Power Politics

Cheap Power to Farmer - A Real Sham 
My open letter to Odisha Finance Minister 


Dear Sri Prafulla Chandra Ghadei, Hon'ble finance Minister of Odisha. 

Pranam !

Resepected Sir,

Newspapers and media have reported that in a workshop held yesterday you made an indication that the state government is mulling to provide power for irrigation at a 'cheaper rate'. Being a farmer and some what dependent on electricity to save my crops, I should have been jumping in joy. Sadly, that has not happened. There are two reasons for this:

1. Farmers need quality power more than free power: Prolonged and frequent disruptions have become menacingly common. Often it happens that you press the green switch to start the pump but find out that the power supply has again snapped soon after. A simple fault in a feeder line requires days to be attended. After receiving a complaint, the concerned line attendant will come to the section office at 10 am, cut off power supply to the entire feeder from the grid itself (meaning no power for the entire greed supplied area), will check for faults and will return to the section in the afternoon or evening. If the lineman succeeds in finding out and rectifying the fault then the power supply will resume through that feeder in the evening. But that happens only if the consumers are lucky. Even a small fuse related problem takes days to be attended. And if something goes wrong with the transformers or supply lines, take it granted that the fault will not be rectified before the crop is destroyed. Even when there is some kind of power supply, more often than not, the voltage is far too low. Which not only reduces pumping capacity but also results in a severely curtailed life span of the pump set. 

2. It is a brazen violation of BJD's own manifesto, which assured the citizens that it will provide free power for irrigation
Your party BJD's manifesto - for the 2009 general election to the state Assembly - had given a clear and unambiguous assurance to give "Free Power to Agriculture Sector"(Source: http://www.bijujanatadal.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=72:bjd-election-manifesto-09&catid=3:newsflash&Itemid=72). Agriculture is a very broad sector. Irrigation is only a part of that. By indicating that your government will soon provide cheaper power (not free power) to the irrigation sector (not the whole agriculture sector), we believe that you are making a mockery of your own poll promises. 

Hence, your indications of a cheaper power supply rate do not enthuse any interest in a genuine farmer. Rather, it only gives scope for proponents of privatisation and liberalisation that government has again become 'populist' by 'subsidising' tax payer's money on a sector which is 'failing to fuel' GDP.   

I appreciate your and the government's concern towards the farmer. But your indication of providing power at cheaper rate for irrigation is like adding insult to the farmer's injuries. We rather look forward to quality power. If quality power comes to farmers at a cheaper price or at free of cost then that is a bonus. I hope I have been able to make my points clear.

When Perpetrators Act as Judge

On paper Meena Gupta committee, assigned to assess environment and forest related issues with regard to POSCO's project in Odisha, has given a split report. But a closer look reveals that it is just one member's - who happened to be the boss of the department which doled out many clearances and which are being subjected to review by the committee - divergent view. 


Meena Gupta’s report is a classic example of what happens when one allows a prosecutor to also try the case.  To be slightly more scathing this case is even serious as it involves an enquiry of a crime by a person who has been party to abetment of that crime itself. As has been already pointed out, Ms Gupta was at the helm of affairs when many environmental / forest clearances were granted by the MoEF. She took charge of environment and forest ministry as its Secretary on June 1, 2007. Prior to that, she worked in the same ministry as the Chief of the Regulatory Agency. Earlier she was the health Secretary to the Government of Odisha. Her period as the Secretary of the Environment Ministry or as the Chief of the Regulatory Agency coincides or precedes or succeeds with many clearances and permissions given to POSCO. Some of the clearances include:

1.      Environmental clearance to captive port on 15 May, 2007.

2.      Environmental clearance to POSCO plant on 19 July, 2007.

3.      CRZ clearance to port on 15 May, 2007.

4.      In principle forest clearance given on 19 Sept, 2008.

5.      Final forest clearance given on 29 Dec, 2009.

As Ms Gupta was a key decision maker with regard to POSCO, it was quite natural for her to interpret the ToR for the committee in a very narrow manner. She only wanted to assess whether the orders and clearances have been complied with. She was not ready or interested to assess whether the clearances granted by MoEF were based on sound reasoning or after proper enforcement of the existing laws and guidelines. After all how can she even tolerate that the decisions taken by her department when she herself was the Secretary can be subjected to scrutiny by a committee headed by her?

While the three other members of the committee have taken a holistic look while going through their task, Ms Gupta has been quite the opposite. Some of her reasonings are quite infantile. She tries to make a difference between POSCO and Vedanta. She says, “POSCO and Vedanta are very different projects and operate in different environs and circumstances. Vedanta’s alumina plant (and the bauxite mine for which lease was applied for by the Orissa Mining Corporation), is located in the less developed western part of Orissa, in a Scheduled Area which is home to two Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs)…. POSCO’s plant, on the other hand is to be located in a coastal district, in the more developed eastern part of Orissa; the area is not a Scheduled Area and has virtually no Scheduled Tribe people.” It is so ironic that Meena Gupta has again erred in failing to see the POSCO project in its whole. She has conveniently ignored that the POSCO project too involves large scale mining, which ostensibly will be done in a scheduled area. The Khandadhar mine is being considered for POSCO. This mine too falls in a scheduled area having primitive tribal’s – the Paudi Bhuyans – habitat.  Violation and denigration of FRA is no less rampant that in Niyamgiri there too.  

Meena Gupta says “each of the members also had a very different understanding of the issues.” That’s quite expected. But how is it that while three well versed and experienced members had an entirely different opinion on whether forest exists in the proposed project area? That had nothing to do with ‘understanding’; they are mere ‘inputs’. She says,

“the area recorded as forest is mainly sandy waste, with some scrub forest, apart from the casuarina plantations in the area.” In sharp contrast to this view the majority report on the other hand says, “As per the land cover analysis with high resolution satellite imagery of 2006/2007 by Orissa government about 70% area of the forest land is covered with various kinds of forest and trees and the remaining area is sandy, covered with betel vine, agriculture and other miscellaneous activities, as also water bodies. The areas under casuarina plantation which occupies the major portion of forests in the coastal areas were earlier covered with mangroves and were destroyed either during super cyclones or by illegal cutting.” Even the main report, drafted by Meena Gupta says at one place, “Since almost 74% of the land to be given to POSCO was forest land, with about 2.8 lakh trees,…”.

Meena Gupta too had an awful interpretation on whether schedule tribe people live in the proposed area or not. While comparing POSCO with Vedanta’s Niyamgiri project she says, “POSCO’s plant, on the other hand is to be located in a coastal district, in the more developed eastern part of Orissa; the area is not a Scheduled Area and has virtually no Scheduled Tribe people.” The majority opinion of the committee on the other hand says, “A large number of documentary and oral evidences have been found to support the presence of forest dwelling STs and OTFDs in the proposed POSCO project area contrary to the claim made by the district administration and the Orissa government that there are none. The voter list of 2006 mentions 21 names of ST community living in one of the villages Polang, included in the project area. A number of non tribal people living in project affected villages have produced documents of 1920s showing their relationship, dependence on forests/forest land thereby clearly establishing the existence of OTFDs and STs in the project area.”

Ms Gupta has failed to go through her task independent of other factors. Rather she has been far too bothered by the scathing N. C. Saxena Committee report and subsequent revoking of environmental clearance to Vedanta’s Niyamgiri project.  She admits, “Since POSCO, like Vedanta is a large mineral based company in the process of establishing a major project in Orissa, the two projects are often equated in the public mind. There was an immediate assumption, therefore, that the POSCO project, too, would be disallowed. Working in this kind of charged atmosphere is neither pleasant nor easy.” It wasn’t truly easy for her. For while the other three members of the POSCO committee stood straight irrespective of preceding happenings, Ms Gupta meekly succumbed.

Having said all this, we too should not call Ms Gupta’s report a trash. She too has a long experience of efficiently handling many responsible assignments. Rather we should highlight how a perpetrator should not have been a judge at the first place and how most government officers hold a narrow vision and tend to arrogantly stick to that narrowness. 

Glutting Disgrace Buried Beneath Superficial Glory?

Now, the bad news

Samar Halarnkar , Hindustan Times
Email Author
October 13, 2010

First Published: 23:23 IST(13/10/2010)
Last Updated: 23:54 IST(13/10/2010)

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October 11, 2010, was a day of glory, hope and shame for India. It was a day India touched — and would soon top — its best-ever medals tally at the Commonwealth Games. It was a day the money poured over 2010 into India by foreign institutional investors was set to touch a record R100,000 crore (or $21 billion). It was a day India was ranked 67 of 84 countries in a global hunger index.

The medals harvest cheered India like nothing else. New sporting heroes, particularly women, emerged from every corner of emerging India. We stopped ranting against that symbol of old India, Suresh Kalmadi, and started raving about the new, like Deepika Mahato, gold medallist in archery and daughter of a Ranchi auto driver. We were right in celebrating the few hundred sportsmen and women who made the long journey from backwater to big stage, from penury to plenty. They had new stories for us, and we wanted to hear them, to be inspired, to feel good.

But there are older stories that we do not like to hear. 

India’s latest hunger ranking, delivered by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C., did not make it to television news. In the newspapers, it was buried, just another bad news story in a nation that, increasingly, does not like to hear such news.

The IFPRI’s Global Hunger index ranks India in the ‘alarming’ group (the categories: moderate, serious, alarming and extremely alarming), below many failed States ruled by tyrants and despots. The ranking considers the number of children under five who are underweight, malnourished or wind up dead, particularly girls.

In Asia, everyone, except Bangladesh, which is just one rank below India, is doing better. China is at number nine, Pakistan at 59, Nepal at 56. India is bested by a host of tottering States, including Guinea-Bissau, Togo, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.

Hunger is particularly inconvenient bad news. Unlike an ill-prepared Games pulled together at the last minute, there are no last-minute fixes.

India’s approach to hunger has been to throw a programme at every failing. So, the world’s largest programme for nutritional, health and school needs of children under six, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which runs 1.4 million centres nationwide with a budget of R7,806 crore for 2020-11. So, the world’s biggest cooked-meal programme, covering 119 million children in government schools up to class VIII with a budget of R9,440 crore. So, the world’s largest public distribution system (PDS) for subsidised food, with a budget of R55,578 crore. So, the world’s biggest cash-for-work programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), with a budget of R40,100 crore. Hunger in India is definitely not a problem of resources.

Hunger persists despite spectacular economic expansion, and it is disproportionate to rising incomes. With per capita income crossing $1,000, India is now considered a middle-income country.

What, then, is the problem?

As this paper, through its ‘Tracking Hunger’ series (www.hindustantimes.com/trackinghunger) has often reported, behind every story of hunger and malnutrition is a collective national apathy towards the poor, an unreformed, struggling agriculture sector, the low status of women and collapsing administration.

In addressing hunger, the biggest question is the same that arose before and during the Games in Delhi: who’s in charge? That’s the question Lant Pritchett, old India hand and professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, poses when he travels across the nation. He rarely gets a convincing answer. “India’s basic systems are badly, badly broken,” he told me. Evidence abounds in leaky multibillion-dollar, anti-hunger programmes: a quarter of the money spent on mid-day meals never reaches the poor, a third in the NREGA and more than half on the PDS. The failures of the PDS are especially acute. Only 36 per cent of its poor have below-poverty-line (BPL) cards to access cheap food. Nearly 60 per cent of these cards are with people who are not officially poor.

Can this be fixed? Universalise the PDS, says the left. Target it more sharply and pay the poor directly, says the free-marketers. There is an unsexy, boring idea: it’s called reform. For instance, a PDS dealer has to go through an average of 18 levels to get grain.

Unlike the failed States ranked above India in the global hunger index, the government has not lost control — yet. Yet, there is no big-bang fix, just a hard slog ahead.

N.C. Saxena, member of India’s influential National Advisory Council, believes most Indian states have lost the capacity for reform on their own. “That pressure to reform can come only from the government of India,” he said. Right now, there is no such pressure.

As with the run-up to the Games, the government knows the problem. Unlike the Games, it shows no urgency or inclination to intervene, to set deadlines and targets, to pick programmes that need to be reformed, to — most importantly — put more people, administrators and politicians, in charge of national crises like hunger and malnutrition.

India’s new stars could lend a hand. A major reason for India’s high child malnutrition is the low status of women. They still eat last and least during pregnancy. As women’s discus throw gold medallist Krishna Poonia, a Jat, noted: “Our community is known more for female foeticide… but so many Jat women have won medals; it proves what we can do — if we get the opportunity.” India’s undiscovered Poonias must have these chances, sooner than later, or we may be doomed to our hunger rankings — and everlasting shame.