Chidambaram shows the right way to handle a crisis

July 14 2011, governancenow.com

A hands-on approach brings sanity in the time of chaos

Wind back to the two train accidents of last Sunday in UP and Assam, which left more than 100 dead and many more injured. There was chaos all around. Nobody seemed to be in charge. The UP accident happened in the morning but one of the three ministers of state for railways, Mukul Roy, could be located in Kolkata only in the evening.

Roy’s response was, "I am not the railway minister but only a minister of state and that the prime minister was the railway minister. I am 1,000 km away from the accident site and will go to the site only if the prime minister asks me to."

The next day he was asked by the prime minister to rush to the accident site in Assam, the news about which had come Sunday morning. He refused, saying that the tracks had been cleared and he had little to do there. He, instead, went to Jangalmahal to give company to Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who was to address a public rally there.

The newspapers reflected the chaos on Monday morning. Each one carried different figures about the dead and the injured and was clueless about the reasons for the accident (we still are).

Take a look at the blasts in Mumbai last evening.

Home minister P Chidambaram was ready at hand to tell reporters in New Delhi what had happened and what was being done to manage the chaos and the crisis. He declared that the media would be briefed every two hours. The Mumbai police commissioner had, by then, reached the spot and refused to speculate on anything, whether about the dead and injured or who were responsible. His account was a matter-of-fact, just as was the case with Chidambaram.

The home minister then rushed to Mumbai, visited the spots, met the injured and by 9.30 am next morning (that is today), he was before the media giving once again a matter-of-fact account of the incident, not willing to speculate. He was presumably wearing the same dress in which he had addressed the media the previous night at 9 (remember how his predecessor had changed his dress thrice in matters of hours of the 26/11 strike in Mumbai in 2008?).

The hands-on approach had a visible impact on the security forces and the media. The nerves were calm. The facts and figures didn’t vary wildly. Nobody was wildly guessing except for passing mention of a suspicion on the Indian Mujahideen as the agent behind the blasts.

Mostly importantly, somebody was seemingly and visibly in charge of the situation and the crisis seemed so much more manageable without everyone going hysterical about it, which could have been the case had Chidambaram behaved the way the railway minister and the MoSs did after the train accidents.

This is not the first time Chidmbaram has shown how to handle a crisis and manage the affairs. He worked the same way while leading the fight against the Maoists in the past too.

If only rest of the ministers emulate his example, our crisis management would be that much better.

Natarajan's task cut out: just hand over forests for mining

July 20 2011, governancenow.com

Chaturvedi committee says scrap Ramesh’s ‘no-go’ area system

Notwithstanding the ‘spin’, post-cabinet reshuffle, explaining Jairam Ramesh's shift from the environment and forests ministry to the rural development ministry, the real purpose now stands exposed.

Days after the reshuffle, planning commission member B K Chaturvedi has submitted a report of a ‘high-level committee’ he was asked to head by the GoM on coal mining, which makes some shocking recommendations.

The most important recommendation is to scrap the system of ‘go’ and ‘no-go’ area devised by Ramesh to protect dense forests and bio-diversity zones from mining activities.

Chaturvedi argues that this system has no legal sanctity as no statutory provision exists and that it was faulty because it relied only on satellite imagery to mark ‘no-go’ areas. It supports the old method of subjective assessment of the importance of forests while clearing mining proposals.

The second one says decide mining on ‘merit’ and allow it in marginal forests and on the fringes of the forests without any restrictions as was the case earlier when road and rail links were allowed to pass through the wildlife sanctuaries and tiger reserves.

Third, it calls for exploring ‘underground mining’ around dense forests. Fourth, it asks for ensuring uninterrupted supply of coal mining operations, ignoring moratorium imposed under the Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index.

During his last days in office (on June 23, 2011), Ramesh had given in to the pressure. He had opened up three coal blocks in the ‘no-go’ area – Tara, Parsa East and Kante Basan in the Hasdeo-Arand bio-diversity zone – for mining on the plea that these blocks fall in the ‘fringe’ area of the bio-diversity zone. But when it came to Morga-II block, he refused (on July 5, 2011) saying it fell in the ‘core area’ of the same bio-diversity zone.

The signal is clear now.

The mining has to be a free-for-all affair as it was in the pre-Ramesh era.

The task for his replacement, Jayanthi Natarajan, is cut out. Since Chaturvedi’s recommendations were sought by the GoM headed by none other than de facto number two in the government, Pranab Mukherjee, it has to be followed. An inconvenient Ramesh is now out of the way.

This is precisely what the mining companies wanted. And this is what prime minister Manmohan Singh wanted to achieve - 10 percent growth in GDP.

Never mind the damage to the forest cover and its impact on the environment. And never mind the conflicts indiscriminate mining and handing over of natural resources to private companies have caused in the tribal heartland of the central India, where a full-blown civil war is going on.

Watchdog or a lapdog?

governancenow.com, July 12 2011

A sad tale of media role reversal

Just as it went after Team Anna for daring to question the government on its will to fight corruption vis-à-vis the Lokpal bill, a good section of the English media is now cross with the apex court for daring to blame the “neoliberal” economic policies of the government for two problems that it dealt with recently – Maoist insurgency in Chhattisgarh and black money.

It seems as if the government has become a new holy cow; as if the media is no more a watchdog of democracy but a lapdog of the government, at least for these English dailies. One daily wondered aloud “whether Justice Arundhati Roy was also a member of the bench” and another said “never-ending lectures” on the post-reform neoliberal economy had the “intellectual depth of a JNU postgrad”.

The offending portions of the orders had traced the root cause of the Maoist insurgency in Chhattisgarh to “the culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned by modern neoliberal economic ideology” and blamed generation of black money on a “greed-is-good” culture promoted by the “neoliberal ideologues”. It helps to know that both the orders came from the same bench – of justices B Sudershan Reddy and Surinder Singh Nijjar.

In the process, Arundhati Roy too had to be denounced. When the attack on Team Anna was at its peak in April, she wrote that the era of “liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation” had led to a situation where “our rivers, mountains, forests, minerals, water supply, electricity and communication system have been sold to private corporations” and corruption had “grown exponentially”.

What Roy said or what the judges said was not without a solid basis. The Maoists may have their own political agenda and the seeds of which may have been planted much before the liberalisation era began, but if they acquired a deadly edge in the recent years it was only because the tribals decided to join their war. What was it that made the tribals wage a war on the side of the Maoists against their own government? The straight and simple answer is: denial of their rights and handing over their home, the forests bearing rich mineral resources, to the private sector.

As Roy pointed out, several states witnessing the Maoist insurgency now signed hundreds of secret MoUs gifting away forests and mines bearing iron ore, coal and bauxite. Chhattisgarh alone signed more than 100 of such MoUs. In the process, thousands of tribals lost their home, with little or no compensation. Many more thousands face such a prospect. In Dantewada, several villages were handed over to Essar Steel and Tata Steel a few years ago to set up steel plants without the consent of the tribals as mandated by the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996. Any wonder the district turned into a deadly battlefield?

The same law also provides “ownership” of the forest produce to the tribals but the tribals still get a paltry sum as “wage” for collecting tendu leaves (see our latest issue) even though the trade is controlled by the state. The Salwa Judum and its fallout, which was the subject the apex court was dealing with while “lecturing” on neoliberal policies, began in 2004 in Bijapur over a fight over better wages for these leaves.

Since then, Chhattisgarh has zealously followed the World Bank dictated neoliberal policies. The river Sheonath has been handed over to a private company, denying tribals access to its water or fish. Several thermal power companies have been handed over coal bearing forest land, the latest being those coming under the “no-go” area of Hasdeo-Arand bio-diversity zone. Recently, a minister’s son, a tribal himself, was found buying tribal lands on behalf of a private company to overcome legal restrictions on sale of tribal lands to non-tribals.

But you will not find these stories in the English dailies which have taken the cudgel on behalf of the government, defending all its follies with a degree of conviction and vigour not seen in recent memory.

How to Kill a River

Governance Now, July 16-31

IIT-Roorkee’s study is a recipe for disaster. Instead of assessing the danger to Ganga’s tributaries from existing hydro-power projects it bats for more


The first ever cumulative impact assessment (CIA) study of hydro-power projects being built on Bhagirathi and Alaknanda, two tributaries of the Ganga, has come as a big disappointment.

Carried out by the Alternate Hydro Energy Centre (AHEC) of IIT-Roorkee, which submitted its report to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) recently, the study ignores the very raison d’être of its endeavour – assess cumulative impact of 70 hydro-power projects (HPs)commissioned or in various stages of development (three of which were scrapped last year) on these rivers, their surrounding ecosystems and human habitations along the rivers. Of the 70, 54 are run-of-the-river (ROR) and the rest storage-based (dams) projects.

The task was onerous and yet important to make sure the drive to harness hydro-power doesn’t kill the rivers and the life-sustaining environment they build around them. In fact, it was prompted by a supreme court order of 2009 to allay such fears and came in the wake of scrapping three major HPs – at Loharinag Pala, Pala Maneri and Bhaironghati on Bhagirathi.

But the findings not only fail to live up to the expectations, they do a reverse swing and advocate more such projects.

Here are some of the key issues involved in the study, the findings and what’s wrong with these findings.

* Both Bhagirathi and Alaknanda originate from glaciers and so do several of their tributaries. The report says glaciers are in much higher altitudes, upstream and distant to be affected by the HPs.

Right, but it doesn’t take into consideration the crucial fact that 75 percent of Himalayan glaciers are retreating at an annual rate of 3.75 percent. This was revealed in the “most detailed” satellite imagery based study, ‘Snow and glaciers of the Himalayas’, carried out jointly by the MoEF and the department of space. Though this particular report was released in June this year, similar findings have been published in the past too.

The study doesn’t take into consideration how much less water will flow in over the
next five, 10 or 15 years and how that would impact the existing hydro-power projects. Prudence demands that such information are taken into consideration while planning or assessing projects.

* A dam (storage-based project) stops the flow and ‘submerges’ a portion of the river, while a RoR project diverts a part of it. Both “affect” the river adversely, diversion being more so. The report says “the river becomes dry in the diverted stretch” which could be “very long” and “fatal to aquatic life”.

It also calculates that the existing HPs would “affect” 47.3 percent of Bhagirathi and its tributaries and 43.9 percent of Alaknanda and its tributaries. But it doesn’t assess what the cumulative impact of such changes would be on the rivers and their tributaries. On the contrary, it advocates fixing a “threshold” at 70 percent, meaning thereby that a river and its tributaries may be allowed to be affected by way of ‘submergence’ and ‘diversion’ up to 70 percent of its length.

Shockingly, the study doesn’t say on what basis this threshold has been arrived at. And while admitting that 70.71 percent of Bhagirathi river is getting affected (31 percent diverted, 39 percent submerged), instead of asking for a moratorium on more projects on this river, it seeks revival of the Loharinag Pala and other projects on the same river which were scrapped last year.

* The study recognises the fact that all HPs adversely impact the river and its aquatic life and hence it should get a breathing space between the dams/barrages “so that the river is given an opportunity to recuperate its ecological environment”. But what should this breathing space be or whether adequate breathing space has been provided in the existing projects has not been spelt out.

* The study recognises that HPs restrict flow of the rivers and that to keep the rivers and their ecosystems in good health and sustain human livelihood and wellbeing certain quantity of water should “always flow in the rivers”. It describes this flow as “environmental flow” but bases its calculations on the “minimum flow” required, ignoring needs and expectations of people living on the banks, a flow required to help the flora and fauna to prosper and flourish, and not just survive and the fact that floods too play important ecological functions.

While proposing a minimum flow, the report acknowledges that this may reduce power generation and “such reduction may make several schemes unviable, especially small scale hydropower schemes”. Yet, it doesn’t say if we should scrap projects to prevent this. On the contrary it concludes that hydro-power can be harnessed with environmental sustainability “provided certain measures are taken”. What these measures are, we are not told.

This part of the study suffers from “a major handicap” as “measured river cross sections and velocity of flows were available at limited locations”. It goes on to say that the desired “building block method” which should be applied to arrive at the right environmental flow “requires much more data, time and manpower and other resources and therefore, could not be applied in this study”.


* The study registers negative changes in water quality but gives a thumbs-up saying that the impact is well within the limits of environmental sustainability. This assessment is based on individual case studies, rather than the combined impact of a series of projects. Experts point out that the thumbs-up is based on central pollution control board’s “use-based” classification of water which may be okay to determine potability of water drawn from a tube well but not for determining water quality of a natural river.

* The study admits that Bhagirathi and Alaknanda river basins are rich in biodiversity “designated as sensitive habitats” with “high conservation significance”. It also says that construction of reservoirs prevents migration of aquatic life and changes the domain of flowing water (river) to a standing water (lake) domain. This change brings about “significant changes in physicochemical characteristics affecting the ecological parameters”.

But it goes on to conclude: “So far, we don’t have any study of changes in aquatic life from river to reservoir. Thus, at present it is not possible to give any firm assessment on the impact of HPs on biodiversity of Alaknanda and Bhagirathi.” But wasn’t that the purpose of the study?

It devotes considerable space to impact on fish, particularly the famed golden mahseer and snow trout that so characterise these rivers by observing that the fish “require an uninterrupted riverine habitat as well as floodplains for their breeding”, which dams and tunnels disrupt. And by way of solution, it says “fish passes” of various kinds be used. But not a word has been said about the efficacy of these passes and instances where such methods have been used successfully to make a convincing argument.

The only worthwhile suggestion the report makes is that no more HPs should be set up on the tributaries of Bhagirathi and Alaknanda. It says: “These streams have been identified as Nayar, Birhi Ganga, Bhyunder Ganga, Balganga and Asiganga which should not be exploited further as these are the lifelines of the main ecosystem of Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers”.

* The study points out that tunneling work for ROR projects damage springs and other underground water channels. This alters water availability and affects local population. But in a typical bureaucratic exercise, it says such blockages would lead to springs finding alternate routes and that the reservoirs being built in other projects would recharge ground water to conclude that the effect will be localised and the cumulative impact will be negligible. And then it goes on to contradict itself: “In the absence of relevant groundwater in the project scenario it may be difficult (or improper) to conclude with confidence on the impact on construction of HPs on the availability of drinking water sources to the population in the project area”.

* Photographs carried in the report tell a harrowing tale of recklessness. Huge piles of muck, generated from excavation work, have been dumped in the river beds, skirting the water flow and in forested areas of hills destroying vegetation. Instead of expressing anxiety and asking for immediate remedial action to prevent damage to the river and forests, it merely advises that suitable dumping ground may be found.

Worse, it points out that afforestation and catchment area treatment has not started for any of the HPs and that post construction impact data are not available. Yet, it concludes that “the problems generated during the construction will die out automatically”.

* The study is dotted with lamentations about lack of data and relevant information. The chapter on ‘recommendations’ begins with this gem: “In view of the fact that the field of cumulative impact assessment (CIA) is new and is being introduced for the first time in India, there are many gaps in the knowledge necessary to undertake CIA with the desired degree of precision, particularly in the Himalayan region where the database is weaker than that in the rest of the country. It is therefore necessary that a major programme of research and development should
be drawn and implemented as early as possible.”

Bharat Jhunjhunwala, former professor of IIM-Bangalore whose petition to the central empowered committee led to the supreme court ordering this study in 2009, says the basic mistake of the study is that sustainable development of a single project has been passed off as a cumulative study.

He goes on to add that AHEC has failed to consider several aspects: loss of forests and biodiversity, trapping of sediments in reservoirs, methane emissions from reservoir, impact on health due to mosquito breeding in reservoirs and so on.

In fact, when IIT Roorkee was given the task by the MoEF, he had objected to the choice of both the organisation and its director Arun Kumar, saying that their primary competence was in engineering and design of small hydropower projects, rather than environmental studies.
He would have preferred if the task had been given to National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Wildlife Institution of India or Forest Research Institute.

Himanshu Thakkar, an expert on water management issues, dismisses the report as “pathetic” and has written to environment minister Jairam Ramesh to junk it. He writes: “We find that the report has not really done cumulative impact assessment, has shown bias in favour of hydropower projects, which is inappropriate for the task at hand, has given many unfounded conclusions and recommendations, has made factually wrong assertions and has done far from objective assessment of the performance of the projects. The report also has not looked at the poor quality of EIAs-EMPs done for these projects and almost universal noncompliance of environment norms in the implementation of these projects. In short, the shoddy report is a lost opportunity and needs to be rejected, even while following up on some of the half-hearted recommendations.”

He is particularly disturbed with the prescription of letting 70 percent of the river be affected. He says submergence and diversion kills a river and “to allow killing of 70 percent of a river is nonsense”.

Questions for Spin Minister

Governance Now, July 16-31



Kapil Sibal’s twopart article in the Hindustan Times (‘A free-floating entity’ and ‘Up the garden path’) trashing Team Anna’s version of the Lokpal bill is breathtaking in its sweeping comments. Had he not been an eminent lawyer one would have dismissed him for being political with the attendant licence to spread lies to deceive the citizens. But he being an eminent lawyer needs to be questioned for writing an eminently trashable article.

Here is a list of his halftruths, untruths, myths and misconceptions about our constitution and parliamentary democratic set-up vis-à-vis the Jan Lokpal Bill:

Sibal repeatedly describes the Jan Lokpal as a body of “11 unelected wise men”, “unelected executive body” etc. The emphasis is on “unelected”.


If such is the sanctity of the election, why isn’t he asking the “topmost executive” of the land, the prime minister, to get elected first? The PM is not only “unelected” for seven years in running he is “unelectable” too. Does that not violate the “essence of parliamentary democracy”, he being a “nominated” man of you-know-who?

Besides, which of these authorities wielding immense power is elected – CJI, CJs, judges, judicial officers, CBI director, CVC, CAG?

Sibal says, “The judiciary seeks to protect citizens. The (Jan) Lokpal seeks to prosecute them.”


Why then, pray, the Judicial Accountability bill? Why the impeachment move against justice Soumitra Sen? Why the CBI is after justice Nirmal Yadav? Why a probe against former CJI K G Balakrishanan on charges of amassing disproportionate assets?


Sibal says Jan Lokpal “seeks to arrogate to itself the power to discipline government servants” and that it will require a “mammoth machinery” to deal with corruption acts of about 10-12 million government servants.


Well, if so, what is the purpose of the Prevention of Corruption Act and how do the CBI and CVC deal with 10-12 million government servants? The Jan Lokpal seeks a merger of the CBI and CVC with itself, so why the fuss?


He also says the constitution “protects the tenure” of government servants and hence it would need a constitutional amendment if disciplinary power is given to the Jan Lokpal.


If so, how are the government servants being disciplined in the first place? And shouldn’t he be the first one to seek amendment to the constitution?

As for the constitutional sanctity, since when has the Congress become so fastidious? Indira Gandhi amended the constitution with impunity, suspending fundamental rights and cutting the apex court down to size. And haven’t we amended the constitution more than 100 times?

Did Rajiv Gandhi bother about the constitutional niceties when he tried to gag the media? Did Sibal ever protest against the Emergency or suspension of fundamental rights?

Sibal says Jan Lokpal is seeking to prosecute MPs who are protected by the constitution to vote and speak freely in parliament.


Does the constitution protect the MPs who take bribe to vote and ask questions? Does it sanction the JMM bribery and cash-for-vote scams too in which everyone involved got away? Why were the MPs thrown out for cash-for-question scandal?

Sibal says Lokpal will prosecute judiciary too.

The Jan Lokpal seeks power to sanction investigation against a judge in corruption cases because the present system, which has failed to punish even a single judge in the past 64 years, doesn’t allow investigation without the court’s permission. That is why justice Nirmal Yadav was allowed to retire peacefully. Will there not be a similar mechanism in the Judicial Accountability bill?

And finally,

Sibal says “some eminent jurists believe Jan Lokpal might fall foul of the basic structure of the constitution” and that it is “answerable to none”.

Really? Will the Lokpal bill not be debated in and passed by parliament? As for answerability, here is a counter:
To the government: Since all answerable-to-the-government anti-corruption mechanisms have failed, the idea is to set up a body “independent” of the government.
To parliament: As in the case of the PSUs, CVC, a parliamentary committee can oversee the Lokpal and annual reports of the Lokpal can be tabled and debated in parliament.
Simple, isn’t it, Mr Sibal?
To the judiciary: Since all decisions of the Lokpal are subjected to review of the high court and supreme court, where is the question of non-accountability?