not an eatery, in fact, but a site for pilfering oil from tankers – earlier in 2010 and had seized 4000 litres of kerosene and 3000 litres of petrol. He had filed a report in this regard and had asked the Police to seal the seized oil and take action against Shinde under Essential Services Maintenance Act. Nothing was, however, done and Shinde was merrily roaming around free, indulging in his illegal business until he got severely singed while attempting to burn Sonwane alive. Obviously, he had friends in the government in the departments concerned, including the Police and, maybe, even in the political establishment. Reportedly, as many as six First Information Reports lodged with the Police and an “externment” order issued against him were never acted upon The indignation of most of the officers “shunning work” was, therefore, either out of sheer shock or totally spurious.
Further proof in this regard came soon after Sonwane’s death in the shape of a crack-down on the oil, land, milk and sand-mining Mafiosi by the government. All these mafias seem to have been having a free run of the state and, apparently, the state government had knowledge of them. More than 200 locations were raided in several districts of the state and as many as 170 were held. Until now, it seems, the government was a mute witness and the Mafias operated with considerable freedom to make money, cheat the government and the people. The new chief minister, chastened after the brutal killing of Sonwane, has assured the staff and their unions that security will be provided to those who do risky jobs. What, however, is needed immediately is to improve governance and ruthlessly eliminate the mafias who have become bold enough to even kill those who interfere with their nefarious activities. Simultaneously, severe action is necessary against those in the government, including politicians, who assist the mafias or are in league with them.
Sonwane’s sacrifice was extolled by the Indian Petroleum Minister as “heroic”, which, in fact, meant nothing. Sonwane was the second honest and courageous man who was audaciously killed by those who live by adulterating petroleum products. In November 2005 Shanmugam Manjunath, a much younger man, a management graduate to boot, was severely beaten up and riddled with bullets by a petrol-pump owner. A product of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow, Manjunath was a popular student and was known for his sincerity and integrity. He had joined Indian Oil Corporation as a manager at Lucknow soon after he graduated out of the Institute in 2003. A no-nonsense and honest-to-the-core young manager – a rarity in these days of corrupted values – he had ordered closure of two IOC petrol pumps in Lakhimpur in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh (UP) for selling adulterated fuel. When he ordered closure of the third he was mercilessly beaten up and then shot. His body was found forced into the backseat of his small car. The culprits were nabbed but would not have been brought to justice had it not been for his friends in the IIM. Their efforts, in view of the government’s utter inaction, ensured a quick trial which was completed in nine months – uncommon in the annals of Indian judicial proceedings. All the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment. Strangely, while his friends and colleagues treated Manjunath as a martyr the Government of India remained a detached spectator. Afraid of the violent mafia of that region, Manjunath’s own company failed to take any action to provide security to its honest employees. The UP government made some noises but their action soon petered out.
Apart from sporadic attempts to check adulteration of petroleum products nothing much has been done over the years by the government or its agencies. That adulteration has been promoted by the skewed prices of petrol, diesel and their adulterants spawning mafias all across the country has been common knowledge for long. Despite knowledgeable circles’ repeated indictment of the pricing and taxation policies of petro-products and subsidies attached to the sale of adulterants, the governments at the centre never reacted positively. Outlook India published in April 2005, six months before Manjunath was brutally gunned down, an interview with KLN Sastri, Executive Director of the Oil Coordination Committee (OCC), the country’s top oil policy body, in which he mentioned that in the 1980s the “range and availability” of adulterants was around 10% but in the late ‘90s the same had climbed up to 40 to 45%. Around the same time Tata Consultancy Services came out with an astounding disclosure that 40 to 45% of subsidised kerosene channellised through Public Distribution System was being diverted for adulteration causing a loss of 5000 crores (Rs.500 billion) of subsidy. At current prices, it should be a mindboggling sum, not counting the increase in percentage of PDS kerosene being diverted due to further fall in ethical standards as also of governance. The fact remains, despite the exposures the governments at the Centre and in the states did nothing and an honest young life was lost.
According to Sastri, all major oil PSUs, including Gas Authority of India and Oil and Natural Gas Commission, “played no mean part, more often knowingly, in abetting adulteration”. It seems, under political pressure they were colluding in adulteration of even petrol by naphtha. Besides, when on OCC’s report about a major private player, presumably Reliance Industries limited, releasing super Light Diesel Oil and other products for adulteration, the then conscientious Secretary Petroleum set up an industry group for a thorough investigation, he was promptly moved out. The then minister petroleum from a southern ally of the National Democratic Alliance government, found him inconvenient.
The massive operations of adulteration in which the oil mafias have been involved across the country could not have been possible without the blessings of politicians at different levels. The highly regarded “The Hindu” recently reported that Rs. 25,000 crores (Rs.2500 billion) were paid in bribes in January 2011 by the oil mafia for issue of a government resolution excluding furnace oil tankers from the monitoring system. The report even named two men who paid the bribe to some ministers, including one from the Centre. The furnace oil business in Maharashtra is reported to be of the order of Rs. 100,000 crores (Rs.10000 billion).
The Prime Minister has been talking off and on about the need to eradicate corruption. Recently, he asserted “Corruption strikes at the roots of good governance... It dents our international image and it demeans us before our own people. This is a challenge which has to be faced frontally, boldly and quickly.” This happened to be one of his many statements on this menace during the last few years. Yet, so far, he has not displayed any gumption to meet the menace “frontally” or “boldly”. Strangely, under the rule of an economist of his stature and credentials of integrity mafias flourish and eliminate the honest.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Spurious in India
The other day the Bhopal edition of a national daily reported a raid on a local manufacturing unit of spurious Unani medicines. Unani is a traditional system of medicine which has been practiced in the country for centuries. Although the name suggests that the system is Grecian, it in fact is a Greco-Arabic system that is widely taken recourse to in South Asia. No wonder, it is generally patronised by Muslims, who would seem to have adopted it as their own. Certainly not as expensive as its allopathic counterparts, Unani for the poor is a default medical system. And, quite heartlessly, there are people who apparently are prepared to harm the hapless poor for a few quick bucks by having them treated by fake medicines.
There was another similar report the same day. An industrialist in a remote corner of the town was nabbed for manufacturing and supplying fake electrical items with names of well-known brands tagged on to them. Even ceiling fans of, inter alia, Usha brand-name were being manufactured by him. Obviously, the budding industrialist knew that the stuff he manufactured wouldn’t sell unless he gave them a brand name. So, he thought nothing of counterfeiting the recognized brands.
But these, perhaps, pale into insignificance before the report of farmers committing suicide because of ruined crops owing to spurious fertilizers and pesticides. Poor farmers bought them taking loans at usurious rates of interest in the hope of augmenting their produce and protecting their crops in the hope of good returns. But that was not to be. The ignorant farmers were cheated and sold duds, ruining their finances. Worse, there have also been reports of spurious seeds being sold to them, even by some public sector firms. Having been heavily shortchanged the farmers facing financial ruin are sometimes driven to take the extreme step of ending their life. However, it is not the farmer alone who, along with his family, suffers because of such widespread dishonesty; the entire nation suffers by way of reduced agricultural output that frustrates its efforts to build up its food stocks.
This is not all. Items of food that are used in large scale are adulterated with toxic materials and are sold openly. Late last year, during the festive season, the local collector organized raids and detected trade in spurious khoya, thickened milk, which is widely used for making a number of upper Indian sweets. A year before that, a sting operation by one of the more conscientious TV news channels exposed the massive trade in spurious milk products all over north India. It included khoya, of course, and even ghee (clarified butter) and paneer (cottage cheese). Many arrests were made in several north Indian states.
Among the most adulterated food items are the Indian spices which are routinely sold by grocers all over the country. While the middle classes and others who can afford to buy the branded packaged products – generally genuine – at a higher cost are able to avoid sickness and ill-health by consuming spurious spices, there is no respite for the poor who have to depend on the neighbourhood grocers. Sale of spurious spices has been an age-old practice. Ground red-chilly, for example, would be mixed with generous proportions of powdered brick and the powdered coriander seeds would contain liberal quantities of horse dung.
Governance being weak, people go to tortuous lengths to produce fake stuff to make quick money regardless of the consequences of their unscrupulous acts on others. On the one hand, the state surveillance is ineffective, even non-existent, on the other, the relevant laws are old and archaic providing for penalties that are so light that they are not enough of a deterrent. An unscrupulous entrepreneur would rather take the risk of spending a few months in the coup and paying a light fine of a few thousands to make a pile.
The utter lack of governance seems to have promoted all around an amoral culture with almost absolute lack of ethical values giving rise to a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust as nobody knows when one is cheated, swindled, robbed or even killed for a few nickels. In this milieu a straight individual is taken for a ride or is dispossessed of most of his assets –liquid or fixed. There is an enormous trust-deficit prevailing in the society. One is generally suspicious of the next man and one has to watch one’s every step. The gullible and the careless end up as losers.
Here, cheats, swindlers and the like are more pious and, with corruption spreading like galloping cancer, religiosity has broken all bounds. Places of worship are multiplying and hundreds of thousands gather at shrines during religious festivals Recently, on a festive occasion a hundred-odd died in a stampede when millions milled around to view a, supposedly, spurious divine luminescent phenomenon near a legendary temple on top of a southern forested hill. Even people’s blind faith has become exploitable for unethical gains.
India had won its independence from the colonial power largely on the basis its moral force. Non-violence, “soul-force”, et al practiced during the struggle for freedom had won encomiums from world leaders. Gandhi’s truth and non-violence were the guiding forces which eventually won the country its freedom without any bloodshed. Truly, in those days, which stretched into the first two decades after independence, ethical standards were so high that scarcely was there a person who would be corrupt, and, if found so, would promptly be ostracized. No wonder, soon after independence the country, despite its abject poverty, was acknowledged by the international community as repository of ethics and morality. Immediately after the end of World War II, unleashed by the self-aggrandising and immoral Axis Powers, India provided a welcome change.
A decline in ethical standards, however, commenced around the 1970s and took progressively a precipitous plunge thereafter. It largely started off as political corruption and later, unchecked and unbridled, permeated the society at every level, so much so that today India is among the most corrupt nations in the world. The governments – central or of states – and public bodies make phony efforts to fight the menace of corruption. Even the corruption- watchdog the Centre recently appointed has a history of corruption.
While politicians and top officials at the Centre, the states and even in the civic bodies loot the public exchequer, they also foster sleaze among those who deal with them. Industrialists, businessmen and traders, in league with politicians and officials, make merry at the cost of the people. The recent missive to the government by corporate houses asking for a check on corruption is, therefore, specious and spurious as it is they who are largely responsible for corrupting the system.
Even the democracy that we have is spurious. Politicians work for their own perpetuation in office, instead of working for the larger good. Politics of vote banks has permeated the entire polity. Besides, the country’s parliamentary democracy is progressively morphing into an oligarchy. As Patrick French, the British author of “India- an intimate portrait of 1.2 billion people”, has revealed, seats in the Indian Parliament are progressively going by heredity. The electoral system being what it is, a non-political contestant has scarcely a chance. It’s now the private preserve of the movers and shakers and wheelers and dealers.
The “social contract”, under which people ceded their sovereignty to the government hoping for installation of a just and equitable social order based on the rule of law, has been severely breached by the (central and state) governments and other public institutions. They and their several agencies are promoting, by way of their acts of omissions and commissions, socio-economic disparities. While a few are reaping the fruits of the country’s economic surge, a very large section of the population continues to be deprived, languishing in heart-rending poverty and under-nourishment. The fetish-ised 9% “inclusive (GDP) growth”, therefore, sounds hollow and the claim of being an emerging super-power is nothing but – well, yes, spurious!
There was another similar report the same day. An industrialist in a remote corner of the town was nabbed for manufacturing and supplying fake electrical items with names of well-known brands tagged on to them. Even ceiling fans of, inter alia, Usha brand-name were being manufactured by him. Obviously, the budding industrialist knew that the stuff he manufactured wouldn’t sell unless he gave them a brand name. So, he thought nothing of counterfeiting the recognized brands.
But these, perhaps, pale into insignificance before the report of farmers committing suicide because of ruined crops owing to spurious fertilizers and pesticides. Poor farmers bought them taking loans at usurious rates of interest in the hope of augmenting their produce and protecting their crops in the hope of good returns. But that was not to be. The ignorant farmers were cheated and sold duds, ruining their finances. Worse, there have also been reports of spurious seeds being sold to them, even by some public sector firms. Having been heavily shortchanged the farmers facing financial ruin are sometimes driven to take the extreme step of ending their life. However, it is not the farmer alone who, along with his family, suffers because of such widespread dishonesty; the entire nation suffers by way of reduced agricultural output that frustrates its efforts to build up its food stocks.
This is not all. Items of food that are used in large scale are adulterated with toxic materials and are sold openly. Late last year, during the festive season, the local collector organized raids and detected trade in spurious khoya, thickened milk, which is widely used for making a number of upper Indian sweets. A year before that, a sting operation by one of the more conscientious TV news channels exposed the massive trade in spurious milk products all over north India. It included khoya, of course, and even ghee (clarified butter) and paneer (cottage cheese). Many arrests were made in several north Indian states.
Among the most adulterated food items are the Indian spices which are routinely sold by grocers all over the country. While the middle classes and others who can afford to buy the branded packaged products – generally genuine – at a higher cost are able to avoid sickness and ill-health by consuming spurious spices, there is no respite for the poor who have to depend on the neighbourhood grocers. Sale of spurious spices has been an age-old practice. Ground red-chilly, for example, would be mixed with generous proportions of powdered brick and the powdered coriander seeds would contain liberal quantities of horse dung.
Governance being weak, people go to tortuous lengths to produce fake stuff to make quick money regardless of the consequences of their unscrupulous acts on others. On the one hand, the state surveillance is ineffective, even non-existent, on the other, the relevant laws are old and archaic providing for penalties that are so light that they are not enough of a deterrent. An unscrupulous entrepreneur would rather take the risk of spending a few months in the coup and paying a light fine of a few thousands to make a pile.
The utter lack of governance seems to have promoted all around an amoral culture with almost absolute lack of ethical values giving rise to a pervasive atmosphere of mistrust as nobody knows when one is cheated, swindled, robbed or even killed for a few nickels. In this milieu a straight individual is taken for a ride or is dispossessed of most of his assets –liquid or fixed. There is an enormous trust-deficit prevailing in the society. One is generally suspicious of the next man and one has to watch one’s every step. The gullible and the careless end up as losers.
Here, cheats, swindlers and the like are more pious and, with corruption spreading like galloping cancer, religiosity has broken all bounds. Places of worship are multiplying and hundreds of thousands gather at shrines during religious festivals Recently, on a festive occasion a hundred-odd died in a stampede when millions milled around to view a, supposedly, spurious divine luminescent phenomenon near a legendary temple on top of a southern forested hill. Even people’s blind faith has become exploitable for unethical gains.
India had won its independence from the colonial power largely on the basis its moral force. Non-violence, “soul-force”, et al practiced during the struggle for freedom had won encomiums from world leaders. Gandhi’s truth and non-violence were the guiding forces which eventually won the country its freedom without any bloodshed. Truly, in those days, which stretched into the first two decades after independence, ethical standards were so high that scarcely was there a person who would be corrupt, and, if found so, would promptly be ostracized. No wonder, soon after independence the country, despite its abject poverty, was acknowledged by the international community as repository of ethics and morality. Immediately after the end of World War II, unleashed by the self-aggrandising and immoral Axis Powers, India provided a welcome change.
A decline in ethical standards, however, commenced around the 1970s and took progressively a precipitous plunge thereafter. It largely started off as political corruption and later, unchecked and unbridled, permeated the society at every level, so much so that today India is among the most corrupt nations in the world. The governments – central or of states – and public bodies make phony efforts to fight the menace of corruption. Even the corruption- watchdog the Centre recently appointed has a history of corruption.
While politicians and top officials at the Centre, the states and even in the civic bodies loot the public exchequer, they also foster sleaze among those who deal with them. Industrialists, businessmen and traders, in league with politicians and officials, make merry at the cost of the people. The recent missive to the government by corporate houses asking for a check on corruption is, therefore, specious and spurious as it is they who are largely responsible for corrupting the system.
Even the democracy that we have is spurious. Politicians work for their own perpetuation in office, instead of working for the larger good. Politics of vote banks has permeated the entire polity. Besides, the country’s parliamentary democracy is progressively morphing into an oligarchy. As Patrick French, the British author of “India- an intimate portrait of 1.2 billion people”, has revealed, seats in the Indian Parliament are progressively going by heredity. The electoral system being what it is, a non-political contestant has scarcely a chance. It’s now the private preserve of the movers and shakers and wheelers and dealers.
The “social contract”, under which people ceded their sovereignty to the government hoping for installation of a just and equitable social order based on the rule of law, has been severely breached by the (central and state) governments and other public institutions. They and their several agencies are promoting, by way of their acts of omissions and commissions, socio-economic disparities. While a few are reaping the fruits of the country’s economic surge, a very large section of the population continues to be deprived, languishing in heart-rending poverty and under-nourishment. The fetish-ised 9% “inclusive (GDP) growth”, therefore, sounds hollow and the claim of being an emerging super-power is nothing but – well, yes, spurious!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Statue for a legendary king
The other day a massive statue of Raja Bhoj, the legendary king who used to rule over Bhopal in central India more than a millennium ago, was installed in the city’s iconic Upper Lake on a bastion of Fatehgarh Fort erected in the 18th Century by Dost Mohammed Khan, the first nawab of Bhopal. The vital statistics of the statue are quite impressive. Weighing seven tons with a height of 32 feet, the gunmetal statue took as many as seven and a half hours to reach the site of installation after which a crane especially summoned from another central Indian town, Gwalior, hoisted it on to the bastion. The VIP Road that snakes its way along the Upper Lake for quite some distance and acts as the main north-south artery of the town was blocked for several hours for the purpose, giving rise to traffic jams of enormous proportions in the older parts of the city. The statue, however, is still waiting to be unveiled.
One of the favourite projects of the current Minister in Madhya Pradesh of Urban Administration and Development, Babulal Gaur, the plan to erect the statue of Raja Bhoj was conceived more for adding another attraction for tourists than for paying tributes to the Great Raja for his gift of the Upper Lake to the townsfolk on which 40% of them currently depend for fulfilling their water needs. The minister has been bitten by the beautification bug and has been going the whole hog to beautify a few select areas of the town and the Upper Lake at great avoidable cost even as a very large part of the town suffers from utter lack of basic civic amenities. The amount of Rs. 30 lakh spent on the statue would have taken care of many roads in quite a few colonies where every day the residents have to deal with several civic problems including broken down potholed roads with sewers overflowing on them. Worse, quite incredibly, the minister has tied up with Indian Navy to have a de-commissioned battleship berthed near the old Yacht Club of the nawabi-era, again curiously, for enhancing the beauty of the Lake and attracting tourists. It is needless to say that Bhopal has had hardly anything to do with the Navy barring its wing in the local National Cadet Corps.
If homage had to be paid to Raja Bhoj, perhaps, serious efforts to conserve the Lake would have been a far better way of doing so. The Raja had given the town a lake of enormous proportions once having a spread over a few hundred square kilometres. It has progressively shrunk and today is a pale shadow of its former self at around sixty-odd square kilometres. What the Lake is in dire need now is of measures that would ensure its survival so that it is not only able to delight the local citizenry with its presence but also provide succour to them in various ways. It does not need any more cluttering up of its banks with statuary or curios for people to gather around to gawk at them.
Enough damage has already been done to the waters of the Lake by the tourists, merry-makers and, now (water) sportsmen and women. The Lake Conservation Authority that came into existence as a successor body after the completion of the 9-year long ineffectual Rs. 267-crore Bhoj Wetland Project has had occasions to arrange and host many seminars of limnologists and other environmental experts with a view to eliciting opinions regarding effective conservation of this important water body, a Ramsar site to boot. In practically every such seminar the experts have been talking of reduction of human pressure on the Lake. Always the view that stood out was that tourism pressures should be reduced and collection of large number of people on the banks should be avoided. The simple logic for these suggestions were that more the people, greater is the garbage generated and greater the pollution of the waters – which eventually end up as drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people.
But, no, nobody has the time to listen to the voices of reason and mature intellect. Eateries – a strict no-no near wetlands – have been opened up, motor boats have been plying with impunity and even a floating restaurant was clandestinely launched before the necessary approvals were obtained. Egged on by the politicians, the local Tourism Development Corporation has developed another boat club, a suspension bridge, an eatery at Prempura, another corner of the Lake, where elaborate arrangements were made by the Wetland Project for post-festivals immersion of effigies of gods and goddesses. While the pressure of effigies has eased off a bit, the pressure of tourism is slowly building up. And, Gaur has under his department several proposals for “vikas” (development) of the Lake and its catchments forgetting that the water body does not need “vikas” but only measures for its conservation.
There seems to be no end of pressures on the Lake. Now it is coming from another source – the local department of sports. The Lake was recently appropriated for holding competitive water sports for which hundreds of competitors and onlookers had collected at the Boat Club. Inevitably, the Lake shore collected a lot of filth. The government’s departments couldn’t care less. After all, despite the Wetland Project and subsequent feeble efforts, drains are still spewing sewage and other noxious fluids into it. They, probably, think a bit more of filth wouldn’t harm it.
Tourism and water sports have become a deadly mix for this legendary Lake. With the complexes of Sports Authority of India and others coming up in Bishenkhedi the birdlife on it has taken a hit. Even Asad Rehmani of Bombay Natural History Society had said that Bhopal was considered by his organisation an important bird area hosting, as it was, large flocks of domestic and foreign bird species. All that now seems to be in the past. The ones which migrate from distant lands have deserted this wetland and have not been showing up in the same numbers.
Twice in the last decade – in 2002 and in 2008 – the Upper Lake came close to extinction, mostly because of the negligence of the authorities. It was only the pressure of the civil society groups that forced government and other authorities to take steps for its restoration and revival. Even currently the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum has been pressing the government to shed the current diffused management of the Lake by several departments and create a suitably empowered autonomous authority of, inter alia, experts and representatives of the people. Despite representations in this regard to the chief minister and the chief secretary such an authority continues to remain elusive.
Now that the Wetlands (Conservation & Management) Rules 2010 have been notified by the Ministry of Environment & Forests things may improve. Hopefully, the state government will appreciate that a statue of Raja Bhoj and a battleship, by themselves, are not going to conserve the Lake. What is needed is a serious effort to prevent contamination of its waters, mitigation of the human pressure on it and securing its catchments to ensure that they not only enhance precipitation but also prevent noxious fertilisers and pesticides to flow into it from the surrounding farms.
One of the favourite projects of the current Minister in Madhya Pradesh of Urban Administration and Development, Babulal Gaur, the plan to erect the statue of Raja Bhoj was conceived more for adding another attraction for tourists than for paying tributes to the Great Raja for his gift of the Upper Lake to the townsfolk on which 40% of them currently depend for fulfilling their water needs. The minister has been bitten by the beautification bug and has been going the whole hog to beautify a few select areas of the town and the Upper Lake at great avoidable cost even as a very large part of the town suffers from utter lack of basic civic amenities. The amount of Rs. 30 lakh spent on the statue would have taken care of many roads in quite a few colonies where every day the residents have to deal with several civic problems including broken down potholed roads with sewers overflowing on them. Worse, quite incredibly, the minister has tied up with Indian Navy to have a de-commissioned battleship berthed near the old Yacht Club of the nawabi-era, again curiously, for enhancing the beauty of the Lake and attracting tourists. It is needless to say that Bhopal has had hardly anything to do with the Navy barring its wing in the local National Cadet Corps.
If homage had to be paid to Raja Bhoj, perhaps, serious efforts to conserve the Lake would have been a far better way of doing so. The Raja had given the town a lake of enormous proportions once having a spread over a few hundred square kilometres. It has progressively shrunk and today is a pale shadow of its former self at around sixty-odd square kilometres. What the Lake is in dire need now is of measures that would ensure its survival so that it is not only able to delight the local citizenry with its presence but also provide succour to them in various ways. It does not need any more cluttering up of its banks with statuary or curios for people to gather around to gawk at them.
Enough damage has already been done to the waters of the Lake by the tourists, merry-makers and, now (water) sportsmen and women. The Lake Conservation Authority that came into existence as a successor body after the completion of the 9-year long ineffectual Rs. 267-crore Bhoj Wetland Project has had occasions to arrange and host many seminars of limnologists and other environmental experts with a view to eliciting opinions regarding effective conservation of this important water body, a Ramsar site to boot. In practically every such seminar the experts have been talking of reduction of human pressure on the Lake. Always the view that stood out was that tourism pressures should be reduced and collection of large number of people on the banks should be avoided. The simple logic for these suggestions were that more the people, greater is the garbage generated and greater the pollution of the waters – which eventually end up as drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people.
But, no, nobody has the time to listen to the voices of reason and mature intellect. Eateries – a strict no-no near wetlands – have been opened up, motor boats have been plying with impunity and even a floating restaurant was clandestinely launched before the necessary approvals were obtained. Egged on by the politicians, the local Tourism Development Corporation has developed another boat club, a suspension bridge, an eatery at Prempura, another corner of the Lake, where elaborate arrangements were made by the Wetland Project for post-festivals immersion of effigies of gods and goddesses. While the pressure of effigies has eased off a bit, the pressure of tourism is slowly building up. And, Gaur has under his department several proposals for “vikas” (development) of the Lake and its catchments forgetting that the water body does not need “vikas” but only measures for its conservation.
There seems to be no end of pressures on the Lake. Now it is coming from another source – the local department of sports. The Lake was recently appropriated for holding competitive water sports for which hundreds of competitors and onlookers had collected at the Boat Club. Inevitably, the Lake shore collected a lot of filth. The government’s departments couldn’t care less. After all, despite the Wetland Project and subsequent feeble efforts, drains are still spewing sewage and other noxious fluids into it. They, probably, think a bit more of filth wouldn’t harm it.
Tourism and water sports have become a deadly mix for this legendary Lake. With the complexes of Sports Authority of India and others coming up in Bishenkhedi the birdlife on it has taken a hit. Even Asad Rehmani of Bombay Natural History Society had said that Bhopal was considered by his organisation an important bird area hosting, as it was, large flocks of domestic and foreign bird species. All that now seems to be in the past. The ones which migrate from distant lands have deserted this wetland and have not been showing up in the same numbers.
Twice in the last decade – in 2002 and in 2008 – the Upper Lake came close to extinction, mostly because of the negligence of the authorities. It was only the pressure of the civil society groups that forced government and other authorities to take steps for its restoration and revival. Even currently the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum has been pressing the government to shed the current diffused management of the Lake by several departments and create a suitably empowered autonomous authority of, inter alia, experts and representatives of the people. Despite representations in this regard to the chief minister and the chief secretary such an authority continues to remain elusive.
Now that the Wetlands (Conservation & Management) Rules 2010 have been notified by the Ministry of Environment & Forests things may improve. Hopefully, the state government will appreciate that a statue of Raja Bhoj and a battleship, by themselves, are not going to conserve the Lake. What is needed is a serious effort to prevent contamination of its waters, mitigation of the human pressure on it and securing its catchments to ensure that they not only enhance precipitation but also prevent noxious fertilisers and pesticides to flow into it from the surrounding farms.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Kanas National Park sets an example for india
China is generally known for the environmental degradation that it has wrought in its various regions in its quest for rapid economic growth. Reports of extensive desertification, contamination of its rivers, air pollution, acid-rains and so on frequently emanate from the country. That it has been taking firm steps to protect and nurture its natural assets – of late, with greater vigour – is, however, not so well-known. It has created numerous national parks in several batches since 1982, with the last and the seventh batch of national parks coming into existence in 2008. As on date the country has as many as 208 national parks. Massive investments are being made to modernise these parks, conserve their ecology and to provide good and sufficient facilities for inland and foreign tourists.
The Chinese are pretty thorough in whatever they do. This was amply exhibited during the last Olympics held at Beijing. In their pursuit of thoroughness they can go the whole hog as they have a couple of trillion dollars of foreign currency reserves to back them up. Besides, an authoritarian way of governance, too, helps. In so far as national parks are concerned they seem to take care of every aspect to ensure that the environment is preserved and the human impact on it is minimised, the locals are taken care of and tourism flourishes. This approach is exemplified by the Kanas National Park, the latest addition in the, seemingly, ever-growing list of Chinese national parks.
Not many would have heard of Lake Kanas, around which Kanas National Park has been created. Established in 2008, the Park is located in Xinjiang province in north-west China and is, perhaps, the world’s largest at around 10,000 square kilometres. It is a vast area much of which is inaccessible. The park is in the shadows of the Altai Mountains that spread across Central Asia, beginning in Russia, stretching through Mongolia and Kazakhstan and ending in Xinjiang. It is scenic with jagged peaks, forests of birch and fir, grasslands that bloom in summers and rivers that flow by with their crystal- clear waters. It hosts a rich wildlife, inter alia, of birds and bears and is inhabited by nomadic Mongol and Kazakh herders.
What India is currently trying to do in its national parks the Chinese have already done it. We are yet to demarcate the core and buffer areas in all our national parks, and at places, such as in Madhya Pradesh, there are even misgivings about delineating such areas for reasons not exactly scientific. The Chinese have divided Kanas National Park into three zones – the “core zone”, the “experimental zone” and the “buffer zone”. The 1700 square kilometres “core zone” is totally barred for entry of people and is inviolate, limited human activities like research or “exploratory tourism” are allowed within 7800 square kilometres of “experimental zone” and tourism is allowed only in the “buffer zone of 500 square kilometres” which has been open to tourism for some time and has already been environmentally disturbed. The “Buffer Zone” has also been the home to the natives of the area, Tuwa, an indigenous hunting and herding community of Mongol stock, numbering less than 2000.
More importantly, the administration has already determined the carrying-capacity of tourists in the park, according to which the buffer could support a million tourists in a year without in anyway damaging the park’s environment. The number of tourists has already touched around 700,000. The administration, not as lax as in India, is not going to allow the number of tourists to go beyond the one million mark. Tourism is important as, indeed, it is for every administration. Although, the Chinese people are now much richer than what they were a couple of decades ago and have become peripatetic yet there is no show of indulgence towards them. Obviously, interests of conservation of the park have been retained as of prime importance.
The administration has, at great cost, even relocated 30 kilometres away a number of hotels that had come up on the shores of Lake Kanas before the area was designated as a national park. Tourism close to wetlands always is harmful. No wonder the lake has been rendered free from their deleterious effects. At the new site of hotels also preservation of the environment was given its due importance. Attempts have been made to keep it clean and green by making provision for treating sewage and arranging for proper disposal of the garbage that is generated.
Again, with a view to reducing the human impact on the ecology of the park, the Chinese administration is moving the Tuwa from their scattered hamlets in the mountains to a central Tuwa village. They are being made to give up their traditional way of life for the sake of environmental conservation and lending a helping hand to promote tourism. They will no longer be hunters and herders and, instead, will earn their keep by taking active part in the tourism trade. Not only will they be taking tourists on horse-riding expeditions, they will and are also being encouraged to open shops and restaurants. They are also being encouraged to extend their homes in order to accommodate tourists to provide the visitors with an ethnic experience. In fact, the engagement of Tuwas in the tourist trade of the park has already commenced. The provincial tourism organisation engages some of them as drivers, cleaners, guards, etc.
The various measures taken by the administration has already started paying dividends. Swans, which had disappeared from the Kanas Lake, have now returned. Likewise, other rare animals have also returned to the buffer zone. Although it is generally admitted that some key species are decreasing due to the degradation of the habitat, yet the area has begun to get repopulated by, among others, brown bear, snow leopards, red deer, many species of birds.
Kanas National Park holds out a very good example to the Indian authorities for management of national parks and other protected areas. Although India has a far longer history of conservation of its ecologically sensitive natural sites, yet it has not been able to prevent their degradation that has occurred over time. Unfortunately, In India there are certain holy cows which it refuses to get rid of. Tourism is one. Howsoever damaging it is the authorities, leave alone banning it (like China), wouldn’t even control it. Whether it is a so-called holy river, a Himalayan glacial area of fragile eco-systems, an important wetland – like the one in Bhopal – or a tiger-reserve, tourism of the most malefic kind is winked at, even promoted, for the sake of generating revenues. Worse, the guardians of the Indian forests and wildlife fight court-battles to continue uncontrolled tourism in core areas of tiger reserves which the national government seeks to keep free from human interference. More importantly, despite availability of recommendations of experts in regard to carrying-capacities of tourists in the national parks, these are hardly ever acted upon. Then again, hotels and resorts may be crowding around the reserves, even choking the wildlife migratory corridors (like in the Corbett Tiger Reserve), yet none would ever try and relocate them away from these protected enclaves. It is the powerful vested interests that call the shots. As regards the forest-dwellers, steps are taken only to relocate them and that too far away from their native surroundings – never ever trying to integrate them into the efforts to conserve the parks, make use of their innate knowledge of the local biodiversity or to take their assistance in providing to tourists a different experience.
It is time the country changed its attitudes towards conservation of its natural assets. Taking a leaf out of China’s experience it needs to improve governance within the national parks, which will be good for our natural assets – or whatever is left of them – as also for the country.
(The piece was inspired by a feature in the May 2009 issue of Geographic magazine, the monthly periodical of the Royal Geographic Society)
The Chinese are pretty thorough in whatever they do. This was amply exhibited during the last Olympics held at Beijing. In their pursuit of thoroughness they can go the whole hog as they have a couple of trillion dollars of foreign currency reserves to back them up. Besides, an authoritarian way of governance, too, helps. In so far as national parks are concerned they seem to take care of every aspect to ensure that the environment is preserved and the human impact on it is minimised, the locals are taken care of and tourism flourishes. This approach is exemplified by the Kanas National Park, the latest addition in the, seemingly, ever-growing list of Chinese national parks.
Not many would have heard of Lake Kanas, around which Kanas National Park has been created. Established in 2008, the Park is located in Xinjiang province in north-west China and is, perhaps, the world’s largest at around 10,000 square kilometres. It is a vast area much of which is inaccessible. The park is in the shadows of the Altai Mountains that spread across Central Asia, beginning in Russia, stretching through Mongolia and Kazakhstan and ending in Xinjiang. It is scenic with jagged peaks, forests of birch and fir, grasslands that bloom in summers and rivers that flow by with their crystal- clear waters. It hosts a rich wildlife, inter alia, of birds and bears and is inhabited by nomadic Mongol and Kazakh herders.
What India is currently trying to do in its national parks the Chinese have already done it. We are yet to demarcate the core and buffer areas in all our national parks, and at places, such as in Madhya Pradesh, there are even misgivings about delineating such areas for reasons not exactly scientific. The Chinese have divided Kanas National Park into three zones – the “core zone”, the “experimental zone” and the “buffer zone”. The 1700 square kilometres “core zone” is totally barred for entry of people and is inviolate, limited human activities like research or “exploratory tourism” are allowed within 7800 square kilometres of “experimental zone” and tourism is allowed only in the “buffer zone of 500 square kilometres” which has been open to tourism for some time and has already been environmentally disturbed. The “Buffer Zone” has also been the home to the natives of the area, Tuwa, an indigenous hunting and herding community of Mongol stock, numbering less than 2000.
More importantly, the administration has already determined the carrying-capacity of tourists in the park, according to which the buffer could support a million tourists in a year without in anyway damaging the park’s environment. The number of tourists has already touched around 700,000. The administration, not as lax as in India, is not going to allow the number of tourists to go beyond the one million mark. Tourism is important as, indeed, it is for every administration. Although, the Chinese people are now much richer than what they were a couple of decades ago and have become peripatetic yet there is no show of indulgence towards them. Obviously, interests of conservation of the park have been retained as of prime importance.
The administration has, at great cost, even relocated 30 kilometres away a number of hotels that had come up on the shores of Lake Kanas before the area was designated as a national park. Tourism close to wetlands always is harmful. No wonder the lake has been rendered free from their deleterious effects. At the new site of hotels also preservation of the environment was given its due importance. Attempts have been made to keep it clean and green by making provision for treating sewage and arranging for proper disposal of the garbage that is generated.
Again, with a view to reducing the human impact on the ecology of the park, the Chinese administration is moving the Tuwa from their scattered hamlets in the mountains to a central Tuwa village. They are being made to give up their traditional way of life for the sake of environmental conservation and lending a helping hand to promote tourism. They will no longer be hunters and herders and, instead, will earn their keep by taking active part in the tourism trade. Not only will they be taking tourists on horse-riding expeditions, they will and are also being encouraged to open shops and restaurants. They are also being encouraged to extend their homes in order to accommodate tourists to provide the visitors with an ethnic experience. In fact, the engagement of Tuwas in the tourist trade of the park has already commenced. The provincial tourism organisation engages some of them as drivers, cleaners, guards, etc.
The various measures taken by the administration has already started paying dividends. Swans, which had disappeared from the Kanas Lake, have now returned. Likewise, other rare animals have also returned to the buffer zone. Although it is generally admitted that some key species are decreasing due to the degradation of the habitat, yet the area has begun to get repopulated by, among others, brown bear, snow leopards, red deer, many species of birds.
Kanas National Park holds out a very good example to the Indian authorities for management of national parks and other protected areas. Although India has a far longer history of conservation of its ecologically sensitive natural sites, yet it has not been able to prevent their degradation that has occurred over time. Unfortunately, In India there are certain holy cows which it refuses to get rid of. Tourism is one. Howsoever damaging it is the authorities, leave alone banning it (like China), wouldn’t even control it. Whether it is a so-called holy river, a Himalayan glacial area of fragile eco-systems, an important wetland – like the one in Bhopal – or a tiger-reserve, tourism of the most malefic kind is winked at, even promoted, for the sake of generating revenues. Worse, the guardians of the Indian forests and wildlife fight court-battles to continue uncontrolled tourism in core areas of tiger reserves which the national government seeks to keep free from human interference. More importantly, despite availability of recommendations of experts in regard to carrying-capacities of tourists in the national parks, these are hardly ever acted upon. Then again, hotels and resorts may be crowding around the reserves, even choking the wildlife migratory corridors (like in the Corbett Tiger Reserve), yet none would ever try and relocate them away from these protected enclaves. It is the powerful vested interests that call the shots. As regards the forest-dwellers, steps are taken only to relocate them and that too far away from their native surroundings – never ever trying to integrate them into the efforts to conserve the parks, make use of their innate knowledge of the local biodiversity or to take their assistance in providing to tourists a different experience.
It is time the country changed its attitudes towards conservation of its natural assets. Taking a leaf out of China’s experience it needs to improve governance within the national parks, which will be good for our natural assets – or whatever is left of them – as also for the country.
(The piece was inspired by a feature in the May 2009 issue of Geographic magazine, the monthly periodical of the Royal Geographic Society)
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Towards sustainable transport
The news has just come in that Beijing municipal administration has decided to restrict the quota of passenger vehicles for 2011 to 20000 a month. The monthly quota will be distributed among fleet buyers and first-time private buyers of passenger vehicles. Only permanent residents of Beijing as well as those in police and military services would be eligible to buy new cars in 2011. Government agencies will not be allowed to buy new vehicles during the next five years. With immediate effect buyers of automobiles that are replacing old vehicles will be allowed to continue to use the previous license plates and won’t be subject to the quota system for new plates. Under the regulations, the issue of new license plates will be otherwise subject to a quota published annually by the municipal government with 88 per cent allocated to first-time individual buyers and 12 per cent to business buyers on a monthly basis via a lottery system.
The city has imposed the quota in an effort to tackle its traffic gridlock and rising air pollution. By 2012 Beijing will have 7 million vehicles on its roads against its current 4.8 million. This is unimaginable from what Beijing was like in 1982 when I happened to spend a week there. Roads were devoid of private vehicles. One would occasionally see government vehicles, the lumbering clones of Russian sedans, in ones and twos. Buses and electric trolley-buses were aplenty. More plentiful were people on bicycles. As the offices would wind up for the day at 6.00 PM they would unleash thousands of cyclists on the roads.
In less than thirty years not only the number of cars in the city has become unmanageable with persistent traffic jams – sometime even well after midnight – they have also caused untold misery to the locals by way of rising air pollution. Around 2005 the city was declared as the “air-pollution capital” of the world with 400,000 thousand premature deaths due to it. Having paid a heavy price for the break-neck pace of economic growth, the measure that has now been taken has come, perhaps, a trifle too late.
A leaf has to be taken out by India from the experience of Beijing and its efforts to set things right in this regard. It is now time such measures are taken in India too. With multiplying cars in metros, cities and towns, big or small, and our failure to correspondingly enhance the number of traffic managers, the traffic has gone haywire and jams on the roads have become the order of the day, causing avoidable air-pollution, wastage of precious renewable fuel and inconvenience to people.
Time was when in the early 1970s the country had only three manufacturers of cars and, all taken together, used to produce around 20000 cars per annum. But in 2007 this number shot up to around 1.8 million. The number should be much more for 2010 as Suzuki, the biggest player in the market, is now planning to cross the one million mark. There are a number of manufacturers inducing a fierce competition. All are pumping more and more vehicles into the roads that are already chockfull of cars. The range on offer is mindboggling – from Tata’s Nano, costing around one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, to a Rolls Royce that costs several millions.
With the rapid economic growth and the rise of the Indian middle classes cars have become the favourite means of locomotion. Multiple cars – and, of course, multiple two-wheelers – in middle class families have become common. Public transport having been mostly non-existent and unsuitable for most of the middle and higher classes, they have been driven to personalised transport. Parking at home and office or places of business and commerce have become a severe problem forcing authorities to provide the necessary facilities at great public cost. With hardly any effective mechanism for pollution control, old, polluting cars jostle for road-space with the newer ones neutralising the beneficent effects of the latter. No wonder, pollution levels are high in practically all urban centres, meting out a double whammy to the government by way of sick, unhealthy, listless personnel on whom it has to spend large sums for their healthcare.
A check on further proliferation of motorised vehicles in urban India is urgently needed. Almost every urban centre, big or small, is witnessing a rise in the number automobiles. Delhi, for example, was adding in 2007-2008 a thousand vehicles every day to the already congested roads. With greater prosperity the number should be more now. Even the 2007-2008 figure was more than what Beijing has mandated now towards addition of new vehicles, though it has created far more road space than what Delhi has done so far despite the recent hectic road and fly-over building activity for the Commonwealth Games. A clamp down on new vehicles in Delhi is, therefore, indicated, more so now that the BRTS (though still incomplete)has largely proved a success.
The problem with Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc should be, more or less, similar to that of Delhi. All these must be adding nearly as many vehicles as Delhi every day. Likewise, the smaller urban centres are also experiencing this kind of an overabundance of motor vehicles on their respective utterly inadequate roads causing problems for everyone, including the commuters, traffic managers and other connected authorities.
The time surely has now come for municipalities of each such centre to determine on a scientific basis the number of vehicles they can conveniently manage on their respective roads without causing environmental, health and other related socio-economic problems and then issue necessary fiats. Besides introduction of measures to dis-incentivise commutes by personalised transport have also become necessary. Such measures have been taken in various parts of the world. Several options are available. I recall for instance, thirty years ago we could not get into Singapore’s High Street unless we were four in a taxi. That also applied to personal vehicles. Then, of course, there is the Congestion charge levied in Central London and its other busy areas.
One, however, fears that the country’s municipal administrations, apart from being lethargic, are also hugely susceptible to pressures exerted by vested interests. It might, therefore, be a good idea to enact a national law that binds the civic administrations to take suitable measures depending on the needs of the individual requirements of each. While doing so it might also be necessary to mandate by law phasing out of old, decrepit, repaired and reconditioned vehicles.
Simultaneously, however, there is a need for expediting the introduction of decent, dependable and adequate public transport in all the urban centres where facilitating mass transit has become a dire need. It must be remembered that India is urbanising at a much faster clip than any other country. Greater urbanisation means more people in urban centres who cannot but have a need to commute. Provision has to be made for their mobility – by a means of transport that is sustainable. Although the government at the Centre is conscious of this fact yet the progress made so far is not quite reassuring. Despite its existence for five years the Urban Renewal Mission has made very little progress.
One fears unless a massive effort is made to move people within our ever-expanding towns things are likely to get out of hand. As somebody has said in the prestigious environmental periodical “Down to Earth” it is now time urban India boarded the bus.
The city has imposed the quota in an effort to tackle its traffic gridlock and rising air pollution. By 2012 Beijing will have 7 million vehicles on its roads against its current 4.8 million. This is unimaginable from what Beijing was like in 1982 when I happened to spend a week there. Roads were devoid of private vehicles. One would occasionally see government vehicles, the lumbering clones of Russian sedans, in ones and twos. Buses and electric trolley-buses were aplenty. More plentiful were people on bicycles. As the offices would wind up for the day at 6.00 PM they would unleash thousands of cyclists on the roads.
In less than thirty years not only the number of cars in the city has become unmanageable with persistent traffic jams – sometime even well after midnight – they have also caused untold misery to the locals by way of rising air pollution. Around 2005 the city was declared as the “air-pollution capital” of the world with 400,000 thousand premature deaths due to it. Having paid a heavy price for the break-neck pace of economic growth, the measure that has now been taken has come, perhaps, a trifle too late.
A leaf has to be taken out by India from the experience of Beijing and its efforts to set things right in this regard. It is now time such measures are taken in India too. With multiplying cars in metros, cities and towns, big or small, and our failure to correspondingly enhance the number of traffic managers, the traffic has gone haywire and jams on the roads have become the order of the day, causing avoidable air-pollution, wastage of precious renewable fuel and inconvenience to people.
Time was when in the early 1970s the country had only three manufacturers of cars and, all taken together, used to produce around 20000 cars per annum. But in 2007 this number shot up to around 1.8 million. The number should be much more for 2010 as Suzuki, the biggest player in the market, is now planning to cross the one million mark. There are a number of manufacturers inducing a fierce competition. All are pumping more and more vehicles into the roads that are already chockfull of cars. The range on offer is mindboggling – from Tata’s Nano, costing around one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, to a Rolls Royce that costs several millions.
With the rapid economic growth and the rise of the Indian middle classes cars have become the favourite means of locomotion. Multiple cars – and, of course, multiple two-wheelers – in middle class families have become common. Public transport having been mostly non-existent and unsuitable for most of the middle and higher classes, they have been driven to personalised transport. Parking at home and office or places of business and commerce have become a severe problem forcing authorities to provide the necessary facilities at great public cost. With hardly any effective mechanism for pollution control, old, polluting cars jostle for road-space with the newer ones neutralising the beneficent effects of the latter. No wonder, pollution levels are high in practically all urban centres, meting out a double whammy to the government by way of sick, unhealthy, listless personnel on whom it has to spend large sums for their healthcare.
A check on further proliferation of motorised vehicles in urban India is urgently needed. Almost every urban centre, big or small, is witnessing a rise in the number automobiles. Delhi, for example, was adding in 2007-2008 a thousand vehicles every day to the already congested roads. With greater prosperity the number should be more now. Even the 2007-2008 figure was more than what Beijing has mandated now towards addition of new vehicles, though it has created far more road space than what Delhi has done so far despite the recent hectic road and fly-over building activity for the Commonwealth Games. A clamp down on new vehicles in Delhi is, therefore, indicated, more so now that the BRTS (though still incomplete)has largely proved a success.
The problem with Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc should be, more or less, similar to that of Delhi. All these must be adding nearly as many vehicles as Delhi every day. Likewise, the smaller urban centres are also experiencing this kind of an overabundance of motor vehicles on their respective utterly inadequate roads causing problems for everyone, including the commuters, traffic managers and other connected authorities.
The time surely has now come for municipalities of each such centre to determine on a scientific basis the number of vehicles they can conveniently manage on their respective roads without causing environmental, health and other related socio-economic problems and then issue necessary fiats. Besides introduction of measures to dis-incentivise commutes by personalised transport have also become necessary. Such measures have been taken in various parts of the world. Several options are available. I recall for instance, thirty years ago we could not get into Singapore’s High Street unless we were four in a taxi. That also applied to personal vehicles. Then, of course, there is the Congestion charge levied in Central London and its other busy areas.
One, however, fears that the country’s municipal administrations, apart from being lethargic, are also hugely susceptible to pressures exerted by vested interests. It might, therefore, be a good idea to enact a national law that binds the civic administrations to take suitable measures depending on the needs of the individual requirements of each. While doing so it might also be necessary to mandate by law phasing out of old, decrepit, repaired and reconditioned vehicles.
Simultaneously, however, there is a need for expediting the introduction of decent, dependable and adequate public transport in all the urban centres where facilitating mass transit has become a dire need. It must be remembered that India is urbanising at a much faster clip than any other country. Greater urbanisation means more people in urban centres who cannot but have a need to commute. Provision has to be made for their mobility – by a means of transport that is sustainable. Although the government at the Centre is conscious of this fact yet the progress made so far is not quite reassuring. Despite its existence for five years the Urban Renewal Mission has made very little progress.
One fears unless a massive effort is made to move people within our ever-expanding towns things are likely to get out of hand. As somebody has said in the prestigious environmental periodical “Down to Earth” it is now time urban India boarded the bus.
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