Law of the jungle - The Hindu

Law of the jungle - The Hindu

Law of the jungle
Ritwick Dutta
BREAKWATER: At a time when non-compliance with environmental rules and regulations is the order of the day, the National Green
Tribunal serves to restore faith in the rule of law. Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
The Environment Ministry has systematically undermined the National Green Tribunal, giving expert committees a free hand to grant
forest clearances to private projects
The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has adopted a confrontationist approach with the National Green
Tribunal (NGT). In its recent affidavit before the Supreme Court of India, the ministry stated that the tribunal has
“exceeded its brief” and caused it “embarrassment” in Parliament. The affidavit was withdrawn and time sought to
file a proper affidavit. The Supreme Court even threatened to stay the operation of the tribunal in view of the hostile
approach of the MoEF towards the green body.
It is therefore necessary to trace the reasons for this “conflict” and “embarrassment” and the implications of staying
the operation of the tribunal.
Specialised body
The NGT is a Statutory Tribunal and was created by Parliament as a specialised judicial and technical body to
adjudicate on environmental disputes and issues. The enactment of the NGT Act, 2010 was itself an outcome of a long
process and struggle. The Supreme Court in a number of cases highlighted the difficulty faced by judges in
adjudicating on complex environmental cases and laid emphasis on the need to set up a specialised environmental
court. Though the credit for enacting the NGT Act, 2010 goes to the then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, it
became functional only because of repeated directions of the Supreme Court while hearing the Special Leave Petition
titled Union of India versus Vimal Bhai (SLP No 12065 of 2009). The recent developments and the hostile approach
of the MoEF towards the NGT seems to suggest that the aim of Mr. Ramesh’s successor (Jayanthi Natrajan) is to
dismantle the tribunal.
Track record
Despite all the hurdles including financial and administrative bottlenecks, the NGT has emerged as a new hope for the10/18/13 Law of thejungle - TheHindu
www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/law-of-the-jungle/article5244600.ece?css=print 2/2
environmental movement in the country. The NGT Act is no less important than the Right to Information Act, 2005,
the Right to Food Bill and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005. Environmental degradation affects
livelihoods, health and access to food. Environmental struggles most often aim at ensuring that information about
proposed projects (Environment Impact Assessment reports), air and water quality data is shared with the people.
Over the last two years, the NGT has delivered 185 judgments on various environmental issues. The MoEF together
with the Central Ground Water Authority, the Central Pollution Control Board and the various State governments
have been forced to wake up from years of slumber and total inactivity. One of the most significant powers of the NGT
is the capacity to do “merit review” as opposed to only “judicial review.” Under the writ jurisdiction of the High Court
or Supreme Court, the courts are essentially concerned with the “decision making process” and not the “merits” of the
decision. As a merit court, the NGT becomes the primary decision maker and therefore can undertake an in-depth
scrutiny into not just the law but also the technical basis of a particular decision.
A new jurisprudence on the environment is steadily emerging in the country and is an example for the rest of the
world. Today, nearly 50-60 Appeals and Applications are heard each working day before the various benches of the
NGT. At a time when Environment Impact Assessments reports are a blind “copy and paste,” job where public
hearings are a “mockery” and non-compliance with environmental rules and regulations are the order of the day, the
NGT serves to restore faith in the “Rule of law.”
CAG report
Why is the MoEF not keen to see the NGT functioning? The answer is quite simple. The conduct of the ministry as
well as the various statutory bodies on the environment has never been called into question in a systematic manner
and its decisions have rarely been subject to any “merit review.” This has given a free hand to the various expert
committees, boards and the officials as well as the Minister to arbitrarily grant approval to projects disregarding the
environmental and social impact of projects and most often in violation of laws and rules. The recent report of the
Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) clearly proves the casual manner in which forest clearance issues
have been dealt with by the MoEF as well as the State governments mostly to favour private companies. History tells
us that the MoEF’s designs have largely succeeded. Post the Bhopal disaster, the National Environment Tribunal Act
was passed by Parliament in 1995 to fix liability on a polluter. It never became operational. The National
Environmental Appellate Authority set up through an Act of Parliament in 1997 was made defunct by the MoEF and
led the Delhi High Court to conclude that the intention of Parliament to set up an effective grievances redressal forum
has been defeated.
The recent affidavit is a wake-up call to those trying to protect the environment, the rights of communities as well as
ensuring greater accountability in the government’s functioning. If the MoEF succeeds in its design, it would mean its
third success in stalling a parliamentary legislation meant to keep a watch on its activities and decisions and
protecting the rights of communities.
(Ritwick Dutta is an environmental lawyer and managing trustee of Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment.)

No covering up this mess - The Hindu

No covering up this mess - The Hindu

No covering up this mess

  AMITA BAVISKAR
The Hindu

Contrary to global efforts at restoring covered streams, the Delhi government’s initiative to concretise and pave nallas is a misstep that will increase drainage problems and destroy vegetation

Like millions of people living in Indian cities, my home is next to a ganda nallah. Only an embankment separates my neighbourhood from the sluggish stream of sewage. On summer evenings, the nallah announces itself with a stench that infiltrates our flats, a bouquet of rotten-egg hydrogen sulphide and methane. Brass lamps and bronze idols are tarnished within a day of being polished. Fridges and air-conditioners need to have their refrigerant gases replaced every year because of leaking pipes. If noxious fumes from the nallah can corrode metal, we wonder what they are doing to the soft tissue of our lungs.

Problems like these are now being addressed by government initiatives to cover up the nallahs. This has already happened in Delhi’s affluent Defence Colony, while work is under way on Kushak Nallah in central-south Delhi and the Shahdara drain in east Delhi. The earthen bed and sides of the nallahs are being concretised and the top paved over. The covered area is to be used for road-widening, parking lots and shops. Many neighbourhood associations support these projects as a solution to a long-standing problem that mars their quality of life and lowers property values. However, instead of improving their environs, covering up nallahs is likely to make their life much worse.

ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

Concretising the channel of a nallah means that it can no longer replenish groundwater. Covering it makes it harder to remove debris and sludge. During the monsoons, constricted flow results in backed up drains and flooding. Reduced oxygenation causes more gaseous emissions, increasing the stink. Manynallahs are lined with trees and shrubs that shelter wildlife. Walking along mynallah once, I was surprised by a raucous party of Grey Hornbills stripping the figs off a peepal tree. But when the vegetation is cleared to enable construction, precious green spaces get decimated. As the environmental NGO, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, has argued in a case being heard by the National Green Tribunal, covering nallahs is a decided misstep, one that will take the city further down the path of ecological crisis.

UNDERSTANDING THE LANDSCAPE

How do we then deal with the polluting presence of the nallah next door? This problem requires not kneejerk solutions but an understanding of the natural landscape which the city inhabits. Most nallahswere once seasonal streams that followed the lay of the land, flowing into lakes and rivers. The nallahnear my home was a channel of the Sahibi river, connecting the Najafgarh jheel (lake) in west Delhi to the river Yamuna. It absorbed monsoon overflow, irrigated crops and provided drinking water. So did the Kushak Nallah, a tributary of the Yamuna which was dammed at Satpula in the 14th century by the Tughlaqs. After Independence, as the city grew bigger and denser, public sanitation projects installed underground sewers that debouched into these water bodies. Today, the Najafgarh jheel has vanished and the nallah that flowed from it has become one of Delhi’s three major sewage canals, carrying the combined liquid filth of west and north Delhi to the river Yamuna.

Even in municipal plans, these streams were not originally designated for carrying sewage. They were meant to be storm water drains, bearing runoff from the rains, just as they had done over the centuries. But the signal failure of the authorities to treat the sewage generated by this city of 14 million has led to the nallahs being hijacked for this purpose. A performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General earlier this year reported that the Delhi Jal Board collected and treated only 54 per cent of the 680 MGD (million gallons per day) sewage produced by the city. Almost half of the sewage in the city flows untreated through 350 km of nallahs into the Yamuna, turning this once-beautiful river into a black, stinking sheet of sludge. In theory, Delhi has been building sewage treatment plants (STPs) and now has installed capacity to treat 543 MGD of waste. However, all these plants work below capacity because the Jal Board did not simultaneously build the sewers to carry the waste to the plants. Without these connecting pipes, the STPs are slowly rusting away — a plant in Ghitorni built in 1997 has not worked for a single day, another in Rohini works to 5 per cent capacity — while untreated sewage continues to flow through the nallahs. To this day, Delhi has no comprehensive sewage management plan. In 2008, the Delhi Jal Board launched an ambitious plan to build ‘interceptor sewers’ along the Najafgarh, Shahdara and supplementary nallahs to catch the flow from subsidiary drains and deliver it to STPs but five years and Rs 1,978 crore later, there is little to show for it. Instead, the authorities are steaming ahead with Operation Cover-up.

Tragically, this is being done at a time when cities around the world are waking up to the wisdom of restoring covered streams to life. The Fleet, London’s ‘lost river’, was a sewer with floating carcasses of dead dogs in the 18th century before it was covered in the 19th. After clean-up, it is now being uncovered as an urban green channel. Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon restoration project turned a neglected stream covered by a highway into a popular recreation area, a place where residents and visitors stroll along its cascading channel, ankle-wading in its cool flow during the hot months. Philadelphia has made ‘stream daylighting’ its official policy, bringing waterways that were buried in pipes to the surface, restoring streams to their floodplains and improving their capacity to recharge groundwater. A stream running through a cityscape can be a delight, a cool green tunnel with footpaths and bicycle trails, where birdcalls and flowing water provide a calming respite from urban congestion and cacophony.

PUBLIC SCANDAL

This ecological vision is not difficult to realise in Indian cities if we resolve to tackle the challenge of sewage treatment head on. The neglect of sewage in India is a public scandal, one in which all citizens, especially those who live in ‘developed colonies,’ are complicit. Unlike encroachments on lakes and tanks for which we can blame greedy real estate developers, the pollution of water bodies is the direct result of our indifference to the fate of our filth. We flush it away and forget about it. Yet public campaigns to save water bodies in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaisalmer and Jaipur have found that it is not enough to protect the lake or tank alone. The streams in its catchment that feed it must also be revived. Only when we stop pouring sewage into them can we start the process of restoring the ecological well-being of urban waterscapes.

As towns grow into cities and cities morph into metropolises, urban ecology seems to be losing ground to urgent demands for improved infrastructure. Covering and concretising nallahs to build roads and parking lots may seem like an improvement. But it goes against the grain of a guiding principle that the New Orleans and Mumbai disasters should have etched indelibly into our memory: cities are embedded in a natural landscape. Artefacts of human ingenuity and organisation they may be, but they can endure and afford a good life to all citizens only when they respect the ecological systems of which they are part.

(Amita Baviskar is an environmental sociologist)

Dangers of chilling on climate change - The Hindu

Dangers of chilling on climate change - The Hindu

Big biodiversity in small city forest

Big biodiversity in small city forest

Big biodiversity in small city forest
Jayashree Nandi, TNN Aug 27, 2013, 03.39AM IST
NEW DELHI: It's not all concrete in the capital. Delhi's city forests are not just lung spaces but
have thriving biodiversity. The forest department has released a field guide to the biodiversity
of Garhi Mandu city forest that has mapped more than 147 species of fauna and 65 species of
flora in the small green patch in north-east Delhi. It took the department over a year to
document these and it's hopeful that the guide would help people understand the relevance of
city forests in the lives of the capital's residents.
While a large number of wetland birds and butterflies were seen by scientists compiling the
field book, forest officials say that there is a healthy distribution of mammals as well. "I have
seen jackals here several times. There are wild hare, mongoose and nilgai. Once people know
there is a small forest here, they will try not to disturb the place," a forest official, who works in
Garhi Mandu, said.
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The field guide also lists major threats to Garhi Mandu forest and the wetlands surrounding it.
The department has observed that several rare butterfly and bird species are not seen here
anymore because of swift habitat destruction. People of Garhi Mandu village often dump huge
amounts of non-biodegradable garbage and debris along the banks of the wetlands and within
the forest area. Grazing by domestic cattle and nilgai have also affected the vegetation.
The Garhi Mandu city forest is very prone to flooding as most of the Yamuna flood plains have
been encroached upon and have lost the capacity to soak up excess water. A canal is used to
draw water from Yamuna for the wetlands. Sewage water and pesticides from the farm runoff are also threatening the existence of species in the wetland and small organisms of the
forest, adds the report.
The forest department has suggested some conservation strategies for the area. "We plan to
develop mounds around the wetlands so people are not able to throw garbage. Seeds of babool
and ziziphus may be sown on mounds so that a green camouflage is created to protect the
wetlands," said G N Sinha, head of forest department.
"Garhi Mandu is a continuation of the flood plains of river Yamuna and is very rich in local
biodiversity. It can act as a counter to flooding, increase the groundwater recharge potential
and protect local biodiversity," M Shah Hussain, scientist-in-charge of Aravali Biodiversity
Park, said.
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DDA/s prposal to redraw Yamun floodplain critticised

DDA's proposal to redraw Yamuna floodplain criticised - The Hindu DDA's proposal to redraw Yamuna floodplain criticised Smriti Kak Ramachandran Hundreds of slum dwellers are evacuated from the Yamuna floodplains every year during the monsoon when the river flows above the danger mark. Photo: Ramesh Sharma ‘Allowing housing to come up in precarious areas will risk life, property’ The Delhi Development Authority’s proposal to redraw the boundaries of the existing river zone, known as ‘Zone O’, that will allow constructions in the areas has drawn criticism from environmentalists. A non-government organisation, the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, which has been campaigning for the protection of the floodplains in the city has shot off a letter to Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung protesting against the proposal, which will be discussed by the DDA at its meeting next week. The YJA has alleged that the move will not only shrink the floodplains in the city by allowing constructions in the hitherto prohibited area, but also allow housing to come up in precarious areas, thereby, risking life and property. The move to redraw the Zone O, YJA has said, will offer people living in unauthorised colonies a “false sense of security”. “A number of recent climatic events, including the floods in 2010, 2011, and the more recent flash floods in June in Uttarakhand, all point to the fact that it is risky and dangerous to construct anywhere on the river's floodplains and it is futile to believe that an embankment can protect any low lying or floodplain areas in front of a marauding river. Experiences from all over the world point to the fact that embankments and levees only provide a false sense of security and invite grave damage and loss to life and property when these get breached,” YJA’s Manoj Misra said. “Delhi is the first major city on the Yamuna and when flood waters in excess of 10 lakh cusec flow downstream at Hathnikund, it could play havoc with all the low-lying areas in the city, including the areas that the DDA plans to slice out of the current definition of Zone O. We do not mean that all those people who are currently residing within Zone O be summarily expelled. But it is necessary that they remain aware that they are living in a risky location and it is best that they voluntarily opt out of there,” Mr. Misra said. YJA has suggested that for those who cannot relocate, there should be a scheme under which the existing structures can be repaired and strengthened on a case-by-case basis. Zone O, which currently defines the bounds of the Yamuna in the city, is the left over of the original vast flood plain of the river and the maintenance of its integrity is essential for the physical and environmental safety and security of the city, including its water security, the YJA claimed.9/14/13 DDA's proposal toredrawYamunafloodplaincriticised- TheHindu www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/ddas-proposal-to-redraw-yamuna-floodplain-criticised/article5031574.ece?css=print 2/2 “It is precisely for this reason that in 2005, the Delhi High Court had set up an empowered committee under Justice Usha Mehra to oversee the removal of all existing structures from the riverbed and floodplains. And it was for this reason that the then L-G had imposed a moratorium on any new construction in the river bed and the Zone O was given a ‘green’ tag,” Mr. Misra added. Keywords: Delhi Development Authority, Zone O, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, Delhi floodplains

Declare water bodies in urban areas as assets, says Ministry - The Hindu

Published: August 29, 2013 00:00 IST | Updated: August 29, 2013 05:32 IST
Declare water bodies in urban areas as assets, says Ministry
Smriti Kak Ramachandran
Urges States to take urgent steps to identify, restore and preserve them
The Hauz Khas Lake is an ‘asset’ for South Delhi residents.Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
The Union Urban Development Ministry has advised States to identify lakes and ponds in urban areas and notify
them in municipal land records as “assets”. The suggestion comes in the wake of the alarming rate of disappearance
of lakes and water bodies from the urban areas and the increasing threat of an impending water crisis.
The Ministry has urged all States to take urgent steps to identify, restore and preserve the water bodies, offering a
slew of suggestions to do so. In a compilation on the conservation and restoration of water bodies in urban areas, the Ministry has asked the States to expand the definition of water bodies to include stormwater drains, baolis (step
wells), trenches around old forts as well as water storages constructed in and around religious structures.
“The shoreline of the water bodies should be properly fenced to protect it from encroachment. A well-planned
awareness campaign should be conducted in the localities to highlight the benefits to be gained from them,” the Ministry has put forth. To remove encroachments, it has suggested consultation with the affected people.
Confronting the issue of land encroachment that often leads to disrupting the flow of recharge water to the water
bodies, the Ministry has suggested a comprehensive review of the catchment areas and regular maintenance work. To
prevent the recurrence of instances where water bodies were choked by turning them into dumping grounds for waste
and debris as was seen in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Haryana and Hyderabad among others, the Ministry wants the
land around the lake and at a certain distance from the shore-perimeters to be declared as eco-sensitive areas.
It has also instructed the urban local bodies to monitor the water quality of these lakes and other water bodies and set
up State-level advisory committee to suggest appropriate steps for conservation and protection.
“The urban water bodies should be designated as a separate land use classification that is legally tenable. It should be
done in parallel with the protected areas as defined under the Environment Protection Act and the Forest Protection
Act to prevent their encroachment and destruction,” the Ministry has put forth.
It has also suggested a comprehensive water front development, preferably at vacant government land to create an
aquatic body that conforms to the social and cultural sanctity of the area.
States have been asked to seek alternative source of funds for lakes and have been asked to tweak the existing publicprivate partnership models to ensure greater transparency

Time to bridge this river divide - The Hindu

Time to bridge this river divide - The Hindu
Time to bridge this river divide - The Hindu

Time to bridge this river divide

  ROHAN D’SOUZA

The Indus Water Treaty must move beyond its logic of compensation and water sharing between India and Pakistan to address the energy and ecological concerns of Jammu & Kashmir

Much of South Asia is now haunted by the spectre of hydro-electricity. At heart remains the sub-continent’s unsolved riddle of trying to ‘meaningfully share’ its many trans-boundary rivers. Existing river development models, as all governments have learnt, are indeed a zero sum game: in which a benefit extracted from one point of the river’s stem will inevitably involve a cost at another point in the flow. For all the careful wording that has gone into framing water treaties, sharing agreements or cooperation models, the overwhelming fact remains that every country in the region is energy starved, politically impatient and is compelled to tap rivers for hydropower.

CLAIM FOR ‘COMPENSATION’

In April of this year, the government of Jammu and Kashmir loudly restated an earlier claim for ‘compensation.’ This demand for financial reimbursement was made not only upon the government of India but in an equally emphatic tone on Pakistan as well. And the source of this twinned nature of J&K’s grief, as they dramatically point out, is the Indus Water Treaty (IWT). Signed in 1960 between India and Pakistan, the IWT, ironically enough for J&K, continues to be celebrated as a diplomatic-legal-technical success story in the region. The consensus over the IWT, in fact, has not only held and endured wars but arguably, as well, offers one of the most substantial set of protocols for addressing disputes and disagreements that may arise over water sharing. But clearly this curriculum vitae of the IWT has failed to impress the J&K government, which has even gone on to hire the services of a private consultancy firm — M/S Halcrow India Limited — and tasked it to assess losses that have ostensibly been incurred by the State in the past five decades on account of the IWT.

According to one such estimate, J&K suffers an annual loss of Rs.6,000 crore; a calculation based on the perceived benefits that are denied to the State from clauses in the IWT that prevent the former from storing water (for generating electricity) and from diverting flows for irrigational needs. Jammu and Kashmir is, in fact, energy-deficit and according to the latest Economic Survey (2012-13), only 23.22 per cent of the required power was generated within the State while the rest had to be imported. As of now, J&K purchases around 1,400 MW of power from the northern grid and spends Rs. 3,600 crore annually on meeting its growing demand which peaked at 2,600 MW. This, given the fact that ‘potentially’ it can generate 20,000 megawatts from the rivers and many cascading tributaries that run through its valleys and hills. In effect, J&K‘s hydro-electricity dilemmas have turned into a hard rock that the State government is now continually hurling against the IWT and battering the delicate water sharing agreement between India and Pakistan.

But if the IWT appears to be failing the people of J&K who, geographically speaking, inhabit the head-reaches of the Indus system, what does one make of the environmental mess that has come to afflict the Indus delta? Historically, the estimated total water available from the Indus catchments has been calculated at being approximately 150 Million Acre Feet (MAF) (181 billion m3), a large portion of which then hurtled as fresh water flows into the sprawling edges of mangroves and estuarine ecologies of the delta. Over the past 60 years or so, however, the quantity of sweet water flows has been reduced below Kotri (in Sindh Province) to a peak (in the three monsoon months) of about 34.8 MAF (43 billion m3), with barely 20 MAF reaching the mangroves. In effect, fresh water flows have been steadily slurped off in the flood plains, with diversions for agriculture and industry and reservoirs holding back volumes for power generation. Importantly as well, instead of the 400 million tonnes of nutrient rich fine grained soil that used to annually nourish the delta, there is now barely a 100 million or so tonnes of soil washing up along the coasts.

DISASTROUS IMPLICATIONS

The long-term consequences of this water and soil squeeze on the delta are yet to be fully understood as an environmental phenomena. In fact in 2000-01, the flow downstream of Kotri (Sindh Province) was recorded as an unprecedented ‘nil’. Only a few recent studies (such as A. Amjad et al, ‘Degradation of Indus Delta Mangroves…’ International Journal of Geology, 2007) have taken note of the potentially disastrous implications from dying fisheries, coastal erosion, mangrove destruction and an increase in sea water ingress into the coastal regions.

What does one make of this simultaneous failing and success of the IWT in the head-reaches and tail ends respectively of the Indus system? And equally, as well, how will this perplexing developmental and environmental conundrum impact future India-Pakistan dialogue and the peace process in the region? This riddle, it could be persuasively argued, has been, paradoxically enough, constructed not only by the context of the IWT but, significantly as well, by the peculiarities of the ‘knowledge regime’ that has largely informed trans-boundary river management in the subcontinent.

The IWT was too simplistically (though perhaps appealing in its time) based on an engineering formula which ‘divided’ the Indus rivers (Western streams to Pakistan and Eastern branches to India), rather than treating the river system as an organic entity that was ecologically linked and environmentally viable only as a connected phenomena. Secondly, managing the IWT has been kept confined to the limited knowledge resources generated by a thin sliver of civil engineers, state managers and ideas borne out of diplomatic intrigue.

Thus, if the IWT is to be saved from a political cul de sac, as far as J&K’s energy crisis is concerned and from a potential environmental collapse in the delta, the treaty and its weighty technical arrangements have to be moved beyond the zero sum logics of dividing waters. Instead, a policy architecture needs to be designed that allows and enables economic and environmental ‘transactions’ within the Indus system. Put differently, rather than stoking a politics of compensation based on narrower or opportunistic readings of the IWT’s many clauses and annexures, the way ahead would be to craft a credible ecologically based cost benefit model that acknowledges the Indus rivers as an organic hydraulic system: made up of fluvial interconnections.

Thus, if the head waters need to be preserved to sustain ecological functions within the flood plains and the delta, a case could be made to pay-off sections in the head reaches either through the transfer of hydro-electricity or commensurate financial packages. Similarly, if the head reaches or catchments of the Indus system are recognised for the range of ecosystem services that they deliver lower down the system then the latter must be expected to be conserved as a viable environmental entity.

EXCELLENT CASE FOR REWARD

Put differently, the government of J&K could make an excellent case for being ‘rewarded’ for preserving its rivers for their potential eco-system services enjoyed by downstream users rather than having to claim compensation for presumed ‘lost’ development benefits. The model of development, hence for the catchment, would be recognised as involving different priorities than the flood plains and the delta.

By allowing such kinds of ecologically calculated cost-benefit transactions across the Indus system, India and Pakistan can turn volatile environmental limits into both economic opportunity and political possibility. The way forward is to harness new knowledge on river ecology, de-centre the civil engineering mindset and craft fresh decision-making collectives that draw upon cultures and traditions of river management in the region.

(Rohan D’Souza is Assistant Professor, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
)

A high-level let-down - The Hindu

A high-level let-down - The Hindu
A high-level let-down - The Hindu

A high-level let-down

 ASHISH KOTHARI

OMISSION: The report fails to explicitly recommend a drastic reduction in the present consumption levels of the rich. Without this, the poor will never have the space needed to become more secure and prosperous. The picture shows the Dharavi area in Mumbai. File photo

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A recent U.N. report on sustainable development is soft on big business and private investments, making sustainability, equity and well-being difficult to achieve

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG), set in 2000, promised a world with dramatically less poverty, hunger, oppression, and environmental damage by 2015. Even as debate on their success or failure rages, there is widespread recognition of the need for a fresh approach after 2015. Meanwhile, the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development has also taken place in 2012 and there is a strong demand for ecological sustainability to be a fulcrum of the post-2015 agenda.

The positives

This is the focus of a recently-released report, “A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty And Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development.” Authored by the U.N. Secretary-General’s High Level Panel of Eminent Persons (chaired by the Presidents or Prime Ministers of Indonesia, Liberia and United Kingdom), it has several positive elements: eradicating extreme poverty, reaching basic entitlements to all, integrating the objectives of development, environment and equity (including gender), enhancing jobs and livelihoods, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, and achieving sustainable production and consumption.

Unfortunately, the report does not deal with structural roots of poverty, malnutrition, unsustainability and inequities, or answer why so many hundreds of millions of people still suffer from these. It does not analyse why Agenda 21, forged in 1992 as a bold and practical vision of how the world could be a better place by the 21st millennium, has been forgotten. These failures of diagnosis lead to recommendations that are not transformative enough to achieve sustainability, equity, and well-being.

The report stresses accountability and transparency in governance, but does not recommend direct democracy. Power in such a polity would flow upwards from communities in face-to-face settings, enabling greater accountability and transparency than possible in representative democracy. The report says: “People … want more of a say in how they are governed.” However, people need to be central to governance; as the village of Mendha-Lekha in central India says, “we elect the government in Delhi and Mumbai, but we are the government in our village.”

On growth

Disappointingly, the report does not see the inherent contradiction between the earth’s ecological limits and unending economic growth. Instead, there is repeated talk of “accelerated growth.” Given that human activity has already crossed several planetary limits (leading, for instance, to the climate crisis), we may need global degrowth, along with radical redistribution so that countries/regions thus far deprived can gain without further threatening the earth. The focus should be on increasing livelihood security, access to basic needs, health and learning … which itself can lead to meaningful growth. GDP as the standard measure of “development” has to be replaced by a basket of well-being indicators, both quantifiable and qualitative. Sadly, the report fails to explicitly recommend a drastic reduction in the present consumption levels of the rich. Without this, the poor will never have the space needed to become more secure and genuinely prosperous.

Corporate sector

This failure is linked to an excessively, soft approach towards big business. Not once does the report mention the need to penalise the corporate sector’s irresponsible behaviour towards the earth and people. There is a focus on private investments, and a faith in “free” markets and market mechanisms (e.g. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which seem highly misplaced. Instead, no confidence is put into turning over manufacture, business and markets towards community, worker and consumer controls.

Knowledge forms

The report fails to acknowledge the diverse forms of knowledge that have sustained human societies for millennia, with only modern science being highlighted. In the goal on health care, traditional and community-based health systems are completely absent; in agriculture, the same with farmer-based R&D. Synergistic use of diverse knowledge systems is crucial to successful initiatives around the world, so this gap is surprising. Equally surprising is the omission of cultural diversity, ethical values (towards fellow humans and the rest of nature), and opportunities for personal spiritual depth. The links between culture, knowledge, sustainability, and equity (including nature’s inherent rights) have to be core parts of the post-2015 agenda.

The report is heavily biased towards urban areas, with statements such as “cities are the world’s engines for business and innovation … the only locale where it is possible to generate the number of good jobs that young people are seeking.”

This is false, given that villages have been sources of enormous innovation (we would all be starving to death if it had not been for the creativity of farmers), and that rural revitalisation has often been a significant employment generator. Examples across the world testify to the possibilities of relative self-reliance through decentralised, democratic economies, which dramatically cut unsustainable transportation, empower people to be in control of their own lives, democratise markets, and provide a stable basis for wider socio-economic and political relations across communities and countries. Indeed, through such initiatives, it has even been possible to reverse distress migration of villagers into cities.

Governance

The report also ignores the need to change the current system of global governance to be far more responsive to the peoples of the world, rather than concentrate all decision-making power in national governments. A new global governance would also prioritise environmental agreements and human rights instruments over finance, trade, and commerce agreements.

Overall, the high-level panel report is about reforms within the existing system of financial, corporate, and nation-state control. Such reforms could be interim measures, but a truly sustainable and equitable future needs far more radical transformations towards community-centred pathways of development and governance.

(Ashish Kothari is with Kalpavriksh. E-mail: ashishkothari@vsnl.com)

Himalaya Divas 09 Sept 2013

Bridged and bound - The Hindu 21 July 2013

Bridged and bound  - The Hindu

Bridged and bound 

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Mindless construction of a series of bridges and other ‘development’ activities over the Yamuna in Delhi have only added to the woes of the dying river

An overdose of bridges:The Old Railway Bridge over the Yamuna in Delhi.Photo: R.V. Moorthy

The recent tragedy in Uttarakhand has taught many lessons. One of which is about the nature of structures built along or over the rivers. A bridge over a river is often the most common but poorly understood structure in terms of its impact on a river. It is time that this changes.   

The Yamuna in Delhi is today marked by three distinct stretches. First is a ‘free’ yet ‘threatened’ (as in non-monsoon months it only carries Delhi’s drinking water supplies) river over 26 km from the Palla village till Wazirabad, followed by 22 km of ‘bound’ and ‘dying’ (nothing but the city’s waste water) river till the Okhla barrage and finally about 2 km of a ‘free’ yet ‘dead’ (with little or no flow in non-monsoon period) river up till it exits the city at the Jaitpur village. This state of the river has a lot to do with the nature of bridges built over it.     

The city of Delhi in 1947 had just one bridge. That, too, was a rail cum road popularly known today as the Old Railway Bridge or the  Loha Pul . 

Today there are 10 of them, including three barrage cum road respectively at Wazirabad, ITO and Okhla. Of the rest three are railway (including DMRC) bridges and four are road bridges at ISBT, Gita Colony, Nizamuddin and DND (Delhi NOIDA Delhi). Three more bridges are under construction — two by DMRC and the third planned as a city icon, the ‘Signature Bridge,’ which is under construction since 2008. 

Since a bridge, like any other structure standing within a river, is an intruder, the least it should do is not to become an obstruction to a free-flowing river, especially during floods. Herein lies the distinction between a ‘true’ and a ‘pseudo’ bridge.

With the passage of time, a number of ‘bridges on floats’ or the ‘pontoon’ bridges came to be raised at a number of points on the river during its lean period. Majnu ka Tila, Gita Colony, Bhairon Road and Sarai Kale Khan were names as much of localities in the city as the pontoon bridges raised there, annually. These had approach roads at the river bed level and were ‘rested’ soonest the river in monsoon came into its own. Many of the later bridges on the river in the city followed these temporary bridge’s alignments.      

A ‘true’ bridge spans over the entire width of a river from one end to another. This stands over a number of pillars and is often planned at the narrowest part of a river, as the Old Railway Bridge in the city is.    

Unfortunately, all subsequent bridges in the city came to be raised as ‘pseudo’ bridges. Where the bridge portion, like the pontoon bridge, stands only over the lean season channel of the river but the approach road gets elevated onto a bund jacketing the river between the pseudo bridge’s guide bunds and severely restricting its flow in floods. The result has been the capture and fixing in time and space the ‘meander’ of the river.    

A seamless river got thus divided into a number of sections defined by the stretches falling between these bridges. A false sense of security from flood waters came to prevail in the city and by the early 1980s (Asian Games 1982), the invasion of the river bed in the name of ‘development’ began. A ‘Player’s Hostel’ which is today the Delhi Secretariat was one of the results. Later, beginning in the 1990s, came the DMRC complex at Shastri Park followed closely by the Akshardham, DMRC yet again on the Yamuna bank and finally the Games village and a bus depot for the Commonwealth Games 2010.       

The saving grace is that the above situation in the city applies till now only to the 22 km stretch of the river in urban Delhi and the remaining part of the river is still free and playful (at least in the monsoon months). But it seems not for long. 

It is understood that a new bridge is now planned for the first time upstream of Wazirabad in what till recently was the rural stretch of the river. While details are vague but indications are that it shall bridge Karawal Nagar in north-east Delhi with Alipur across the river in north Delhi. 

We hold that any such bridge at this point of time is not warranted since there is hardly any noticeable cross-river traffic of man and material to justify a new bridge anywhere upstream of Wazirabad. If it were so then would there not have been a pontoon bridge of some standing there?

But even if the planners find enough justification to raise a bridge there, then we suggest that let it be a ‘true’ bridge with a span not less than 5 km, which is the river’s width there. Such a bridge would then truly be ‘harmless’ to the river and turn out to be an icon par excellence, as well. 

A Very Expensive Proposition

A very expensive proposition During his visit to India this week, French President Francois Hollande is likely to urge the government to conclude a questionable deal to purchase six nuclear European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) from the French company Areva for Jaitapur (Maharashtra). Though marketed as "the most advanced" reactor, the EPR is commercially immature; not a single reactor has been commissioned anywhere in the world. Moreover at the construction sites at Olkiluoto (Finland) and Flamanville (France) costs and time have escalated dramatically from the initial projected figures, suggesting that each reactor will cost about Rs. 60,000 crore. So six could cost in excess of Rs. 3.5 lakh crore. To put this figure in perspective, each of the two reactors that Areva is hoping to sell in the next five years is larger than Maharashtra's annual plan for 2012 (Rs 45,000 crore). Shockingly, the government agreed to purchase the reactors from Areva without a nominal competitive bidding process. The procurement rules in any branch of the government, including the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), mandate public tenders for any purchase above Rs. 10 lakh. Cables revealed by Wikileaks suggest that this peremptory decision was made in 2007. The government's rationale was laid out by former DAE secretary Anil Kakodkar. In an article in 2011, Kakodkar wrote: "We also have to keep in mind the commercial interests of foreign countries and of the companies there… America, Russia and France were the countries we made mediators in these efforts to lift sanctions, and hence, for the nurturing of their business interests, we made deals with them for nuclear projects." Indian officials are aware that this attitude is costly. In another cable, the general manager of the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPCIL) admitted that India had "paid a 'high' price for French reactors from Areva". Unsurprisingly, the government has been reticent about discussing the modalities of the contract it is negotiating with Areva. It has failed to support its assertions that "the cost per unit of electricity from the Jaitapur plant will be competitive to the other power plants" with any substantive data on costs. When asked, it demurred, even in Parliament, with the excuse that "the detailed project proposals … are under finalisation." To check the veracity of the government's claims, we recently used the best available public data on fuel prices and capital costs, assumed a substantial markdown to account for lower costs of labour in India and estimated the expected tariff from the EPR reactors. This calculation involves some rather detailed accounting, but the basic procedure for setting the electricity tariff from nuclear plants was laid out by NPCIL in 2008. By adapting this procedure to the EPR - and using the most recent guidelines of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission - we estimated that if NPCIL were to follow the regulations faithfully, the first-year tariff from the EPR would be about R14 per unit. This assumes that reactor construction starts next year and is completed on the same pattern as the Kudankulam I and II reactors, which, given the untested nature of the EPRs, is generous. The calculated tariff is a far cry from current or expected future tariffs from other base-load power projects. Since it cannot pass on such a high tariff on to consumers, the government may absorb the loss and sell electricity at a lower price. However, every rupee of under-recovery will cost the exchequer about Rs. 1,000 crore per year. Just to halve the tariff from the first two reactors down to Rs. 7, the government may need to spend Rs. 14,000 crore per year. This is in addition to indirect subsidies in the existing revenue model. For example, NPCIL plans to put in its equity early, and then let it lie idle with no return for the period of construction that may easily extend beyond a decade. The government may increase these handouts in various ways - for example, by putting pressure on public sector banks to provide cheap credit for the project. The issue here is not Maharashtra's need for electricity. Rather it is why the government has chosen this particular company, and its overpriced technology, to meet this need. MV Ramana and Suvrat Raju are physicists associated with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. Ramana is the author of The power of promise: Examining nuclear energy in India The views expressed by the authors are personal

Reel vs real women - Hindustan Times 13 Feb 2013

Reel vs real women - Hindustan Times

Reel vs real women

All along I have considered myself a fairly confident person. Being overly self-deprecating and indulging in self-pity for vested imperfections has never been my forte. For me, it has always been more significant to be as good a human being as possible, complete with all the incompleteness and imperfections that is 'me'. But lately some fissures have stealthily appeared on this poised perception of mine and startlingly it has got nothing to do with any real life incident but everything to do with the reel life. Yes, I am rationally destabilised and suffering from a bout of pseudo complexes thanks to the prodigious, implausibly perfect and obstinately idolized tele-serial daughters-in-law (DILs).


If you thought the small screen has outlived its days of soppy soap operas ruled by Adarshvadi Tulsis and Parvatis glorifying the stereotypical image of the Indian woman, you are sadly mistaken as these super women (DILs) are back in their revamped, utopian avatars. The renewed, farther from reality version of Akshara, Gopi, Simar, Anandi etc are the novel benchmark for an ideal daughter-in-law and have the entire nation revering them. No personal grudges against the actors, but it's the clichéd character portrayal that dismays me.
On reel, all these ethereal damsels are picture perfect literally, looking ravishing from dawn to dusk and thereafter too. They are all decked up, bejewelled from head to toe with iron-straightened silky tresses. In real life, we mere mortals have a perpetual bad hair, bad skin, bad weight, bad wardrobe and bad mood days. And that's how we are; we love dressing up but don't intend to compete with the showroom mannequins, ready to be showcased 24x7. After all, beauty is not only skin deep, it's much more than skin only.
The reel DIL is illusory, impeccable, unbelievably self-less, overly resilient and a know-all multidimensional avatar of a perfect wife, mother, sister-in-law and of course daughter-in-law. She is a one-stop solution to all family problems and you can blindly trust her to win hands down every challenge that you accept on her behalf during the my-DIL-is-better-than-yours tug of war never mind how silly it might be. For us, their real life counterparts, it's an everyday struggle, multitasking, trying to juggle our various roles and relations, both as a homemaker and a career woman. We put in our best, but it's not a win-win situation always. We struggle, we succeed, we falter and we try again. We are not selfish but we don't ignore 'self' also. We have forbearance but we are not meek. We foster family bonding but we seek personal space also. Family comes first but our aspirations do not lag behind.
Please stop this on-screen idolisation of women, epitomising a delusionary perception of a perfect wife, mother and daughter-in-law. Don't rev up the expectation quotient of an overly demanding society. Don't elevate us to the pedestal of a demi goddess, wary of a fall with every thrust of life. Just let us be. We are women, only human and not a synonym for perfection

Chinese Checkers Himanshu Takkar Hindustan Times 12 Feb. 13

Chinese checkers The news that China is planning to build three more dams on the Yarlung Tshangpo (as Siang, the main tributary of the Brahmaputra is known in Tibet) has lead to a fresh interest in the issue. Before I elaborate, here are some facts: out of Brahmaputra's total catchment area of 5,80,000 sq km, China has 50.5%, India 33.6%, the rest almost equally in Bhutan and Bangladesh. Out of 2,880 km length of the river, 1,625 km flows in Tibet, 918 km in India and 337 km in Bangladesh. A 510 MW dam called Zangmu has been under construction since November 2010 and China has built six other projects on the tributaries of the Tsangpo. It has now declared that it is going to build 640 MW dams at Dagu, Jiexu (7 km downstream of Dagu and 11 km upstream of Zangmu) and 320 MW at Jiacha. Worryingly Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said the $1.2 billion Zangmu project "can also be used for flood control and irrigation". For a project to be useful for irrigation and flood control, it needs to store and divert water. The Zangmu and the other hydropower projects will have adverse downstream impacts. Considering China's past record, any assurances from them of being responsible towards downstream countries do not hold water. There is a tendency among supporters of dams to say that run-of-the-river (RoR) projects, like the one that is being built at Zangmu, are environment friendly. But the truth is such projects have several adverse impacts: submergence, displacement, deforestation and destruction of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, to name a few. The Chinese projects on the Tsangpo will have significant impact on India: changed water and silt flow patterns, increased flood and erosion capacity of river and adverse impact on the biodiversity in the river that has close links with the livelihoods of lakhs. India has been less than firm with China on these issues. The government informed Parliament in the past that China has not disclosed the reasons for destructive floods in Himachal Pradesh in August 2000 and in Arunachal Pradesh in June 2000, even though floods in both cases originated from China. In fact, to say the truth, India's treatment of impacts of its own such projects on downstream communities or those of our neighbours has been far from inspiring. One mechanism to tackle China could have been the United Nations Convention on Non-Navigation Use of Water. But India did a disservice to its cause by abstaining from voting in favour during the debate for the convention and not ratifying it later. The only plausible course for India now is to push for a water-sharing treaty with China. Himanshu Thakkar is with the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People The views expressed by the author are personal

Field trials for new cotton GM seed over in Hry, Pb (HT- 12 Feb 13)

Field trials for new cotton GM seed over in Hry, Pb Genetically modified (GM) seeds major, Monsanto is through with the field trials of Bollgard-II Roundup Ready Flex - a seed that offers inbuilt insect protection and weed management - conducted in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab, said executive vice-president (sustainability and corporate affairs ) of the company, Jerry Steiner on Tuesday. Steiner, who was in Chandigarh along with the company's managing director Gyanendra Shukla to hold discussions with Punjab agriculture department officials and others, told Hindustan Times that Bollgard-II Roundup Ready Flex was the next generation of technology where they were able to combine efficient weed control. “Lot of people are calling it Bollgard-III. But it is actually Bollgard Roundup Ready Flex. While Bollgard-II was meant to control only bollworms, the new Bollgard-II Roundup Ready Flex is equipped with weed management,'' Steiner said. The executive vice-president said farmers in the US and Australia had used Bollgard-II Roundup Ready Flex successfully with good results. Shukla said for northern India the company had completed all regulatory data generation. "The field trials for the new seed conducted in Haryana and Punjab are over. We are at the final stage where we are going to submit the file to the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) which is the apex body created in the union ministry of environment and forests for approval. The challenge is that the regulatory body is not active and has not been reconstituted by the ministry after the expiry of its term,'' Shukla said. Steiner, on the other hand, said another biotech trait, which was in the pipeline, was Bollgard-III. "We continuously innovate to bring new modes of action against insects because nature is at work. Whenever you put a fence, the nature finds a way around it. That's the reality and it's happening for a long time. Herbicides and insecticides have resistance. This is quite normal. We continuously search for that next mode of action while selling the current mode so that we stay one step ahead.” He said: “We have a third mode of action that we are bringing in cotton, which is unique. Also, we are researching to broaden the spectrum of insects to pick up insects such as Lygus in addition to the Bollworm. That's Bollgard-III.'' Shukla said for Bollgard-III they needed permission to conduct field trials. Explaining about Bollgard-II Roundup Ready Flex, Shukla said cotton farmers were constantly challenged with reducing crop yields loss due to weed. "Ineffective weed management also increases the susceptibility of crops to sucking pests, bollworms and fungal diseases, thus restricting the plant growth, limiting yields and impacting farmer income. Managing weeds in the early stage, especially eight to 10 weeks after emergence, was critical. The prevalent solution of hand weeding is labour intensive, time consuming and expensive. On the other side, no single chemical gives complete protection from weeds in cotton crop,'' he added.

Kozhencherry — then & now - The Hindu

Kozhencherry — then & now - The Hindu

Kozhencherry — then & now

Dr. Ajith Cherian

Serenity and tranquillity have been replaced by money and comforts

1982 — Kozhencherry, Pathanamthitta district, Kerala

It’s all dirt roads. Slushy in rain, puddles in downpour, small streams in thunderstorm. One umbrella and three children — blood-related, belligerent, boisterous. From the bus stand they hop from one puddle to the next that 2 km stretch. Nothing escapes them. Mangoes ripe and unripe, cashew nut fruit red and the green ones, jampakka; everything becomes a target for practice. When they finally get to their ancestral property, a two-room house, they get down for their feast. A rooster is killed and hung above the fire. All three of them sit around to pluck its feathers. Rest is taken care of by the womenfolk. Off they run to the ‘puncha’ paddyfields to catch small fish with dhotis and towels. Poor tadpoles are at the receiving end.

The well water was so cool and sweet unlike the chlorinated water in their cities. The wells never used to run dry even in the harshest summer. And summer was never that hot — felt like warm spring throughout. There was year-round paddy cultivation and labourers would come for water and food which was available throughout the day from the kitchen, shaming even a 24-hour restaurant.

The cows, chicken, kids of all ages kept the womenfolk busy. No courtyards had boundaries, no houses had gates, but I cannot remember a boundary dispute ever arising in those times. Even domestic herd respected these imaginary lines, the only violators being chicken, which were promptly warned away by the canine counterparts.

There would never be more than Rs. 300 in the house at any point. There never arose a need exceeding that amount. Church was the epicentre of all activities. Swimming courses were in the canal nearby which had year-around water supply. No house had any motorised vehicle. Hercules and Raleigh cycles reigned. We learned the basics of bicycling in these giant two-wheelers when the adults were away. We used to put our right leg below the bar across to the other side and it had a funny look. Bruises were healed by leaves of communist green and nature. None had any severe trauma like broken bones — God knows why.

Television was yet to invade our visual senses. Radio receiver sets were the omnipresent media (sans FM). Soap was always the red Lifebuoy. Bar soaps were unbranded and often made with coconut oil and caustic alkali in varying proportions in an old, patched up, plastic bucket. Battery was always Eveready and milk was always fresh from the udder.

Few teashops, which sold anything from tobacco to pepper to fertilizers, satiated all our consumerist needs. These old time malls were the hotspots for the latest political and local news. They were open late into the night with the help of a ‘ranthal”. Arrack was unheard of and men used to consume toddy in secrecy after night fall.

I had never played with an electronic gadget ever in my life. When I was a kid, I never had any and when they became ubiquitous I never felt the need. Boredom was never complained for we used to amuse ourselves with whatever was available. Rooms were small but hearts were big, Men were men and women, women and there were none in between.

2013 — Kozhen-cherry

Rubberised tarred roads greet us. Palatial houses line either side, a majority lying vacant and a few occupied by elderly grandparents. There is an SUV in every porch. Courtyards are patterned with interlocking tiles. Old wells have dried up replaced by tubewells. The thick greenery has been replaced by a thinner one. The village currently boasts the maximum density of vehicle showrooms in Kerala. NRI bank accounts are overflowing with fixed deposits.

Paddyfields lie dormant (they are awaiting a new tarmac for an airstrip), the courtyards are bereft of animals. Milk comes in packets and powders. More than 75% of the population consist of senior citizens; youngsters and children have emigrated to presumed greener pastures. There are more rooms than occupants in all the houses and the inmates appear to be waiting the final visa.

This is the greatest irony one can witness in a short span of 30 years — the problem of plenty leaving unanswered questions. A good portion of their lives was spent gathering and now they are left with arthritic knees, fatty livers, and dim visions. They are doing their best safeguarding their collections and looking at various permutations and combinations on how to pay the least income tax. Money is kept in NRI accounts and they count the number of days they spend in India, careful not to exceed 180 days. The spurt in prosperity gospel churches aid this belief as they need something to fall back upon. When does one finally live!

(The writer is MD, DM, PDF, Epilepsy Assistant Professor, Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram. Email: drajithcherian@yahoo.com)

The great medical education bazaar - The Hindu 23 June 2013

The great medical education bazaar - The Hindu

The great medical education bazaar

Sumanth Raman

The HinduThousands of gullible students are spending time preparing for and paying entrance fees to appear for these bogus tests where the candidates who have already “booked” their seats months or even years in advance get the top ranks. File photo: K. Murali Kumar

The massive fraud being played on medical students who prepare for the entrance exam of private colleges, thinking them to be genuine, should be stopped

It is admission time and the great medical education bazaar is in full swing. Parents are running around like headless chickens ready to mobilise bundles of cash trying to get their children into the best medical colleges. In a society that has come to accept that paying illegal capitation fees is an effective way to get good education it is little surprise that parents have no compunction in violating the law and in acceding to the demands of the colleges by paying up whatever is asked.

Officially, the collection of capitation fee is banned. However, it is an open secret that many colleges continue to charge this fee with impunity. Many private medical colleges are believed to be charging between Rs.30 lakh and Rs.60 lakh as the capitation fee per candidate for an MBBS seat this year. On top of this, is the official annual fees which is between Rs.5 lakh and Rs.7 lakh a year. Thus a medico joining a private college this year under the management quota is likely to be spending anywhere between Rs.50 lakh and Rs.80 lakh or even more for just the undergraduate degree. The capitation fee for a post-graduate seat in a prized specialty like obstetrics & gynaecology or orthopaedics or radiology is now rumoured to be well over Rs.1.5 crore. The colleges have tightened their security systems to keep away the media who are always on the lookout for their hidden camera scoops.

One step of the farcical admission process is the “entrance or admission test” conducted by many of these private colleges. In most of them, the result/merit list is ready even before the candidates appear for the exam. Thousands of gullible students are spending time preparing for and paying entrance fees to appear for these bogus tests where the candidates who have already “booked” their seats months or even years in advance get the top ranks.

The present system needs urgent reform for several reasons. There is a massive fraud being played on students who are actually preparing for the entrance tests in these colleges thinking them to be genuine. If they knew that these are rigged exams, it will enable them to save their time and money. Private colleges would do their best to try to scuttle the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) exam administered by the MCI, which would be transparent and where the merit list can be the basis of admission (though this is not the case at present), as there is no guarantee that the selected merit list candidate will be willing to pay anything more than the official fees.

Capitation fee or its equivalent which is widely prevalent needs to be brought above the table. If the governments cannot or will not enforce the law and stop the colleges from collecting this fee then they must consider some method of legalising it. The colleges claim (not without some merit) that with today’s cost structure it is simply not financially viable to run a private medical college without collecting capitation fee. The present system also leaves the colleges open to blackmail by politicians, bureaucrats, Income-tax officials, police, etc., all of whom know very well what’s going on. In fact, the corrupt among these groups are the major beneficiaries of the present system. Many of the more established colleges may actually welcome an opportunity to go legitimate if they are legally allowed to collect the capitation fee component.

All over the world, including the best private universities in the U.S., one is permitted to pay his or her way in once the college is satisfied that the student meets the eligibility criteria. The education fairs being held all over the country by foreign universities are essentially aimed at attracting buyers for the seats. So why can private colleges in India not do the same? If there are more colleges the cost would automatically come down as has happened with the engineering colleges and the courses would become affordable to a larger segment of the population.

Management quota seats can be at a hefty premium but the allotment of these too needs to go through a centralised, state-supervised process to ensure that candidates without the minimum qualifications are not selected and that capitation fee is not charged. Private medical colleges have made huge investments and the system evolved must protect their interests too as the fate of thousands of students is involved.

While the principle that education must not be a commodity that can be purchased without merit is a sound one, burying our heads in the sand without acknowledging the stark reality of the medical education bazaar in India will have dangerous repercussions.

In a situation where the parents and the colleges collude and neither has a problem it becomes difficult for the government to act against the collection of capitation fees as there is no complaint made by anyone. The ones who lose out are often the weakest students (no money/no influence) whose only asset may be merit. In the India of today, that does not count for much.

(The writer is a consultant in internal medicine. He can be reached at sumanthcraman@gmail.com)