A great game that all sides can win
[hindu]
Pakistan is averse to discussing Afghanistan with India, fearing that would legitimise India’s interests in that country. But it would be in the interests of all three to do so
Two questions have increasingly taken centre-stage in discussions about what might happen in
Afghanistan after United States withdrawal in 2014. One, if it will become a proxy battlefield for India and Pakistan, the two big South Asian rivals, and two, if anything can be done to prevent this.
William Dalrymple, for instance, wrote in an essay for Brookings Institution this year that beyond Afghanistan’s indigenous conflicts between the Pashtuns and Tajiks, and among Pashtuns themselves, “looms the much more dangerous hostility between the two regional powers — India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. Their rivalry is particularly flammable as they vie for influence over Afghanistan. Compared to that prolonged and deadly contest, the U.S. and the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] are playing little more than a bit part — and they, unlike the Indians and Pakistanis, are heading for the exit.”
The assertion is not new. Western commentators have long put out that the new great game in Afghanistan is going to be between India and Pakistan. The theory goes that India’s search for influence in Afghanistan makes Pakistan insecure, forcing Islamabad to support and seek to install proxy actors in Kabul to safeguard its interests, and that this one-upmanship is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to stability in that country. As 2014 nears, the idea has naturally gained better traction.
India would have several problems with this formulation. The foremost is that such a theory panders to the Pakistan security establishment’s doctrine of strategic depth, in the pursuit of which it sees a third, sovereign country as an extension of itself.
India, for its part, views its links to Afghanistan as civilisational, and its own interests there as legitimate. Its developmental assistance to Kabul now tops $2 billion and it has undertaken infrastructure projects in Afghanistan. And, if the situation allowed, Afghanistan could become India’s economic gateway to Central Asia.
New Delhi also believes the “proxy war” theory buys into Islamabad’s allegations against India that it refutes as baseless. Since about 2005, Islamabad has alleged that Indian consulates in Afghanistan, especially in Jalalabad and Kandahar, which are close to the Pakistan-Afghan border, are a cover for anti-Pakistan activities. It alleges that Afghanistan is where India arms and funds Baloch secessionists. And after the Taliban unleashed a relentless campaign of terror inside Pakistan, allegations are rife that sections of them are on India’s payroll.
The Indian position would be that if there is a war, it will actually be a one-sided one, in which Pakistan targets Indian interests and Indians in Afghanistan through its proxies. The latest was the attempted bombing of the Jalalabad consulate in August. The deadliest, the bombing of the Kabul embassy in July 2008, was linked by the Americans too to the Haqqani network, a faction of the Taliban that is widely viewed as a proxy of the Pakistan security establishment. Despite repeated prodding by the Americans, the Pakistan Army has made it clear it will not go after safe havens of the Haqqanis in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
NEW DELHI’S CONCERN
Concerned that any instability in Afghanistan is certain to spill over across Indian borders, over the last two years New Delhi has suggested repeatedly to Islamabad that the two sides should talk about Afghanistan. But as Pakistan has emerged as a key player in facilitating talks with the Taliban, and while it has no problems talking to every other country with an interest in Afghanistan, including Russia and China, it has cold-shouldered India. The ideal course would of course be for trilateral talks involving Kabul, Islamabad and New Delhi. For, Afghanistan is not just a piece of strategic real estate but a sovereign country made up of real people.
Right now, though, Pakistan is averse to any idea of talks on Afghanistan, believe as it does that India has no role in there, and that talking would give legitimacy to New Delhi’s claim that it does. It already resents the India-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Treaty.
DIVERGENCE ON VIEW
The divergence surfaced starkly at a recent Track-2 dialogue convened by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung — a German think tank associated with the Social Democratic Party, which brought together retired bureaucrats, former generals, journalists, civil society representatives as well as one politician each from the two countries. One of the issues that came up for discussion was if there was at all a need for India and Pakistan to talk about Afghanistan.
Most, but not all, Pakistani participants and some Indians too were of the view that talking about Afghanistan was impossible so long as tension between India and Pakistan remained, and that right now Islamabad was in any case too preoccupied with the ‘reconciliation’ process in Afghanistan.
A suggestion was made by an Indian participant that in view of the approaching U.S.-set deadline for the withdrawal of its troops, and the possibility that a dialogue on other subjects between India and Pakistan was unlikely to resume until after the 2014 Indian elections, the two sides should consider discussing Afghanistan as a standalone subject in the interim. But this was dismissed by many Pakistani participants. Why should Pakistan jump to talk on something simply because India considered it important, asked one, when on every other issue, New Delhi behaves as if talks are a huge concession to Islamabad — including the recent Manmohan Singh-Nawaz Sharif summit in New York.
But a far-sighted approach perhaps would be to consider that none of the likely scenarios in Afghanistan after the U.S. drawdown looks pretty, and to weigh the consequences for Pakistan itself especially if, as one Pakistani participant rightly suggested, the Taliban refuse to play Islamabad’s puppet; after all, they did not when they ruled Afghanistan from the late 1990s to 2001. As well, the Afghan presidential election, to be held in April 2014, is sure to have its own impact, though it is still anyone’s guess if it will be held and whether the country will make a peaceful democratic transition. In Pakistan, many commentators believe the backwash from Afghanistan post-2014 is dangerously going to end up on its western/north-western borders. Strategic depth no longer holds Pakistanis in thrall the way it used to in the last century. A Pakistani participant pointed out, only half-jokingly, that his country had ended up providing strategic depth to Afghanistan through its two wars, rather than the other way around.
As for the view that Pakistan and India cannot talk about Afghanistan without repairing their own relations first, it might be worth considering if such a discussion could actually contribute to reducing bilateral tensions, given that the concerns over Afghanistan do not exist in a vacuum but arise from other problems in the relationship between the two. It could even provide the opportunity the Pakistan side has long wanted to bring up with New Delhi its concerns about Balochistan.
By rejecting Kabul’s entreaties to New Delhi to play a bigger role in securing Afghanistan post-2014 than just training Afghan security forces, India has signalled it is sensitive to Pakistan’s concerns. As Afghanistan’s immediate neighbour, Pakistan is right to claim a pre-eminent stake in what happens in there, and India should have no quarrel with this. As was pointed out at the Track-2 meeting, Pakistan has suffered the most from the two Afghan wars; it provided refuge to Afghans during the first war in the 1980s. More than 100,000 Pakistanis live in that country. The two countries are linked by ethnicity, culture and religion; over 55,000 Afghans cross daily into Pakistan through the two crossing points Torkham and Chaman, not to mention the hundreds who cross over the Durand Line elsewhere.
What Pakistan could do in return is to acknowledge that as an important regional actor, India too has legitimate interests in Afghanistan, and also as a route to Central Asia. After all, if Pakistan considers itself to be the guard at the geo-strategic gateway to Afghanistan, it must also recognise that squatting at the entrance can only serve to neutralise rather than increase the gate’s geo-strategic importance. On the other hand, India-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan could open up a world of opportunities for both, and who knows, maybe even lead to the resolution of some old mutual problems. As both countries grapple with new tensions on the Line of Control, Afghanistan may seem secondary on the bilateral agenda. In reality, it may be too late already.
Many strides in food security
[hindu]
The foundational work done in the 1960s has made it possible for India to make access to food a legal right. But more needs to be done to sustain the progress.
This is one of the most significant years in India’s agricultural and national history. At Independence in 1947, we were suffering from acute food shortages that led to the introduction of food rationing. Later, we started depending on imported food, largely under the PL480 programme of the United States, although the country’s population then was only a little over 300 million. In 1966, the year Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister, India had to import nearly 10 million tonnes of foodgrains to ward off a famine.
BUILDING A RESERVE
In the latter half of 1966, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai and I went to meet Indira Gandhi to discuss issues relating to the use of remote sensing to map coconut root wilt disease in Kerala. She turned to me and asked: “How soon can we build a foodgrain reserve of 10 million tonnes?” It was clear she was worried about dependence on imported food to feed our population, a majority of them farmers and farm labourers. Also, it became clear to me later, that Indira Gandhi was convinced an independent foreign policy could be built only on a foundation of food security based on home-grown food. This led to her determination to achieve food self-sufficiency as soon as possible, and to always maintain substantial grain reserves.
The relationship between food self-reliance and national sovereignty became evident when several important decisions became possible only because we had built up sufficient foodgrain reserves. Thus, India’s assistance to Bangladesh in its liberation struggle, help to Vietnam to avoid famine following the unification of the country in 1975, and its ability to conduct nuclear implosion tests at Pokhran, were all possible only because it had become food self-reliant in the early 1970s. General Vo Nguyen Giap, who was largely responsible for Vietnam gaining freedom from France, and being unified, would tell me whenever I met him in Hanoi in the early 1980s, that Vietnam owes much to Indira Gandhi for saving it from widespread famine soon after unification. Indira Gandhi asked me to visit Vietnam in 1975 to develop a long-term strategy for food self-reliance. This led to India setting up a Rice Research Institute in the Mekong delta to assist in harnessing the untapped yield reservoir in rice in the delta. Today, Vietnam is a major rice exporter.
The foundation laid by Indira Gandhi in the 1960s has now made it possible to make access to food a legal right. The transition from the ship-to-mouth existence of the 1960s to the Right to Food with home-grown food commitment, as enshrined in the National Food Security Act of 2013, is a historic one.
There is, however, no time to relax. The monsoon and the market are two major determinants of the fate of farmers, and we should do everything possible to insulate them from the adverse impact of both climate change and price volatility. The pathway to achieve these twin goals has been laid out in the reports of the National Commission on Farmers, submitted during 2004-06.
INSTRUMENT FOR INTEGRATION
Agriculture is a powerful instrument for national integration. Wheat and rice produced by Punjab farmers help feed many parts of India. Farmers everywhere have a common need, namely, opportunity for assured and remunerative marketing. They are willing to share their knowledge and expertise freely without thought of intellectual property rights.
Striking progress in improving the yield of crops in the early 1960s came from a shift in plant breeding strategy involving attention to the performance of populations rather than of individual plants. This emphasis on population performance led to a quantum jump in the yield of crops. Similarly, we need to assess our progress by using population performance as a yardstick to measure excellence. National integration is our heritage.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
In mid-1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote in their book The Population Bomb: “Sometime between 1970 and 1985 the world will undergo vast famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death. That is, they will starve to death unless plague, thermonuclear war, or some other agent kills them first. The United States should announce that it will no longer ship food to countries such as India, where dispassionate analysis indicates that the unbalance between food and population is hopeless.”
Almost at the same time, in July 1968, Indira Gandhi released a special stamp titled the Wheat Revolution, thereby announcing that India had embarked upon the path of self-reliance in foodgrains through a revolutionary change in agricultural technology and policy. It is therefore a great privilege to receive an award bearing her name.
Also, the purpose of the award is an area dear to my heart: a nation that is united in its commitment to the principles of non-violence, secularism, social and gender equity, self-reliance and love and respect for all.
India has become the first nation in the world to make access to food a legal right. The right to information can be implemented with the help of files, but the right to food can be implemented only with the help of farmers.
To correct an institutional mismatch
[hindu]
It is important to build a democratic civil-military relationship so that the nation does not face a crisis.
The editorial page lead article in
The Hindu, “
The general and his stink bombs” (September 30, 2013) flagged the “dysfunctional relationship between our democracy and the military.” This serious issue, directly impacting on a citizen’s security and country’s sovereignty, needs to be addressed in its proper perspective.
To do so, we need to draw on the centuries-old wisdom of Kautilya, reiterated in modern times by the General-turned-President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower: “When diplomats fail to maintain peace, the soldier is called upon to restore peace. When civil administration fails to maintain order, the soldier is called to restore order. As the nation’s final safeguard, the army cannot afford a failure in either circumstance. Failure of army can lead to national catastrophe, endangering the survival of the nation.”
This sums up the role performed by our military and the criticality of an abiding and democratic civil-military relationship, lest the nation should face a catastrophe. It should be realised that in war or conflicts, military men do not offer the “supreme sacrifice” just for money or rank. There is something far more precious called “patriotism and honour”, and this is embedded in the Indian Military Academy credo which none of the civil servants or politicians has gone through but most military leaders have. The civil-military relationship should be moored on such an anchor.
Not a democratic equation
This is not so in India’s current “democratic dispensation” wherein the politico-civil elite continues to suffer from the feudal-aristocratic mindset of Lord Alfred Tennyson (“Charge of the Light Brigade” – 1854): “Theirs not to reason why,/Theirs but to do and die.” This was reflected in the observations made by the Union Minister of State for Defence while delivering the Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa Memorial Lecture in mid-2012: “The military forces have remained loyal to the elected government and have been its obedient servant.” Such an equation is not democratic.
Ironically, it is the military leaders who have attempted to define a democratic civil-military relationship. In his treatise “The Soldier and the State” (1998), the former Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, lays it down with a fair amount of clarity: “The modern military profession exists as part of the government insofar as the term ‘government’ includes the executive departments of the nation-state... Modern democracies therefore pay great attention to the supremacy of the political class over the military in governance, normally referred to as ‘civilian control of the military.’ This is clearly how it should be, since all ultimate power and decision making should be wielded by the elected representatives of the people.”
On the eve of demitting office in 2012, General V.K. Singh fully endorsed this view with a compelling caveat: “I am a firm believer in civilian supremacy over the military in a democracy. I subscribe to the views of Admiral Bhagwat. However, civilian supremacy must always be rooted in the fundamental principles of justice, merit and fairness. Violation of this in any form must be resisted if we are to protect the Institutional Integrity of our Armed Forces.”
The combined views of the former chiefs of the Navy and the Army set forth certain non-negotiable imperatives for the civil-military relationship: democracy as a vibrant and functioning entity with the “elected representatives of the people” running the government as per established democratic norms; the military profession existing as part of such government; civilian supremacy to be exercised by the “elected representatives of the people”; such supremacy to be rooted in the principles of justice, merit and fairness; a violation of this can be resisted to protect the institutional integrity of the armed forces.
Whether governments in India are being run as per established democratic norms is a burning question. Even so, India’s professional military is meant to protect, safeguard and sustain our democratic republic wherein live one-sixth of the human race. Therefore, it is imperative that a democratic civil-military relationship framework existed, was practised and sustained. But unfortunately this has not even been attempted; the civil-military relationship is not mandated in the governance system.
Matters drifted, intrigues prevailed and things have happened in recent years and months that strike at the very roots of the Army as an institution.
Fallout
The fallout of the sordid happenings on the Indian Army was best summed up by defence analyst Maroof Raza: “The system has closed around the chief and this will only embolden the bureaucracy. The fallout will be that at least for two generations, no military commander will raise his head. And the message for military commanders is that it isn’t merit or accuracy of documents that will get them promotions, but pandering to the politico-bureaucratic elite. The last bastion of professional meritocracy in India has crumbled. The damage will be lasting.”
Despite such a damning indictment, nothing has been done to undo the damage. What is worse, the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister chose to ignore the letter written by Admiral L. Ramdas, the former Navy Chief, in July 2012 raising serious military and national security issues and seeking a high-level inquiry and remedial action.
This epitomises the near-total collapse of the institutional framework and the atmosphere of suspicion and alienation between the civil and military hierarchies. This is evident from the recent high-octane controversy following the ‘leaking’ of the top-secret report on TSD, a covert unit of the Army, the activities of which are directly related to the safety of the soldiers on the borders, retribution on the enemy and the security of citizens. This episode, which has created a lot of bad blood between mainland India and Jammu & Kashmir, appears to be a ploy to justify the scrapping of this unit by the Army Chief. This has led to consternation among senior Army officers, who confide that this action is the single major cause for the recent spurt in cross-border intrusions and ceasefire violations that have led to several deaths on the Pakistan border.
It is better to light a candle rather than continue to curse darkness. Civil and military establishments are all a part of governance that comprises the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, mediate their differences and exercise their legal rights and obligations. The military should be an intrinsic part of such a governance mechanism.
Democratic governance is participatory, transparent and accountable and promotes justice and the rule of law. Governance includes the government, which is its dominant part, but transcends it by taking in the private sector and civil society. All three are critical to sustain human development and national security. Because each has weaknesses and strengths, democratic governance is brought about through constructive interaction among all three — which role civil society would play.
Parliamentary oversight
Once we broad-base the “defence” or the “military” and move towards “national security,” civil society participation becomes imperative. Governance then could really become a catalyst for civil-military relationships, and bureaucracies cannot play spoilsport.
This, coupled with parliamentary oversight, is the best form of “civilian control of the military” in a democracy, and that is what military leaders have defined. A set of rules governing such a relationship between civilian authorities and the military, and balancing the financial needs of defence and security, are the needs of the hour.
With this concept at the core, steps could be taken to build and sustain a democratic and functional civil-military relationship by implementing recommendations by expert committees and groups lying buried in the vaults of the Defence Ministry.
The BASIC countries have countered the US position and demanded that the global climate agreement to be signed by 2015 should not focus just on actions to reduce greenhouse emission reductions but also resolve how these actions in the developing world be funded, supported by technology transfer and the adaptation needs met.
BASIC ministers call for specifics on funds to mitigate climate change
[hindu]
The BASIC position was put forth in a meeting of the four countries – India, China, South Africa and Brazil in Beijing on October 29. The meeting was held to strategise ahead of the annual climate negotiations that are to start in Warsaw on November 11.
The statement put out by the four countries jointly at the end of the meeting said, “(The BASIC) Ministers reiterated that the 2015 agreement should address all elements referred to in paragraph 5 of Decision 1/CP.17 in a balanced and comprehensive manner, and should not just be confined to mitigation.”
The decision referred to in the statement demands that countries discuss all the key elements of the UN climate talks - mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, transparency of action and support, and capacity-building for reaching a comprehensive 2015 agreement.
More than 190 country members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have decided that a new agreement would be signed by 2015 to combat climate change and be made operational by 2020.
The US had earlier suggested in a formal submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that the 2015 climate pact should concentrate on emission reduction targets and issues of how countries are held accountable for what they claim to be doing and the rest of the concerns should be relegated to less legally onerous forms of decisions under the UN climate convention.
The BASIC countries and several developing countries have expressed reservations that separating mitigation actions from the enabling support – financial and technological – would diminish the existing obligations of the developed world to pay for actions of the poorer countries.
The BASIC ministers meeting in Beijing countered the US proposal, stating “Ministers called for a more balanced, structured and formal mode of work focusing on the four pillars of the Convention, i.e. mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology.”
The BASIC countries went on to say, “Ministers noted with concern that pre-2020 ambition gaps exist not only in mitigation, but also in adaptation, finance, technology and capacity building as well as in equitable access to sustainable development.”
The phrase 'ambition-gap' has often been used in public domain to refer only to the difference between the reductions that existing commitments of countries - to cut greenhouse gas emission - can achieve and what is required to keep temperatures from rising to dangerous levels. The BASIC countries have tried to push the point that the gap in action exists as the developed world has not provided the resources to the poorer countries to do more, as is currently required under the UN climate negotiations.
LPG subsidy to continue for all consumers
[hindu]
All household LPG consumers will continue to receive subsidy even if not linked to the Adhaar card, a top oil company official said in Kolkata on Saturday.
“All consumers irrespective whether seeded with Adhaar card or not will continue to get LPG subsidy,” Oil Corporation executive director Andrajit Bose told PTI in Kolkata.
He said that apprehension that subsidy for those not having the card would be discontinued from today was not true.
However, the current system of subsidised LPG cylinders for non-Adhaar linked consumers would be valid only for the next three months, he said.
Indian Oil was the co-ordinator for all oil PSUs in West Bengal. Therefore, there was no reason for apprehension for HP Gas and BP Gas consumers also, he said.
An advertisement by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in the day’s dailies on linking LPG subsidy to Adhaar card for Kolkata, Howrah and Coochbehar districts with immediate effect, created panic among LPG consumers here.
West Bengal Chief Minister expressed shock and pointed out that only between 15 to 20 per cent of consumers had received Adhaar cards so far.
The IOC official said that customers who had already linked or seeded their card number with the LPG distributor and banks for cash transfer, would be mandatorily migrated to the new system.
In other words, linked consumers would buy cylinders at the market rate and the subsidy would be transferred to their bank accounts directly.
Moreover, government would transfer an average subsidy for LPG in advance to the bank account when the consumer booked it for the first time in the new system.
Customers would continue to get subsidies at the time of delivery for nine cylinders in a year.
Govt cuts import tariff on gold, hikes silver
[hindu]
The government on Friday slashed the import tariff value of gold to $ 440 per ten gram and raised it on silver to $ 738 per kg, in line with global prices of the precious metals.
The import tariff value is the base price at which the customs duty is determined to prevent under-invoicing.
The tariff value on imported gold was hiked two days back to $ 442 per ten gram, while it was kept unchanged at $ 699 per kg for silver.
Normally, the import tariff value is revised on a fortnightly basis. The sudden revision has taken place in view of volatility in the global prices.
The notification in this regard has been issued by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), an official statement said.
Apart from precious metals, tariff value on imported brass scrap has been slashed to $ 3,840 per tonne from $ 3,933 per tonne maintained till Thursday.
However, the tariff value on imported vegetable oils like crude soyabean oil, RBD palm oil and others have been raised.
Import tariff value on crude soyabean oil has been increased to $ 1,006 per tonne from $ 952 per tonne and tariff value on RBD palmolein has been raised to $ 900 per tonne from $ 869 per tonne in the review period.
The import tariff value on gold and silver has been changed taking cues from the global market. In Singapore, the yellow metal is ruling down at $ 1322.2 per ounce and white metal at $ 21.87 per ounce.
In the domestic market, gold is being sold at a high premium due to supply crunch caused by government measures to restrict the import of precious metal in an effort to cut current account deficit.
India, the world’s largest consumer of gold, imported 393.68 tonnes of the yellow metal during the April—September period of this year, as per official data.
The government has taken several steps to reduce gold imports including hike in custom duties.
We need our slaves
[dte]
India is for the most part a Teflon society. Nothing sticks. It’s as
if the grime and bloodiness of our largely medieval ways of thinking and
acting have nothing to do with us. It’s always the problem of the
“other”, invariably the fault of the “system” and “we” are not to blame.
Millions of young children work when they should not. Many of them
are employed in hazardous industries. Many of them work as bonded labour
for some small debt their parents or grandparents could not repay. But
we all know that. Millions of women are similarly exploited and
sexually, too. We are familiar with that. Men and boys are not free from
this scourge either. Perhaps, that’s the reason the release of Global
Slavery Index 2013 by Australia’s Walk Free initiative caused hardly a
ripple here. The index put India as the country with the largest number
of modern day slaves but there was no outrage, no collective horror.
How should there be? Slavery is part and parcel of our way; we live
with it comfortably. How else would we run our homes, our industries,
our service sector, our agriculture? India has in recent years zoomed to
second place among cotton exporters. How else would we have managed
without children picking cotton from the fields?
With an estimated 13.3-14.7 million enslaved, India accounts for
almost half the 30 million slaves that this new index has found. These
are overwhelming numbers—China comes a distant second with 2.9
million—but way below that estimated by the US State Department in its
United States Trafficking in Persons Report 2013. That put the forced
labour at an estimated 20-65 million, which to me sounds a more
realistic assessment than Walk Free’s. But both emphasise the scale of
the problem within India. Trafficking is mostly internal and as the
latter notes with obvious shock: “Many of India’s enslaved have not been
moved from one place to another— they are enslaved in their own
villages.” So India ranks No. 4 in a list of 162 countries.
What has not escaped either of these reports is that most of the
enslaved are from the lowest castes and other disadvantaged social
strata—men, women, and children who are forced to work in quarries,
brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture and garment factories. “A common
characteristic of bonded labour is the use of physical and sexual
violence as coercive means,” says the report. And it’s not just debt
bondage to a local landowner but also because they are born into slavery
because of caste and customary social and hereditary obligations.
A few years ago, Planning Commission member Narendra Jadhav had given
me his book Untouchables, the story of his family, much of which was
based on his father Damu’s diaries. I can never forget the searing,
wrenching first chapter in which Damu is forced to guard a corpse found
floating in a well in his village till the police officer from the
nearest town came on the scene. That chore was given to Damu after he
had run all day before the revenue official’s tonga to herald his
arrival. Hungry and exhausted he guards the corpse for a day and half,
and when the fauzdar arrives he is ordered to bring the body out of the
well. All because Damu belongs to the Mahar caste of Dalits and is
expected to do such things as a hereditary custom—and for free. For
refusing to do as ordered Damu is flogged by the police and left
bleeding and would have been killed had not the village chief
intervened. That was in 1930.
In 2013, some of these egregious customs may have ended in many parts
of the country but bonded labour, despite laws to end it, still
flourishes. In 2011, an ILO Committee of Experts had urged the
Government of India to carry out a national survey on bonded labour
because findings from research studies had shown that millions of such
workers were still being used in agriculture and in industries like
mining, brick kilns, silk and cotton production and beedi-making.
Although one such exercise to identify and rehabilitate bonded labour
had been conducted some years ago, the ILO felt it was necessary to
repeat it. However, “local officials are not currently encouraged or
supported to find bonded labourers”.
I have a major gripe with this report. Why do the authors describe
slavery as a “hidden crime”? At least in India that is not true. The
country flaunts “the full spectrum of different forms of modern slavery,
from severe forms of inter-generational bonded labour across various
industries to the worst forms of child labour, commercial sexual
exploitation and forced and servile marriage”.
From army of minors and women employed by the prospering middle
classes as household slaves to children forced to beg in the streets,
it’s all out there in the open. The only thing is we don’t call it
slavery—or anything of the kind. That’s not our way.
Mercury treaty still sketchy
[dte]
The
Minamata Convention adopted on October 10
is a big step forward in phasing out the use of mercury—a silvery,
odourless element that earned Victorian hatmakers who used it the name
of mad hatters. The highly toxic element debilitates people and causes
dementia and other diseases.
The international conference organised by the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) at Minamata city in Kumamoto, Japan, aims
at curbing the health and environmental damage caused by the element.
Ninety two countries signed the treaty to phase out the use of
mercury and mercury-based products by 2020, and over the next five
years, the signatory countries will invest in developing mercury-free
solutions.
The convention also decided to set up a Global Environment Facility
Trust Fund with an investment of US $10 billion for research and
development.
While experts have welcomed the Minamata treaty, they believe it might not be enough to check the use of mercury.
Satish Sinha of Toxic Links, a non-profit working on hazardous
wastes, says while the convention saw for the first time countries with
opposing foreign policies coming together to sign a treaty, “there is a
long way to go”.
No emission targets
Sinha points out that although the treaty calls for phasing out of
certain products, there are no emission targets for important
industries. The treaty leaves it to the signatories to fix emission
targets, he says.
While it draws a timeline for phasing out a range of products,
including batteries, clinical equipments, cosmetics, the treaty has not
specified any date or timeline to stop the usage of mercury in artisanal
and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) and coal-fired power plants, the
largest emitters of mercury.
UNEP stated on October 12 this year that ASGM and coal-fired power
stations are the biggest sources of mercury pollution worldwide. Miners
inhale mercury during smelting and mercury that runoff contaminates
fish, the food chain and people downstream. About 727 tonnes of
mercury is annually emitted from ASGM operations, especially in western
Africa.
Anti-hazardous chemicals campaigners such as International
Plaster-of-Paris and Elimination Network (IPEN) are also unhappy with
the convention’s outcome.
“Minamata-like tragedies are already taking place in areas
surrounding ASGM sites, though most are hidden from public view.
However, provisions to address mercury pollution through ASGM are very
weak (in the convention treaty). For example, the current text allows
import of unlimited quantities of mercury for use in ASGM with no
phase-out date,” says Olga Speranskaya, co-chairperson at IPEN.
Close to 2,000 people died in Minamata city due to the release of
methyl-mercury in the industrial wastewater by a chemical factory
between 1932 and 1968. The toxic chemical bioaccumulated in shellfish
and fish in Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea, which, when eaten by
the people, resulted in mercury poisoning.
Next only to ASGM, coal burning for power and other industries
contributes about 475 tonnes of mercury to the manmade emissions.
According to a UNEP report this year, the mercury content of coal varies
widely, introducing a high degree of uncertainty in estimating
mercury emissions from coal burning.
However, the Minamata treaty only calls for the usage of best
available emission-control technologies in new power plants, boilers and
smelters. “For the existing and older plants, the signatories have been
asked to determine emission targets,” states the treaty.
“Many countries are rapidly expanding their national electricity
generating capacity, including construction of many new coal-fired power
plants. The treaty’s proposed provisions will not likely result in a
reduction of the number of coal-fired power plants in operation or
even slow their growth,” said Speranskaya in a letter to UNEP, adding
that for developing nations the treaty does not come into effect for the
next 10 years.
Mercury-free devices
Days after the treaty, the World Health Organisation and Health Care
Without Harm—a campaigner for mercury-free health devices— launched the
Mercury Free Healthcare by 2020 campaign. The treaty calls for a ban on
usage of mercury by 2020 in certain medical and monitoring devices,
including barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, manometers and blood
pressure monitors.
However, the treaty exempted vaccines containing thiomersal, an
anti-septic and anti-fungal preservative which has mercury. While the US
and Europe had phased out the vaccine preservative about 15 years ago,
thiomersal was at the centre of the debate between health activists
during negotiations at the Minamata Convention.
“The continued use of thiomersal is unjustifiable and phasing out its
use in all products globally should be expedited. It is unethical and
unjust to continue exportation of thiomersal-containing products to less
developed countries from countries that no longer accept its use,”
says Eric Uram, executive director at SafeMinds, a US-based health
advocacy group.
UNEP has also exempted the usage of mercury for ritualistic and
religious purposes after Nepal objected to the inclusion of mercury for
spiritual purpose under the phase-out list. Even the Hispanic and Yoruba
communities in the US and the Caribbean consume mercury for
ritualistic purposes. Nepal’s representative at the convention, Govinda
Prasad Kharel, undersecretary and senior environmental engineer, has
told the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel for Negotiations in
Geneva that strong religious beliefs are attached with mercury, so it
should be allowed to be used for religious purposes.
Nevertheless, the treaty has been taken seriously by 138 nations, who
approved of the convention in October. The treaty states that
signatories have 10 years to phase out mercury completely, a period,
Sinha believes, will be crucial as stakeholders will have to find
innovations to phase out anthropogenic emissions of mercury.
India chooses not to sign Minamata treaty
India did not attend the diplomatic conference that was
held at Minamata city in Japan to adopt the mercury treaty on October
10. Alok Saxena, chief engineer at Central Electricity Authority, who
represented India in the final negotiations on the mercury treaty at
the Geneva Conference, said that though India approves the treaty, it
wants a Montreal Protocol-like arrangement to phase out mercury. The
Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer had a provision to set up
a fund to help developing nations phase out ozone-depleting substances.
India is the second largest emitter of mercury after
China. Estimates prepared by researcher Ragini Kumari of Toxic Links in
2007 show that 90 per cent mercury emissions in India come from coal
used by power plants and allied industries. With no emission standards
in place for mercury, India is promoting several coal power plants
which emit mercury.
Recently, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)
found that the power project in Singrauli in Sonbhadra district of Uttar
Pradesh, which is considered to be the next powerhouse of India, has
become a health hazard. In 2012, CPCB analysed 11 coal samples from
Singrauli and found mercury concentration in coal ranging between 0.09
parts per million (ppm) and 0.487 ppm. In 2011, Delhi-based non-profit
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) found 0.15 PPM mercury in
coal at Anpara village of Sonbhadra district. CSE’s findings show that a
1,000 MW thermal power plant is emitting at least 500 kg of mercury
every year in Singrauli alone. |
Minamata highlights
Banned
- Mercury mining will be stopped by 2027
- Compact
fluorescent bulbs of 30 Watts or less using more than 5 mg and high
pressure mercury vapour lamps for general lighting purposes will be
phased out by 2020
- Use of mercury in switches, relays and batteries will be banned by 2020
- Cosmetics using mercury will be banned by 2020
- Mercury-based barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, manometers and blood pressure monitors will be banned by 2020
- Use of mercury in chlor-alkali production to be phased out by 2025 and in acetaldehyde production by 2018
Exempted
- Use of mercury for dental amalgam
- Vaccines that use mercuric compound thimoseral as a preservative
- Use of mercury in button zinc silver oxide and button zinc air batteries
- Mascara and other cosmetics for eye where mercury is used as preservative
- Defence products with mercury
- Mercury used for research
- Use of mercury for religious practices
Regulated
- Use of mercury in coal-powered power plants, smelters and boilers.
- Mercury levels in cold cathode ray fluorescent lamps and external electrode fluorescent lamps
- Use of mercury in Artisinal and small-scale gold mining
- Mercury used in polyurethane, vinyl chloride, sodium or potassium mehylate or ethylate production will be reduced by 50 per cent
