First time study: child poverty
Child Poverty Tens of millions of children in developing countries do not have access to food, water, education and sanitation, according to a report prepared by the Townsend Centre for
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Fund cut raises brows
U sa's George W Bush administration is once again facing flak from environmentalists, this time for proposing a nearly six per cent cut in the budget of the us Environmental Protection Agency
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Helping hand
The food processing industry is growing faster than <font class="UCASE">it</font> and pharmaceuticals.One of the implications of this growth is that industry is buying raw materials on a large scale affecting both supply of food, which is contracting, and prices, which are rising.
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Under seige
Two-wheeler makers in denial mode? The Tatas' Rs 1 lakh car has sent out disturbing signals for the two-wheeler industry. A recent survey carried out by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and
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Now what?
Government must facilitate, not control The experiences of Sukhomajri and Bunga have a lesson: given the right conditions, external and internal, villages can be self-sustaining. But their inherent
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Union pangs
Uk patients flood Spain's free healthcare
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Focus on farm sector
By Devinder Sharma Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram should address the woes of those ailing farmers in the budget. General elections are around the corner. It is therefore more of a political compulsion than the requirements of a prudent fiscal policy that should have automatically diverted public funds for the ailing agrarian sector. Unfortunately, the game plan all these years has been to ignore agriculture and instead pamper the bloated rich of big business to grow richer. No budget is complete without the Finance Minister reminding the country, with possibly a catchy phrase thrown-in, the Herculean task his budget will perform in addressing the agrarian crisis. P Chidambaram is no exception. He often quotes a couplet from the writings of some of the best-known poets, saints and thinkers of south India. After all, 60 per cent of the population is still directly engaged in farming. Despite all these efforts to rescue agriculture, the annual budget has truly been a carnival for the rich and beautiful. As the veteran economist Kamal Nayan Kabra reminds us: "Indeed, the corporate income tax foregone by the government is trivially less than the total amount spent by both the central government and the 28 state governments on all rural development schemes.' Accordingly, in 2004-05 Rs 2.06 lakh crore was the revenue loss from the numerous tax concessions, exemptions and incentives, the total excise, customs and personal income tax and corporate income tax exemptions. In 2005-06, these exemptions amounted to Rs 2.35 lakh crore. For the debt-ridden farmers, and despite reports of farmers suicides regularly pouring in from various parts of the country, the Finance Minister will gloat while announcing that he has managed to meet the target of providing Rs 2.25 lakh crore as farm credit in 2007-08. Ironically, this is less than the total revenue loss of Rs 2.35 lakh crore incurred a year earlier from tax exemptions for India Inc. Isn't it therefore strange economics? What millions of farmers get is simple gratitude (and credit), whereas a few hundred rich walk away with almost an equal amount as direct income (money saved by way of tax exemptions is like money earned). Why can't the industries be asked to avail more credit, and let the direct income be for the farmers? I have often wondered as to how does the economist justify more credit to farmers who are already reeling under the burden of non-repayment of credit. Well, everyone knows that farmers are committing suicide because they cannot repay back the loans. Mounting indebtedness is the reason behind the death toll on the farm. Why can't the Finance Minister make an honest effort to pull these farmers from the credit trap? Why can't the Finance Minister actually provide farmers with more steady and assured monthly income? After all, like all of us what the farmers too need is a monthly take-home income package. The first step that needs to be taken is to write-off the outstanding dues of small and marginal farmers owning less than 5 acres of land in irrigated areas and 20 acres in un-irrigated regions. There is already a talk of writing-off Rs 65,000-crore, including Rs 25,000-crore, which the nationalised banks fear would be the non-performing asset. The accumulating losses that the farm sector has been incurring year after year are much higher than this amount. Such bad debts need to be immediately struck off so as to provide a new lease of life to the debt-ridden farmer. In fact, the UPA government should have done this soon after it came into power in May 2004. At the same time, lowering the interest rate for farm loans to 4 per cent across board is also required. In China, the interest rate for credit to small farmers has been abolished. Along with this, what is more important and does not require any fiscal outlay is the need to abolish the draconian law that was enacted during the British Raj. Between 1904 and 1912, the British had framed Public Demand Recovery Act, under which farmers could be jailed for defaulting the State for a paltry sum. So much so that even the jail expenses were to be borne by the farmers. The banks have very cleverly used the same provisions for debt recovery in agriculture. Striking out the bad debt needs to be accompanied by a new farm policy that guarantees against making this a recurring exercise. Unless the government ensures that the National Food Security Mission and the Rs 25,000-crore fund it has set aside for agriculture as per the recommendation of the National Development Council are diverted to a nationwide Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) programme, the cycle of mounting indebtedness and then writing-off loans will not end. Replacing the current system of fertiliser subsidy wherein the government reimburses the industry for production expenses can make a beginning. Fertiliser subsidy, which is expected to touch Rs 50,000-crore in the near term, should in future be provided directly to farmers. What is acting as a roadblock for implementing this recommendation is the lack of political consensus. Farmers should be encouraged to utilise this subsidy for shifting to organic means of production. Such an initiative will drastically reduce the cost of production, rejuvenate the soils, provide income to farmers and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Due allocation for education still an elusive goal
Not only is the United Progressive Alliance far from delivering on its National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) promise of allocating six per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to education but the allocation also dipped in percentage terms in 2007-08 compared to the preceding year. According to the Economic Survey 2007-08, the Budget Estimates of the expenditure on education stood at 2.84 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal. In 2006-07, the expenditure as per the Revised Estimates was 2.88 per cent. Though the expenditure on education as a percentage of the GDP in the past two years was higher than the first two years of the UPA rule, it still falls short of the 2.9 per cent achieved in 2002-03 during the National Democratic Alliance regime. In the NCMP, the UPA pledged to raise public spending on education to at least six per cent of the GDP in a phased manner. Starting lower than 2.74 per cent of the GDP in the last year of NDA rule (2003-04), the allocation in 2004-05 was 2.67 per cent. Though it went up to 2.69 in 2005-06 and stood at 2.88 per cent in the Revised Estimates for 2006-07, the allocation is still below the halfway mark of the promised target. Last year the Planning Commission, in fact, said India could hope to achieve the target
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Call for privatisation of old oilfields
The Economic Survey has reiterated that the government should raise output by privatising the oil fields and hence reduce dependence on imported crude oil. India, which spent $48.389 billion to import its crude oil needs in 2006-07, has already spent $48.02 billion on crude imports in the first nine months of the current fiscal because of rise in international oil prices. The pre-budget survey that was tabled in Parliament, suggested selling old oil fields to private sector and for application of improved and enhanced oil recovery techniques. Besides stepping up domestic production, the remaining deficit would have to be bridged by entering into strategic geo-political alliances to access energy assets in the region, the Survey said, pointing to the need of making investments in energy chain in West Asia and Africa. Reducing incremental import dependence of the country's energy requirement requires tapping of coal reserves, accelerating exploration of oil and gas, fully exploiting the nuclear and hydro potential for power generation and expediting programmes for energy generation through renewables, the survey stated. While production from old fields declined, the award of 162 new areas for exploration under New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) since 1999 have led to 46 oil and gas discoveries to add 600 million tons of oil equivalent hydrocarbon reserves. As on April 1, 2007, the investment made by Indian and foreign companies in NELP blocks was $ 3.887 billion, out of which only 30 per cent was by the national oil companies.
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Sowing for a better harvest
SEEDS The Budget has announced a 150 per cent weighted average rebate on seed research and development. The measures # The finance minister has announced a 150 per cent weighted average rebate on research and development (R&D) of seeds. The context # Seeds are a key input and determines crop productivity, and improved seed quality alone can contribute about 25 per cent to the yield. Seed characteristics such as germination, high seedling vigour, and genetic purity are as important as other inputs. Thus, while fertilisers and water are important, the crucial input for increasing productivity are superior quality seeds. The impact # R K Sinha, executive director, All India Crop Biotech Association (AICBA) , the association of Indian agriculture biotech companies, said, "This is a welcome move.' Unfortunately, the FM has not granted infrastructure status to the seed industry which would have encouraged investments in the modernisation of seed processing plants, seed treatment and development facilities, godowns for storage, as well as transport and distribution. This, along with the creation of a dedicated Seed and Technology Development Fund, could have given clear signals to global and domestic industry to invest in agriculture. The industry hopes that during the year the government will "grant infrastructure status to the seed industry' and set up a "dedicated Seed Technology and Development Fund' for the long-term benefit of the farmer, industry, and economy.
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Till the very last rupee
The budget this year provided 15 per cent higher allocation for health and 20 per cent for education. However, this may not mean that more children will learn to read or write or more doctors will be available at public health centres. In the present context, outlays are supposed to be considered ends in themselves. While higher outlays are welcome, there is an urgent need to measure outcomes, the actual effectiveness of a government scheme. A clear index of deliverables is what will lead to other reforms: rewarding states that are doing it right and implementing mid-course correction in areas where the scheme fails to take off. A paragraph towards the end of this year's budget speech shows that the government is beginning to wake up to this need: "I think we do not pay enough attention to outcomes as we do to outlays; or to physical targets as we do to financial targets; or to quality as we do to quantity. Government therefore proposes to put in place a Central Plan Schemes Monitoring System (CPSMS) that will be implemented as a Plan scheme of the Planning Commission.' It is heartening to see an acknowledgement of a long-felt void. As the government disburses more money, there is an even greater need to track it better, to find out a rupee's worth in intervention A versus B or its performance in different states. For now, one has to depend on a few private NGOs/research institutions who fulfill this need: For example, Pratham, an NGO working in the field of primary education, comes out with an annual survey called ASER that has some startling findings on Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan, a Centrally-sponsored programme that aims to put all children into school, even in the remotest parts of India. They found the number of days a teacher is actually teaching in class is abysmally low. They had a percentage for children who are in secondary school but can neither read nor write. There is no government agency that comes up with similar data. India is wasting precious resources if teachers are not found in classrooms after two decades of the existence of this "flagship programme'. The government did make an effort to come out with an "outcome budget' but, according to experts, it was not even worth the paper it was written on. It had never-ending tables with targets achieved in the form of numbers. Drinking water reports had data on the number of taps and villages covered but not the quality, quality and availability of water that is distributed. The outcome budget stops short of measuring important aspects like absenteeism and who is accessing these services created by these schemes. Anyone reading it will be no wiser if she wants to find out where to put the money the next year. Once government has evolved the mechanism of measuring these outcomes, it can take the next step: link performance with outlays for states. Infant mortality rate, extent of immunisation, literacy for women, feeding programmes should be systematically collated to form a clear index. Central share of the scheme's money should be transferred based on the performance of states on this index. The fuzziness on performance has another implication too: the government is not able to under-take mid-course correction. For example, the Supreme Court has asked the government to universalise the Integrated Child Development Programme. With no improvement in malnourishment figures for children, which are higher than that of Sub-Saharan Africa, there is clearly something wrong. The government is starting from scratch in trying to figure out what is going wrong. A fresh committee has been set up to brainstorm, without any data to arrive at clear answers. The number of anganwadis set up each of the last five years, state-wise, is available. But it has no information on whether the anganwadi worker actually comes there, feeds children in the 0-6 age group with supplementary nutrition, takes care of their health and immunisation needs and pays special attention to malnourished children. N.C. Saxena, who is a court-appointed commissioner for monitoring the mid-day meals and the ICDS programme, is a strong votary for measuring outcomes versus outlays. In an article, he goes as far as to suggest action against officers who indulge in bogus reporting of figures. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, the number of fully immunised children being reported by the state government was almost 100 per cent in 2002-03. A rapid household survey found only 30 per cent of children to be fully immunised. "Such cases of flagrant over-reporting should not go unpunished,' he says, stressing on the need for independent agencies verifying data for the government and then disseminating it widely. Such steps will need a complete change in bureaucratic mindset. This signal from the finance minister, hopefully, will not go unnoticed if India is serious about inclusive growth.
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Band aid, in wrong place
No one asks the farmerBringing up babus With its Rs 600 billion farm loan waiver in the current budget, the government has applied some band aid to the financial haemorrhaging of India's farmers. It is another matter that the hurt is at some other place. The farmer has difficulty in obtaining cheap and reliable credit; various laws prevent him from selling his produce at the most competitive prices in the open market; there is no reliable advice available to him on how best to tend his fields in an economical manner; existing farming techniques, guided by corporate interests, continue to suck life out of the soil without replenishing it and there is no system of health security in the villages. On all these counts, the government has yet to show even minimal movement. The farm loan waiver gives the impression that farmers do not wish to repay their loans. This is a serious misrepresentation of the ground reality. According to figures from the NABARD, only some 10 per cent of the farmers default on bank loans. And even then, it is rarely that farming assets are taken away by the banks for failure to pay back loans. The problem for farmers lies in the loans taken from informal sources: moneylender and relatives. Often, the moneylender himself is a prosperous neighbourhood farmer. He gives large loans that are beyond the paying capacity of the borrower. These loans come with exorbitant rates of interest and severe penalties for default. The lender here does not falter in taking away farming assets, including land. After all, this could be a strategy for acquiring more land for himself. The advice of the agriculture minister a few days ago at Mumbai that farmers need not pay back loans taken from
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Post-Budget, e-waste problem may worsen
It took a much-publicised Greenpeace agitation in 2005 two years to achieve its desired result - make Wipro Infotech come out with a range of eco-friendly desktops in June 2007. Unfortunately, it will need a more sustained movement to curb the growing electronic waste menace- which is bound to gain momentum following the 2% reduction in the mean central value-added tax rate on all IT products announced in the latest Union budget, as more people dump their old desktops for newer versions. "Sales of desktops are likely to go up 15-20% because of rising demand. Unless corrective measures are taken, the e-waste problem is going to become more serious,' Vinnie Mehta, executive director of the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT), said. "It's high time India had proper guidelines in place on disposal of ewaste,' Greenpeace toxics campaigner Ramapati Kumar said. Currently, many companies either dump their e-waste in the garbage bin or sell it to local scrap dealers. A large quantity of desktops sold in India use hazardous chemicals like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which makes it more necessary that these products are disposed safely.
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Good initiative for tribals: Protecting forest wealth
The role of forest dwellers is most important to save forests, who are living in forests for centuries. The natural habitat of these tribals is also jungle like wildlife. Basically they depend upon forest produce and if the solution is sought for their problems at their home then they might be the real saviour of forests and wildlife. Under this concept a scheme has been started to provide them with livilihood resources who are dependent on forest areas. This scheme aims to lessen their dependency on forests. According to the directives of Forest Minister, the forest department is making allocation for funds. For collecting additional amount for the scheme the Forest Minister has given directives to establish coordination with other departments' schemes. Conservator of Forest (livelihood) has been appointed as nodal officer for this work. Nodal officer receiving the proposals from field officers would provide livelihood to the villagers according to their capacity and on the basis of their consent. For different kinds of livelihood and resources a budget provision would be made available. The state government would provide funds for construction of buildings and machinery and Joint Forest Management Committee would provide amount for other works. In the first phase of this scheme, some of the villagers of district would be identified whose means of employment is selling wood after collecting from jungles or who are involved in illegal cutting of trees to earn their livelihood. Such persons would be provided employment resources on priority basis, so that they might be helpful in conservation of forests. It is a good initiative of the State government. This move would ensure security and safety of forests. With this initiative the villagers living in remote areas would get alternative and good employment resources. Role of these forest dwellers would henceforth become more important and wildlife and environment would be remain safe.
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FinMin mulled Rs 5,000-cr guarantee company before farm loan waiver
Prior to announcing the Rs 60,000-crore farm loan waiver package, the finance ministry had toyed with the idea of setting up an Agriculture Credit Guarantee Corporation with a corpus of around Rs 5,000 crore to deal with bad loans. The entity would have insured lenders against borrower defaults with banks making less provisioning for such loans and continuing to offer farm loans. However, the plan was dropped after the amount of the waiver and relief package rose to a massive Rs 60,000 crore. "We then thought of giving direct subsidies to farmers as there will be no leakage in this scheme and the benefits will go directly to farmers,' said a government official. Cooperative banks account for Rs 37,000 crore or about 61 per cent of the Rs 60,000-crore package announced in the Budget. Regional rural banks and scheduled commercial banks account for Rs 12,000 crore and Rs 11,000 crore, respectively. The details of the farm package are likely to be finalised by March 25. As the government will implement this package over a period of three financial years, it may make a provision of up to Rs 25,000 crore in 2008-09. Part of the financial assistance due for restructuring of cooperatives according to the recommendations of the Vaidyanathan Committee is also likely to be part of the package, officials say. Cooperatives and banks may also have to share a little burden in case of default loan accounts, which have been written off for prudential accounting norms.
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Deputy Unit Head–Global Climate & Energy Team, Greenpeace International, Amsterdam
Deputy Unit Head – Global Climate & Energy Team, Greenpeace International, Amsterdam Closing Date: Thursday, 23 April 2012 Deputy Unit Head – Global Climate & Energy Team Organisation: Greenpeace
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Priorities for the climate negotiations: a climate regime that works
<p align="center"><img alt="" src="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/media/iep/homepage/msanwal_blog.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 117px;" /></p> <p align="center"><em>MukulSanwal<a href="#_ftn1"
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THE NEGOTIATING TEXTFOR PARIS: AN APPEAL
<p align="center"><img alt="" src="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/media/iep/homepage/msanwal_blog.jpg" style="width: 605px; height: 118px; float: left;" /></p> <p>There are two opposing visions
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Struggling with global climate change
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong><img alt="" src="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/media/iep/homepage/msanwal_blog.jpg" style="width:
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A hand in every pie
AS THE party in power at the Centre for 45 out of 49 years, the Congress(i), with all its factions, can be held mainly responsible for India's achievements and failures. In the politically