Passing USA's laugh test
Helping George Bush gain political mileage seemed to be the overriding concern at the recent climate convention negotiations in New York. India stood alone on the issue of apportioning global sinks
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The global green farce
At UNCED the inclustrialised countries do not want any serloys restructuring of their economies or their lifestyles to save the earth. But the Brazil conference will see a major effort to got developing countries to share the burden of change. Des
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The racket at Rio
The save the planet bazaar does not deserve to be taken seriously
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Ban on grazing hits Raikas community hard
This monsoon, the Raikas, traditional camel breeders in the Kumbalgarh Wild Life Sanctuary in Rajasthan's Pali district, will face an existential crisis again. It will be the third successive season that the pastoral community will have been banned from grazing their camels in Kumbalgarh.
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Costs and benefits of India's waste disposal options
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Telephony regulators cannot stay speechless
The recent imbroglio on interconnectivity between cellular and fixed/WiLL CDMA subscribers left many speechless. The response came via a proxy war involving MTNL and BSNL. This is worrying; for interconnectivity is the basic technical and legal requiremen
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Himachal Pradesh in trouble over tragopan breeding
the wildlife department of Himachal Pradesh is now in a muddle. Its pheasant-breeding programme lacks experts. The Rs 5-crore Sarahan pheasantry, which saw the world's first-ever successful captive
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Callous forest law
What is needed is to undertake liberalisation from the point of view of the poor. This is the message of Dewas
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Cosmetic concern
At a time when USA is banning MTBE , Indian public sector companies, with the blessings of the petroleum ministry babus, are promoting its use
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Jobs and the environment
The brunt of environmental protection cannot just be borne by the poor
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A road to nowhere
The government must undertake a serious study of human nature interaction before declaring any area a national park
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A minister's choice
On global issues Kamal Nath was prepared to take positions unpalatable to his bureaucrats and worked closely with CSE. But he was not willing to go far on national issues, especially on the crucial one of participatory natural resource management
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Corporation for Sustainable Development
Under the Millennium Development Goals MDG of the United Nations UN , it has been agreed to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. The Johannesburg Plan of
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For frugality and sensible use
A recent letter from a reader has disturbed me enormously. B P Radhakrishna, president of the Geological Society of India, in response to a story in Down To Earth about how drought was affecting
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Shanghai-ed
Finance minister P Chidambaram goes to Mumbai to deliberate, with its corporati, upon urban renewal, and promises sparkling growth for this bursting metropolis. On the way to the venue, he is
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It's dark outside the TV grab
In this day of television grabs, policies are about slugfests. The logic of the grab is that any discussion must be heated, with sharply divided positions clear proponents and opponents. It is a
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Desperately seeking waste
By the time you read this, the decision would have been taken: to allow or not to allow the French warship Le Clemenceau into India, so that it can be dismantled with unknown quantities of toxic
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Poor regulators do not a rich country make
IN this past month, farmer associations in Haryana and Tamil Nadu have located and burnt field trials for genetically modified Bt rice. In Chhattisgarh the state government has stopped similar trials
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Witness to opposition (Editorial)
Every chair of the community hall of the Shree Shantadurga temple in South Goa's Quepem taluka was taken. In a few minutes, the public hearing for Shakti bauxite mines was to begin. Then there arose a whisper: the temple had objected to the hearing being held in their premises; it was being called off. It was the second time the hearing was convened and this time, too, the villagers told us, the 30-day notice rule had been violated. The panchayats were informed just two days ago that people should state their objections, if any, to the expansion plan of the bauxite mine-an increase in production from 0.1 million tonnes per year to 1 million tonnes, requiring an increase in mining area from 26 ha to 826 ha-in this forest- paddy region of Goa's hinterland. From the open window I could see a large police battalion gathering. The whisper grew to a shout. Hefty transporters- owners of trucks to carry the bauxite-were shouting the expansion must be cleared. Within minutes, villagers responded. The voices became more strident; both sides were close to a fight. Things settled only when the local MLA insisted with district officials that the hearing be held as scheduled. The hearing began. The company was requested to explain its project-a Powerpoint presentation in English was simultaneously translated into Konkani. A lot of fluff and technical verbiage followed: the geology of the region; the drilling techniques to be used; how bauxite was critical to the country's development; how all clearances had been granted for extension of the mining lease; and how the company would ensure that environmental damage was mitigated at all costs. Listening to the presentation, everything seemed taken care of. The company would stabilize waste dumps by planting trees, backfilling the pits so that rejects were minimized; it would not breach the groundwater table and, to top it all, it would set aside money for environmental management. But this was before the residents- from politicians to villagers to church representatives-got up to speak. They ripped through the environmental impact assessment report prepared by an unknown consultant. They explained the company had got the number of people living in the area, and even the existing land use, completely wrong. The company claimed most of the land it would mine was 'wasteland'. This, people explained, was a lie because the company was eyeing communidade land (common land) they intensively used for agriculture or grazing livestock. Thus, mining here would massively harm them, a fact completely neglected in the environmental impact assessment. As speaker after speaker rose, it became awfully clear that even though the mine was coming up in the backyard of these people, the statutory environmental impact assessment could simply gloss over what would happen to people's land, forests, water or livelihood. I then checked the report. There was not even a map that identified for me habitations or agricultural fields. The report said, rather glibly, there were no surface waterbodies in the vicinity of the project. It then concluded the project's use of water, for spraying on roads and pits, would have no impact on availability for people. The river Sal, some distance away, was discussed for environmental impacts; even the Arabian Sea. But the numerous village streams, which flow from the hills and irrigate the fields found no mention. At the hearing, villagers counted the streams. The area used to be extremely water- scarce. But the government spent substantial money under the national watershed programme to build check dams, plant trees and increase water recharge. As a result there was now enough water for good harvests. Villagers wanted to know why the same government, which had first invested in improving their water security, was now hell-bent on pushing an activity that would destroy their lives. I wasn't surprising when all those gathered agreed unanimously that the mines must not be allowed under any circumstance. The people said the regulatory clearances-the mine closure plan, the mine management plan-were worthless or even fraudulent. The company, already mining in the area on much smaller land, had flouted every existing condition, broken every trust. Life, they said, was already a living hell because of this small mine; what would happen if it expanded? More land taken, more streams destroyed, more rejects piled high for rains to turn into silt? The questions we must ask are: how could the regulatory institutions even consider giving clearances for an expanded mine area without first checking the company's compliance record? Does this not speak of the weak and non-existent capacities of our regulators to manage the mines so that local or regional environmental damage is minimized? Does this not suggest that people who live in these areas are doomed, because once clearance is given there is nobody to check if the stipulated conditions are met? Should I be surprised I was witness to complete opposition by people to the project? What next? My colleague Chandra Bhushan tells me the rest is fairly predictable. The minutes of this public hearing will be sent to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. Its expert committee will deliberate, or sit, on the matter for a few months (as it is controversial). Then it will call the company to explain how it will take into account the issues raised by the people. An improved Powerpoint presentation will be made by another consultant; more deliberations will follow; new conditions will be laid down. With these conditions the expanded mine will be cleared, people's opposition be damned. I hope he is wrong. Let's track this one. The future might be different. Writer is Director, Centre for Science and Environment
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Seeds of change
The NSC has transformed itself from the usual non-profit-earning PSU into a vibrant entity. Private sector seed companies have, till now, had a virtual monopoly over the production and sale of seeds, mostly hybrid seeds, of high-value crops. This was chiefly because the public sector seed producers, besides being fewer in number, remained focused right from the beginning on the production of seeds of low-value but high-volume crops (basically cereals), where profits were low though the quantities to be handled were large. Besides, public sector units (PSUs) made little attempt to keep pace with time. However, the much-needed change in the public seed sector is coming about now with the largest player, the National Seeds Corporation (NSC), adopting a corporate culture and deploying state-of-the-art technology to produce seeds even of high-value crops and hybrids. Indeed, as could be expected, this change in the work culture has transformed the NSC from the usual non-profit-earning PSU into a vibrant entity striving to find a place among the mini-Ratnas, if not the Navratnas. The headquarters of the NSC and four of its regional units in Bhopal, Jaipur, Secunderabad and Bangalore, have already acquired the ISO 9001-2000 certificate and the remaining regional units are in the process of doing so. No wonder then that, after a gap of 32 years, the NSC paid a 5 per cent dividend, amounting to a little over Rs 1 crore, to the government in November last. This was made possible by a massive 46 per cent growth in business in the past one year alone. Its post-tax profits jumped by a whopping 200 per cent in 2006-07. Indeed, the man behind this incredible transformation is the present chairman and managing director B B Pattanaik. "I would be able to declare a much higher dividend for the current year,' asserts an enthusiastic Pattanaik. He has not only motivated the aging employees of this 45-year-old corporation for better performance but has also taken several new initiatives to be in a position to rub shoulders with the well-run private sector seed companies, many of which now have business tie-ups with the NSC. "I am not interested in increasing competition with the corporate houses; I am more for partnerships,' says Pattanaik. About a dozen big houses, including some multinational companies like Monsanto and Cargill and domestic players like ITC, ECL Agro-Tech and Sheel Biotech, have forged strategic business alliances with the NSC. Most of these companies use the vast marketing network of the NSC for the sale of their seeds and other farm inputs. The Indian Oil Corporation, on the other hand, sells the NSC seeds through its network of Kisan Seva Kendras (farmers' service centres). Significantly, the NSC is now very much into the production of hybrid seeds, organic seeds and even tissue culture plantlets. It is multiplying the seeds of mustard hybrid DMH-1-DHARA evolved through biotechnological interventions by the Delhi University; as also those of the pigeon pea (arhar) hybrid, ICPH 2671, evolved by the Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT). Besides, the NSC would soon begin supplying gladiolus bulbs for flower cultivation. The NSC's tissue culture unit with a capacity to churn out annually about two lakh test tube-raised plantlets for propagation of the banana is coming up in Bhubaneswar and may become operational by the next month. For research and development back-up, the NSC gets support from the vast agricultural research network of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the state agriculture universities. This helps the NSC to add, on an average, around 20 new varieties and hybrids to its product range every year. Significantly, the NSC is now playing a catalytic role in the expansion of seed production, processing and storage infrastructure in the private sector under a government scheme involving 25 per cent subsidy for this purpose. About 120 projects for the creation of seed processing capacity worth 23 lakh quintals and seed storage capacity of 9 lakh quintals have already been approved. A total subsidy of Rs 6.94 crore would be paid to the private sector companies which are creating these facilities. For involving more and more farmers in the relatively more lucrative seed production business, the NSC is facilitating the provision of loans to them from the State Bank of India. Besides, it is ploughing back about 2 per cent of its own profits into the activities related to seed production by farmers and other measures as part of its corporate social responsibility initiative.