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Settling border
issue Making it happen |
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Mid-day meals
The stalemate in
Egypt
The burger tree!
India’s
search
for energy security
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Making it happen The
Central food security ordinance will have to be ratified by Parliament during the monsoon session beginning on August 5 and chances of its getting through are high since no party would like to oppose this pro-poor legislation. Accordingly, states are preparing to roll out the scheme. Those ruled by the Congress are particularly enthusiastic about it, given Sonia Gandhi's push, though much groundwork remains to be done. Haryana and Delhi will launch it on August 20, Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary. Delhi, which is heading for elections later this year, has issued guidelines for the identification of eligible households. Punjab has its own atta-dal scheme in place and seems unsure about how to amalgamate it with the Central scheme. The ordinance enjoins the states to implement the food scheme in six months. The states are empowered to define the criteria for identifying beneficiaries. This is a crucial task. The existing public distribution system got discredited because of leakages. Now every state should take care to plug the PDS loopholes and formulate its own eligibility criteria, weeding out the undeserving and fake beneficiaries. The Aadhar scheme can help in proper identification of beneficiaries. The Central scheme is limited to 67 per cent of the population. If a state wants to extend the benefit to a greater number of people or offer food items in addition to cereals, it will have to bear the additional burden. The ongoing debate between some of the top economists over growth versus welfare is unlikely to spill over into Parliament. The government has taken the plunge. The Congress sees it as a game-changer. Opposition parties are rattled by the poll implications of the scheme launched close to the elections. Politics apart, here is a chance for the Centre and states to work together to eradicate malnutrition and hunger at the national level. It is a formidable challenge and a huge amount of the taxpayers’ money
(Rs 1.25 lakh crore a year) is being pumped into it. Making it a success is in everyone’s interest.
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Mid-day meals At
one time teachers were accorded a very high place in society. Blame it on commercialisation of education or the multiple tasks assigned to teachers, they have lost the high pedestal. They have been reduced to arranging children for political rallies and helping in the implementation of various government schemes. Had the teachers and principals not been assigned the job of supervision, and at places even cooking mid-day meals for primary schoolchildren, perhaps Meena Devi, Headmistress of the school in Bihar where 23 children died after eating the mid-day meal, wouldn't have been booked under such sections as 302 (murder) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC. While the government has improved the salaries of government teachers, it has robbed them of their dignity. One is reminded of the famous poem by Taylor Mali, an American poet and educator “What Teacher Makes”, written in response to a dinner table conversation that begins with “What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher…”, the poem resonates with the general perception that teaching is the worst career option left for those who cannot fit into better careers such as medical, law, management or engineering. Therefore, it was justified that to restore the dignity of their profession three lakh primary school teachers across Bihar boycotted mid-day meal duties. Teachers should not be used for implementing even the well-meaning schemes of the government. The PIL filed by the Meerut-based UP Pradhanacharya Parishad was based on a very valid objection against the orders of the District Inspector of Schools. The observation of the Allahabad High Court that the duty of school teachers is to teach and not supervise cooking of meals, given in response to the PIL is equally justified. Now, it is for the teachers to restore the dignity of their profession, by not knitting sweaters while on duty.
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To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved. — George MacDonald
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The stalemate in Egypt As
Egypt wrestles with the political stalemate following the coup and the deposition of President Mohamed Morsi, there is thus far no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Supporters of the former President and members of the Muslim Brotherhood have proved more tenacious than expected by continuing with weeks of sit-ins in a part of the capital Cairo while the Army-dispensed civilian outfit is going through the motions of setting about amending the Constitution and priming the announced schedule of holding parliamentary and presidential elections. The outcome has thrown up many contradictions. While the former President remains sequestered in a secret location and his supporters are sticking to their demand that he be reinstated, appeals from the interim civilian President, Andy Mansour, for their joining the new mainstream sound hollow. The only measure of flexibility shown by the Brotherhood was its decision to meet the visiting foreign policy chief of the European Union, Catherine Ashton, even though it had formerly snubbed the first senior US official's visit in the post-coup period. Plainly, the Brotherhood's constant refrain that Morsi be reinstated is entirely unrealistic, and perhaps saner elements in the Brotherhood are using it as a ploy to seek other concessions. Equally, it would be untenable for the Brotherhood to talk while its standard bearer remains incommunicado. It is also unfair that Brotherhood-supported newspapers and television stations should remain shut. Similarly, the accounts of the richer - some of them very rich - members of the Brotherhood will need to be de-frozen. How the Army and its supporters go about tackling these problems remains to be seen, but the portents are hardly encouraging. If the Army does indeed intend to return the polity to a truly civilian dispensation amidst doubts over its real intentions, it needs to begin the long process of co-opting the Brotherhood in the new dispensation. Inevitably, there are differences within the Brotherhood over the next moves it should make. Indeed, there must be second thoughts on the wisdom of the attitude of the former President in his haste to cement the rule of the Brotherhood to the disregard of roughly half the population with other views. Perhaps the power grab was inevitable after the Brotherhood had lived through 84 years of persecution at the hands of authoritarian rulers. The fear among many outside observers is that events in Egypt might take the shape of Islamists denied their due in Algeria taking up arms against the authorities in many years of guerrilla warfare. One difference between the two situations is that the Algerian Islamists were never allowed to rule once the military saw the writing on the wall. In Egypt's case, the Army recognised the growing agitation against it in the year it ruled after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Curiously, the Brotherhood government took care to leave the Army's vast economic privileges intact while getting rid of the senior-most officers and appointing General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who proved to be its nemesis, defence minister. Of course, one half of Egyptians came out on the streets to seek the Army's help in seeking to depose President Morsi. And unlike after Mubarak's overthrow, the Army remains popular. Initially, the Salafist Al-Nour party threw its weight behind the overthrow of Morsi only to change its stance later. And intriguingly, one politician, the redoubtable Amr Mussa, the long-time foreign minister under Mubarak and later the secretary-general of the Arab League, is playing his cards close to his chest, unlike Mohamed ElBaradei, the former international atomic energy chief who has donned the hat of vice-president overseeing foreign relations. There are signs that the Army is getting impatient in breaking the stalemate. The new call by the Army chief seeking to get the anti-Morsi crowds out on the streets to strengthen his hands against the Brotherhood has been met with the latter calling it a cry for a civil war. Orders have been issued for more arrests of Brotherhood leaders. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that both the Brotherhood and the Al-Nour party have rejected the Army's cal for talks. The Army, on the other hand, has issued a 'state of alert' putting more troops on the streets in greater Cairo. The Brotherhood sit-in in Cairo for more than three weeks is testing the nerves of the Army establishment. But General Sisi's decision to confront the situation head on is a high-risk strategy. There is deep feeling among Brotherhood supporters of being wronged by having their elected President - the first democratically elected office holder in the country's history - to be ousted in a coup. They acknowledge that mistakes were made, but they declare that those mistakes did not entitle the Army to depose him in a coup. Apart from Egypt's pivotal position in the Arab world, the United States views the country as an essential element in ensuring the security of Israel. The Obama administration is therefore huffing and puffing in refusing to call a coup a coup, which would entail an obligatory cut-off of considerable military aid. At the same time, Washington is coaxing the Egyptian Army to soften its stand in terms of offering concessions in the form of releasing the former President from house arrest. A slap on the wrist the US has now administered is to delay sending a consignment of F-16 fighter jets, part of the $1.3 billion annual military aid. In purely financial terms, Egypt has been rescued by its Arab neighbours in the form of a total of $13 billion aid package from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. The Sunni Arab Gulf monarchies are of course delighted that the Muslim Brotherhood has been deposed and the tsunami of the Arab Spring has been stalled for the present. But the dilemma for Egypt remains. Divisions in the country are deepening and continued Army rule, although clothed in civilian clothes can only be a temporary expedient if the country is ever to fulfil its
potential.
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The burger tree! Just
before the beginning of his summer vacation, my four-year-old nephew, Geetansh, was being taught the Hindi alphabet at his school. In order to enhance the learning experience of the children, the teacher used to draw images of certain objects, the names of which begin with the letter being dealt with. In this series, she drew the image of a Banyan tree and made the kids copy that on their notebooks. Now, when my sister - an accomplished artist herself - came across the sketch, she asked Geetansh what tree was that. "It's a burger tree!" replied the little one in a matter-of-fact tone, leaving his mother baffled. She maintained that it couldn't be so as burgers didn't grow on trees, but the kid was adamant that his teacher had told him so. When my sister went to attend a parent-teacher meeting a few days later, she found that many other parents were also trying to unravel the burger-tree mystery. "I had told them that it was a bargad tree," revealed the Hindi teacher, and everybody burst into peals of laughter. We also couldn't control our laughter as my sister narrated the episode. This also reminded me of an earlier one which took place last year. We were together during the summer vacation and one fine morning we went to a zoo located near our home. We saw a variety of colourful birds, ducks, langoors, jackals, panther and tiger. The zoo had a plenty of greenery and we could hear the chirping of birds nestled in the trees as we went around the campus. On our way to the crocodile enclosure, we heard the distinct cooing sound of the koel bird from a cluster of trees. At once, Geetansh, who I fondly call Geeta Ram, quipped: "Mama ka phone baja…" Actually, I had set the koel's cooing as the ring-tone of my cell phone, and the little Geeta Ram could link that cooing sound only to my ring-tone. Both episodes underline the widening gap between nature and us. Children of us, city-dwellers, don't climb trees or hillocks; they'd rather go on watching television for hours together. They're no more interested in playing marbles, stapoo or pithoo garam, and seem happy with their computer and smart-phone games. They may not wish or greet our guests, nor mingle with other children in the park, but they don't think twice before sending or accepting friendship requests on social-networking websites. Instead of going in for a splash in a pond or a puddle, they'd prefer a swimming pool or a water park. Nowadays moms think that their children would get sick if they play in the rain, and get dirty if they play in mud. And about their choice of eatables, the less said the better. We may blame our fast-paced life for the unhealthy trend, but our convenience-oriented lifestyle and over-protective mindset are also equally responsible for it. After all, when my father asks the kids where they would like to go for an outing and my two-year-old daughter promptly replies "Mall chalo", we just can't laugh it
away.
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India’s search for energy security
A large part of India’s population has a low energy access. Some 400 million Indians live without electricity,
and 700 million still use traditional biomass for cooking. This has environmental and health implications.
The
key energy security issues of India are linked to the need for energy resources for addressing growth imperatives and energy poverty. India’s energy securing strategies have had elements of both regional and nationalist approaches such as seeking pan-Asian cooperation, investments in transnational gas pipelines, energy consumer-producer dialogues, and more nationalist strategies, involving bilateral deals, trade arrangements, and overseas investments in energy resources by state and private energy companies. Whether this mix continues, or there is a tilt to one or the other will depend very much on how India perceives the global environment that it faces, and the space that it has to make choices to secure and deliver energy. Some key aspects of the Indian economy of relevance to its search of energy and resource security are: nLarge energy and resource needs to deliver growth: To eradicate poverty and meet its human development needs, the Planning Commission estimates that India needs to grow at the rate of 8–10 % annually to 2031/32 from 2003/04 as base. India’s ability to achieve this growth rate requires commercial energy to grow at the rate 5.2–6.1 % annually. According to the projections of the Planning Commission, total commercial energy supply will have to increase 5 times in 2031/32 over the 2003/4 level. Coal will continue to be the most important source of energy followed by oil. Minerals and metals such as limestone and copper and iron ore are required to meet its urbanization needs. nA growing and demanding middle class. India’s middle class is key to its emerging economy status. It is estimated that this group, 126 million in 2007–08, comprise 11.4 % of the total Indian households, but makes up 25% of total income and saves more than 55% of its income. As India urbanizes, the demands for energy and raw materials will grow to meet its needs of mobility, connectivity and comfort. The energy mix is primarily fossil fuel based, and largely dominated by coal, followed by oil and natural gas. Currently imports are 70% of oil requirements, 17% of natural gas and 12% of coal; this is projected to rise to rise in 2031 to 90% to 93%, 0% to 49% and 11% to 45% respectively. In case of non-fuel minerals, expectations are that demand for these will increase 5 fold between 2009 and 2030 for minerals and metals such as aluminum, copper and zinc. Its needs for copper concentrates are expected to further stress a tight global market. In case of other critical metals – molybdenum, rare earths, tungsten, and cobalt have strategic importance to Indian economy, as they are used as inputs into high technology or strategic sectors, with no or inadequate substitution opportunities available for these materials
Fossil fuel dependence Coal accounts for 53% of the total commercial energy supply in the country. Although it in principle has large coal reserves, the bulk of these are not extractable at current technology. It is estimated that only about 20% of coal reserves can actually be extracted, suggesting the need for large coal import dependence in the future. India is the third largest consumer of coal after China and USA. Oil accounts for 33 %of commercial energy consumption followed by natural gas at 8%. A large share (70 %) of oil is imported mostly from West Asia. India’s oil import dependency is projected to rise to 90 % by 2031. This rising import dependency and rising oil prices are a cause of great concern for India given that the oil payments impose a huge burden on the exchequer. Apart from the economic burden, there is also concern with the geopolitical situation in countries of West Asia which causes considerable worry about stability of supplies. Supply from politically unstable parts of the worlds also leads to significant price volatility as predicted supply shortages (whether real or perceived) usually result in industry purchasers stocking their inventories, resulting in high prices, followed by declining prices as buyers leave the market and run down their inventories. This is compounded by concern with regard to oil transit routes, especially the ’sea life lines’.
Supplementing fossil fuels Renewable energy’s contribution to the electricity mix in India in 2009 was 34% of which 78% was hydro and the rest included wind (90 %) and solar and other renewable energy (10 %). Of the various sources, wind energy capacity alone accounts for nearly 11 GW mostly in the southern part of the country. The problem with wind power is that it is seasonal and intermittent, and there is lack of predictability and inability to schedule the power that is to be fed into the grid. Despite all this, contribution of wind to grid power has been significant (70% of RE and about 20% of total electricity mix in 2010). Solar is the new focus of attention. The recent Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission with target of 20 GW by 2022 is a key institutional innovation for expanding solar energy in the country. India has put in place several interesting policy innovations to create markets for green energy and institutionalize energy efficiency in the country:
India has about 150 GW potential of hydropower potential even though its contribution to the total commercial energy mix remains small. In 2009, 39 GW of the 148 GW installed capacity of electricity came from hydropower. The reasons for such under-utilisation of capacity relates to poor and inadequate institutional arrangements to address environmental and social costs, approval issues, inadequate pre-project investigation, longer gestation periods, geological and hydrological risks (in construction and operation), lack of demand (in some of the home states) and in a few cases, inter-state (water availability) issues. Inter-state disputes can become a cause for holding up of hydro projects that involve common river systems between states leading to under-utilisation of hydro potential in the country. The disputes relate to sharing of waters, inter-basin diversion of water loom large in India. Nuclear energy has been of strategic importance to India for many decades, and it has been developed indigenously given the technology denial regime in place for India. At present, the installed capacity of nuclear reactors under operation is 4560 MW. The nuclear question in India is complex: there are some aspects of it which make it a more suitable energy choice for India, but from the risk angle it is a very problematic choice as discussed earlier. India has modest domestic reserves of uranium and faced constraints on the international trade of uranium due to the denial regime. Given limited resources, India has planned to develop a closed fuel cycle, which makes use of the full potential of the available nuclear fuel resources and also makes it possible to use thorium, which India has in abundance. The three stage nuclear energy programme involves the following: Near-term growth: Will be determined by success in locating additional uranium resources in the country and opening up of civil nuclear commerce as it requires using uranium to produce power and plutonium. Medium-term growth: will come from fast breeder reactors and adoption of closed fuel cycle The plutonium will be used as driver fuel in the second stage along with thorium of which India has one of the world’s largest reserves, to produce Uranium 233. Long-term growth: will depend on the development of technologies for deployment of thorium and fusion technology. In this third stage, power will be produced using this artificially produced Uranium 233. Uranium trade is an important step on the way to achieving nuclear self-sufficiency, as per the vision behind India‘s three-stage nuclear programme. The nuclear agreement with the USA helped facilitate access to much needed uranium internationally. Post the 2008 waiver by the Nuclear Supplies Group, India signed agreements with Namibia, Argentina, Canada, Kazakhstan, S. Korea and a broad based agreement with Russia. MoUs are also in place with UK & Mongolia. Negotiations are ongoing with Japan and EU; positive indications coming from Australia. S L. Rao, author of “Global markets, financial crisis and resource security” provides a set of priority actions for the energy sector:
Excerpted from the book "Energy and Resource Security" by Ligia Noronha as part of the TERI-KAS (Konard Adenauer
stiftung) dialogue series
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