Sailendra Nath Ghosh, 90, one of the country's earliest environmentalists and a social philosopher, passed away at his residence in New Delhi in the early hours of October 18, 2013. He is survived by his three daughters and grand-children, his wife having predecessed him four years ago. Born on April 19, 2013 in the village of Sapmara in the Diamond Harbour subdivision of what is now the South 24-Parganas district of West Bengal, he had a chequered life. The unjustness of society around him drew him inevitably to the communist movement which had started to grow as he was turning from his adolescence to his youth. In due course he became a leading figure in the District Committee of the CPI. He was also the sub-divisional Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Krishak Sabha and in that capacity had helped Kansari Haldar, who was later to become the legendary leader of the kisan uprising in Kakdwip in the late forties and early fifties, in grasping the essence of Maxism-Leninism to become a Communist. (Haldar wa also elected to the Lok Sabha from the area and remained an MP for several years.)
In the early fifties Ghosh was deputed by the party to work at the CPI headquarters in New Delhi where he was the secretary of the economic unit attached to the Central Committee of the undivided CPI. However he revolted against Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 and quit the party in a rare display of courage for he did not leave the CPI for greener pastures. In fact this decision forced him to endure considerable hardship before he established himself as an authority on energy policy and ecological research. He was quite close to former Union Minister of Oil and Petroleum K.D. Malaviya and made substantive contribution towards implementing the policy of oil nationalisation. A self-made man of principles, he worked in various capacities: as an Assistant Editor of Financial Express; Director of the Bureau of Petroleum and Chemical Studies; member of the Oil Industry Development Board; Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. He was also a member of the Governing Body of the Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya.
In a review of In Search of a Better World: Memoirs by Jolly Mohan Kaul (that appeared in Mainstream, Annual 2010 dated December 25, 2010) he wrote:
This reviewer has much in common with the author. Both joined the communist movement in their teens. This reviewer, after a stint of 19 years, relinquished his membership in February 1957, after his differences on both domestic policies and foreign affairs culminating in his public denunciation in 1957 of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, while the author resigned his membership in January 1963 after the Chinese aggression on India in 1962. Both have come to embrace the Gandhian philosophy and outlook on life. Both became interested in spiritual matters, the author defining God as the “intelligent cosmic consciousness” and this reviewer calling God the transcending force that regulates the order of the galaxies and the universe in motion and also the “Divinity within” which inspires one-ness with all of Creation, that is, the “interacting forces of the cosmos”.
He was close to N.C. during his days in the Communist Party and that relationship did not suffer even after he quit the CPI. As a matter of fact it deepeened with the passage of time and especially after the unveiling of neoliberalism through the new economic policies by Dr Manmohan Singh both as a Finance Minister (1991-96) and the PM (2004-till date). Both N.C. and Sailendra Nath Ghosh were outspoken critics of this path of development that sought to jettison the Nehruvian course of economic progress.
Ghosh wrote extensively in Economic Weekly (and thereafter Economic and Political Weekly), Seminar and Mainstream. In the later period his articles were carried mostly in this journal till his last days. The message of greetings he sent for the meeting held in the Capital on January 29, 2013 to mark Mainstream's completion of fifty years read:
Mainstream is a very important instrument for the common people's struggle for life, livelihood, dignity and justice. It is a genuine Left-wing journal because it is the unfailing tribune of the poor and the oppressed. It is the voice of patriotism which upholds national interests but never indulges in chauvinism and draws lessons from other nations' experiences. It is active in promoting Indo-Pak peoples' co-operation. Dealing with current topics and also issues which are likely to loom large in the foreseeable future, it uses common people's idiom and avoids scholasticism. Its writers in general give not only analyses of events but also point to feasible solutions as guides to activists. It provides space to all free minds. It works as a national unifier. An ideologue of RSS persuasion once told me that the journal Mainstream gives him food for thought. That is its best testimonial.
Bereft of advertisements from large business houses, it has to keep its print order low for it has to incur loss for every printed copy. Usually journals with high ideals become short-lived. Mainstream has creditably completed fifty years of existence. Sumit and his family have single-handedly borne this killing burden. I wish Mainstream a long, very long life with utmost cooperation from its devoted band of workers, contributors and readers.
While offering our heartfelt homage to one of our sincere well-wishers, Sailenda, as he was fondly known to his friends and admirers, we are publishing one communication and an article he wrote for Mainstream in the last few months and reproducing one article that appeared in June 2013 and two others published in July 2010. S.C.
For Climate Change Mitigation
Imperative of Mass Action Programmes of
Bamboo Plantation and Algae Culture
The following are some thoughts penned by the author on the World Environment Day which was observed on June 5, 2013.
India's national Capital city and some other mega cities are now going through a tremendous heat wave, which have few parallels in these cities' history. Amid this horrid indicator that a catastrophic climate change has indeed been taking place, the country observed the Environ-ment Day by passively resolving to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that have been trapping heat within the lower regions of the Earth's atmosphere, without even chalking out the outline of any mass action programme. Most of our people have come to believe that reduction in the emission of GHGs depends on (i) the scientists' and technologists' ability to develop simple devices for harnessing cost-effectively the renewable forms of energy, and (ii) the political leadership's willingness to invest funds on their mass-scale manufacture to bring down their costs to the common people's income levels.
But, in Nature's order, there are some ways that have freed man from depending wholly on new man-made technologies. Search for these ways led to the discovery of (i) the bamboo forest's capacity for donating more oxygen than the forest of comparable size of hardwood forests, and (ii) the algae's unique capacity for sequestering carbon and producing large quantities of oxygen. Akshay Urja, the journal of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, in its February 2009 issue, published an excellent article, co-authored by Priyaranjan Sinha and Rajesh Bajpai, which points out that the bamboo, which is the world's loftiest grass and a non-wood plant, and is called the “tree for environmental protection, source of nutrient foods, high-value construction material, source of fibre and pulp for paper, the prime source for rural people's income”, deserves to be called poverty alleviator. The article further points out that “in tensile strength, the bamboos are superior to mild steal: they bend in strong winds but rarely break. In weight-to-strength ratio, these are superior to graphite”. Moreover, bamboos are perhaps the fastest-growing plants. There are some varieties of bamboo which grow at the rate of 5 cm per hour or 1.5 metres a day. In versatility, it has no match among terrestrial plants.
In the light of these findings, the highest priority should be given to nationwide re-plantation of this highly beneficial plant, both for climate change mitigation and poverty alleviation.
In India, the North-Eastern States are the richest in bamboos' diversity and stocks. The Western Ghats are the second best. In Kerala, in earlier times, every village had its forest dominated by bamboos, and virtually every household had its home garden of bamboos. Entry of European businessmen in India's export trade led to the over-exploitation of this species; and in course of time, bamboos became scarce so much so that during the last three centuries, bamboos got dislodged from all high-value uses. A nationwide campaign for their re-plantation should, therefore, be on the agenda not only on the Environment Day but on all suitable days.
♦
The culture of micro-algae should be another item of mass action programme. Alga is the Latin word for sea weed. And sea weeds are the most prolific producers of oxygen on this planet. Algae are non-flowering aquatic plants which are both autotrophic and photosynthetic. These are autotrophic because these produce organic substances for their own nutrition from the carbon dioxide dissolved in water. As carbon sequestrians these have no parallel. As photo-synthetics, these are also largest producers of oxygen. Possibly, no other organism on this planet has a combination of these two qualities of autotrophism and photosynthesis. Hence these are unique gifts of Nature.
A major problem is that algae vary hugely in lineage. Most are microscopic in size and single-celled; many are multicellular and “some are as large as the giant kelps which can grow to 65 metres in length”. These large variations make things more complicated. Even researchers find it difficult to know which genera of algae are the most productive. Even to identify which micro-algae belongs to which genus seems difficult.
In the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) at Delhi, there is a Division for Environ-mental Sciences which does research on algae. But their research, so far, has remained confined to laboratories. They need to develop the expertise to guide the famers in the culture of algae in the village ponds in all suitable agro-climatic regions and also to supply the inoculum thereof.
Putting these two together will be investing real substance to the observance of the World Environment Day.
(Mainstream, June 15, 2013)
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Futility of Fighting Mosquitoes by Chemical Methods
Nature has Provided Aromatic Plants in for their Biological Control
On March 18 last, Mail Today, a Delhi-based daily, published a report with a big headline “Delhi's Dengue Mosquitoes defy Winter Chill” and quoted year-wise figures of dengue patients and dengue-caused deaths. The figures showed ups and downs in the numbers of year-wise victims. But over the last five years, there has been an overall trend of increase. This raises the question: why man has been losing in the battle with the tiny mosquitoes.
Years of observation and cogitation have convinced this writer that we, humans, have not yet fully grasped
(i) that Nature maintains the web of life on this planet by diverse species of plant and animal life; and
(ii) that none of these species is an “absolute nuisance” or “wholly beneficial” to any other species.
Further, we are yet to learn that an animal species that Nature has brought into existence must have been evolved to serve a particular purpose in the evolution of life and that it can neither be extinguished nor de-activated by man-made devices.
Practitioners of reductionist science would be aghast at the suggestion that even the mosquitoes, which humans regard as pests, may have been intended by Nature to serve a particular purpose in the evolution of life.
About 35 years back, in an International Symposium on Man and Nature hosted by the then socialist state of Bulgaria, a senior Bulgarian scientist pleaded for extermination of mosquitoes, with which the present writer felt impelled to dissent and present a contrary view, in the following words: “Are you sure that mosquitoes do not serve any positive purpose in the evolution of life? Let me present the hypothesis that mosquitoes, by drawing blood from humans and many other species of animals and by sucking juices from various species of plants, help evolve newer and newer genes and enhance genetic bio-diversity.” All participants in the international gathering became dumb-founded and speechless at this stunning proposition. None could utter a word of protest although there was not a word of ready accep-tance. Since then, this author has remained steadfast to his hypothesis and belief. More intensive biological researches will be needed either to confirm or to reject this hypothesis.
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COMMUNICATION
Undoing Man-Made Damage
Shri Kuldip Nayar's article “Man-made Disaster Plays Havoc” (published in Mainstream, July 6, 2013) was of great topical interest. He rightly says that the Ministry of .Environment is always under pressure of various lobbies and State governments.
But the article fails to give even one positive idea of what should have been done to forestall the disaster; it said: “around Uttarkhand there is a very large area which is very fragile but the Central Government did not want to disturb its ecology”. To remove fragility and provide a consolidated basis was a fundamental duty to undo the man-made damage. Was that impossible or by itself perilous? There was no answer.
Uttarakhand is the native place of Vandana Shiva, the great international campaigner for ecology. She and the world ecology movement need to come out more positively so that such disasters do not recur.
Sailendra Nath Ghosh
August 20, 2013
B-77, Manavsthali Apartment, Vasundhara Enclave, Delhi 110096
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But defence of the mosquitoes' right to exist as a species cannot hide the very great risks they present to humans and other animals. They are vectors of not only malaria and dengue, but also of many other types of viral fever and the dreadful encephalitis. Draining every pool of stagnant water, keeping all drains dry, sleeping within mosquito nets may not be practicable for all people, in every situation. Should, then, man apply some chemicals whose effects are claimed to be mild? According to specialists, pyrethroids are man-made chemicals that are the least harmful to men. And these do not last in the sunlight for more than a couple of days. But how do these work? These block the flow of information from the mosquitoes' brain to their hearts and thereby disable their hearts to breathe so that they get killed. Since animals, large and small, have the same kind of vital organs and these interconnected organs function in the same way, will not the “mild” chemicals like pyrethroids, inhaled by a man several times, block in some measure the information flow from the brain to the heart and cause long-lasting respiration problems? Is man's relatively slow march to death a likeable solution?
The issues involved are even more complex. Efforts to kill mosquitoes by sprays (called “foggings”) of chemicals of any brand—strong or mild, DDT or malathion—inevitably lead to faster growth of mosquito population and increase in their virulence.
Biologists have explained how and why these exactly opposite of intended results occur. Chemicals kill not only the mosquitoes but also their natural predators such as the lizards crawling on the walls that used to devour the mosquitoes, and the frogs and tadpole in water bodies that used to devour the mosquitoes or their larvae.
Since the life-cycles of mosquitoes are very fast and frequent—they may have two to three generations in one month—while those of their predators are slow and time-consuming—the former's number soon becomes a multiple of their previous number.
Since Nature has kept the preys and the predators engaged in a perpetual arms race, the preys sharpening their defence-cum-escape mechanism and the predators improving their attack mechanism, the mosquitoes, after chemical sprays, become more chemical resistant and virulent. Their virulence, that is, becoming more poisonous, is a way of their escape from their predators. Irrespective of whether man is their natural predator or nor, man becomes more vulnerable to bites of mosquitoes whose number and virulence meanwhile multiply.
Nature's Provision of Plants for
Mosquito Control
Has, then, Nature kept man without a self-activating perennial defence against mosquitoes? No, certainly not. It is man's neglect of bio-science and his sloth in the study of properties of plants, large and small, that has kept him blind to the plants that are mosquito repellants. I was not trained in botany but succeeded in discovering a mosquito-repelling plant by a happenstance.
About 30 years back, I was invited by a Madras-based NGO to serve as a “resource person” and train about 30 activists drawn from various countries of Asia and various parts of India, in ecologically sound rural development. I was a lodged in a room which alone had an attached bathroom for my exclusive use. But the room had an open window, with an adjoining cowshed where seven or eight cattle were tethered. I was mortally afraid of mosquito bites and decided to return home the next day if my room was not changed. But a strange thing happened during the night. No mosquito hovered round my ears and not even one mosquito stung me. Next morning I enquired from the organisers about the secret behind the absence of mosquitoes. They pointed to a large cluster of citronella plants about 60 feet away from the room. Later, from Delhi's botanist friends, I came to know it is an aromatic plant in the grass family. The flower Chrysanthemum also has substances that are poisonous to mosquitoes.
CIMAP's Objectives Need to be Redefined
Another realisation came from my place and condition of living. During the last 16 years I have been living in an enclave in East Delhi where we have an open, wide sewage canal close by, breeding millions of mosquitoes every day. I searched frantically for citronella plants and visited the “nurseries” of plants in the neighbourhood. None them has it or even heard of this plant. From Internet I came to know that in UP's capital city of Lucknow, there is CIMAP, the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants. Possibly, this Institute publishes the results of its researches in its bulletin which has a limited circulation. This Institute gave the information that the essential oil which citronella yields is available at some shops in Delhi's Chandi Chowk. It seems to have no action programme for propagation and promotion of cultivation, by the masses, of plants like Citranella. Sale of essential oil may have some commercial value but an Institute's objective need not be so narrowly focused. People will judge the Institute's utility by how substantially it promotes public health by mass-scale propagation and cultivation of aromatic and medicinal plants.
(May 10, 2013)
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Bhopal Gas Tragedy
Unasked Questions, Unraised Issues
The world's worst industrial disaster occurred during the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984. Some 4000 people died instantly and 11,000 died subsequently. More than five lakh people were maimed. Continual seepages of the factory's poisoned wastes to the ground water level over a span of nearly 26 years are claiming newer uncounted victims everyday. The US corporate world and Administration had a bellyful laugh over the Indian Government's and Apex Court's naïveté, docility to foreign powers, and indifference to their own people. India's media, after a quarter-century-long slumber, have woken up to ask who was responsible for letting off the helmsman of the world's most murderous enterprise. But the most basic questions, which have large bearings on India's future, have remained unasked.
In the wake of the so-called Green Revolution, many pesticide manufacturing plants were launched in this country and abroad. But none is known to have used lethal gases like phosgene, methyl isocyanate (MIC) and carbon tetrachloride as feedstocks. Phosgene gas is known as one of the earliest inputs in the manufacture of chemical weapons. MIC is known as a one-step-more-advanced chemical. Hence there is reason for strong suspicion that it too is used for the manufacture of chemical weapons. Carbon tetrachloride (which is described as the world's strongest liver poison) is itself known as a chemical weapon. It is also used for making cyanogen chloride which is a chemical weapon. Its mixture with carbon tetrachloride, too, can be used as a chemical weapon. Was the Union Carbide, then, using the Bhopal factory as an experimental base for manufacturing weapons for chemical warfare? Did the Indira Gandhi Government or Rajiv Gandhi Government ever probe this? If not, why not? What was the official battery of industry inspectorates doing? If it did probe the matter, will the government publish it even at this stage?
Even a person with the meanest intelligence can understand that without Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's clearance, the killer company's Chairman could never have got a safe passage. The Congress party, steeped in the culture of sycophancy, worsens its position in the public eye by trying to deny the undeniable. The question is: why did Rajiv Gandhi not rise to express his righteous indignation at this unprecedented genocide by an industry? The company's assumed involuntariness was no ground for its excusability: taking this risk with the knowledge of its potential for high-level disaster was itself the worst kind of criminality for any industry.
One cannot but recall Rajiv Gandhi's then newly found craze for the US-type “technological progress”. Too much dependence on Soviet collaboration, he felt, had kept India far from attaining its due stature in technological advance. He knew that his grandfather (Prime Minister Nehru) and his mother had experiences of the USA's denial of even innocuous civilian technology to India but he felt that better friendly gestures from India might, at this stage, prove beneficial. And condign punishment to the Union Carbide CEO could hinder his coveted “technology transfer”!
This craving reinforced the Indian elite's longtime craze for seemingly economic-cum-military prowess-building glamorous technologies in reversal of Mahatma Gandhi's accent on human-scale technologies and his teachings about “development without foreign aid”. The important tasks of garnering of—and encouragement to—efficacious “people's technologies” and the excitation of Indian scientists' and technologists' potential for generating technologies suitable for local environment remained neglected as before. The new craze was only to imitate and import. Technologies emanating from the West, such as genetically engineered “high-yielding” seeds (which really meant “temporarily high-yielding in response to high inputs”), chemical fertiliser and chemical pesticide technologies had already become popular among India's elite. Rajiv Gandhi added a new dimension to it. As a sequel, horrific transgenic engineering in the name of advanced biotechnology, nanotechnology have all become covetable to India's copycat politicians and scientific-technological elite in disregard of the fact that “nature-conquering” technologies are not only unsustainable but also highly destabilising.
Is this craze for any genre of glamorous technologies not a disease, a paranoia?
II Immensity of Union Carbide's Wilful
Neglect and Conduct of some ex-SC Judges
Repeated mentions were made about leaks from the Union Carbide plant in the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly in 1981. It became a major issue in MP in 1982. Thereafter, the UCC's US-based head office sent to Bhopal a safety audit team in 1982. The team found 30 major risks in the plant, of which 11 were in the lethal MIC unit. The team warned about the “high potential for a serious incident or more serious consequences”. In September 1984, another safety audit report warned of the deadly possibility of a “runaway reaction in MIC storage tanks”. The UCC's management was thus made fully aware of the design deficits and safety shortcomings of the plant. The corporation's American bosses, who, by virtue of their majority shareholding, held the reins of the plant's governance, remained unmoved. According to Major General Pushpendra Singh (retired), who is a former Director General of the Disaster Management Institute, Bhopal, the corporation went further with its cost-cutting programme, which entailed severe safety implications. “Operating crew for the MIC plant was reduced from 12 to six while the maintenance crew was dropped from six to two. Refrigeration unit was switched off the MIC storage tank, which needed to be kept at a high cooling level, below 5 degree centigrade!”
Was this not a deliberate invitation to disaster? Was this any different from waging war against the populace of a large city? Did it not verge on war crime, deserving a trial for mass murder?
Commonsense expected that besides meteing out deterrent punishment to the guilty men, judicial conscience would impel the judges to say that industries which, in the event of an accident, could potentially kill thousands within minutes, be outlawed (that is, totally prohibited) and that industries which, by their emissions to the atmosphere, or discharge of untreated or inadequately treated effluents or disposal of wastes could cause “slow deaths” to large numbers of people, be brought under a special industry-related penal code. Nuclear fission-based and lethal gas-based industries fall under the former category. These needed to be banned for yet another reason. These could be used as factories for clandestine manufacture of nuclear weapons and chemical weapons (respectively).
But wonder of wonders, in 1996, the then Chief Justice of India, Justice A. M. Ahmadi, and his co-Bencher, Justice S. B. Majumdar, equated this horrendous crime with an offence like negligent driving of vehicles which, everybody knows, can kill not more than a few persons at a time. They diluted the charge-sheet by shifting the charge from Section 304-II (which the CBI had framed and was itself too soft for the crime involved) to Section 304-A of the Indian Penal Code on the ground that the loss of life inflicted was without intention or foreknowledge about the consequences. This, in spite of all the ominous forebodings and repeated warnings! Even the UCC's paid advocates could not have produced a more specious argument.
It was the same Justice Ahmadi who was later made the Life Chairman of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre. Sadder still is the fact that the hospital has only 260 beds even though the Supreme Court had, in 1991, ordered a 1500-bed hospital with the best equipment at the company's cost. The allegation is rampant that preferential treatment is being given to non-victim private patients!
Justices Ahmadi and Majumdar were not the only Supreme Court judges whose faculty of judgment got warped. In 1989, the Supreme Court had brokered a settlement for only $ 470 million against the government's original demand for $ 3 billion as compensation to the victims. How the demand got reduced from $ 3 billion to the paltry sum of $ 470 million remains a mystery! India's politicians would not have dared to commit this betrayal alone. They roped in the judiciary to perform the black act jointly and then to do the whitewashing. In India, people have already come to develop a poor opinion about the politicians' morals. If the judiciary, at times, descends to this low level, it is a cause for alarm. It calls for a thorough review of the processes of judicial appointments. Usually, judges are recruited on the basis of their legal acumen. Familiarity with law is indeed necessary. But more important is the passion for justice. Whether the candidate for judicial appointment has a burning sense of justice has to be the first and foremost test. Will the Law Commission, the Ministries of Law at the Union and State levels, and the judicial potentates devise ways to test the moral backbone of judicial appointees?
III US Tycoons and the Government of India are on the Same Wavelength
The West-based corporates and the White races have traditionally viewed the Asian people's lives as “damn cheap”. To them, Asians are just guinea-pigs. The tragedy is, the Indian rulers and India's elite in general have a similar view about the poor people's lives in the country. Otherwise, settlement at $ 470 million as compensation for 15,000 dead and nearly six lakh maimed people cannot be explained.
Recently, commentators have drawn comparisons. US President Obama vented his fury even after British Petroleum's offer of several billions of dollars for the loss of 11 American lives and damage to marine life and ecology from its oil spills. Libya was made to pay £ 5 million per family for the 270 who died in the Pan Am flight 103 bombing at Lockerbie. Libya is being made to pay another £ 2 billion for its act of supplying Semtex to the IRA who used it to strike terror in the UK. As against these, the victims in Bhopal got only a few thousand rupees per head!
A government, which devalues its own people's lives, demeans itself and loses the world's respect. The Indians people, whose struggle for freedom had set off the process of liberation of all colonial peoples in the world, were thus laid low by an unthinking, unfeeling Indian Government.
This indifference to the victims' miseries is still continuing. Some NGOs have been fighting for the last 18 years in different federal courts of the USA on the issue of contamination of water and soil by the poisonous wastes left behind by the Union Carbide plant but the Government of India has remained a passive onlooker. Before the district federal Court in Manhattan, the Dow Chemicals and Union Carbide have contended that the contaminated land does not belong to these petitioners. As a result, “even if the US federal Court issues a decree, the order cannot be implemented because the Government of India is not a party to the suit”.
But why blame the rulers alone? The Indian political elite cutting across party affiliations and India's eminent lawyers have the same kind of indifference to common people's lives. Otherwise, how could these lawyers produce legalistic arguments to bail Dow Chemicals out of the Union Fertiliser and Chemical Ministry's demand in 2006 for a deposit of only Rs 100 crores for clean-up of the wastes! One lawyer, a Congress-man, said “the 1989 settlement had covered all costs; hence nothing needs to be paid by Dow now”. One, belonging to the BJP, said “the Supreme Court is fully seized of the matter of plant-site remediation in respect of Bhopal: unless the SC gives a categorical direction, Dow cannot be made liable in any manner”. None pointed out that Dow had a liability because it is this company that helped UCC to quickly sell off its shares, just to escape responsibility for the clean-up and also to escape the heavier compensation in case the previous settlement is challenged in further Court proceedings. None of Dow's Indian consultants pointed out that the previous settlement was unfair and inhuman.
On the question of filing a curative petition before the Supreme Court for quashing its 1996 verdict and for retrial of the said company's Directors under Section 304-II (under which the CBI had originally charged them), Fali Nariman, a top law practitioner, who is also regarded by many as a human rights activist, said: “This would be a double jeopardy!” The stark fact is that these Directors knew the deadly nature of the gases stored in the factory's tanks and still they disregarded the repeated warnings from safety audit teams about the possibilities of “runaway reactions in MIC tanks”! Common people regarded these Directors as merchants of death. But his eminence had persuaded the SC judges that these Directors could not be accused of intent or foreknowledge of the consequences! Were his “human rights” for the affluent only? The lakhs of victims had no “human rights”!
One feels impelled to ask: what use is these lawyers' professional brilliance if they lost their soul and human considerations, as servitors to their paymasters?
IV Responsibility of Non-executive Directors
After the trial Court's recent judgment sentencing each of the six Indian accused of the Bhopal plant to two years' jail, India witnessed two comic opera plays. India's Law Minister, Veerappa Moily, declared that this light sentence for such a grave offence was ‘justice buried', forgetting that the “credit” for this goes to himself. The Law Commission, in its 234th report in August 2009, had recommended that the offence under Section 304-A of the IPC be made non-bailable and the punishment thereunder be raised to 10 years, but his Ministry sat over it.
Some newspapers pleaded that Keshab Mahindra should be spared the jail sentence because he was a non-executive Director and used to merely chair the UC India Limited company meetings because of his stature in the realm of Indian industry, without being the President of this subsidiary company. This is laughable. A non-executive Director's sacred duty is to keep a check on the executive Directors' parochial instincts, bring fresh thinking in overall interest, and thus, to be the company's ‘conscience-keeper'. If instead, Mahindra had become a dummy and a shield for foreign wrongdoers, he acted criminally indeed.
V A Heart-warming Contrast
India is the land of Lord Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, the world's two greatest embodiments of compassion. Yet, fellow-feeling is drying up here. While most parts of India were celebrating joyous events of their localities forgetting the writhing pains that the Bhopal victims have been suffering every moment during the last 25 years, a heart-warming news—a message of abiding sympathy—comes from the common people of the USA. Chidananda Rajghatta reports from Washington (vide The Times of India, June
16, 2010) that a 12-year old boy of Indian-American origin symbolically attempts to serve summons on Warren Anderson, the “butcher of Bhopal”. An American girl, who has spent five years of her school life campaigning for justice for the victims of Bhopal, joins a protest demonstration before the Indian embassy in Washington D.C. Activists from the University of Maryland, many of whom were not even born when the world's worst industrial disaster took place, shout themselves hoarse for the suffering victims half-a-world away. Activists of the International Campaign for Justice say that the omissions and commissions in India, by Indians, are more galling than the American hubris. We need to take lessons from these youngsters and see that our hearts beat in unison. We must not forget that Bhopal is, in many ways, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only difference between the latter two and Bhopal is delibe-rateness versus near-deliberateness in causing the holocaust.
VI US Administration's Blackmail
Just as in Rajiv Gandhi's time the US President extracted from the Indian Prime Minister an assurance of Warren Anderson's safe passage, the US Administration of today is seeking to utilise the Indian elite's technology craze to curb the demand for justice to Bhopal victims and to get the obnoxious Bill for “drastically limiting the foreign supplier company's liability for damages to civil population from nuclear accidents” passed by the Indian Parliament. Threats are being issued that unless these are done, there are chances that Indo-US relations would be strained. The USA needs to be told that whatever the US is trying to sell to India is basically in the US industries' interest. The US nuclear reactor manufacturers have not been finding customers in their own country for the last 30 years on account of people's resistance. It is trying to sell these reactors to a naïve Government of India which underplays the underlying risks to India's population, and prefers to remain blind to the inevitable economic ruination—and also to the energy crisis that will flow from the locking up of financial resources in the nuclear ventures. The US is trying also to sell to India military hardware, not for friendship but for its own commercial interests. Indo-US collaboration in agriculture is nothing covetable because the USA has only “succeeded” in making dust bowls out of its once-fertile soil; and its giant corporations are now peddling the genetically modified crops which can only bring worldwide food insecurity and health hazards. Some of the US' educational institutions are, of course, excellent. Many of these, which have not become slaves to the giant corporations' diabolical “research grants”, will in any case be interested in promoting exchanges with India's centres of learning. Hence the threats and baits need to be spurned. President Obama has some good ideas for his own country. But he is yet to understand that peace and prosperity are indivisible. He can never, never bring prosperity to the USA's poor by passing nuclear reactors and “genetic modification of crop” technology to other countries and making them poorer.
Epilogue
The USA expects the Indian Parliament to pass the Bill for limiting the liability of nuclear operators in the event of accidents. Its dangerous implications have been explained by Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Maryland, USA, in an article published in The Hindu of June 21, 2010. The USA has set for its own country a limit of about $ 11 billion per accident payable by the industry. In India, the proposed limit for the operator is just Rs 500 crores, that is, about $ 110 million, which is one per cent of the US limit! Further, the Bill proposed by the Government of India allows an adjustment of this figure, upwards or downwards, to a possible lower limit of Rs 300 crores or about $ 65 million.
A 1997 study by the US Government's own Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, found that “severe spent fuel pool accidents could result in damages from some-what under $ 1 billion up to $ 566 billion, depending on how full and hot the pool is at the time of accident and the intensity of the postulated fire. The highest figure would amount to over $ 700 billion in 2009 dollars. Vast amounts of lands—up to about 7000 square kilometres in the worst case—would have to be condemned. Large numbers of people would have to be evacuated.” The Brookhaven account “does not include excess cancer deaths, which can range from 1500 to more than a lakh”. In a much more densely populated India, the cancer casualties would be much higher.
The question is: where is the need for nuclear plants? At one time, nuclear energy was advertised to be an energy which “would be too cheap to meter”! In reality, it has become “too dear to meter”, despite too many subsidies.
Germany has legislated to shut down its remaining 17 nuclear units after an average operational lifetime of about 32 equivalent full-load years, which seems to be not far off. India, a sunnier country, can meet all its needs by renewable forms of energy (biogas, power from biomass, micro-hydels, wind energy, direct solar energy, and photo synthetic energy). This country has no need of nuclear power.
(Mainstream, July 31, 2010)
o o o
To Fight Pseudo-Maoist Menace
Give the Adivasis a New Deal and Change the Development Paradigm
Few, among the top political executives, realise that our own fate is inextricably linked up with the fate of the adivasis. If mankind is to survive, it has to imbibe the quintessence of communitarian spirit and conservation ethics of the tribals. Modernism's accent on individualism has led to acute self-centredness of a rapacious civilisation that has reached its peak in assured mutual destruction. Redemption from the looming threat of self-destruction lies in embracing the nature-harmonic ethos of the tribals. To a tribal, forest is the source of all good things. He recognises the primacy of Nature over men, the primacy of forest over villages. To him the centre of gravity lies in the non-human world of forests. He feels a mysterious bond and symbiotic relation with other animals. He instinctively knows the value of inter-species balance and has diligently sought to keep his community population stable over centuries by the use of herbal contraceptives—and abortifactants in dire cases.
If there are areas where climax vegetations and reservoirs of biological diversity still remain, these are due to tribal ethics which forbid interference with biota. It is their ethics that the harvest of certain wild plants be severely restricted to certain days of the year. The need for avoiding over-exploitation of any natural resource permeates their consciousness. Madhav Gadgil points out that there are tribal communities that “traditionally set free calves or pregnant does caught in their snares”.
A report from an African tribal environment shows how deeply ingrained is their social consciousness. Anthropologist Mary Douglas' report, on the Lele tribe in the Kasai province in Zaire, says that “before a communal hunt, it is the duty of every man to declare any animosity he might have secretly harboured against a neighbour and to promise that it will not be allowed to rankle any more. If there is any insincerity in this on the part of anybody, the spirits would see that the expedition is in vain.” There are reasons to believe that such practices were in vogue till recently among many adivasis in India. This is the essence of true socialism, solace for mankind.
II (A) Dispossession of Adivasis over Centuries—Beginnings of Dispossession by British Rulers
The British rulers adopted various pretexts, made various rules and called these “laws” to deprive the adivasis of their traditional rights over forest lands, from the beginning of their colonial rule.
(i) Whereas in most parts of the non-colonial world, the historically accepted legal concept was “what is practisced in the place is the law of the place”, the Britishers developed a love for the Roman law “whatever has not been assigned by the sovereign belongs to the sovereign”. Thus, the usurpers of “sovereign's rights” began to dispossess the indigenous people.
(ii) They also denied the recognition of the community as a legal person, knowing well that in tribal areas, individual rights were embedded in community rights.
(iii) On hills above 10 per cent slope in Orissa, they abolished even the occupancy rights of the adivasis and appropriated to the State the slopy hills. Possibly, they did this in several other states, too, Enquiries and information about those were promised but never pursued. This was a tendentious and most illogical step because the adivasis were known as the best preservers and developers of forests.
(iv) Next, the State took over vast forest tracts all over India, except in parts of North East India. This exception was made because of the long-time prevalence there of certain Hill Regulations whose violation could stir up violent tribal revolts.
(v) In certain areas, they adopted a kind of tricksterism by first vesting the ownership of entire tribal community lands in their respective chiefs and then taking over these lands from the chiefs' hands by pampering them with certain privileges and paying them some paltry sums as compensation. Since this triggered widespread protests, this trick could not be continued or practicsed in other areas.
(B) Continuation of Dispossession Drive by “Swadeshi” Rulers
The Swadeshi rulers did not hesitate to pursue the same heinous policy of dispossessing the adivasis. Maybe, this was due to their greater faith in the forest bureaucracy.
(i) In post-independence India, a law was enacted to categorise all community lands with tree cover as forests. Thereafter, all such forests were declared as properties of the state.
(ii) The state took over the forests owned by the Mundas as well as the Mundari and Khumkatti lands on the pretext that the state would nurture these better and bestow on the tribes greater profits. The promises were never kept by the state.
(iii) Deprivation and dispossession to the adivasis caused by the decimation of their forest habitats by the unscientific practices of commercially driven Forest Departments: One deplorable practice of the foresters was to give priorities to pines which killed the sal (shorea rubasta) trees. There were many other examples. Adivasis knew much better the symbiotic and allogeneic relations between tree species than the foresters but such ruinations had to be borne by the adivasis.
(v) Ouster of the Adivasis from their habitats by mining activities: Many forest areas were found to be repositories of mineral wealth. Since in today's world, industries are valued most, governments become blind to the more fundamental values of ecology and life-support systems. Hence they invariably encourage mining activities, pollute the air and water of the forest dwellers and smear all their living resoueces with toxic substances.
In a word, the premise that the adivasis have equal rights and equal dignity with the vaunted “genteel” has never been heeded. The temporal benefits of the latter have always been sought at the cost of the former. The “growth economists” have become impervious to these ghastly realities.
The cruelties against the adivasis have been planned and steadfastly pursued by the elite political class irrespective of political affiliations under the false belief that if the nation has to prosper, some people have to be sacrificed. And the Scheduled Tribes appeared to be the most convenient sacrificial beings. Otherwise, how does one explain the deliberate, persistent subversion of the Supreme Court's landmark judgment of 1997 on a special leave petition filed by Samata, an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, against the mining leases given by the Government of Andhra Pradesh on tribal lands. The judgment declared:
(i) That all lands leased to private mining companies in the Scheduled Areas (that is, in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere) are null and void.
(ii) That transfers of land in the Scheduled Areas by way of lease to non-tribals, corporation aggregates etc. stand prohibited.
(iii) That every Gram Sabha has the power to prevent alienation of lands in the Scheduled Areas and to take appropriate action to restore to the Scheduled Tribe any land that has been unlawfully alienated.
(iv) That minerals are to be exploited by tribals themselves either individually or through cooperative societies with financial assistance of the state.
(v) That in an area where lease to non-tribals has not been totally prohibited, the lessee must pay at least 20 per cent of the profits as permanent fund for development needs, apart from reforestation and maintenance needs of ecology.
Governments of all hues at the Union level and in the Stales have sought to keep this judgment under wraps. In their biased, pro-elite thinking, they consider it a judgment inimical to national development. Enquiries need to be made how many times and in which cases this judgment has been violated.
III Adivasis are between the Devil of “Pseudo-Maoists” and the Deep Sea of “Security Forces”
Centuries of deprivation depicted above drove the adivasis to the lowest rung of existence. They are now facing the gravest threat to their existence—squeezed between the once solace-giving, now extortionate and occasionally intimidating “pseudo-Maoists” one the hand and the Indian state's mighty security forces on the other. True, the latter's targets are the Maoists. But the Maoists are so entrenched that large numbers of adivasis are likely to be the casualties.
I have deliberately called them “pseudo-Maoists” because there is a world of difference between what Mao represented and what his supposed followers in India are doing. Though Mao enjoyed being deified—that was his weakness—he was a realist. He knew in which conditions guerilla warfare could be waged and in which conditions it would be suicidal. His one great contribution to ideology was that “power classes” could turn to be exploiters like propertied classes. Hence he felt the need for a pervasive cultural transformation so that power could not corrupt the power holders. Since he tried to force the pace and sought to challenge vested interests in the party, the government, the enterprises, the academia etc. all at once without creating mass-level ideological and cultural consciousness and spiritual elevation, he failed in this endeavour. He also correctly understood that in the modern technological civilisation, the countryside suffers from the adverse terms of trade vis-à-vis the urban conglomerates. He, therefore, sought to build a model egalitarian politico-economico-socio-cultural base at Yenan. Since he failed to fathom the deeper issues of ecology and the great differences caused by different genre of technology, it did not endure and yielded place to Deng Xiaoping's seductive aberrations. Our Maoists do not bother about perspective-related issues. They know only the dictum “power flows from the barrel of the gun”. Hence they get isolated from the people as the state's armed forces start driving in top gear. The nation reckons then as murderers.
If Mao had been alive now, he would have noticed that new reconnaissance and surveillance technologies in the hands of the military have rendered guerilla warfare obsolete. Guerilla warfare, even in dense forests and mountainous jungles, is not possible in an era when invisible spy planes from high altitudes are able not only to spot small guerilla groups but also to record their conversations and instantly relay the same to the troops on patrol. The Sri Lankan Government forces did not have such super-sophisticated technologies. Even then, the LTTE got decimated in the end. If the “Maoists”, flush with their initial victories—which advantage the initiators of armed offensives always get—tend to remain blind to this reality, it will result in a holocaust.
This does not mean that the oppressed and exploited classes have no means of salvation. Resistance against various forms of oppression is surging in every corner of the globe and is merging in one global stream of liberation. Irresistibly, this will be an oceanic tsunami of resistance. Despite the control that the neo-imperialists exercise over the communication media, oppressed people are now able to set up their own broadcasting media and garner mass support through global mobilisations. The Iranian Opposition leader, who was the runner-up to the Iranian presidency last year, was not far from the truth when he said that to control a website is to command an army. Besides, technologies for decentralised harnessing of renewable forms of energy have emerged, and are progressing well as a liberating force. These have great potential for freeing energy generation and other economic activities from the clutches of large owners of capital. Those who aspire for the adivasis' and poor people's liberation need to have a holistic perspective. Climate change, and humanity's agenda for survival in that context, has placed the traditional forest dwellers' ethos and knowledge systems on a high pedestal, which everybody will have to acknowledge sooner or later.
IV Who are the Progenitors of India's Maoists?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that Maoists are the enemy number one to internal security. This assertion raised the question: who are the progenitors of these foremost enemies? Certainly, they “Maoists” are, wittingly or unwittingly, the greatest menace. All those who have traced the growth of Maoists, have pointed out two factors. One, out of the union of the People's War Group with the Maoist Communist Centre, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was born. And their growth got a big boost when the Union and the State governments invited the MNCs “to develop these areas” and a large number of MOUs were signed by the State governments of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh with the MNCs in violation of the Supreme Court's famous Samata judgment. In order to implement these projects, large-scale acquisitions of land from cultivators and forest dwellers were started. The scare of displacements, the threat of loss of community life, the spectre of unemployment, food insecurity and drinking water scarcity (drinking water being heavily polluted with mineral particles) haunted the farming communities and the forest-dwelling adivasis. These MOUs were the direct outcomes of pro-MNC liberalisation, pro-finance capital globalisation, and pro-business privatisation policies. This regimen throws up billionaires at one end and legions of malnourished people at the other. Who were its architects? Who catapulted India into this orbit? Everyone in India knows that the architects were no other than yourself, Mr Prime Minister, and your deputy, Montek Singh Ahluwaliah, with the initial backing of P.V. Narasimha Rao and the later acquiescence of India's dominant political class of many hues. Hence, can you escape the charge of being the creator of India's number one enemy to internal security, Mr Prime Minister? In the same manner as the US settlers eliminated the indigenous people there and the settlers in Australia eliminated the “aborigines”, the concept of progress which is driving India now is eliminating the adivasis and the real farmers. This is throwing up some billionaires from India's business class and promoting Indian and foreign agribusiness on Indian soil while ruining the weaker classes which no sops can compensate.
A revealing commentary on—in fact, a mockery of—our approach to development appeared in the newspapers of June 23 last. On June 21-22, our Union Finance Minister was telling his American audience that India would need one trillion dollars over the next five years to attain “9 plus” per cent growth but expects a funding gap of 30 per cent, which he would like the US investors to fill. The aim is “raising the growth percentage” even by inordinately raising our external debts. The hollowness of this approach was revealed the same day by the UN report: “Hunger is back in South Asia to the 1990 level”. It said that in South Asia, including India, the percentage of malnourished people was 21 in 1990-92; it dipped by only one per cent (that is, to 20 per cent) by 2000-02; and was back to 21 per cent by 2006-07. It was shocking though this portrayal was less grim than the reality.
It is common knowledge that statistics about the indices of “life below – poverty” level have been heavily manipulated for a show of progress. Anybody with experience about this country's rural life will say that the percentage of malnourished people today is much higher than 21. The recent report of the Tendulkar Panel put it at 37 per cent. Mani Shankar Aiyar is very correct when he says that 900 million Indians are living on less than the minimum recommended wage under the MGNREGA. (The minimum of Rs 100 for a day's wage for a family of five comes to Rs 20 per head.) Outward symbols of development—extensions of metalled roads, multiplication of post offices and phone call booths, blares from radio and television sets from the houses of traders, contractors and sarpanches (the beneficiaries of leaked moneys from multiplying projects)—cannot hide hunger and the increasing numbers of diseased people. This is not the way to inclusive growth.
At the cost of a little digression, we need to say that the trumpeting by the capital-dominated world that China and India are the new powerhouses of global economy is a cover-up for the void below. China is now the country with the largest income disparities between its own people. India's path from the 1980s—steadfastly since the 1990s—has been no different. The only difference is that the Chinese leaders are aggressive nationalists, prone to incursions on other nations' rights, dictatorial and intolerant of dissent. In contrast, India's political leaders are self-centric, easy compromisers of national self-respect, eager to get pats on the back from foreigners, derisive of India's own nationals but tolerant of protests from middle classes. The challenge from the Maoists hidden behind the adivasis is the bitter fruit of the current model of development.
This paradigm of development puts a premium on building infrastructure. But have we ever carried a national discourse on what kind of infrastructure we need for inclusive growth? A little introspection will show that infrastructure for business interests almost always destroys the infrastructure for common people's life-support system—namely, the forests, the riverine flows, the quality of surface and groundwater, the fertility of the soil, the quality of air. The roads become the vehicle for draining away the food grains, fish and milk from the low-income villagers to the higher-income urbanites. This paradigm of vikas means vinash for most people. Sustainable pro-people development demands a reversal of this paradigm. To think that the only alternative to “command economy” of the Soviet model was “the market economy” of the capitalist model was sheer brain-mortgager's inertia.
Unlike many of our Ministers and Opposition leaders whose brains are stuffed with theories dished out from the Western centres of learning, Bhutan's Prime Minister, serving under a constitutional monarchy, has brushed aside the half-baked ideal of “high GNP and high growth percentage”, and has installed as the nation's motto “Maximum Happiness of the People”, which puts a premium on the people's level of nourishment, robustness of health, harmony in life, freedom of thought and expression, and sublimity of spiritual life. It is time we learnt lessons from this small-size neighbour and replace our goal of development. The soil for “Maoism” will then disappear.
V Pillars of the Suggested “New Deal” to Adivasis
Giving a “New Deal” to the adivasis should mean:
(i) Assurance to the adivasis that there would be no displacements and dispossessions hence-forward, except in cases approved by the Tribes Advisory Council (three-fourths of which are to be manned by elected representatives of the Scheduled Tribes of the State), the State legislature, and Parliament. Approval of each of these three bodies would be mandatory.
(ii) Restoration of tribal communities' property rights over the forest lands and their right to grow and nurture the forests for their common benefits and humanity's survival.
There should be no difficulty in making these declarations in view of the findings of successive groups led by Prof B.K. Roy Burman who has possibly done the most extensive surveys in adivasi-inhabited regions of the country. These findings reveal that it is only in the adivasi-controlled areas that the actual forests are larger than the extent of declared forests. In the Forest Department-managed forests, the actual forests are always less than the extent of declared forests. This proves that the adivasis impulsively grow and protect the forests. It is only in recent years that due to the economy's over-arching commercial pulls and the consequential survival crises in tribal life, they are tending to get diverted from their traditional mores. Environmentalist groups rather than official foresters would be more effective in counselling them.
Now, we would need to address ourselves to an intricate question: to what extent can this country afford to restrict mining in forest areas?
According to an Expert Group appointed by the Ministry of Rural Development,
The areas inhabited by the tribals are also the storehouse of mineral wealth of the country…… The bulk of the coal deposit (92 per cent); bauxite (92 per cent); iron are (78 per cent); uranium (100 per cent); copper (85 per cent) and dolomite (65 per cent) and the list goes on.
About limestone and dolomite, one can definitely recommend that their mining, except in infinitesimal quantities in certain very special cases, should be prohibited. These formations are holders of water. Wherever these have been mined, water bodies below have dried up. Their industrial use is mainly in the making of cement. Water is far more important for life's survival than cement. Moreover, there are many alternative routes for cement manufacturing processes.
Uranium mining also needs to be banned. Mankind has no need for nuclear power (uranium-generated electricity). It can safely be said that twenty years hence (that is, by 2030 AD) none will talk of commercial energy from uranium. It can only aggravate energy crisis, bring economic ruin and breed radio-active disasters. Wherever uranium mining takes place, cancer takes a heavy toll of life of all species; still-birth and other deformities become endemic. Deposits of uranium should be buried under thick over-burdens.
Bauxite mining needs to be minimised. Its use is for making aluminum, which is used for making bodies of aeroplanes, for making utensils, and for aluminum foils for food packaging. Anthropologists say that cooking foods in aluminum vessels had been one major cause for mass level degeneration of people's health and the decline of the Mayan civilisation. In these days of climate change, when we are heading towards a catastrophe (life's extinction), the use of jets which deplete oxygen and increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, should be heavily restricted in the interest of life's survival. For food packaging, aluminum foil can be replaced by biodegradable plastics which can be manufactured out of food wastes.
As regards iron ore mining, our Swadeshi rulers, in the manner of foreign colonisers, have been exporting iron ores at throwaway prices, jeopardising India's future. These exports should be prohibited and iron ore mining should be tailored to India's own requirements. Indian the steel industry's product-mix, too, needs to be redesigned, more so when there is a glut in the world market. Instead of giving priority to demands for steel structures for skyscrapers, luxury limousines and mega-industrial plants, the steel industry's product pattern should be geared more towards smaller industry constructions, railways, and common people's needs. The steel industry has come to be highly integrated in the name of utmost economy of resources and maximum profit to capital. This process has resulted in high concentration of pollutants in the centres of steel production and large displacements of people from their habitats. Scientists and steel technologists should, therefore, be challenged to develop technologies for decentralisation of various wings of steel production. If varieties of steel mills can be dispersed in economical ways, hardships to people caused by relocation will be minimised and absorption of pollutants in an ecological way will be possible. Adivasis and other sections of people would, then,