"Environmental breakfasts" in mega hotels
Big business in Germany more than in any other country. But how delighted should an environmentalist be with this development?
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A better option
Asian policymakers need to invest in environmental infrastructure to arrest ecodegradation
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'Their capability to pay arises out of their high level of exploitation'
Union minister for environment and forests Kamal Nath's attitude to the UNCED summit is a curious mixture of pessimism and optimism. He is unhappy over what he feels is the "rigidity and inflexibility" of some of the greatest polluters in the world. Yet,
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Chasing an eccentric monsoon
FEW WOULD disagree that the monsoon in India is almost unparalleled in beauty, but not many realise the subtle nuances in the workings of nature that makes this season possible. These curious
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Hard selling a fallacy
The North will stagnate, South will grow, and the multinationals, aided by World Bank ideologues, will exploit the poorer countries for their own survival
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Taxing reforms
Germany s new ecological tax reforms are ridden with flaws
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DISTRESS SIGNALS
New diseases are emerging with changes in the environment, some old diseases are also staging a comeback
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Waste is being dumped in Russia
<font class='UCASE'>Galina Sdasyuk</font> is a researcher at the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, and is formulating a sustainable model of development for her country. She spoke to <font class='UCASE'>Vineet Katariya </font>
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Blending green concerns into market economy
GERMAN environment minister Klaus Topfer has come under fire for his tough green laws such as the one against packaging. Environmental ministries, he says, are like end of the pipe treatment plants: They are responsible for cleaning up the mess made by ot
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Gene transfer yields pest resisting rice strain
Darshan S Brar, who has been working for years on rice hybrids at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, talks about gene transfer techniques that develop resistance to insects in plants.
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How Israel
RAJASTHAN Chief Minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and his cabinet are busy wooing Israeli expertise in, of all things, water management. The first entrant is Tahal Consulting Engineers Ltd, a Tel
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Two new worlds
:id fatigue' in the West is changing the perception of the development paradigm of the poorer countries
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The new urban dream
Sweden is successfully moving towards self-sustaining cities where long-term ecological gains rank higher than short-term economics.
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Solo Performances
Besides the communities who have done exemplary work in the field of environment, several individuals are making a difference in the lives of many people in various parts of India. Some of them, who were brought to Down To Earth's notice during the proces
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A question of harvesting water
The only way to prevent traditional water tanks from self-destruction is to hand over their maintenance to the people
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Getting It Right
Loan waiver for farmers is a good beginning M K Venu A former bureaucrat who had worked with finance minister P Chidambaram in 1997 summed up the 2008-09 Budget aptly in the words of Edmund Burke: "Mere parsimony is not economy. Expenses and great expenses may be an essential part in true economy'. The bureaucrat in question, former revenue secretary N K Singh, had then designed one of the most liberal tax amnesty schemes for the urban rich with a view to mainstreaming sources of black money generation. The amnesty programme had later prompted even the Supreme Court to comment that such schemes must not become regular practice. Those were difficult times when a prolonged growth slump in much of Asia had led to sluggish revenue collections year after year. Budget targets were rarely met, if at all. Consequently, the government had to resort to amnesty schemes, in desperation, to collect more revenues. Things have dramatically changed in recent years. Asia is fast becoming the engine of growth, and India is a big part of the story. The government's revenues have soared from about Rs 2,54,000 crore in 2003-04 to Rs 5,85,000 crore in 2007-08, more than doubling in four years. With its coffers overflowing, the UPA government has chosen to embark on a "great expenses' programme. And why not? If you could give amnesty to the rich in difficult times, why not amnesty to the poor, distressed farmers when the coffers are full up? The Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver may have some design flaws, but no one today should quarrel with the sentiment that agriculture, and the small farmer, do need a leg-up. Clearly, the distress in the farm sector in recent years has created an adverse political climate for the UPA, which has been a bit shy of selling more aggressively the unprecedented GDP growth India has seen in the past five years. It is obvious that you cannot sell high GDP growth and bulging forex reserves in large parts of rural India which are in distress. This had also become a cause of persistent friction between the Congress and the Left within the UPA alliance. All this while, it would appear, it is this political tension which had resulted in the growing communication gap between the Congress and the Left. This may have had its spillover effect even on the nuclear deal. The Left would seem to have been somewhat assuaged by the Budget proposals. The CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has for the first time welcomed the farm and social sector programmes announced by the finance minister. This may signal a temporary thaw in the relations between the Congress and CPM. There is talk that the nuclear deal may also get revived, and the Left may not do any more than make some routine noises over it. The larger issue is one of creating a conducive atmosphere in the political economy to build a consensus for further reforms that are critical for India's economy to sustain a 9 per cent growth for the next five years. The massive farm loan waiver and higher spending in social sector programmes must be appropriately used now to bring down the political opposition to further reforms which are important to propel India to the next level in the globalisation sweepstakes. The Budget in some ways has signalled a New Deal, in which every section of society has benefited, whether it's the urban middle class or the rural poor. But these benefits must now be accompanied with some obligation to work towards a common goal. The one common objective, with which the CPM must have no quarrel, is promoting higher levels of industrialisation. The CPM has also formally recorded in its party document that rapid industrialisation is necessary and there is an urgent need to move people from low yield agriculture to industry. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too has been placing repeated emphasis on this. The only caution that needs to be exercised is this process must be conducted in a democratic, bottom-up fashion. This was the prime lesson of Nandigram and Singur. The farm loan waiver must be seen as a purely temporary relief and there must be some programme by which farm families locked in low-yielding, suboptimal farm activity are moved to non-farm sectors. After one loan waiver, there is no point in their getting into another loan to do unremunerative agriculture. This would be a recipe for future fiscal disasters. Some permanent institutional arrangement must be designed by the Centre and states together to ensure that inherently remunerative farm activity gets a boost with technical, marketing and financial support. The other farm families must be encouraged through new skill development programmes to move to the manufacturing sector. This needs to be done in a focused manner. The Left Front government in West Bengal has designed an elaborate scheme, after the farmer protests in Nandigram, which seeks to handhold farm families for years after their shift to manufacturing townships built on their land. If done democratically, this is the only way to design a long-term solution to the problems of India's farm sector. A rapidly globalising economy just cannot afford 60 per cent of its population in agriculture sharing less than 20 per cent of the national income. This will remain the biggest point of tension in our political economy. The massive farm loan waiver in the Budget only addresses the symptom. Much more needs to be done to address the root cause. The Rs 60,000 crore loan waiver, at least, brings the whole issue to the centre stage. That is clearly a plus.
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Seeds for Iife
Scientists and NGOs find common ground in ensuring that farmers possess the divers they can use and conserve
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The trouble with the Trapezmium
A public interest petition in the Supreme Court to shift industries from the Taj Trapezium, based on a report forwarded by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, opens up a Pandora"s box of objections to experts" ways of tackling the
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On the Edge
In Vietnam, an astonishing array of species, some never before encountered by humans, are being threatened by deforestation and an illegal trade in wildlife. However, the government is waking up to the need for preserving this heritage. But are the refor
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'Coal will dominate at least for the coming 200 years'
ALEX C TOOHEY, a chemical engineer, is the chief executive of the World Coal Institute WCI , London. The WCI is a non profit, non governmental association of coal producing enterprises, with memberships from all the 6 continents. The WCI's mission is t