Mundra SEZ spells displacement for fisherfolk
Livelihoods of fisherfolk is at stake as the Mundra special economic zone (sez) on the northern shore of the Gulf of Kutch gets underway. Potentially the largest sez in the country, it covers 28 km
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When markets do work
Some innovations change lives. A favourite of mine is the village milk collection system, a cooperative model. There s a dairy in the village, people bring in milk, the dairy in
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Ending the debt trap & attaining food security
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's initiative is a major step in recognising the country's debt to farm families but much more needs to be done. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's budget 2008-09 has aroused widespread interest in methods of saving our small and marginal farming families from indebtedness and acute economic distress, which lead to occasional suicides. The steps proposed in the budget will give relief to nearly four crore farmers, at an estimated outlay of Rs.60,000 crore. As stressed by Mr. Chidambaram, this is a major step in recognising the indebtedness of the country to farm families who, th rough their toil in sun and rain, are safeguarding national food security and sovereignty. The question arises whether this step will mark the end of farmers' dependence on moneylenders and traders for their credit needs. Some of the following issues need consideration: First, the definition of small and marginal farmers has to be different for irrigated and dry farming areas. The present definition classifies marginal farmers as those owning up to 1 hectare and small farmers as those owning 1-2 hectares. Farmers cultivating crops in rainfed, arid, and semi-arid areas may own 4-5 hectares but their income is uncertain and their agricultural destiny is bound closely to the behaviour of the monsoon. A large number of farming families affected by the agrarian crisis in Vidharbha fall under this category. They will not be eligible for debt waiver and debt relief under the present scheme. A second problem relates to the source from which loans have been taken. The programme announced in the budget covers farmers who have taken loans from scheduled commercial banks, regional rural banks, and cooperative credit institutions. It does not cover farmers indebted to moneylenders and traders. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), 48.6 per cent of the farm households surveyed were indebted; of these 61 per cent had operational holdings below 1 hectare. Of the total outstanding debt, 41.6 per cent was taken for purposes other than farm-related activities, such as healthcare and domestic needs; 57.7 per cent of the outstanding amount was sourced from institutional channels and 42.3 per cent from moneylenders, traders, relatives, and friends. It has been estimated that in 2003, non-institutional debt accounted for Rs.48,000 crore; and out of this, Rs.18,000 crore was at an interest of 30 per cent per annum or more (NSSO 59th Round cited by the Economic Survey 2007-08). The Expert Group on Agriculture Indebtedness chaired by Professor R. Radhakrishna has recommended, in its report of July 2007, the inclusion of the financially excluded, particularly the small borrower households, and the adoption of risk-mitigating measures for agriculture. The concept of financial inclusion is in its early stages of operationalisation. Loan waiver is the price we have to pay for the neglect of rural India during the past several decades, as reflected in a gradual decline in investment in key sectors like irrigation, post-harvest technology (even today, farmers dry the harvested paddy on roads), market, and communication. The four crore farmers who are to be relieved of their debt burden before the end of June 2008 will become eligible once again for institutional credit for their cultivation expenses during kharif 2008. The challenge now is to prevent them from getting into the debt trap again. For this purpose, both Central and State governments should set up immediately an Indebted Farmers' Support Consortium at the district level. This should comprise farm scientists, panchayati raj leaders, input supply agencies, representatives of relevant government departments and financial institutions, rural and women's universities and home science colleges, private sector and media representatives, and others relevant to assisting the farmers relieved of their past debt in improving the productivity and profitability of their farms in an environmentally sustainable manner. This is essential for enabling them to have a higher marketable surplus and thereby more cash income. The smaller the farm, the greater is the need for marketable surplus to avoid indebtedness. Such an Indebted Farmers' Support Consortium should get the four crore farmers the benefits of all the government schemes such as the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the National Food Security Mission, the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme, the National Horticulture Mission, Rural Godown and Warehousing Schemes, and the National Rural Health Mission. If this is done, every farm family released from the debt trap should be able to produce at least an additional half tonne per hectare of food grains or other farm produce. This should help increase food production by about 20 million tonnes during 2008-10. At a time when global and national food stocks are dwindling and prices are rising, this will be an extremely timely gain for our national food and nutrition security system and for the control of inflation. We should ensure that the outcome of debt waiver is enhanced farmers' income and production. The prevailing gap between potential and actual yields in the crops of rainfed areas such as jowar, bajra, millets, pulses, and oilseeds is over 200 per cent even with the technologies on the shelf. The restarting of the agricultural career of four crore resource-poor farmers through loan waiver could mark a new dawn in both agrarian prosperity and national food sovereignty
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Why does farm production stagnate?
India and the world population has doubled or tripled since the World War II. The world and India produces seven times more food than 60 or more years ago when many nations were in a shambles and farms were marred by mines and other hazardous chemicals in the aftermath of millions killed by bombs and gun battles, though not India, which was not a big theatre of war, but of the war of Independence. Imperial rulers were preoccupied with German and Japanese invaders and with conquering them. India was the fodder of the war machine with 2.5 million soldiers to fight on every front to defeat the Axis power. The war had seen the Bengal Famine with tens of thousands dying of hunger, but official records called it malnutrition, not starvation. That was the Imperial nomenclature, valid ever since until today. Yet in the bygone 20th century we have seen great strides, we have seen great visible progress in pursuit of Mahatma Gandhi's goal of wiping every tear from every Indian face. Irrigation dams by the score have been built and dry farms have had irrigation canals and channels supplying life-giving water. Where canals could not reach hand pumps or powered pumps have been installed to irrigate farms. Punjab, Haryana, western UP and many other States prospered, but not all areas. From 30 million tons of grain, India today produces as much as 210 million tons. For a long time, India was supposed to be self sufficient, not needing to import any grain, though for some years now, as part of the policy of food security a buffer stock has been built and wheat and rice have been imported. Sometimes exotic basmati rice has been exported and cheaper and large quantities of cheaper imported to try and feed Indians, but the exercise has not fully succeeded. In spite of the great Indian success story, when India's economy is one of the fastest growing at a clip of nine per cent per year why do we in free India, 40 per cent of us remain below the poverty line, sleep on an empty stomach, why 42 per cent of all children starve or are very poorly fed? Yet, literacy and education are fundamental rights, food is not. There are no free lunches, though midday school feeding programmes are much in place, yet honored more in the breach than in the observance, because 80 per cent of the money provided must be and is known to be siphoned off by the time it reaches the panchayat or the village or the city school into the pockets of all kinds of people, be they suppliers, petty or senior officials and politicians, down now to the village panch, leave alone the sarpanch. Is that the way of the Third World, if not all world, because corruption in the First Word is far more sophisticated; it runs into millions and billions of dollars, not in peanuts or a few rupees, hundreds or thousands of them. Such is the system, like it or not? Is that why 30 per cent growth some areas of the services sector and nine per cent overall, farm or grain production grows only at 2.6 per cent and in years of monsoon failure or excess of it, the growth is what in modern parlance is sophisticated jugglery of world negative as nobody wants to speak the truth that output has gone down or dropped. Management and official jargon has taken a new leap in falsehood and lies as truth is totally at a discount and invention and magic with words is the norm. That is Harvard or management school education, push the dirt under the rug, don't allow it to be exposed. Thanks to multinational producers and sellers of genetically modified seeds or biotechnology, salesmen push the hybrid seeds for well irrigated farms to grow more cotton whereas rainfed farms can take only ordinary seeds, cheaper and ten times costlier. At the time when farmers in Nagpur or Vidharbha and Andhra should be reaping a big crop, they find zero shoots. They have borrowed money to buy this costly seeds. They are deep in debt, of principal and interest. They have been cheated. Since they cannot afford to pay, the moneylender knocks at their men with musclemen in tow, throws them out of their hearth and home and occupies their parched farm. What does the poor farmer do now? He takes his life, next members of his family start doing the same. Thousands of farmers have been doing so for some decades now, although heartless money lenders have been doing this for centuries gone by. That is the story of Indian village, village after village. Now that a general election is less than 15 months away to choose a new Lok Sabha and three States in the north east are in the process to elect legislatures and six more States will do so before the end of the year or early next year, the Government is engaged in double quick time to line up doles for the voters, especially for the farmers, who are the backbone of a democracy, who hold the maximum number of cards. The magicians that the Prime Minister, his Finance Minister, and their boss, the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance are, have ordained that Rs.32,000 crores of buoyant government revenues must be dispensed with as debt relief to farmers to woo them for the grand old party. This is less than ten per cent of the bank loans of Rs.3,42,000 crores the farmers owe to the banks, but it is the government which will reimburse them so that they can balance their books and prudential banking does not receive a jolt. But the farmers at the mercy of private money lenders who charge 2 to 3 per cent are unlikely to benefit. Will they continue to die and starve as before? Only time will tell. God save them, for who else can? Lalit Sethi, NPA
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Rainwater Harvesting- Bangladesh
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><strong>Rain Water Harvesting</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px;"><strong><img alt="Rain Water Harvesting-Bangladesh" src="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/country/bangladesh/rainwater_harvesting_hl.jpg" style="width: 525px; height: 297px;" /></strong></span></p> <p>Rainwater harvesting is one of the feasible options of fresh water sources in the coastal areas of Bangladesh and recently a lot of initiatives and programme were undertaken to promote and install rainwater harvesting systems both in the coastal and arsenic affected areas in Bangladesh. Moreover, every year the country is also blessed with ample rain. The average annual rainfall in Bangladesh is about 2200 mm, seventy-five percent of it occurs between May and September.</p>
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Talking Energy - On a lighter note
<p>Every niche has its own lingo and Energy might have one of the most complicated ones around. Just as an example energy can be measured in six different ways! - Joule, Calorie, Tonne Oil Equvalent,
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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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The environment war
The army has taken to environment resuscitation with prganised fervour, but is still facing a barrage of criticism from state forest
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Red alert in the east
Real estate developers and government agencies are devouring the wetlands in communist ruled Calcutta
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Rolling on
Bunga took the sukhomajri story forward The first village to follow Sukhomajri's development model was Bunga, just 30 km away in Haryana's Panchkula district (see timeline: Divergent trajectories).
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Privatization of Water
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><strong>Privatization of Water</strong></span></p> <p><img alt="" src="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/country/nepal/private_water_hl.jpg" style="border-width: 2px; border-style: solid;" /></p> <p>The World Bank initiated water sector reforms aim primarily at privatizing water utilities and commercializing water resources. The water privatization policy of the World Bank articulated in a 1992 paper entitled “Improving Water Resources Management” proceeds from the belief that water availability at low or no cost is uneconomical and inefficient.</p>
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Bangladesh
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="210px"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#363636" colspan="2" height="26px" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 14px; padding-left:5px;"> Editor's Pick</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="380" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/country/bangladesh/bangladesh_iframe.htm" style="border-width:0px; border-color:#333; background:#FFF; border-style:solid;" width="555"></iframe></p> <hr /> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="210px"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#363636" colspan="2" height="26px" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 14px; padding-left:5px;"> Country Overview</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 540px;"> <tbody bgcolor="#F0F0F0"> <tr> <td> <p><iframe align="right" frameborder="1" height="310" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.co.in/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=bangladesh&aq=&sll=20.984928,82.752628&sspn=45.458666,56.513672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Bangladesh&t=m&ll=23.684774,90.351563&spn=3.42031,3.724365&z=7&output=embed" width="330"></iframe><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Bangladesh is located between 20 º 34 to 26º 38 north latitude and 88.01 º to 92.42 º east longitude, with an area of 147,570 sq km). With a population of 164.000 million, Bangladesh is one of the world's most densely populated countries.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">It has a border on the west, north, and east with India, on the southeast with Myanmar, and the Bay of Bengal is to the south. Geologically, Bangladesh is a part of the Bengal Basin, one of the largest geosynclinals in the world.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">The Basin is bordered on the north by the steep Tertiary Himalayas; on the northeast and east by the late Tertiary Shillong Plateau, the Tripura hills of lesser elevation, and the Naga-Lusai olded belt; and in the west by the moderately high, ancient Chotanagpur plateau.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>
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Dead fish tell tales...
...as the case of Betwa proves. Tales which have the power to move a whole town in Madhya Pradesh and send the notoriously slothful official machinery into a whirligig of activity. It is all about a people’s struggle to save the highly polluted Betwa rive
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Choking slowly to death
The Damodar is the most polluted river in the country today, thanks to the several industries that have sprouted on its mineral-rich banks. Experts say the only way to save the Damodar valley is for these highly polluting industries to make massive invest
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Will the Aral Sea ever come back?
"Forgive us, Aral. Please come back." These words written in chalk, on a ship sftKk in a sandy wasteland, which was once the bustling shore of the world"s fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea, tell a graphic tale of the human toll caused by am of the w
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Government attention sets pulses spinning
Pulse production in India is touching an all time high, but the benefits are reaching only a few because most farmers are ignorant about the new, easier to grow varieties, and about agronomic practices that would make the crop less of a risk.
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Toxic trap
Village Chipri in Kolhapur, Maharashtra is fighting: diseases, a factory and lax authorities
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Trapped in a quagmire
Pollution, disorderly urban growth and inadequate basic services are plaguing the Kathmandu valley and adversely affecting tourism, the valley's major revenue earner. Tourism itself is a burden on the valley's resources. Attempts are being made to stem t
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Dang and blast
The anachronistic, and explosive, colonial formula of exploiting forests by denying the forest people their rights is still being followed to the letter by underdeveloped Indian administrators in the Dangs, Gujarat"s boondocks tribal belt
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The spirit of the sanctuary
<I>FIVE YEARS ago, the social forestry department in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra cleared several trees from a forest near Nandivse village to plant acacia trees. It did not know that the 4-ha patch was a sacred grove surrounding the temple of a powerful local deity, Kal Bhairon. The villagers, too, joined in because they were paid for the felling and planting.