Cleaning some muck

In the middle of all the things that mainstream media keeps itself busy with, there are several positive items that have been but a blip in the information deluge. Such as this news this morning that the Government has banned import of plastic waste, tonnes of which end up in India for recycling. India itself generates many more tonnes of its own plastic waste, clogging its water bodies and entering its food chain. Similarly, India's turning into a dumping ground for the developed world's electronic waste, which, frankly, we can do without.

What I am most keenly watching is how we manage water. Historically, India has been horribly underprepared to deal with its environmental problems, and now when the water crisis is becoming more real by the day, this under-preparedness manifests itself in Sewage treatment plants never built, industrial waste norms never enforced, or billions of liters of monsoon rains never stored.

Take the case of The Ganges, a water body that has a documented history of thousands of years, is a dying river. Such has been the lack of intent in this country to protect the river that even after spending billions of Rupees over many decades, we don't even have accurate data measurement in place. As you read this, 5000 Million Liters of untreated domestic sewage, and 500 Million Liters of toxic industrial effluents, enter the river EVERY DAY. 

As always, there remains hope that this Government will perform when previous governments have failed. By next year, it has committed to build Sewage Treatment Plants in 118 towns on the river. If they can deliver, it would bode well for the rest of the country, where 80% of all surface water is polluted, most of which is from domestic sewage.

Just as importantly, though, there is a growing realization that this is not just the Government's job, and a participatory approach is perhaps the most impactful way in which India can tackle its environmental pollution issues. In fact, its perhaps the only way. After all, its not a Government that litters, its you and me, and I think that is why one of the most important deliverables of the national campaign, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, is that it will take its message to the classrooms.

While in the long run, climate impact, population growth, rising consumption will make it tougher and tougher for this society to sustain itself as it is today, society though, I feel, has a seed for resilience that just might force it to start looking for solutions when adversity really, really stares us in our faces. 

Is India finally standing up to the bullying China?

For some of us who believe we are filled with a little more nationalistic fervour than the rest, the film Haqeeqat may be of some relevance. The 1964 film by Chetan Anand was based on the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and starred Dharmendra and Balraj Sahni in the lead. I remember seeing the movie at a very young age, and It left a very strong mark in my mind. Perhaps not because I was already bubbling with patriotism, but because I was a young boy and the scenes of war and death shook me to the core.

The film is about a platoon of Indian soldiers in Ladakh during the war, who are heavily outnumbered, who all die while keeping the Chinese at bay. The music, by Madan Mohan, and the lyrics, by Kaifi Azmi, do their job of invoking the sense of grief at India’s losses in the war.

I, personally, have never been able to trust the nation of China since. I do not trust their intentions, I do not trust their actions, and I do not trust any parlays of friendship they make towards any other nation. Increasingly, India, for all its good intentioned Nehruvian worldly outlook till date, and the rest of the world, is coming to the same conclusion. R Jagannathan explains it very clearly that China’s worldview, and its ambitions, are much bigger than India, and the latter must find its own voice, and more importantly, be more strategically aware of its role in the world, because the Chinese he says, respect only power.

For many who follow geo-politics, India’s lack of a world view can be very frustrating. If we read our post-independence history, we have been a nation that was only too happy to be a self-reliant, soft spoken, good to its neighbours, “why can’t we all get along?” republic that never wished ill for anyone, even if they spat in our face or tried to take our territory.

Of course, keeping my sarcasm aside, there have been times when India has been aggressive, and in my limited knowledge and reading of our history, those times include when India liberated Bangladesh, and when India tested the first nuclear device, both under Mrs. Gandhi. Whatever her faults, or Operation Blue Star, or the Emergency, her foreign policy was hawkish. Of course that does not take away at all the blots from her political life.

Needless to say, the Modi Government is treating its foreign policy imperatives like a twenty twenty cricket match, going out of their way to strengthen ties, create new ones, forge partnerships, and establish a new India to the rest of the world. This aggression in foreign policy is a welcome departure from the pathetic mishandling of India’s foreign affairs in the Sonia Gandhi Government.

A lot of people who invest in the derivatives markets know that market sentiment is not entirely based on hard numbers and mathematical models. While the Prime Minister and his team have a very uphill task of getting India back on track, a lot also rides on the sentiments that are present. Modi, no doubt, brings lots of positive sentiments, and dispels a lot of the gloom that had set in in the last many years under Sonia Gandhi and her puppet Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The Planning Commission had become an instrument to allocate funds to her socialist schemes, and the National Advisory Council became the controlling instrument for the Prime Minister’s Office. Sonia Gandhi as its Chairperson gave her the status of a Cabinet Minister and all the perks that came with it, in fact, it was her brainchild. It is no wonder that the Indian voters gave Modi a mandate to govern never seen in the last two decades.

While India’s internal systems and processes are on their slow mend and will take time, no matter how impatient some of its critics get, India’s foreign policy is certainly on an upswing, with the PM leading the way himself. After most Heads of State attended his swearing in as the 15th Prime Minister of India, he has visited Bhutan, Nepal, Japan, Brazil and is in the United States now. Sushma Swaraj, the Minister of External Affairs, has been under the media radar but has been busy in her own right, travelling to Bangladesh, Vietnam, Singapore, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Even the President of India visited Vietnam, in a very clear foreign policy move. In the same period, India has welcomed leaders from the US, Australia, England, France and Russia.

Now in the United States, Modi is drawing rockstar crowds. I do not doubt that there is a hint of deliverance and grandstanding in this massive event planned at the Madison Square Garden, after the US denial of visa to him for so many years. What Modi and Obama will be able to hammer out in NYC is another matter.

To close it all out, China is most certainly wary that India now has a hawkish leader who talks tough and is taking India’s foreign policy very seriously. Given China’s grand vision of itself, surely there is something to be read between the lines when Xi Jinping comes calling to India instead of formally inviting Modi to Beijing. As R Jagannathan points out, perhaps his haste was a Chinese attempt to see for themselves the mettle of the new government.

India will have no shortage of allies if it decides to take its issues with China to the next level. They have their eyes on the lands of all the nations around it, the seas around it, and having firmly established themselves as the world’s manufacturing hub, on most global resources. They have made their intentions known to everyone everywhere, and I hope India will be there to remind them that they simply cannot bully and bribe their way into being a superpower.

Saving the #Ganges

With so much being written about cleaning the Ganga, I am fairly positive that I probably would not have anything new to contribute to the discussion. The NDA Government has been taking about it, and it seems that high level meetings and discussions have indeed begun in earnest, and there have been time bound commitments made by the political leadership.

The Ganges rejuvenation has been a key project of Narendra Modi, and multiple stakeholders have emerged who want to be a part of it, or have at least begun speaking about it. The Honourable Supreme Court recently pulled up the Government, asking them to show a plan to clean the Ganges, and that given the current pace of clean-up, it would take centuries for the river to be clean.

While there may have been a tinge of sarcasm in the Honourable Court’s voice, a more believable reality could be that the Ganges may not even survive till the end of this century.

It is expected that this government, under Modi, means business and would be a much more active government than its predecessor. In addition, in only a few months since coming into power, the Prime Minister has been leading India’s foreign relations from the front. Even as the Prime Minister is busy preparing himself for Xi Jinping’s arrival, a number of India’s traditional, and not so traditional partners, have offered their services and expertise for helping clean up the river.

The British Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, on his recent short visit to India offered Britain’s services, sharing their experiences from cleaning up the river Thames. As the Deputy PM rightly points out, the Thames flows through one of the largest cities in the world. However, it remains to be seen whether the Ganges, over 2000 kilometers long, with over 500 million living in its basin, can use the same solutions that helped the much, much smaller Thames.

Israel, now one of India’s traditional partners, is branching out of its role as our defence supplier, working on various issues such as agriculture. The Israeli Government, it seems, has already contacted their Indian counterparts with some proposals.

Globally, rivers are in decline. The Ganges has been identified as one of the ten most endangered rivers of the world by the WWF as far back in 2007, a list that includes other mighty rivers such as the Nile, the Yangtze and the Indus. Its fair to assume that India is not the only nation where its rivers are dying. India is not alone in following the global development pattern where development is synonymous with extraction, production and consumption.

The environment had been providing us plenty till a few decades ago, and it is only now that this whole pattern of development is being questioned. Unfortunately, humankind is hooked to this version of development, and it makes the task of weaning away towards a more sustainable model even more difficult. Why should our citizens be deprived of driving a nice car and using the latest gadgets, ask the developing nations.

As I have always believed, and I am not being very original when I say so, the Ganges cannot be resurrected without the active support, willingness and action from the people that depend on it. As I have already mentioned, it has one of the largest basins in the world, and supports millions of people directly and indirectly, by supplying water for everything from electricity to agriculture to drinking to manufacturing. Recently, the Prime Minister met with his key minsters and called upon the need to make the Ganges rejuvenation a mass movement.

Recently, the the Water Resources Minister, Uma Bharti, released a website that brings together all the Government schemes on cleaning the river.

The task of cleaning a mega river is firstly, not, and cannot, be bound by deadlines, secondly, the causes of its pollution are too many and far spread, and thirdly, the myriad of solutions that are required, keeping in mind the human complexities and necessities, ensure that this will be a very tough, and demanding task. This is not the first time that the task of cleaning the mighty river has been taken up. Thousands of crores have been poured in, and the Ganges has only gotten more polluted. A task of this scale will require nerves of steel, because I anticipate a huge opposition to many of the things that I believe are critical for this project.

The small industrial units linked across the length of the river would not want to spend extra to install equipment for effluent treatment, stack emissions or waste management, for example. The country has numerous laws on dealing with industrial waste and pollution, but these are largely disregarded by most industrial units because of lax enforcement, and corrupt authorities.

Similarly, lack of urban planning, low or nil sewage systems, and greatly underwhelming sewage treatment capacity have ensured that most of the human waste generated, right from the very mouth of the river in Uttarakhand, goes into the river as it is.

In my line of work, we often repeat – what cannot be measured cannot be managed. Measuring and monitoring of all industrial, agricultural and human activity in the Ganges basin is essential. Millions of litres of untreated sewage and effluents are poured into the river, and the Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar announced recently that polluting industries along the river will be measured 24x7.

I find myself spiritually, environmentally and socially linked with the Ganges. I have always found peace on her shores, seen her at Devprayag, where the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda become the Ganga, and at Kolkata, where the Hoogly is about to enter the ocean. I worry for the many species that it supports that are on the brink of extinction because of human activity. If this has to be done, the time is now. 

#Achhe Din?

A lot has been written, and is in the process of being written, about Narendra Modi's term in office as the Prime Minister. While the vast fan base of Modi, and the many thousands of conservative Indians who seem to have found a voice on social media, is refocusing its efforts in highlighting the new government's work, his critics have been more than vocal in asking where the acche din are.

No doubt, that kick-starting a behemoth that is the Indian system is not a work of days, or even months. For India to amply demonstrate that it has turned the corner after what many argue is one of its worst governed periods in independent history, it could take a lot time for any visible impact on the ground.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever way you look at it, the opposition is so weak that it can at best troll and flame bait the government. While the Government did face a sticky situation when it could not get the Insurance Bill passed, the ever optimist that I am, believe that was because the BJP is simply learning the ropes of running a government at the Centre, and it is not easy for anybody in the present government, who are all relative newcomers on the national arena.

This holds true for dealing with the media as well. The Prime Minister has more certainly gotten down to running the Government, and is much more sparse in his social media presence, and participation in Parliamentary debates. The Cabinet too, is not without its share of controversies. A lot has been made of Smriti Irani's educational background, a lot of it is artificially contrived if you ask me, and she recently got the NDA critics all excited when she claimed to have a degree from Yale, which, it turns out, is a short certification course she once participated in.

Another perpetual discussion that always rides pillion with the Government is the allegiance of Arun Jaitley. He's been known to be close to the Gandhis, he's been known to be close to NDTV, and the conspiracies rage on. Its another matter that he's in the line of fire for leading two of the Government's most important and high profile ministries - Finance and Defense.

Nevertheless, while the jibes on #achhedin continues to be the way to go for all critics and opposition, what I do believe in that we will see change. Undoubtedly the Government will face stiff opposition and criticism from the whole gamut of its usual and perennial critics, whether justified or not, and that Modi will have a tougher job of pushing through his agenda when there are a lot more stakeholders to convince, and a lot more toes to step on, but he can draw strength from the immense mandate he has received, to lead this country. Something that could be used to override an opposition that seems to be committed to block any of his decisions, with or without merit.

Each and every part of the system is crying for an upgrade. There are archaic laws and regulations that need to be updated or removed altogether, there are delivery systems that have leaks in every place, and there are people sitting in the government that are simply not able to deliver, or do not want to deliver. To change all this is not a matter of weeks or months, but as Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The only way is to keep chipping away on the block of rock that is contemporary India, and slowly but surely it will turn into something better.

I've been so busy lately that I haven't time to do much of anything else, other than take care of my responsibilities at home and at work.

I do get to spend some time on Twitter in a day, but there's just so much information and discussion on that forum that I can only take a few news bites and sound bites in a day.

Today, for example, I learnt that Rahul Gandhi was pouring his heart out in Rajasthan, invoking the deaths of his grandmother and father, and giving the people glimpses into his childhood. Frankly, I have never heard any of Rahul's speeches in full, and this is a speech I would have loved to hear.

The news of the digging for gold in Unnao is well, quite stale now. Of course, nobody thought twice about the Government of India sending a team from the Archaeological Survey of India an old fort site in a village in rural UP after a Swami is visited by the old King who was killed over 150 years ago (He was killed by the British for rising against them in the War in 1857, and at least this way his memory was reopened, which is the only good thing I see in this whole thing) who tells him there is over 1000 tonnes of gold buried underneath and that it needed to be taken care of.

What everybody did think twice, thrice, four times, and many more times is that Narendra Modi ridiculed the Government for sending a team from ASI to dig a site for gold based on a dream which may or may not be real. Apparently there were some snide comments made, some rebuttals made, and Modi, as reported in some sections of the media, had to tone it down. What a great day for the Congress puppets on Twitter that was.

There were some major changes in the ownership and editorship at the Hindu, which were again because of reporting on, you guessed it, Narendra Modi. It was well discussed on Twitter, but don't think the mainstream media really made much of it.

India is just waiting for the elections 2014, and everything that is being said or done at the government level is done only to change their fortunes in that direction. The Communal Violence Bill for example is the new poster child for the UPA Government, and it seems they are keen to ride to victory on the Muslim vote in one way or the other. Never has the time seemed more ripe for the marginalized Muslims of India to demand their fair share, and ask the Government to answer why they have only been fed promises and rhetoric for so many decades by Rahul Gandhi's forefathers.

Of course these questions won't be asked and therefore not answered. We live in our own vicious circle of misplaced priorities, and avoidance of asking the right questions. So lets continue enjoying the election juggernaut, and lets see whats in store for this great nation of ours.