It is the middle of September and the rains have let Jowalagiri village down.  Again.  As I sit on a rock and watch the sunset in a clear sky, shorn of any harbingers of rain, I recognise that the pied crested cuckoo – a traditional rain man – is hovering somewhere nearby and his melancholic call lets me know that he is as let down as I am.  Year 4 of the drought.

In early August, there were a couple of showers that instilled hope and thinly covered the beds of the numerous water bodies, but now the lakes and tanks are getting drier by the day and, if there is no rain in the next ten days, much of the ragi crop, alongside which double beans (avarikkai) has been planted, will be lost and it will be back to the now-familiar debt trap for many.

The richer farmers are clearly better off, of course.  They are using their capital to pump up groundwater, which itself is a capital asset, being non-replishable in a lifetime, to grow vegetables – tomatoes and beans largely – and flowers, all of which consume large quantities of water, pesticide and fertilisers.  Even as I yearn to speak with them and ask them to shift to crops more benign to the Earth, am I entitled to do so?

As I sit there watching the sunset, I think of why, despite the thousand of crores that the Government of India and the states have spent on bringing water to agriculture, there is no water security for the majority of our agriculturists, who are dependant on rain and unlikely to get loans from banks to dig borewells.  I am not talking of the money that was eaten away, though that sum is outrageous in itself.  For the huge actual amounts that we have spent on the construction of numerous irrigation dams across India with their intricate water diversion network, what do we have to say to the poorest farmers who do not live by the canals downstream of the dam?  “Sorry, we have nothing left for you”, or “get off the land and move to the city” or “Bad luck, buddy, wrong choice of land”?

And, as I sit there, I think of hundreds of farmers around me who are pushing their children out of farming and into India’s cities, not because there are no buyers, not because technology has not evolved, not because they can’t access genetically modified crops or prices of agri produce on the internet, not because there is no land.  Simply because there is no water.  Jowalagiri is not an exception; the entire district of Krishnagiri and, indeed, much of agrarian India this year is staring at a water crisis.

This is not just a failure of the monsoon, this is a failure of Government policy; an abiding and wretching visual to monumental folly.  We cannot stop an El Nino and can do precious little about the cards we are dealt.  But the Government could have, using its vast resources of money and manpower, harvested the rain that fell across much of the drier areas of the country, with a fraction of the expenditure incurred on large irrigation projects, using traditional wisdom from the many generations before us that did this successfully, combined with modern science, examplified by the images beamed by satellites.

Yet, over the years, not only have successive Governments not encouraged India’s farmers to store this water in traditional structures and tanks, they have actually discouraged such behaviour through the creation of laws that took common lands (including lakes and tanks) away from the people, perverse incentives such as free power to draw water from borewells and higher prices for rice and not millets (that are more water-frugal), and encouraging the cultivation of sugarcane along water courses.  They have emphasised independency and competition, rather than inter-dependency and collaboration which has, across the history of farming, been the key to sustainability.

India’s complex water policy has bestowed on the power-wielders of pre- and post-independent India the ability to amass, control and direct large amounts of river water along channels of bias and preference, all funded by (often) well-meaning but hopelessly inept aid organisations such as the World Bank. It is a policy that divides Indian agrarian society of about 600 million people into two gigantic halves – those with access to water, and those without –engendering conflict, speculation in land and the exodus of ecological refugees across the vast land mass.

Across India, there are pitifully few examples of Government-backed decentralised water harvesting, just as indeed there are hardly any examples of courses run in India’s mainstream universities – that trains to-be engineers – on the science of traditional water management, pond-based agriculture and preserving watersheds using local knowledge and advanced science in collaborative partnership.

As I sit there watching the sunset, it’s impossible to not pine for what we have lost.  Even as demography specialists warn that India’s growing population and the Food Security Act demand more grain and higher buffer stocks, India’s ancient profession of farming is dying principally due to the lack of good water policy,  left behind in the dust bowl of an economic whirlwind.  The feeling that arises within is one of anger.  How can large numbers of intelligent humans create policies so stupid that reward what is wrong and punish what is the right thing to do?

Just what are you smoking, Mr. Agarwal?

In the Business Line on February 12^th, 2014, Mr. Anil Agarwal, the Chairman of the Vedanta group of companies that is principally involved in mining of natural resources, wrote an article titled ‘We can mine our way to prosperity’.  In this he said “India has enough potential to produce $400-500 billion in natural resources such as oil and gas, gold, silver, iron ore, copper, coal, calcium, rock phosphate and others.  It is bound to generate substantial revenues, of which more than half would go to the Government.  And this will be helpful in infrastructure development.  This will also create employment for 10-15 crore people by way of thousands of downstream industries.  The GDP will improve, deficit will reduce and it will be a win-win situation.  Investment in exploration is a must for our future generation.” 

This is an argument built on two oft-perceived assumptions.  The first assumption – called trickle-down economics – is that when wealth is generated, it is shared, while the second is that GDP is the measure for’win-win’ (whatever that itself means to him).  Trickle-down economics is something most businessmen believe in, since it is a wonderfully convenient argument.  Economists rejected the principle long ago though and there is no better book that demolishes this argument than ‘The Price of Inequality’ by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning, former chief economist at the World Bank, who has long believed that the economy exists to serve the top 1% of the wealth pyramid.  “Those at the top have learned how to suck out money from the rest in ways that the rest are hardly aware of,” says Professor Stiglitz, “that is their true innovation.” Incomes have fallen and inequality has increased, he says, as a direct result of deregulation, privatisation and smashing the unions. Appealing to the selfish 1%, he even argues that inequality undermines productivity and retards growth, whereas a more egalitarian society would result in a more stable economy.

Mr. Agarwal’s view is entirely wishful thinking, notably chimerical, clearly self-serving and out of touch with economic reality.  What he has chosen to not focus on is the mass displacement of entire communities of people, particularly tribal, such mining will entail, the destruction of habitat (which he has anyway no concern for) and bio-diversity, the resultant pollution and – what is economically critical to know – the extreme concentration of wealth.  He has to see no further than Bellary in Karnataka for a reality check; it is a story that is so well known that it needs no repetition.  Unhindered mining, in addition to furthering inequality, plays a sinister role in long term well-being of an economy:  when any country exports its minerals, it is tantamount to exporting irredeemable capital, the economic equivalent of a human being selling his organ to pay for a routine expenditure. 

The Justice MB Shah Commission, which was set up to look into illegal mining of iron ore and manganese in India, submitted its report late last year, a damning indictment of the plutocracy that is India.  Just one state, Odisha (where Vedanta has hung its hat),  incurred a loss, according to the report, of Rs. 59,203 crore because of illegal extraction of mineral resources, particularly iron ore.  The biggest brands, the most ‘responsible’ of corporations –  SAIL, Tata Steel and the Aditya Birla group –  the report added, were violating environmental laws. Of the 192 mining leases, 176 were within dense forests and 94 were operating without environment clearances.  The report, rather than the corporations involved, stands rejected by the elected.  Just what ‘win-win’ was Mr. Agarwal speaking of? The vast majority of Indian businesses, particularly those involved in extraction, are irresponsible and short-term in thinking and anarchist, no less.  Indeed, Mr. Agarwal’s own group of companies is an example of irresponsibility and the attempt to mine the Niyamgiri hill, which is sacred to the local people, demonstrates his indifference to the under-privileged, abuse of political power and an apathy to local culture.

It is time – high time – that we re-looked at the mining industry de novo.  All mining should be done with extreme care, the resulting minerals being used within the host country to produce goods and services that are necessary to create true societal wealth in preparation for a post-mineral future.  Is this a new version of Swadeshi?  I do not know.  What I do know is that, if it is, then Norway too is doing it.  This country sets modest export targets for its oil and then channelises the proceeds into a sovereign fund – an excellent example of responsibility that India, with its current dispensation, rule of the elite and surfeit of rent-seeking behaviour, cannot hope to emulate.  India is, instead, closer to Nuaru, a desolate, unhappy island that, since its depletion of mineral resources has chosen to harbour Australia’s prisoners in return for income. 

GDP  growth is one indicator of human development, it is far from being the only one; indeed, many countries are seeking indices that will focus on collective human good beyond the exposition of statistics on income.  In the years to come, the generations that grow to be future citizens will not forgive us for being quiet and complacent in the face of such thinly veiled deceit in the name of development economics.  It is time for right thinking people to stand up – it’s the least we can do for our planet.

 

 

 

 

The Case Against Sugar

In the first week of January 2014, a group of medical and nutritional experts in the U.K. launched a rather unusual initiative called ‘Action On Sugar’ to influence the food industry to reduce added sugar in foods by 40% over four years.  If anything, this was long overdue.  Across the Western World and increasingly in India, sugar is emerging as the single biggest cause of a growing lifestyle disease epidemic.  India, I read, is the World’s largest consumer of sugar and with a growing appetite for junk food; Pepsi recently announced an investment of about five billion dollars (rupees thirty thousand crores) in helping us on our collective way to the hospital. The Action on Sugar needs to originate here.

Refined sugar is a relatively new invention to the World and is newer to India.  In our country in the 1970s, when I was growing up, sugar was rationed carefully and it was common for the poorer economic sections of society to drink their tea without it; indeed I clearly remember my gardener drinking his tea, with a piece of jaggery by the side, that he’d bite into once in a way.  Historically, sweets (or ‘sweetmeats’ as Indian sweet dishes were called) were consumed on special occasions and made with jaggery.  Acreage under sugarcane in India grew dramatically in the 1970s, with irrigation support and the green revolution, and sugar has since been widely and easily available – interestingly, this is the period in which obesity, blood pressure and illnesses resulting out of a sedentary, rich-food lifestyle have made their firm presence in all of urban India and in parts of rural India as well.

Refined sugar has no nutrition at all and is a source of completely unnecessary calories; there are multiple sources of sweet carbohydrates in every part of India that have higher nutrition.  Sugar is known to be addictive as well: in a French study in 2007, it was reported that when rats were given the choice between sugar and cocaine, they chose sugar overwhelmingly.  Even the rats that had been given cocaine over a period, to get them addicted to it, seemed to prefer sugar.  There is enough anecdotal evidence of this in our lives as well; the craving for a sugary dessert after a meal can be intense and continuous.  While sweet dishes as dessert after every meal, rather than a fruit, are conspicuously sugary, it is the insidious addition of sugar to human diet that has caused the addiction.  All of us, children in particular, consume sugar in most processed foods: sauces and ketchup, ‘healthy’ juices that have added sugar, brown and white beverages, cookies and bakery products, junk food and bread spreads.

As I began to study the health effects of sugar, there was as much learning as there was worry; what follows in this paragraph must make us sit up and take notice.  Refined sugar is obviously a major contributor to obesity and is a toxin for those with diabetes.  In addition, a US study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta and Harvard School of Public Health showed a link between high levels of sugar consumption and a 275% percent higher relative risk of dying from cardiovascular disease where refined sugar consumption was about a quarter or more of a person’s calorie intake.  Dr. Aseem Malhotra, an eminent cardiologist in the UK who is leading the fight against sugar, suspects that sugar causes the liver to produce more uric acid, and this leads to high blood pressure and much of the resultant illnesses, including dementia.  Sugar, he further adds, could be as inimical to the liver as alcohol, contributing to a non-reversable condition called non-alcohol fatty liver disease – the second biggest cause of liver failure after alcohol (which, by the way, is from sugar as well!). Others point to a possible role that sugar could be playing in some cancers.  No wonder then that Professor Simon Capewell of the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Psychology, Health and Society labels sugar ‘the new tobacco’.  Much of this information has been known for years, but it all came together to make a compelling case only with the increased focus in the Western World on public health which now centres around the consumption of toxic junk, including refined sugar.

So, how much sugar is OK to consume?

In January 2014, a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Dental Research suggested that added sugars should not be more than five per cent of calorie intake, to protect teeth and gums and most health specialists agree with this estimate.  This means a maximum of six teaspoons of sugar for a person consuming two thousand calories a day.  To most of us, this will mean a lifestyle change.  Remember the sugar you consume in your tea or coffee is part of the story and much of the sugar you consume is involuntary, as you eat processed food: as a yardstick for comparison, a can of any of the cola brands in the market contains the equivalent of nine spoons of sugar (actually, high fructose corn syrup, a cheaper alternative to sugar, but with the same deleterious effects), which is your quota for a day and a half.

It is time to act now – individually and collectively – to neutralise an avoidable epidemic. Cut your sugar to the minimum – it’s the least you can do to help yourself.

Why Tiger Tourism Will Never Save the Tiger

The protected forest areas of India, the big ones, have opened up to tourism in the last fifteen years in an way few would have foreseen.  As India discovers the economic benefits of wildlife tourism and its potential in providing employment opportunities, Governmental encouragement has not been found wanting to the hospitality industry – loans, state-sponsored advertising, infrastructure support such as laying of metal roads in forest habitat and subsidised hospitality training have all been part of a heady cocktail meant to kickstart wildlife tourism and put India on par with the African continent in showcasing its wildlife to eager tourists.  To crown it all, such tourism has been dubbed ‘eco-tourism’, a tribute more to the location of a resort rather than to the sustainable nature of its practices.  The result: the last decade has seen hundreds of resorts that have mushroomed in the buffer zones and beyond of India’s wildlife sanctuaries.

 This tourism is not eco-tourism at all.  I brand it ‘tiger tourism’.  The majority of tourists who visit the Project Tiger sanctuaries have but one objective: spot a tiger, take about a dozen pictures in those precious seconds and relive those moments, alongwith the sundry details of the ‘encounter’ to all who may care to listen.  If there is no tiger to be seen, an elephant or two would be second best.  But few other animals make the mark for the tiger tourist. At the end of an outing into the jungle, if he asks, “Saw something?”, he is talking about the tiger.

The number of tiger tourists, not tigers, in India has exploded in the last decade.  In the holiday season (accumulating to about three months in a year) and on weekends, particularly the three-day ones, hordes of tourists, wearing brightly coloured clothes and carrying adequate stock of chilled refreshment and snacks,  descend on India’s wildlife sanctuaries that harbour a number of critically endangered mammals, birds and reptiles. A fair percentage of these hordes have substantial disposable income and are looking for a comprehensive holiday experience – they’d like to live in or by the jungle, but would want the luxuries of a seaside or suburban resort.

To cater to this human traffic and its increasing propensity to spend money, many resorts have built much above the basics –saunas, spas and swimming pools (when the elephants in the forest around the property have no water in their water holes), in addition to air-conditioning in the rooms and luxurious  buffetts at mealtimes, necessitating the import into the protected area of truckloads of branded foodstuff. The majority of these resorts are enclosed by electric fences to separate its inhabitants from the denizens of the forest.  Some of these properties – the Serai resort in Bandipur is an example – sit on critical land, such as elephant corridors, or in close proximity to water holes, even as the owner-managers of these resorts attempt to build their credibility as wildlife lovers.   All of this is legal, even encouraged by State Governments, if the resorts pay their electricity bills on time and remit adequate taxes collected on ‘sher darshan’ (in Kanha), hospitality and liquor.

That the resorts do not go by the spirit of conservation or, indeed, by the rules is the first problem.  Another is the sheer number of tiger tourists.  Most of India’s tiger sanctuaries have now become large open zoos, much in the nature of what has happened in parts of the African wildland.  Jeeps criss-cross paths in the forests searching for wildlife, to ensure that the tourists have their money’s worth. Term this a kind of tiger hunting and you wouldn’t be far off the mark.  When a tiger is sighted, what follows is mayhem:  other vehicles are informed by wireless and those in the vicinity speed towards the location.  In one particularly tragic incident some years ago, a tigress mauled a French tourist who was in the back of a vehicle that, alongwith others, had formed a ring around the animal, giving her little chance to escape.  For a shy, retreating animal like a tiger, this is harrowing.  The same animal, after its first attack on a human, could then become a danger to the people, who are often poor and marginalised, living around the National Park and who cannot defend themselves adequately in the event of a surprise attack.  To counter this danger, villagers will then ask their political representatives to campaign to eliminate the concerned animal.  The long and short of this is that, what begins as a ‘harmless’ exercise to showcase a tiger to a tourist, might just lead to considerable bloodshed and the possible death of the same animal.  The originators will never be punished quid pro quo, as surely they deserve to be for having created a problem in the first place.

In addition to ‘tiger hunting’, there is the another reason why many sanctuaries have now become large zoos: baiting of animals for the tiger, known to be done in the sanctuaries in Western and Central India.  This is horribly unethical and cruel, is not allowed by law and will deprive, over a period, the species of its hunting instinct.  Animals, particularly bull calves (since they are cheaper to buy), are tied at ‘strategic points’ in the forests.  They are generally not well fed, for their calling must attract the star’s attention.  When the tiger kills the bait – a practice that is as unfair to the bait as it is cruel and sadistic – the tiger tourist is informed of his luck and taken to the location to photograph to his heart’s content.  Baiting has the informal approval of many in the Forest Department of the concerned states who are compensated well for looking the other way.  Surely, this wasn’t was tiger tourism was meant to do?  Try convincing the calf that it is win-win for it to be attacked by a tiger, without a ghost of a chance of escape.

If all this was not enough, a lot more that happens is expressly illegal.  In many resorts all over India, ‘special’ meat is served to privileged guests – venison, hare and, rarely, bison meat being three examples.  Many establishments blare music; on days such as New Year’s Eve, these resorts would have you believe that the denizens of the jungle were in a celebratory mood – the music is loud enough to keep them miles away.  Plastic, paper, glass and other waste is either burnt (releasing the pollutants into the immediate atmosphere), dumped into pits or thrown by the roadside, neither of which are desirable practices.  There have been numerous instances of deaths of deer and other animals choking on plastic in India’s protected areas, yet few resorts adopt the practice of transporting these wastes back to some possible point of origin, such as the nearest city.

This growth of tiger tourism means that the average room tariffs in these resorts have more than tripled in the last five years.  New ones bill tourists between $200 and $500 per room night.  At such demanding prices, resorts will be forced to offer unsustainable luxuries to guests (unsustainable, from an ecological point of view).  Guests may not cross their fingers or weigh their luck to see the tiger anymore; they may demand it (economics, as  you can see, is a dismal science).

The tourism industry, of course, has attempted to present tiger tourism as win-win, even for the tiger.  More tourists, they would have you belive, means more revenues that can be diverted to the forest department for tiger conservation.  Presumably, this will improve the protection mechanisms employed, resulting in better forests and thereby a further increase in tourists.  A virtous cycle.  On paper.

 This assertion, as well as the support provided by State Government tourism ministries, puts the Forest Department of a State in a bind.  Government financial and political support for forest management has always been modest;   in fact, most Forest Departments now are expected to generate tourism-related revenues by the levy of annual licence fees on resorts or taxes on vehicles.  Where the Forest Department runs its own hospitality services,  these are run as low-priced establishments ostensibly to help the middle class find accommodation in India’s wildlife sanctuaries.  The reality of course, is that these places are poorly maintained and hardly perform their objective;  politicians and bureaucrats see these rest houses as extensions of their favourite watering holes in the city.

Forest officers in most such situations are helpless and can do little.  They are trained in wildlife protection and, being part of the bureaucracy, know which side of their bread is buttered; hence they do little.  If there is a crisis, react if you must, else let things take their course.  This approach, of course, benefits everyone except the animals in the forest.

 As India’s forest cover shrinks and animals are forced to retreat further into their restricted habitat, we cannot anymore afford the luxury of tiger tourism.  The best way to protect an animal is to protect its habitat, leave it alone and allow experts – experienced foresters and wildlife researchers alone – to work on capturing the essence of the denizens of the forest.   When the Supreme Court therefore effectively banned tiger tourism earlier this week, I was overjoyed at the news;  all of us need to take a figurative hat off to the one institution that is the last hope of the distressed, the vote-less, the deprived.

Perhaps the tide has turned.

If you visit a tiger reserve, marvel at the sheer diversity of wildlife and flora that surrounds you.  Leave the tiger alone.  Its the least we can do to protect his world.

 

 

 

Run River, Run

There are times I get really angry. Angry at the ‘system’ that engenders destruction and conflict, angry at business that seeks to optimise wealth to the exclusion of all else, angry at people like us for being indifferent and angry at myself for not doing enough.

As you have guessed, this is my mood at the moment.

The reason centres around the Cauvery, my favourite river.  Indeed it is the only river I really know, having travelled up and around it for years.  The Government of Karnataka has, over the last couple of years, sanctioned 142 small hydro-electric projects that will generate an estimated 652 megawatts of electricity.  Indeed, these projects are being encouraged by an arm of the Government called the Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Corporation Limited, as being eco-friendly ( a most abused word).

Not one or two, but one hundred and forty two projects.  Each generating between 3 and 24.75 megawatts.

Why 24.75 you ask?  Because a project that generates less than 25 megawatts needs no environmental impact assessment done. No paper needs to be published on how the project will fragment a river, damage fish populations, destroy otter and crocodile habitat and, thanks to the movement of heavy equipment and people, construction and settlement, increase the conflict with wildlife.  Projects generating greater than 25 MW are being shown as being smaller; in fact, some projects, after their first phase that requires no environmental clearance, are increasing their capacity beyond 25 MW in daring, flagrant violation of the rules, all in the hope that no one would question the process or, if they did, all would be regularised since the deed had been done.

Most of us see small hydro electric projects as a safer option than the big ones and, in general, the answer is, yes, they are safer.  Yet, when such a large number come up along a river, there is reason to be cautious, for there is a cumulative impact that is hard to understand.  These projects together will have a great impact on the hydrology of the river, as they all store water for peaking and release it only during generation, in addition to increasing the evaporation losses.  Such a large number of dams will cumulatively have a huge impact on the water availability downstream, with likely impacts across the border, enhancing the conflict with a sister state. In addition to the impacts on hydrology, there will be cumulative impacts of deforestation, sedimentation and the construction activities like roads and channels.

If we keep quiet now, what will be left of the river in the years to come is hard to imagine.  I am angry because we see river water as a cut-and-dry resource, to be exploited for senseless agriculture (such as export-oriented sugarcane), urban misuse and electricity.  I am angry because upto 35% of energy we generate is lost in just transmitting it inefficiently; even a 1% gain in Karnataka’s transmission loss would generate about 80 MW, equal to 20 mini hydro projects. And I am angry because of the scale of idiocy that permeates decision making.

This is a request to you, the reader, to turn to activism to protect what is yours by right, being a public good – the river.   Please write to the Environment Secretary, the Chief Minister, the Union Minister for Environment and Forests.  Please blog about this and reach out to the media to make a splash (pun intended).

Because we do not need more power generated.  We just need more power available for use. The difference in these statements is enough to allow a river to run.  For ever.

Speak up.  It’s the least you can do for your planet.