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A nuclear nightmare
The Siachen question |
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Death of a doctor
Beyond ‘Do Bigha Zamin’
Playboys of the golden track
While disasters and degradation seem to be great levellers, a reality check shows that the impact of environmental degradation hits women, particularly the rural and urban poor, far more than it hits men. It impacts negatively their health, income-generating options, education and even domestic life. And yet, women are not at the forefront of policies that will safeguard their environment and their well-being
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A nuclear nightmare
It
is a worst-case scenario too horrifying for words: terrorists take over Pakistan and its huge nuclear stockpile falls into their hands gratis. The accumulated weaponry is so daunting that the zealots can hold the whole world to ransom, and even vaporise a large section of it. Islamabad, of course, discounts such a possibility in public and so does the US, but a top American expert, Dr Jack Caravelli, a former adviser to at least two US Presidents, has now revealed that secret plans are in place to take control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in case the unthinkable does take place. Volatile elements in Pakistan can be depended upon to ignore the rider that the US would act only if the country falls to terrorists, and condemn this contingency plan as yet another frontal attack on its sovereignty after the Osama strike. But for the rest of the world, this revelation would be somewhat reassuring, given the heightened fears over the safety of the nuclear stocks and installations. The threat is real and immediate. Although a Taliban spokesman has asserted that it has no plans to launch such an attack, since “Pakistan is the only Muslim nuclear power state”, nobody is taken in. Significantly, a prominent Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader, Sajjad Mohmand, has pledged to liberate the atomic weapons from the control of “traitors ruling the country and use them to defend Pakistan and Muslims worldwide”. The threat is ominous. Paklistan’s nukes may be widely dispersed at secure places but the fear of at least some of these weapons and facilities falling into wrong hands is itself chilling. The Mehran naval airbase which was attacked on May 22 is only about 25 km from the Masroor air base, where Pakistan is believed to have a large depot of nuclear weapons that could be delivered from the air. There are enough extremist officials within the military establishment to facilitate such a raid. The threat perception has become more acute ever since Pakistan showcased its capability to build low-yield short-range plutonium-based weapons that are mobile and can be transported and used easily. If these fall into the hands of jihadised elements, the temptation to use them as terror weapons will be immense.
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The Siachen question
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Pakistan is in a situation where its stand defies logic in its dealings with India, it chooses to play the China card. This has been noticed during the latest round of talks on the Siachen glacier demilitarisation issue. Knowing well that any reference to China will be disapproved by India, the Pakistan Defence Ministry representatives who held talks on Monday and Tuesday with their Indian counterparts in New Delhi pushed for China to be represented during the negotiations because Beijing controls the Shaksham valley in the Siachen area. Besides this, Pakistan wants India to withdraw its troops from the vantage points held after great sacrifices without the areas’ proper demarcation. How can India vacate the areas it had captured in Operation Meghdoot without any guarantee that they would not be surreptitiously occupied by Pakistan? Islamabad’s stand is that India’s occupation of those areas has altered the status quo that existed when the Simla Agreement was signed. But the truth is that there is no mention of these Siachen points in that accord. India and Pakistan were faced with a similar situation during their talks on the Siachen issue before the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, which killed the composite dialogue process that was on between the two sides. Then also India insisted that the areas under its control must be demarcated before the withdrawal of its troops, but this was not acceptable to Pakistan. Islamabad’s refusal to accept the demarcation idea clearly shows that its intentions are not pious. The next round of talks, scheduled to be held in Islamabad, can be fruitful only if Pakistan substantially accommodates the Indian viewpoint. The standoff after the talks that concluded on Tuesday was already in the air because of the confidence deficit between the two sides. An atmosphere conducive to any agreement between India and Pakistan is missing today. It is difficult to say when the situation will improve. In fact, the tension between India and Pakistan is likely to go up owing to Pakistan’s unwillingness to punish all those guilty of the Mumbai terrorist killings despite India having provided enough proof to nail them.
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Death of a doctor
The
unfortunate lynching of a doctor by convicts in a Bihar prison raises several uncomfortable questions about prison administration, the role of the police and that of medical practitioners themselves. Although the state government acted promptly, completing an official inquiry within a day and quickly booking the culprits, who are life convicts, its failure to take immediate action against prison officials remains baffling. It is clear by reports coming out from the prison that the convicts colluded with a section of the prison staff to call the doctor on a false pretext of serious and sudden ailment. When the doctor, who had earlier resisted pressure to write false medical certificates to stall the transfer of the convicts to a central jail, entered the ward in question, the convicts fell upon him and lynched him. The officials in the prison cannot escape their responsibility for not taking sufficient precautions before sending the doctor in and for their failure to check the claim of sudden illness. The collusion between inmates and the jail staff is fairly common in Indian prisons. Sporadic raids by the police have often led to the discovery of mobile phones, firearms and home-cooked food besides luxury items denied to the inmates. In the jails of Punjab, even banned drugs and substances have been smuggled in as prison officials looked the other way. Influential inmates and the ones who enjoy notoriety and clout in the underworld are also known to have enjoyed privileges that are normally denied to the convicts and those under trial. What is less known is the complicity of jail doctors. Many of them are too willing to write false certificates to enable prisoners to move into hospitals outside or even to claim temporary insanity in their defence. The tragic incident in Bihar should prompt a wider scrutiny into all that is wrong with our prison system. At the same time, unacceptable behaviour and violence resorted to by inmates need to be tackled differently. One of the many possible suggestions could be to isolate such elements , specially those who are already convicted as in the instant case, and send them to prisons far away from their own state.
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You cannot sit on the road to success for if you do, you will get run over. — Anonymous
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Beyond ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ Tolstoy’s
famous question, “How much land does a man require?”, was answered when the Count who had ruthlessly exploited his serfs was buried in a grave measuring 7 x 4 x 4 feet. And that, Tolstoy concluded, was all the land a man requires. Is corporate and infrastructural greed in India today destroying the small, hapless farmer, the bedrock of traditional society and culture, for a pittance in the name of some “public purpose” on behalf of the greater common good? Are these “land wars” over land acquisition the apocalyptic end of everything or no more than a painful transition to a new stage of social equilibrium? Land acquisition is part of the story of civilization. All traditional societies are land/farm based. But there comes a time when needs, population pressure, innovation and the desire to better their lives drive communities to foster industry. Land is acquired for habitation, infrastructure and manufacture, and farmers find themselves able to feed growing numbers through increased productivity of land and water and/or trade. After a period of adjustment, all benefit. The trick is to smooth the transition, not fight it mindlessly as some neo-Luddites would do in India in the name of ecology, displacement, culture and habit. These are not empty values but they can be exaggerated beyond their true worth. The other major problem is that critics tend to view these issues with tunnel vision and in the here and now. They lack perspective and ignore the relevance of both time and space. Both these permit tradeoffs and compensation and must be factored into any calculus. A dynamic society in terms of numbers and rising expectations will be overwhelmed by mounting impatience and social pressures if it merely stands still wringing its hands, hoping that the flood will pass. Too many worry about what might happen to their ideology or caring missions for the disadvantaged should the poor begin to stand up. They fear intellectual and moral displacement. Several fallacies coalesce to confuse thinking. Some believe that nature is unchanging and that all we see around us is pristine. On the contrary, nature is fickle and some of it replicable. Others ignore population growth. India was 336 million in 1947, is 1.2 bn today and could grow to 1.7 bn by 2060. Yet our land area remains the same. Land acquisition is inevitable. The notion that diversion of land for industry will jeopardise food security is fallacious. The overall area required is but a tiny fraction of available land, except in particular locations, whether it be for dams, mines, factories, communications or townships. Can we do without better infrastructure and connectivity? If SEZs are required to keep only 30 per cent of land acquired for “production”, is the remainder necessarily grabbed by the land mafia? The rest is required for roads, services, schools, hospitals, banks, markets, parks and so forth and for housing the work force in what are green-field cities. These parameters must surely be regulated. But to exclude them from industrial planning would be to cast the entire burden of housing, transport, other infrastructure and urbanisation on municipal authorities or hell-hole shanty towns. It is often asked why the developer of a public-private project like the Taj Expressway, currently in the public eye, should be given adjacent land at “throwaway prices” for real estate, golf courses and even a Formula One race track. The answer is that the developer, Jaypee, is to build the Rs 11,000 crore expressway at its own cost. Since nobody has this kind of surplus money, Jaypee will generate the funds by developing and selling housing and other facilities that will provide the wherewithal to build the expressway. Such packages need to be formulated within given guidelines and be subject to regulation. And this is what is being done. Why the hurry? Because development has a multiplier in terms of income, employment, secondary activity and revenue to the state while delay entails loss for everybody. Again, with a national requirement to add 10 m jobs net per annum, just to absorb new entrants to the labour force, let alone cater to the huge backlog of unemployed, underemployed and distress migrants, time matters. Disparities and neglect have spawned naxalism, unrest and social violence. These could destabilise the state. The land can no longer provide. Uneconomic holdings are resulting in farmers selling their land and becoming labourers or seeking non-farm occupations. Farmers do want to sell land – for education and to better their life chances. But they must get a fair deal and some share in incremental values that come with land use changes and economic growth. How this is done can be negotiated and there cannot be on one rigid all-India formula. A consensus is being developed on the 1894 Land Acquisition and Relief and Rehabilitation amendments. Many states and some corporate houses have evolved innovative packages. Industrialisation does not only mean large industries. The tiny and small sector must be assisted to grow. Agro-processing and byproduct utilisation offer huge employment and productive possibilities. Tribal interests and forest rights must also be protected but tribal India does not want to be caged in living museums. Tribals aspire for a better life, developing at their own pace. Neglect of the Fifth Schedule has been the primary reason for tribal distress. This is still nowhere on anybody’s radar screen, so hollow and uninformed is the debate. Poverty is India’s greatest polluter and ecological enemy. Steady 9-10 per cent growth over the next decade could eliminate stark poverty and underpin social and economic rights as the undermass rapidly wins empowerment. Jairam Ramesh has fought the good fight and come to the right conclusion. Growth is not the enemy of the environment. He has pleaded against techno-phobia and growth scepticism. At the same time he has rightly posed limits to growth in the medium and long term. In doing so, he recalls Gandhi’s axiom that there is enough for everybody’s need in this our world but not enough for everybody’s greed. That should be the bottom
line.
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Playboys of the golden track SOMETIMES a picture can convey a story and a state far more eloquently than what is possible even in a thousand words. Capturing an event or a moment on camera, at just the right point, is not every press photographer’s forte. At an army recruitment rally at Amritsar, nearly 18,000 prospective candidates were put through the basic physical fitness test of running. That only 1,200 measured up to that test tells its own tale of the pathetic state of physical fitness of the youth of Punjab. But it is the picture of a young man collapsed, with face down and crumpled body, lying on the track, exhausted and spent, that made a telling story. Drugs and liquor (thanks to the Punjab government’s drive to earn ever more revenue by promoting sale of liquor and the politico-police nexus in the state, for smuggling of drugs) has taken its toll. This sad picture takes the mind back to the days when Punjab’s youth was known for his physique, fitness and endurance. It was in the early fifties that the All-India Athletics were held at Government College, Ludhiana. Those days, the college stadium used to be full of young boys and girls doing the rounds of the ‘track’. Some were preparing for the big event and the rest were there just to keep fit. At the great event, Jagdev breasted the tape to win the gold in the 400 metres low hurdles, while Hardev took the gold in the 110 metres high hurdles. Yet another ex-student from the college, Flight Lieutenant Amit Singh Bakshi, sailed home in the 400 metres to take the gold. We collected some more gold in the relay races. It was a big day for the college, though the greater show was yet to come. At the long jump pit were displayed boards indicating India, Olympic and World long jump records. It was Jaijee from the college who created a sensation. As he kicked off from the board and leapt into the air folding himself and then midway in the air opening out like a long compressed spring, he sailed well past the line indicating the Olympic record. A deafening roar reverberated through the air and everyone in that stadium was on his feet. The judges assembled to closely examine the ‘sandbar’ and found a small ‘nick.’ Whether it was the result of Jaijee’s spike touching it or the staff repairing the ‘sand bar’ doing a shoddy work, there was no telling. The judges in their wisdom decided not to take note of that historic leap, sending a wave of disappointment in the crowd. Jaijee had to be content with just gold. Today, we ask ourselves, what has become of the youth of Punjab, leave alone the playboys of the golden track, or for that matter the state’s Milkha Singhs! That one picture of a young man, as he lay collapsed on the track, viewed in the backdrop of the time when Punjab’s youth dominated the physical fitness field, epitomises the sad story of Punjab ’s downward slide, not only in physical fitness but in almost every other
field.
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While disasters and degradation seem to be great levellers, a reality check shows that the impact of environmental degradation hits women, particularly the rural and urban poor, far more than it hits men. It impacts negatively their health, income-generating options, education and even domestic life. And yet, women are not at the forefront of policies that will safeguard their environment and their well-being
Sabita
smokes 20 cigarettes a day-and not on the sly. She has one square meal spread over three days. She does a half marathon every day, part of it carrying weights as heavy as 10 kg. She looks much younger than her years. We are not talking about a Size-0 anorexic gym-hitting model who every third urban teen is waiting to emulate. Sabita, in fact, is just eleven years old -but looks younger than nine. While most of her upper middle class counterparts are close to attaining puberty, Sabita still sports the body of a child that is a long way from adolescence. Never heard of her? That's because she is not famous. Women's lives, particularly in the Third World, are so intimately interwoven in innumerable ways with their environment that changes and degradation have immediate as well as far-reaching impact on their lives directly and indirectly. Since they play a critical role in income-generating and community sustaining activities like cooking, gathering fuel and fodder, looking after children and the elderly, farming, fishing and selling the produce, every environmental change or crisis comes bundled with class-gender effects. These include an increase in the workload, poorer access to resources, deteriorating health and deprivations along with an unfair decrease in return and benefits. Hence, sustainable development demands the recognition and incorporation of these in any programme or policy that purports to address issues of environment and grassroots development.
Harsh reality
While the metrosexual man is occasionally seen cooking, cleaning and tending to baby with a smile in urbane commercials and soaps, the reality for a large majority of women is completely different. As one descends the economy ladder, the gender divide in chores becomes more marked. Urban signs of convenience — like refrigerators, gas stoves, electricity — begin to disappear lower down the economic scale, and so does the man's share in 'domestic chores'. In fact, the woman's presence begins to increase not only in running the house and caretaking activities, but in sharing the breadwinning, irrespective of her age, health and the additional demand of other responsibilities. Since ensuring there is food on the plate is a woman's job, all associated activities too become her responsibility - from procuring the grains, meat and farm produce, getting fuel, and water and ensuring that the whole exercise is done in time, no matter what it costs her. Development activities that include creating structures and destroying vegetation makes her domestic chores more time-consuming as she trudges through longer and more difficult terrain or procedures to collect fuel - whether she is using twigs, wood, or kerosene. It could mean hours gathering twigs, preparing and making use of cowdung or in harder times, dry leaves and vegetable and farm waste. Or waiting endlessly for her share of kerosene. It could mean unending treks for water, more exhausting hours of cooking and cleaning and dragging out her daughters from school to help her do all this. Since receding forest cover and spreading urbanisation directly impacts the quantity, quality and nearness to water, fuel and fodder the energy left for direct agricultural or income-generating activity reduces steadily. This often forces girls to leave school to help at home or even find work. The whole scene leads to harder work, poorer economic returns and steadily worsening nutrition and health. A vicious circle that pushes women deeper into poverty. It is not surprising that women pay a greater price when environmental degradation takes place. Deforestation, water scarcity, soil degradation, building and urbanising activities, exposure to agricultural and industrial chemicals and organic pollutants. They all affect women's workloads, productivity, nutrition, health, development and overall well-being. A family's health suffers when fuel shortages force families to consume raw or partially cooked foods, as these can often be toxic, especially if these are from animal sources. Women and girls suffer the most since in most places they eat last and the least. Women are more exposed to the hazards of polluted water than men. They are not only the primary carriers of water, but they wash clothes and utensils, bathe the children and cattle, mostly with polluted water. Moreover, since childcare is primarily the woman's responsibility, when children get infected, women are more likely to catch the disease. When firewood is scarce, people switch from using logs to little twigs and branches, then they move to crop residues, cow dung and even dry leaves. This reduces the dung available for manure. Those that can afford, switch to chemical pesticides - leading to a whole new batch of problems for man and beast from exposure to pesticides. Women's unique biology renders them and the children they breastfeed more vulnerable to the poisonous effects of pesticides. Exposure to certain agricultural and industrial chemicals and organic pollutants, especially as a result of shifting to chemical fertilisers and pesticides from conventional options like cow dung and dry leaves (which are increasingly used as fuel to save time and effort spent in travelling long distances to gather wood) increases women's vulnerability in pregnancy and childbirth as well as to diseases and delayed growth among adolescent girls.
Broken homes
As food becomes scarce during extreme conditions like drought, men migrate to towns, but the women are left behind with the children and the old. Very often men find new partners and abandon the women they have left behind. Households where women are the sole bread earners tend to be poorer. This is a worldwide phenomenon and one of the factors why 70 per cent of the world's poor are women. In India, a fourth of all poor families have women as primary breadwinners. The consequences on children raises numerous questions about the schooling programmes needed in areas suffering from an ecological damage. Most rural schools show low female enrollment and high female dropout - particularly in those seasons when the cumulative burden of work at home and in the fields is very high. Merely providing schools even within easy reach, even with sops like free meals and uniform, is not enough since a heavy workload on the mother means the daughter is denied education even if there is a school nearby. While protecting the environment, making food, fuel, water and fodder easily available is an important political agenda as a long-term mission to improve the lot of women and raise literacy levels. Equally important, in the immediate future, is the schooling format to keep with the local agro-labour calendar giving children time to help their mothers, rather than have girls pulled out, especially during peak labour season.
Policy-making role
The gender tilt of these consequences stems from traditional gender inequalities in the division of labour and in the distribution of subsistence resources, access to assets, income-earning opportunities and participation in public decision-making forums. Women's active participation in forest protection and wasteland development schemes ensures success and promotes gender equity, increases women's participation in public decision-making bodies, enhances women's bargaining power within and outside the household, and contributes to their overall empowerment. Women's absence from policy-making bodies limits their influence over governance. Worldwide, women hold less than 20 per cent of seats in government. And though women are keenly affected by environmental degradation, they are rarely involved in policy decisions at the local and national levels. This limited participation means their perspectives; vulnerabilities, risks, needs, knowledge and best solutions are often ignored.
The Kolkata-based commentator on social issues is a Sir Ratan Tata Trust Fellow
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Sabita is every other girl in the most backward areas, who has been denied schooling so she can help her mother. Her weightlifting and marathon are the increasingly lengthening treks to fetch fuel and water. Her 'smoking' comes from the long hours cooking over a smokey chulha for the family. She gets to eat if and when there is something left over after the menfolk have eaten. And these are privileges when the going is good. Drought, floods, famine, epidemics, pollution of soil, water or air - all these make the going even tougher. Her lifestyle ensures that undernourishment keeps her looking smaller than her years as milestones like puberty are delayed. The same circumstances, coupled with the burden of several pregnancies will ensure that she looks and feels far older than her years a decade later - if her environment lets her live that long. She is not confined to the rural hinterlands. A Sabita is as easily found in the growing number of urban slums and new settlements that mushroom around new developmental activities - upcoming buildings, highways, metro-rails and flyovers that invariably spawn new urban clusters of migrant labourers and their families.
Studies have shown that in most rural areas, females on an average spend more than seven times as many hours in wood and water collection as males. A WHO estimate says that the energy used to carry water may consume over one-third of a woman's daily calorie intake. Coupled with poor access to sufficient food, malnourishment is an inevitability. Cooking on chulhas or cheap kerosene stoves which consume too much fuel and emit hazardous smoke affects women and children in particular. Indoor air pollution kills more women in developing countries than does atmospheric pollution. A fireplace operating burning 4 kg of wood for an hour generates 4,300 times more carcinogenic particles than 30 cigarettes. A chulha is 500 times more polluting than an oil burner and 1000 times more than heating with gas! Cooking on a chulha calls for burning one kg wood per person. Every kg emits 129 mg of carbon monoxide while a cigarette emits only 58.8mg (so that's where Sabita's smoking comes from). One of the reasons biomass energy has received so little attention in national energy planning is that it is seen as 'women's fuel'.