climate change

                                                       

                                                                                               

                            SHIFT FOCUS FROM ECONOMY TO CONTAINING CLIMATE CHANGE

                                                                                                                    -SANJOG MAHESHWARI

              The time has come now that even a common citizen should be concerned with the consequences of global warming. Torturously scorching long spell of summer with scanty rainfall -far short of the average- that follows cyclone Aila this year are indications enough, if at all they are required, that further disastrous consequences of our apathy towards the problem could be just round the corner.  While global warming will affect everyone, for the obvious reasons, our poor will have to bear the brunt more than the rich. As droughts, cyclone and floods stalk the land, these environmental refugees, forced to leave their huts and hearths in search of a squire meal, will flood towns and cities year after each year culminating in such phenomenon becoming a part of our existence. On a broader canvass, under developed and the developing countries will have to bear greater burden than the developed countries.  The demon won't hear the argument that we emitted lesser carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere than the developed countries, and that our per capita green house gas emissions   still averages less than theirs.  Come what may, it sure will do what it invariably does: ruin our agriculture, eco-system and environment; endanger our very life and existence on this planet. The poor and the middle class that comprises above 70% of the population will suffer the most as their dependence on natural resources for survival is greater.  In India, this year alone, an estimated 7.5 million people are likely to be adversely affected by global warming.

            We will find it difficult, if not altogether impossible, not to accept the cap on our carbon dioxide emissions.

              At the domestic front we have no explanation   as to why we are keeping the vital interests of more than 70% of our population hostage to the greed and caprice of less than 10% of its rich and powerful?  It is high-time that we initiated proper action in this direction; cancelled all the big deals particularly pertaining to car-production and manufacturing, stopped the inflow of foreign capital into the country and shifted the focus from the economy to ecology, environment, forests, flora & fauna, and agriculture. We must also focus on developing and harnessing the non-conventional –renewable resources of energy in a big way. Another important plan on our agenda should be putting a very affective check on our burgeoning population by enforcing a package of the most severe penalties, punishments and disincentives on the offenders of the " one-family; one-child" norm as in China and scrupulously follow the Chinese way of tackling this" mother of the most,  if not all the problems".    Perhaps then we will have something to show to the world that we also mean business and are in  no way less concerned.  China with a decade long dedicated programme of population control will sure qualify for liberal concessions from the developed countries enabling it to give further impetus to its already accelerated industrial and agricultural growth whereas we, the prisoners of our populist policies, will be roughshod at every future climate-change meet.

              No doubt, these measures will grossly infuriate the rich and powerful in the country and our growth rate may also slow down.  But it would be a very small price to pay for warding off the total disaster and devastation.  Should we sacrifice the larger interests of 70% of the poor of this country which involves   their very survival at the altar of the insatiable greed and caprice of 10% of its rich and powerful?  Is the tag "bad boy of climate change talks" not too hot for our comforts? 

              As citizens it is our bounden duty to force the government to give up its populist policies and take affective steps to ensure that the water we drink is not contaminated, the air we breathe is not polluted and the food we eat is not adulterated.      

              Though the Copenhagen is behind us now, the US Administration under President Obama is most likely to push hard for an international agreement on climate change in future meets.  At home, the US Administration is pushing forward a 10 year ambitious programme for renewable energy resources with an investment of over $150 billion.   They are forcing the automobile industry to introduce very strict fuel efficiency norms to reduce vehicular emissions of the poisonous gases.  Of course, India and China must claim a commitment from the Industrialised countries to contribute certain percentage of their GDP to fund and finance climate action in the developing countries and  bring round the developed countries to share the green technology with them, but they must also make matching efforts to qualify for the favour and finances

              For the teeming millions of India, clean water to drink, fresh air to breathe and a green earth to walk on are far more desirable than the dubious distinction of being home to five out of ten richest persons in the world.

                                                                                                                      SANJOG MAHESHWARI

THE ANATOMY & THE HISTORY OF DIVISIVE POLITICS

We started out on our journey as republic with divisive politics. In fact, the malady is inextricably ingrained in the very system of our governance. It was for his successively leading the Congress Party to the winning post in all the general elections fought under his leadership on the strength of solid Muslim votes assiduously cultivated, fostered and nourished by him, that India’s first Prime Minister, Jawharlal Nehru earned the tag: “The First Muslim Prime Minister of India.”

He inherited the British policy of ‘Divide & Rule’ disguised it in “Quota & Reservation in jobs etc. for the selected sections of the society” on the basis of their ‘social’ as against ‘economic’ status, which has since reinvented itself, many times over, and in multiple forms, penetrating deep in the civic society and the polity, and has since come to be universally recognised, with loads of trepidation and frustration, as “Divisive Politics.”

While the minority (read Muslim) vote-bank still continues to remain the mainstay of the Congress Party’s political culture, the divisive politics, over the years, has displayed the uncanny tendency to blossom forth into multiple strains as it hybridized into V.P.Singh’s “Muslim-S.C &S.T.-OBC” variety, several years ago, but is still being fondly cultivated. fostered, and nurtured by the likes of Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, Amar Singh- the list is long. Public memory is proverbially short, but not so short as to forget how this strain of divisive- identity politics once catapulted the one of the wiliest cats of the jungle of U.P. politics to the top post, and brought the other one dangerously close to grab it.

However, in the sixties when it tried to spread its vicious tentacles in Maharashtra, the awakened and enlightened Marathi people could not resist but to counter it by breeding and developing its yet another strain. Their great leader- Bal Thackeray- founded Shiv Sena in the fifties. Under the leadership of much-venerated Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray, they went ahead to cultivate and breed “ Regional-cultural-linguistic” variety of it, christened “Maharashtra for Marathi.” As the poison kills poison, this culture is now proving a lethal weapon, not only against the divisive politics as such, but mainly so against those who, till recently, have been reaping bumper harvest of political gains by gleefully perpetuating it for the furtherance of their own entrenched vested interests for several decades now. It looks extremely ridiculous on their part when they criticise the most respected leader of the region for something what their own leadership had earlier invented and used to the hilt to repeatedly gain political mileage over its rivals in the politics in all its spheres. During the earlier seventies, the writer of these lines spent about 6 years in Nagpur where he, even then as a very young school-going boy, could palpably perceive the all pervading influence of the leader over the people.

Pretensions to the contrary apart, divisive politics of quota/Reservation in government jobs, seats in the educational institutions and other such matters selectively for certain targeted groups, even if draped and decked with the covering of social justice, does what it would invariably do-i.e. Dividing the nation,. Such act of preference to selective groups or communities, by any name, certainly disadvantages other communities, and as a consequence, keeps the nation divided. Unfortunately, the politicians across the board, cutting party-lines, keep sitting pretty while the governments run by them perpetuate this worst form of racism albeit in disguise of social justice even if it results in fragmentation of society, and divides the nation. Divisive politics by any other name cannot get any less vile. You cannot fool all the people all the time.

Where this politics of exclusiveness, quota/reservation, identity and vote-bank, religious-cultural-linguistic chauvinism, the stuff by which the Divisive Politics is made, would lead us to- Balkanisation of the nation, where else?

The interesting, though hugely disturbing, aspect of the phenomenon is that the quick-fix-solutions, instead of containing the malady which is inextricably intertwined with our very system of governance, go only to fuel its growth in different strains and forms. As no political outfit or individual can gain any ascendancy over its rivals without resorting to it, it would be highly despicable and downright in the bad taste to blame any individual politician or political party for embracing it in pursuance of their cherished political ambitions.

The culture of identity and selective politics and the politics of vote bank is integral to our system of governance and we will have to live with the evil so long as this system lasts. For winning the next election, all that a ruling political party needs to do is to distribute huge largesse from the Exchequer among the selected, targeted groups at the material time, during the run up of general elections. Thanks to the system, such ad-hoc measures have paid rich political dividends all the time in every election in the past, and can safely be relied upon for gaining political mileage over the rivals in the politics, in future as well.

The divisive politics has its roots in our system and as such it will require overhauling the system itself, if we are interested in destroying it-lock, stock and barrel. Blaming the individual politicians or the political parties for the evil is tantamount to not seeing the wood for the trees, and prove counterproductive.

The remedy lies only in replacing this system with the American Presidential model, and sooner we replaced our Westminster type Parliamentary form of governance by the Presidential model, the better it would be for the health of our democracy.

Roadside Dillema

This time around the drive to Aligarh had not been that bumpy and bone-rattling as it always invariably used to be, till only a year back. We started from Janakpuri around 6.00A.M., took N.H.24, past Indirapuram, turned right on to the G.T. Road, negotiated crowded market places at Dadari and Sikandrabad, skirted around Bulandshahr, Khurja and reached our destination in Aliigarh in good time-within 4 hours which included some time spent eating out breakfast by the canal bank at Bulandshahr. Earlier on similar errands, our romance with the U.P. Roads had never been so good and that made us complacent on our return journey back to Delhi a few days later.

The return journey was timed at 1.30P.M., ample by any reckoning, to be back to home by 5.30 P.M. Further, to safe on time and fuel, at Sikandrabad, we turned left taking the Greater Noida road (and that proved our undoing), drove through the busy vegetable market of the town with some difficulty , as by then, it had become quite crowded. Little did we think that the testing times await us only a few Kms. away.

The Sikandrabad level-crossing gate was closed and there it was: a mother of all traffic jams; or so we thought. There we remained stuck helplessly- for what then appeared to be ages; at that chaotic point, foaming and fuming, cursing our luck, and other fellow drivers who were maneuvering to go ahead of us in that melee. They generously returned our compliments. Fortunately for us, the altercations did not translate into full-blown road-rage. We didn’t have a twig to hit back the enemy, had he decided to attack us. We were, however, told that there was nothing unique about the traffic jam ( as also the altercations) at this point; it happens about five to eight times a day. We had to keep the engine running all the time, inching forward at the slightest indication of opening. In the meanwhile, the level-crossing gates, alternatively opened and closed at least two times before we could get the opportunity to cross over the rail-lines, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

There could be thousands of such level-crossings around the country, and if at every crossing the common citizens are confronted with the similar type of nightmarish experience four or five times a day, then where are we heading to? The tale of our miseries, however, was not to end here.

A few kilometers on, crossing a bridge over a canal, the road forks: one stretch going to Palwal to join N.H-2 there and the other going to Delhi via Greater Noida and Noida. The traffic transporting goods and people between the towns of the area, their hinterland and beyond merges at this god-forsaken place. Here again we got stuck, and waited interminably, braving all sorts of jam related hazards, for more than two hours. By that time it was dark also. In the headlights of the moaning vehicles, on those two narrow winding roads-one leading to Palwal and the other to Greater Noida- we could see endless line of all manner of passenger and commercial vehicles: buses, vans, tractors with trolleys attached, overloaded trucks, long vehicles, huge container platforms, tempos with passengers precariously hanging out from their open side-doors and, of course, cars with running engines all belching volumes of carbon-di-oxide in the atmosphere. The noise of blowing horns mingled with that of running engines and screaming drivers made for a picture perfect scene of chaos. I had been on the wheel all the time. Reaching home at about 9.00P.M., I had fever and was laid-up for a fortnight. By the time recovered, I had already lost 12 workings days plus three holidays besides a few hundred rupees on medicines and footing the Doctor’s bill .

I am not a pessimist, but it sets me thinking. What price the society has been paying since long in terms of lost man-hours, and economic and environmental costs for this lop-sided development where, in a predominantly agricultural country, the agricultural sector registers the GDP growth not even a quarter that of the rest of other sectors; infra-structure is not strengthened before embarking upon huge industrial projects, and the national resources are wasted in producing luxury goods to cater the creature comforts of the elite few of the society? Diabolic materialism and crass consumerism are robbing people of quality life and tension-free living.

An army of handsomely paid writers write reams eulogizing this growth where the poor and the middle-class India is forced to subsidize its rich and powerful to become still more rich and powerful. With loads of trepidation, I hear car manufacturers, year after each year, reporting 20 to 35% increase over the preceding year in production of their various models. Even presuming that 30% of their product is exported, it leaves us with suffocating number of cars to choke beyond capacity, our already saturated roads. Even at a modest guesstimate, if there are only one thousand Secundrabad ,Dadri type choke-points in the entire country, through which at an average 1500 passenger vehicles with average passenger load of ten passengers pass through, each losing an hour in traffic jams occurring with a frequency of four times a day, the colossal loss in terms of man-hours only will be worked out in the region of several lakhs a day. Add to it the fuel cost of thousands of idling engines on all these choke points throughout the country and hazards of atmospheric pollution caused thereby and you get a rough picture of mindless waste of manpower, money and material which could have easily avoided had they cared to develop and strengthen the infra-structure before executing industrial projects. The government’s ill-planned development policies and activities have been causing huge sufferings to the common man, besides entailing colossal waste of scarce national resources and manpower. When should we expect the government to abandon this “putting the cart before the horse” policy and rearranged the priorities?”

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

Roadside Dillema

SANJOG MAHESHWARI

                                                                                                                                                                                         

                                                          WHITHER DEVELOPMENT?

-           SANJOG  MAHESHWARI

              This time around the drive to Aligarh had not been that bumpy and bone-rattling as it always invariably used to be, till only a year back.  We started from Janakpuri around 6.00A.M., took N.H.24, past Indirapuram, turned right on to the G.T. Road, negotiated crowded market places at Dadari and Sikandrabad, skirted around Bulandshahr, Khurja and reached our destination in Aliigarh in good time-within 4 hours which included some time spent eating out breakfast by the canal bank at Bulandshahr. Earlier on similar errands, our romance with the U.P. Roads had never been so good and that made us complacent on our return journey back to Delhi a few days later.

              The return journey was timed at 1.30P.M., ample by any reckoning, to be back to home by 5.30 P.M. Further, to safe on time and fuel, at Sikandrabad, we turned left taking the Greater Noida road (and that proved our undoing), drove through the busy vegetable market of the town with some difficulty , as by then, it had become quite crowded.  Little did we think that the  testing times await us only a few Kms. away.

The Sikandrabad level-crossing gate was closed and there it was: a mother of all traffic jams; or so we thought. There we remained stuck helplessly- for what then appeared to be ages; at that chaotic point, foaming and fuming, cursing our luck, and other fellow drivers who were maneuvering  to go ahead of us in that melee. They generously returned our compliments. Fortunately for us, the  altercations did not translate into full-blown road-rage. We didn’t have a twig to hit back the enemy,  had he decided to attack us. We were, however, told that there was nothing unique about the traffic jam ( as also the altercations) at this point; it happens about five to eight times a day. We had to keep the engine running all the time, inching forward at the slightest indication of opening.  In the meanwhile, the level-crossing gates, alternatively opened and closed at least two times before we could get the opportunity to cross over the rail-lines, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

There could be thousands of such level-crossings around the country, and if at every crossing the common citizens are confronted with the similar type of nightmarish experience  four or five times a day, then where are we heading to?  The tale of our miseries, however, was not to end here.

  A few kilometers on, crossing  a bridge over a canal, the road forks: one stretch going to  Palwal to join N.H-2 there and the other going to Delhi via Greater Noida and Noida.  The traffic transporting goods and people between the towns of the area, their hinterland and beyond merges at this god-forsaken place.  Here again we got stuck, and waited interminably, braving all sorts of jam related hazards, for more than two hours. By that time it was dark also. In the headlights of the moaning vehicles, on those two narrow winding roads-one leading to Palwal and the other to Greater Noida-  we could see endless line of all manner of passenger and commercial vehicles: buses, vans, tractors with trolleys attached, overloaded trucks, long vehicles, huge container platforms, tempos with passengers precariously hanging out from their open side-doors and, of course, cars with running engines all belching volumes of carbon-di-oxide in the atmosphere. The noise of blowing horns mingled with that of running engines and screaming drivers made for  a picture perfect scene of chaos. I had been on the wheel all the time. Reaching home at about 9.00P.M., I had fever and was laid-up for a fortnight. By the time recovered, I had already lost 12 workings days plus three holidays besides a few hundred rupees on medicines and footing the Doctor’s bill .

I am not a pessimist, but it sets me thinking.  What price the society has been paying since long in terms of lost man-hours, and economic and environmental costs for this lop-sided development where, in a predominantly agricultural country, the agricultural sector registers the GDP growth not even a quarter  that of the rest of other sectors; infra-structure is not strengthened before embarking upon huge industrial projects, and the national resources are wasted in producing luxury goods to cater the creature comforts of the elite few of the society? Diabolic materialism and crass consumerism are robbing people of quality life and tension-free living.

An army of handsomely paid writers write reams eulogizing this growth where the poor and the middle-class  India is forced to subsidize its rich and powerful to become still more rich and powerful.  With loads of trepidation, I hear car manufacturers, year after each year, reporting 20 to 35% increase over the preceding year in production of their various models. Even presuming that 30% of their product is exported, it leaves us with suffocating number of cars to choke beyond capacity, our already saturated roads. Even at a modest guesstimate, if there are only one thousand Secundrabad ,Dadri type choke-points in the entire country, through which at an average 1500 passenger vehicles with average passenger load of ten passengers pass through, each losing an hour in traffic jams occurring with a frequency of four times a day, the colossal loss in terms of man-hours only will be worked out in the region of several lakhs a day. Add to it the fuel cost of thousands of  idling  engines on all these choke points throughout the country   and hazards of atmospheric pollution caused thereby and you get a rough picture of mindless waste of manpower, money and material which could have easily avoided had they cared to develop and strengthen the infra-structure before executing industrial projects.  The government’s ill-planned development policies and activities have been causing huge sufferings  to the common man, besides entailing colossal waste of scarce national resources and manpower.  When should we expect the government to abandon this “putting the cart before the horse” policy and rearranged the priorities?”

 

 

                                                                                                                -SANJOG MAHESHWARI