The Filthy Delhi Air: How to Control Vehicular Pollution?

While adopting advanced emission standards is important, one should not lose sight of the low hanging fruits that can help improve the quality of air.

In November last year, environmentalist Sunita Narain and senior advocate Harish Salve alerted the Supreme Court of India to the dangerous level of cancer causing Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 in Delhi’s air. As if statistics were not enough, in theatrics of sorts, they pulled out a PM measuring machine and informed the judges that PM 2.5 levels were four times the safe limit inside the courtroom. Alarmed at city’s inhabitants breathing polluted air, the court asked the government to file a response to the documents filed by Mr. Salve.

Delhi has an arduous history of battling pollution, and surprisingly it is not the executive or the legislature but the judiciary that has stepped in to fight against air pollution in Delhi. Almost 15 years ago, Delhi switched its public buses from Diesel to much more innocuous Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) following a Supreme Court order. The replacement of entire fleet of diesel run public transport with one fueled by CNG was immensely successful in bringing down pollution levels in the capital.

        Levels (annual average) of Critical Air Pollutants in Delhi over the past 23 years

However, after almost a decade of breathing relatively clean air, Delhi has lost the battle against air pollution, becoming the most polluted city in the world as per the findings of a World Health Organization (WHO) study. The improvement in air quality achieved because of cleaner CNG based public transport has been nullified due to the sheer number of vehicles on the road. Today, Delhi has more cars than Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai combined and is adding 1400 new cars to the roads each day. Given the heavy diesel subsidy (withdrawn only in 2015), almost half the cars in the city today run on Diesel - a declared carcinogen - as compared to the year 2000 when only 4 percent used Diesel. In this situation, it is not surprising to learn – courtesy a study done at Jawaharlal Nehru University – that 62 percent of all fine particles are contributed by the transport sector.

Particulate matter present in the air is a threat to human health. Owing to their small size these particles enter the bloodstream by penetrating the lungs, causing cardio-respiratory problems. To this end, the report on Global Burden of Disease puts air pollution as the fifth largest killer in India, causing a loss of $18 billion due to shortened lifetimes and inflated medical expenses.

Despite damning statistics, governments have been tardy. Stirred by the poor air quality and government apathy towards environment, advocacy groups have been vociferously demanding quicker implementation of Euro IV norms in 2015-2020 against the 2017-2025 deadline proposed by the Auto Fuel Vision and Policy. At present the pollution norms in India are 10 years behind those in Europe and the demand to align the Indian Bharat Stage (BS) norms with the Euro norms is justified and in the right direction but suffers from some practical constraints in areas of fuel refining and engine technology.

Any vehicle emission reduction program has two essential goals; a decrease in overall vehicle emissions and the elimination of harmful by-products of combustion like NOx, CO, PM et cetera. The former can be achieved by improving the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. During the decade between the year 2000 and 2010, India witnessed an annualized 1.3 percent improvement in fuel efficiency to 16.5km/L. However, to achieve the target of 21km/L by 2021-22, an annualized 3 percent improvement is required. This requirement necessitates the use of a lean Air-Fuel combustion mixture (more air, less fuel) in the engines. Though it may sound counterintuitive, a mixture of more air and less fuel when burnt produces a higher temperature inside the engine, on account of complete combustion of the fuel. A higher combustion temperature in turn breaks down nitrogen (N2) present in air to form harmful nitrous oxides (NOx). The NOx so formed can be treated using exhaust aftertreatment devices but these devices are damaged by the high sulfur content of the fuel used in India (BS III Sulfur content – 350 ppm).

Thus any reduction in vehicle emissions requires a fuel with low sulfur content (10-50ppm) and lean burn engines with exhaust aftertreatment device. Both require large amounts of capital investment in refining infrastructure and product development, leading to cost escalation in price of fuel and vehicles for the consumer. Therefore, any up gradation of emission regulation can only be incremental, given the extreme price sensitivity of the consumer in a developing economy like India.

In face of the National Green Tribunal order banning diesel vehicles over 10 years of age, the government will be forced to look towards near term solutions that can arrest further deterioration of air quality. If such measures are not taken, then it will be long time before Delhi could breathe clean air. The NGT order though in right spirit, would not only cause financial hardship to vehicle owners but will also be ineffective in reducing pollution. A study at IIT Delhi highlights that these old vehicles are not a major source of air pollution in the city. The report argues that only 7% of the vehicles on the roads are over 10 years old and a ban on these vehicles will reduce PM 2.5 levels by only 1%. A more pragmatic approach would be to make a fitness test for vehicles over 10 years of age mandatory. This way, vehicles exceeding the emission limits will be de-registered and pulled off roads instead of a blanket ban.

Other measures, aimed at reducing total number of vehicles on the road include strengthening public transport systems like metro, bus services and ensuring last mile connectivity for users of Metro etc. Singapore has been extremely successful in building a strong urban transport network thereby limiting the number of vehicles on roads. Easy availability of taxis discourages ownership of private vehicles. The proliferation of mobile taxi services like Uber, Ola Cabs etc gives us the opportunity to take many private vehicles off the roads and reduce traffic jams, pollution and parking woes of the city. However, the same taxi services can also discourage people from using mass-transit options like bus and metro. A deeper study is awaited to ascertain the environmental impact of the new taxi services on urban roads.

Massive traffic jams are a problem for all major cities in the world, a paper published by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health estimates that by 2030, the economic cost on account of fuel wastage due to road congestion would be around $100 billion in the 83 cities that were part of the study and $17 billion would be spent as healthcare expenses in these cities by the same year. In a smart measure, Paris recently adopted road rationing by allowing vehicles with even and odd registration plates to drive on different days. Such measures have been adopted in other high pollution cities like Beijing as well, and have been successful in reducing traffic snarls and air pollution levels.

Delhi being a commercial hub in North India, attracts large number of commercial vehicles, these trucks entering the city are a major source of diesel pollutant, given that most of these vehicles are BS III compliant and do not follow the latest BS IV norms on account of their registration with transport authorities outside Delhi. The movement of BS III trucks through the city should be limited and they be charged a pollution tax on entering city limits. This cess could be used to fund clean environment initiatives.

Finally, from the aspect of sustainable mobility, it is important to promote electric and hybrid vehicles. Delhi has a significant number of e-rickshaws but government should also encourage electric cars by way of low interest loans or reduction in road tax for such vehicles. This will go a long way in curbing urban pollution.

While long term measures like advanced emission standards will still take many years to kick in, it is important that we capture the low hanging fruit by ensuring better traffic management, improved public transport services and alternate energy vehicles, if we are to effectively control air pollution.

This post was originally published on 31st May 2015 at policywonks.in 

My Advice To Mr. Modi: 4 Big Steps That Will Help You Become A Complete Statesman

Politicians often spar over everything, ideology or no ideology; the issue should help them win votes. So it is not surprising to see that when distressed farmers in the country are driven to a point of suicide, politicians within government and without are doing what they do best – trade charges and grab headlines.

Today, India is at an important crossroad where we can either continue to make sanctimonious noise and let our democracy slide into decay, or seize the hour and embark upon building national institutions with renewed vigour. Without doubt, if there is one person who is a spring well of this vigour, it is Prime Minister Modi. He has vision, boldness, and an appetite to take tough decisions for the nation’s. Here is a list of four decisions that will engrave his name in stone, and complete his transformation from a politician to a statesman.

1. Free Education Of Political Influence:

Given the twists and turns in the education policy that we see today, from Delhi University going back and forth on Four Year Undergraduate Program to mid-session cessation of German language teaching in government schools, or even worse, the frequent change in curriculum based on the ideology of the political party in power, education has become a game of ping-pong. Such an approach is jeopardizing the country’s future progress by giving its youth second rate education. Adding to the woes is the Annual State of Education Report (ASER), that highlights how 50% of grade five students cannot read grade two texts, apart from having difficulties in doing basic math. In this scenario, it would be reflective of the Prime Minister’s leadership prowess if he quells the political sabotage of the education system by and gives a freehold to academics with experience and long term vision to guide the country’s education policy towards stability and effectiveness.

2. Give Anti Corruption Laws Teeth That Bite:

Crony Capitalism has become so deeply entrenched in the country that every few months we see a new scam falling out of the closet. Some are investigated and brought to conclusion, but most are easily forgotten as soon as the media highlight fades away. More often than not, these scams are used to settle political scores. The political class’ lackadaisical attitude towards corruption is evident from Minister of State for Personnel, Dr Jitendra Singh, saying in the Rajya Sabha that no time frame can be given for the implementation of the Lokpal Act even after 365 days of it being signed by the President. Given this situation, there is no chance that India will become free of corruption anytime soon. The government must not only implement the law at the earliest but also strengthen the institution of Lokpal further by bringing in investigative agencies like the CBI under its purview, so that the corrupt can be investigated and prosecuted without political interference.

3. Restore Freedom Of Speech And Artistic Liberties:

A true leader thrives in an atmosphere of dissent, where civil liberties are expanded instead of being curtailed. With bizarre pronouncements by film censor board on appropriateness of films and banning of books that do not conform to the majority view, we are only replacing a vibrant, free spirited Indian culture of debate with one that is regressive and intolerant. This is an area where we actually need minimum governance, the state must withdraw from passing value judgments on what the society can watch, say or read. Instead of controlling the content, the government should try to expand the reach of the medium.

4. Focus Not Only On The Ease Of Doing Business But Also On The Ease Of Living:

Anyone who has lived in India will know as to how difficult it is for an ordinary citizen to deal with the byzantine Indian bureaucracy. From election offices, to transport authorities to navigating through never ending court cases an average citizen spends much of her time, energy and money in trying to avail what is rightfully hers. This ease of living is not only about setting few forms and application procedures right but as much about changing the attitude of government officers from being dilatory to facilitating. The move towards e-governance, linking of Aadhar cards with bank accounts is welcome, but the government should also sensitize authorities to respond to the needs of poor who queue at its offices, with urgency. Every hour wasted waiting in government offices often means a wage loss for the already impecunious.

This article was originally published in Youth ki Awaaz on 8th May, 2015

Development: Impact on the Ground

The Question of Sustainability 

In the first essay on of this series on Development and its Alternatives, we saw the idea of Development from the perspective of societies that had witnessed it and which, with an evangelical zeal, were ready to export it to other parts of the World. Then we took our analysis to the civilisational context and the mindset in which Development was welcomed by those who were ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘backward’. In this final essay, we look into the changes that development brought about and if the present conception of development is sustainable.

Chinese action in Tibet: Denying
Tibetans their Tradition

More often than not, development has been used as a pretext to invade countries and regions that the aggressors perceive to be backward. China, for instance annexed Tibet in the 1950s, purportedly to free Tibetans of poverty and destitution. However, what we see in the form of development has also caused destruction of an entire race. The results of Mao’s Cultural Revolution focusing on purging traditional elements from the society are visible even today. Few weeks ago I met a girl of Tibetan domicile, at a café in McLeod Ganj - the seat of Tibetan government in exile. During the course of our discussion on Tibet, I came to know that she was in India to learn her language - Tibetan. She was fluent in Chinese but never had the opportunity to learn her mother tongue in her homeland. With a single minded commitment to Development in Tibet, the Chinese government is also following a policy of repression of local knowledge and culture. I am conscious enough to not fall prey to propaganda on any side be it the Tibetan Government in India or the Chinese, but this story of linguistic oppression perpetrated in order to ingrain certain ideas of development in a society is nothing less than barbaric.

Kondha Tribe guard their habitat

This straight jacketing of cultures, in the name of development is happening globally, the situation back home is not much different. The Kondha tribe inhabiting the Nyam Giri Hills in Odisha, known to worship nature, faces an existential crisis

as mining companies want to expand their operations into the hills worshipped by the tribe. Is it right for us to encroach upon the territories used by those who may not agree with a majority way of living? Instead of decrying indigenous people as backward or anti-development, I believe it is important for us to reflect upon predatory practices that development has ushered in. A good lesson can be drawn from Bolivia where the government has made an effort to reconcile and incorporate diverse traditions and cultures by enshrining in their constitution, rights specific to the nature. Under these laws, trees and wildlife have a right to life under conditions that are not a threat to their future existence.  This way, we may be able to protect indigenous ways of living, while pursuing development in a more humane way; one that is destructive neither for man nor for nature.

Signs of American Inequality

Not only is it a threat to cultures and environment, development of this kind is also creating inequality within societies. Development, originally conceived to remedy poverty of the ‘Third World’ has effectively created islands of destitution and suffering in the third world. No less than Jawaharlal Nehru, once a proponent of Mega Hydro projects and Industry, as evident from his adulation of  ‘Dams as Temples of Modern India’ was forced to reconsider his views when he saw the large scale displacement, suffering these projects caused to people who had to give up everything so that development could take place. Even to this day, people who had given up their lands for projects like Bhakra Nagal Dam have not been properly compensated for their lands. For that matter, even in United States large amounts of disparity between the rich and the poor exists. A cousin, living in Atlanta, Georgia told me how the city had a déjà vu with its poor when hordes of urban poor suddenly became visible as city tram services were made free of charge, effectively enabling them to use modern modes of transport for the first time.

Even if we apply a more humane version of development that is successful in addressing matters of cultural subjugation, environmental damage or inequality within society, how will we be able to address the question of resource limitation? Is the present Development model, closely bracketed with a consumerist economic behavior sustainable? The important question here to ask, as Ramchandra Guha, does in his book, ‘How much should a person consume?’ is can the entire world achieve American level of Development? Is it even possible given our limited natural resources? Already statistics show that if the whole world was to achieve American level of car ownership there would be 4 billion cars on Earth, where is the metal, oil and gas to achieve it. The trends that we see are already dangerous, China, with its mammoth demand, as Thomas Friedman cites, consumes 45 billion pairs of chopsticks every year accounting for 25 million fully grown trees. What kind of afforestation program can compensate for such scarring of the Earth? Who said Gandhi, was not a genius, his prescience about “Earth” having “enough to satisfy human needs but not greed” can be no truer today.

It would be woolly eyed optimism, if not plain foolishness on my part to say that Post-Development is the alternative and Development is bad. I would be fooling myself with such black and white characterization. But I believe that Development in its present form is not the best solution to improving livelihood of ‘All’ humanity, it may have worked for some but it is definitely not working for all. Post-development theory shows some promise in remedying the perversion of Development by preserving and propagating what exists in traditional ways of life. My sincere hope is that we will find a path somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The first step though is to clearly recognize that there is something wrong in the direction in which the world is heading.

Development: Swallowing the Whole

Psychology of Civilisation and Acceptance of Development 

In the first essay of this three part series on Development and its alternatives, we saw how the concept of ‘Development’ introduced after the Second World War has become a one size fits all solution for poverty alleviation world over. In its application, it is destabilizing traditional ways of life and causing irreparable environmental damage.   In this second essay we discuss how three different modern realities  - our obsession with skin color; contemporary architecture with its omnipresent glass and steel buildings and a revivalist Hindu movement under the right wing dispensation in Delhi,  are a sneak peek into a civilization that has wholeheartedly embraced development and growth sans critique.

In sixth grade when I was rather surprisingly, at a day’s notice, asked to deliver a speech on Thomas Friedman’s ‘The World Is Flat’. I think Globalization was a fancy word back then and without doubt continues to be, but now it comes with its discontents. Whatever it was, I never could have read or even comprehend the book in one day.  So, the speech was nicely read from a sheet prepared by my teacher. Now many years later, when globalization has become so potent an idea that scarce would you find a pundit not extolling its virtues, I picked up the book to gain a ‘globalised’ perspective on ‘development’.

The author, at one point argues that as a result of increased economic interdependence amongst nations today, the possibility of regional conflicts snowballing into global wars is minimal. Testimony to this is the fact that China and United States, widely seen as possible anatgonizers in a new multi polar world, are so heavily invested in each other’s economy that no future war can be fought without inflicting self wounds. Much like nuclear weapons during the Cold Wars, economic interdependence is the new deterrent against wars.

However, Historian Margaret Macmillan, at a recent lecture in Delhi played down the role of global interconnectedness as a deterrent to war. She highlighted that warring states of Europe during the First World War were just as interlinked as the nations in today’s globalized world; from marital ties between monarchies to professional associations of Lawyers and Laborers working in cohort across the continent, the interdependence was strong. Records reveal that at one point, diplomats of five warring nations stationed in London were all first cousins. Yet, little could these relations do to arrest the war from defiling world peace.

The analysis of Indian role in the war under command of the British Empire is invaluable in more than one ways. It reveals the psychology of a people towards another, and in that it is important to our continued analysis of Development as discussed here. That a miniscule British presence of over 100,000 men could subjugate a territory as vast and treacherous as India precludes the possibility of military superiority alone being the reason for establishment of colonial rule in India. It is not unreasonable to assume that skin color of the white men gave them an exalted status and perhaps a sense of invincibility in the minds of the Indian. Perhaps, the almost frenetic demand for skin whitening formula speaks about this mindset even today.

However, this myth of invincibility of the white man was shattered when Indian soldiers, over a million in number, fought the Austro-German alliance in Europe during the First World War. Seeing the British losses on the battle field, these soldiers on return from the war, no longer considered the British undefeatable. This change in perception is believed to have emboldened them to resist British rule in India with greater vigour. In effect, shattering of a psychological myth may have hastened the process of India’s independence in some ways.

In this light, it is pertinent to question if the reaction to the intellectual ideas such as ‘development’ that took birth in the West could have been received with anything but acceptance. Given these psychological workings of the mind and the projection of Europe as the cradle of civilization, it is easy to lend an air of superiority to the intellectual discourse of the West. Development, I believe is no different. Thus, when we see Development as an idea that has captivated societies all over the world, it is not solely based on its own merit but also on the deification of its propagators.

While we have analyzed reasons for perceived superiority of the West, it is essential also to look inwards and understand the historical context in which Development was welcomed. In the post WWII era, the jargon of Development quickly evolved and was thrusted upon the Third World as a one size fits all solution to the all pervasive poverty and backwardness. Soon, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, scientists and technologists were developing models and metrics to eradicate suffering from the world based on an American capitalist, consumerist centered idea of development. Given the perceived superiority of the colonial masters for reasons as discussed above, Third World leaders accepted externally conceived and planned models for a revamp of their nations. This acceptance however also came about as a result of what we lacked in our own civilization.

To this end, V.S Naipaul’s scathing critique of Indian civilization and its decay in “India: A Wounded Civilisation”, laments on an intellectual stasis that inflicts our society. He argues how a rich tradition of cultural synthesis capable of ‘incorporating and adapting’ myriad influences into its own civilisational matrix has given way to one of intellectual bankruptcy, where ‘what we borrow, we seek to swallow as whole’. When I see hideously designed glass and steel structures in Delhi, I cannot but agree with Naipaul when he writes, “Year by year India’s stock of barely usable modern buildings grows. Old ideas about ventilation are out; modern air-conditioners are in; they absolve the architect of the need to design for the difficult climate and leave him free to copy”. This mentality to cut, copy and paste is best summed up by former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit when she said, “Hum Dilli ko Paris bana denge”. Indian adulation of occidental ideas and a concomitant decay in our own civilisational logic has ushered in a Development sans critique.

The idea of civilisational stasis can further be grounded in an analysis of how ‘identity’ shapes evolution of a civilization. A very interesting observation on the acceptance of ‘development’ can be made with a background of how scientific and spiritual identities have shaped differences between the West and the East. The colonial rule looked down upon the scientific achievements of the East as second grade to the technological advancement achieved in the west during Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. This Amartya Sen sights in ‘Identity and Violence’ as having “encouraged Indians to put their spiritual foot forward, to an extent, a reaction to a rather dismissive imperial reading of India’s analytical and scientific past history”. Certainly, now when Prime Minister Narendra Modi brings up Hindu gods performing plastic surgeries, instead of rescuing the scientific models of gravitational attraction proposed by Aryabhatta or astronomers like Varahamihira and Brahmagupta, he further pushes ancient Indian science towards obscurity and maybe even absurdity. Given this context, when Development came as a concept in the 1950s, with technology as a central tool for poverty alleviation, India was ready to accept it without debate, for it had chosen to forget its scientific past and become the land of spirituality.

Over the years, we have simply accepted the notion of development and are mindlessly trying to turn India into America or Europe. I say mindless, not because ‘development’ is bad, but because maybe it is just inadequate for us. If only we could accept that different cultures have different ways of living and different attitudes towards life, rather than trying to enforce what may have worked best for America, we may be moving towards ‘pluri-verse’ over a ‘uni-verse’

In the next blog in this series, I will look into the effects of development on the ground and explore if Post Development is also a shot at meaningful World Peace.

Have Growth and Development undone Humanity?

Post Development and an Alternate World Vision

In the past few days there have been almost daily newspaper reports on world rankings in Social Progress, Human Development Index, Investment and Credit rating Agencies’ Upgrades and Downgrades and the like. Following these reports ‘Third World’ countries are sometimes lauded for their achievements and at others berated for their failings in Human Health Indicators, Poverty alleviation efforts, Education disparity or Malnutrition Statistics. As the next logical step, these reports are analyzed to develop Joint Action Plans by Governments and International Aid Agencies with the objective of achieving a universal standard in Human living. It is all very fulfilling to notice governments re-dedicating themselves towards ‘Growth and Development of all Humanity’.

Coming to India, it is often said that if we achieve double digit growth in Gross Domestic Product numbers, we will lift millions of people out poverty and life of destitution. No one can doubt that and definitely anyone who does is very sincerely branded as an anti-national. However, my intention today is not to make a political statement on civil liberties under siege in India but to discuss and challenge the present discourse on Development.

A few months ago, I happen to attend an academic seminar on Development and its Alternatives at the Nehru Memorial Museum a

nd Library, here in Delhi.  The seminar did two things for me, first it made me look deeper into Development theory from a sociological and economic point of view second, I could add a structure to my nebulous ideas on inequality and neo-liberal imperialism. Let us start by tracing the idea of Development and how it evolved over the years to become the central theme for all Humanity.

The technological and social advancement made in the West after the Second World War, introduced a new thought about global disparity and how it was a responsibility of the Developed Nations of Europe and America to help the Third World Asian and African nations to realize their full potential for Growth and Development. It was none other than American President Harry Truman who during his inaugural address on January 20, 1949 gave body to this ‘Development’ centric notion of the world.

“We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people.The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people.”

With Truman’s noble intention and a grand vision for the world, the third world was to be turned into America. With its modern education, industry, knowledge and society America was the paragon of development which everyone else was to emulate. This is what anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls a ‘Uni-verse’ vision, in this conception the ethics, knowledge, philosophy and way of life of all traditions is considered inferior and incomplete vis. a vis. the Western model of development. This doctrine for development is put in words by a report brought out by United Nations “for the economic development of underdeveloped countries,” as follows

“There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scraped: old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of cast, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress.”(United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs [1951])

With the history in context, it wouldn’t be misplaced to say that the development as we see today has miserably failed, in other words this battle against backwardness of the Third World has been nothing but pyrrhic. The very fact that today we see increased thrust of ‘Sustainable Development’ itself explains the flaws in a consumerist development order. In China for instance, a recent BBC documentary ‘Under the Dome’ cites data that shows Beijing is under a cloud of harmful pollutants for as much as 2/3^rd of total days in a year. Displacement of people for mega projects have led to complete washout of traditional knowledge and cultures. Large tracts of forests have been destroyed in the tropics to meet the development demands of the world. In the occidental vision, nature is considered as an infinite resource that is meant to be consumed quite contrary to its role as a living being as believed by a wide array of local cultures from India to Latin America.  More and more languages and local cultures are at the brink of extinction as we chase the vision of a ‘Uni-Verse’.

The present concept of development takes the one size fits all to solve problems of people all over the world. This model while bringing fruits of development to some condemns many to life of destitution. For instance, a researcher recently recounted the story of development and self perception of a community in India’s Ladakh region. When 20 years ago people were asked to point the the poorest household in the village, they had responded that no one was poor in their community. When the same question was asked to the people recently, they begged for development aid citing the backwardness of their community. This example amply illustrates that communities had no notion of poverty or even if they did, their situation was worsened by development.

Stories such as these make us think, whether we need alternate forms of development or maybe an alternative to development itself. Such an idea, at first is difficult to accept, for be it communism or capitalism, development and growth have occupied the central space, it is only the means to achieve them that have differed in both ideologies. While one takes a redistributive and social welfare approach, the other believes in the fairness of markets to take care of interests of all. However, the notion of Post Development appears more palatable when we align it with the concept of a ‘pluri-verse’ and ‘planeterization’ in contrast to ‘uni-verse’ and ‘globalization’. 

In the next blog, I shall be exploring the following questions about Alternatives to Development? Where are they to be found? Do local epistemologies have some answers to this? And will definitely talk about examples of Post-Development in Latin American countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Columbia.

Free electricity: if the rich can have it why not the poor?

AAP Convenor: Arvind Kejriwal

With the polling day round the corner, the electoral battle in Delhi is intensifying by the hour. What started as an issue based campaign is fast becoming one about political mudslinging and personal attacks. However, one issue that still figures prominently in the city's political discourse is that of Free Water and Cheap Electricity as promised by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The party has promised a 50% reduction in electricity tariffs and 700 liters of free water everyday to each household. These doles of 'free' water and electricity have faced active criticism from many city folks. Frankly speaking, until few months ago, I myself was shouting ‘Nothing should be free!’. Ideally, that is how it should be, but unfortunately crony capitalism has become so deeply entrenched in our system that unless the poor are protected by an upright administration, they will be crushed like stones in a quarry. Today the rich get subsidies in the form of tax breaks, cheap land, free electricity, free water, and a free run to pollute the environment all in the name of development but when it comes to the poor we start balking at any reference to subsidies.The anti-subsidy community often says that kerosene subsidies will make oil companies sick and that Rural Employment Guarantee is akin to paying people for doing no work. In short, it is believed and widely propagated that subsidies make people lazy and encourage a culture of entitlements.  

In counterpoint, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues in his book ‘The Price of Inequality’ that politicians and big businesses tilt policies to benefit the rich by playing with public perception. For instance, no one raises questions on the cost of cleaning the environment using tax payers’ money when the industry is its largest polluter. Take the case of river Ganga, to date hundreds of crores have been spent by governments on cleaning the river polluted by untreated industrial effluents flowing into it. The tanneries on the banks of the river pollute it, but don’t pay for the pollution they cause. Is it not a form of subsidy to the industry? But sadly in public perception, industry equivalent to development and progress, therefore if you raise a voice against industrial excesses you are quickly branded as anti-development and anti-national.

I am not anti-industry nor am I anti-capitalism, all I am saying is that subsidies as they exist today, are biased against the poor. We give billions in tax breaks and sops to the industry but when it comes to the people that really need government support we are parsimonious. Current minimum wage for an unskilled worker in Delhi is around 8500 rupees per month. In this scenario, if we consider a family of four with one earning member then how can he/she be expected to meet costs of food, housing, transportation, education, health care for his entire family with this measly amount? The gap between the rich and the poor can only be bridged if governments run by corporate funded political parties divest themselves from serving the interests of the Khas Aadmi and start working for the Aam Aadmi. 

In this light if the Aam Aadmi Party spends 200 crores on subsidies that give the poor a chance at decent living, then I say Sure, Why not?

Above All Liberties, Give me Liberty to Speak Freely

P. Murugan Author of Tamil Novel
Mathorubhagan

“Perumal Murugan, the writer is dead. As he is no God, he is not going to resurrect himself. He also has no faith in rebirth. An ordinary teacher, he will live as P. Murugan. Leave him alone,” posted Perumal Murugan, the author of Tamil novel “Mathorubhagan” on his social media page. Book burnings and intimidation by caste groups have led the author to quit writing altogether. The protesters went crimson over the author weaving an ancient ritual of consensual sex between any man and woman during the Vaikasi Visakam car festival with the novel’s protagonists Kali and Poona’s attempt to conceive a child. This attempt by the couple to seek a child outside their marriage has been deemed derogatory by the Gounder community towards their womenfolk and the local temple deity, even though such rituals are part of the Temple’s oral history.

Freedom of expression has been a contentious issue since time immemorial; its genesis intricately linked with that of democracy in ancient Greece. Athenian democrats like Pericles d

efined freedom of expression as the feature which distinguished Athens from Sparta, much on the lines of what would distinguish United States and North Korea today. Yet, it was the same Athens where Socrates was ordered to consume poison for encouraging the youth to question authority.

Galileo's Trial after confirming Copernican
Heliocentrism

If anything, the fight for free speech has been long and tortuous. Throughout recorded history, the ruling powers have sought to control opinion and dissent, by way of restricting freedom of expression. In De revolutionibis orbium coelestium, Copernicus hypothesized that the Earth revolved around the Sun, thus questioning Church’s geocentric view. In an age where holding a view contrapuntal to that of the Church was proscribed, Galileo’s confirmation of Copernican heliocentrism was sufficient for the Pope to try him for heresy.

Yet another case that is symptomatic of the struggle to control opinion is the Church’s opposition to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. On the Origin of Species put man on the same page as apes, striping man of his dominant role among all species. England’s highest ranking church official, Henry Cardinal Manning, criticized Darwin’s views as “a brutal philosophy – to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam.” Theological seminaries were rattled when they were forced to reconcile God’s beneficence in a world that was built on survival of the fittest!

Free speech is a tool that ensures mankind doesn’t stray from the path of progress. Science, like art takes human thought to new frontiers; central to this process is the freedom to debate, argue and refine these thoughts. Had Copernicus, Galileo or Darwin kept their views to themselves, we would still have been living in the age of unreason.

However, the context of debate around freedom of expression has changed today. Unlike the past, when monarchs and religious institutions clamped down on dissent with brutal force, today constitutional guarantees safeguard individual rights.  Every time the state infringes upon a citizen’s rights, the courts are quick to move in and restore constitutional liberties. The landmark Supreme Court judgment in the Kesavananda Bharati vs. Union of India case curtailed the parliament’s legislative powers to matters that fell outside “the basic structure or essential features of the Constitution.” Were Parliament allowed unfettered power to amend the constitution, political expediency would have turned the document into an insignificant piece of paper. Freedom of expression thus has become non negotiable today.

State vs. Citizen battles have been long fought and won, and indeed will continue to be won as the example above illustrates. However, a worrying trend emerges when the state has to adjudicate between film makers, writers, painters and those who claim to be offended by the former’s exercise of free expression. In this context, the debate over freedom of expression becomes a matter of subjective judgment. If the portrayal of Lord Shiva in the film PK is offensive to some and acceptable to others, then who decides whether it should be banned or not? What authority does a judge have on matters of creative expression? It is important to note that law provides an objective framework to deals with matters of state transgression into individual rights. But when freedom of expression becomes a point of contention between different sections of the society, there exist no framework within which value judgments can be passed by the state without them being questioned by the contesting parties.

Sulman Rushdie with his controversial
book The Satanic Verses

In the case of Sulman Rushdie’s controversial book The Satanic Verses, the British and the Indian governments reacted in contrasting ways. The Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi banned the book within days of its release, giving in to pressure from clerics and politicians representing the Muslim Right.  The British government despite the explosion of bombs and general threats to anyone associated with the book did not succumb to any form of terror and threats. The then Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe best summarized the government’s position: “The British government, the British people, do not have any affection for the book…It compares Britain with Hitler’s Germany. We do not like that anymore than the people of the Muslim faith like the attacks on their faith contained in the book. So we are not sponsoring the book. What we are sponsoring is the right of the people to speak freely, to publish freely.” The problem with governments passing value judgments is that there is bound to be a set of people which will agree and another which will disagree with the government’s position. Who then is right?

Voltaire on freedom of expression

The debate is incomplete without analyzing the consequence of state action in restricting freedom of expression. When the state allows curtailment of free expression, the demands for curbing it grow even louder and sometimes for reasons that can be at best called devious. For instance, in case of The Satanic Verses, it is believed that Iran’s fatwa against Rushdie was inspired less by theological interpretation of the book but more by a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia to become champion of global Islam. Back home, it is surprising to know that protests against Perumal Murugan’s book started only 4 years after it was first published in 2010. Media reports from Tamil Nadu suggest that these protests will help the Hindu Right make inroads in the southern state. Eventually the whole business of banning books becomes a recursive cycle; if you ban one book there will be demands to ban ten others. Can a government allow Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternate History if it banned Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses?  What reasons will pacify those who start seeing the debate through a communal angle?

However, in balance, I may add that till now we have discussed freedom of expression in cases where exercise of the right enticed a violent reaction from those hurt, be it the clerics in Rushdie’s case or the caste groups in Murugan’s. The most recent being the attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo by terrorists offended by the weekly’s cartoon of Muhammad. In an editorial in The Hindu, Devdutt Pattanaik argues that such physical violence is reprehensible, but goes on to question the emotional violence that the cartoons may have caused to practitioners of Islam. The emotional violence that the cartoons may have caused cannot be measured, but the physical violence of the attackers can be. Therefore, do we condemn the actions of the killers but say nothing about the emotional violence caused by the cartoonists?

Unfortunately, the very nature of the debate leaves us in a moral quandary. In the absence of a middle path, we are forced to choose between Objective and Subjective, between All or Nothing. The answers apparently are not only unknown but also unknowable. In situations like these we cling to faith and for now I would repose mine in British libertarian John Milton’s words, “Above all liberties, give me liberty to know, to utter, and argue freely according to conscience.”