Is there an end to the ‘Anthropocene’ as we know it, and if yes, what could it look like?

Pursuant to scientific evidence, we are ubiquitously accepting the embarrassing predicament that we are now within a geologic epoch where Earth has been fundamentally transformed by a single species – us (Crutzen 2002; Zalasiewicz et al. 2021). It is dominantly framed as a problem, and our impact on the Earth is seen as not just detrimental to its functioning but also irreversible. This implies that human actions are transforming the environment in ways that are driving it to ‘novel’ conditions, and this is seen as a problem because we are unprepared to deal with it (Robbins and Moore 2013). This ‘anthrophobia’ is accompanied by a growing sense of urgency, anxiety, and a crisis mindset, which tends to result in either nihilism, dysfunction, and paralysis or an action bias overdrive (Robbins and Moore 2013). However, both these responses are problematic and can potentially create more risks, without first understanding how we reached here, what we hope for the future to be, and with that, what we can fix.

In this essay, I will first delve into what is wrong with the Anthropocene as we know it by drawing on what we do not talk about in its formulations. I will then reflect on how we landed here by exploring our relationship with the Earth in general, and nature in particular, and how that matters in our journey forward. I will end with some approaches for reimaging our role and ways to take “modest actions”, that can potentially put us on a track where we can learn to live within the dynamic system.

What remains unseen in the Anthropocene [1]?

Indeed, humans have been no more than a blip in the life of Earth, in terms of time spans of being around (often referred to as ‘deep time’ [2]), the amount of space we occupy [3], and the amount of biotic life we represent [4]. Yet, we have not been insignificant in its course of evolution. Driven by our social, economic, political, and even aesthetic aspirations (see discussions on landscape in Olwig 2005; Axiom 5 on power in Mitchell 2008), we have driven several technological revolutions across space, time and cultures, that have resulted in unforeseen conflicts with the environment (Turner II 2022). These technologies, while addressing some aspirations of the few in power, have had long-term implications for the other humans, non-humans, and overall planetary boundaries.

For instance, atmospheric changes driven by carbon emissions from the industrial revolution are seen as the root cause for the ‘Great Acceleration’ (Steffen et al. 2015). This period and process, in turn, was fundamentally tied with the histories of extraction and colonialism, each inseparable from capitalism, racism, and myriad forms of injustices including those against indigenous communities (Yusoff 2020; De la Cadena 2015). Apart from degrading the environment, we as a human society did not shy away from subjugating horrors to our own kind. In some ways then, the Anthropocene, a geologic epoch, stems from human society’s ego embodied in aspirations, and values materialized through actions. This also goes to show that the Anthropocene is not an apolitical outcome, but one that is driven by the power vested in the hands of a few.  

Anthropocentric world-view

Human ego is a vital issue for discussion in our relationship with nature and how we value it. I will discuss here a few different perspectives on nature, and how these have implications on how we [ab]use it.

On one extreme, nature is seen as a “naive reality”, “God-given”, an “Eden”, and untouched by humans (Cronon 1995, 34–36; Johnston 1981). Placing nature on a pedestal, it is understood as being stable, pure, self-sufficient, and capable of preserving its own balance – values that human societies aspire to achieve themselves. This position creates a moral imperative of what nature, and therefore our surroundings, ought to be. These ideological imaginations of nature, propagated through multiple media including landscape paintings, poetry, and literature, have inspired many to recreate such “Edens” by emulating these imaginations. Examples of these recreations are many across different cultures and societies, including the “New Edens” described in Cronon (1995) where a legal protection of an endangered bird is overturned to enable building these “havens” for the elite, or the “rewilding” experiments conducted in Europe as described in Lorimer and Driesseny (2016). In each, it is an aspiration of the few that trumps the cost to (human and non-human) others. This raises unaddressed questions of environmental ethics on who decides what nature needs to be protected and how.

Other views of nature are far more entangled with human well-being and history. In its demonic form, climatic extremes such as floods and hurricanes are seen as the “return of the repressed’ (Cronon 1995, 48).  Considering, disasters tend to affect the most marginalized (Maskrey, Lavell, and Jain 2022), this view is likely also from their perspective. Despite enough evidence about the anthropogenic nature of many of these disasters, we have learnt to avert accountability by calling them “natural” (Few et al. 2021; Cronon 1995).

Another nature/culture view emerges from the Marxist accounts of production of nature, where everything is seen as a product of human labor and capital. There is an underlying [almost boastful] belief here on the social capacity to produce “second nature” (Thrift 2012). Postmodern theories suggest that our ways of seeing nature is mediated by representational practices and devices, such as cartography or wildlife photography. In a similar set up, nature is merely seen as a medium for cultural landscapes: culture is the agent, and nature the medium (Johnston 1981). Apart from justifying one’s own ideals, these approaches see nature as no more than “an edifice or self-conscious cultural construct” (Cronon 1995, 39).

Another, and possibly the most self-centered perspective thus far, objectifies nature as a commodity. Apart from widespread practices of “greenwashing”, such as real estate to be sold as “New Edens” to aspiring buyers in an earlier example, nature is also defined (mainly by economists extending from the Marxist ideas) through the concept of Natural Capital and ecosystem services (Guerry et al. 2015). These views present nature to have an “objective value” for the functions it provides (i.e. provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural) for human well-being. These concepts have gained currency in different fora, ranging from international climate change debates to corporate boardrooms. Their advocates argue that these concepts help assigning a ‘value’ to the natural systems making their ‘protection’ more justifiable. However, this approach also tends to position one ecosystem against another as long as it can provide the same services, and is therefore potentially replaceable from the human society’s point of view. This also limits the value of nature (and other non-human elements) to the known and currently relevant functions, and ignores the value of what we do not yet have information or imaginations for.

Almost all these perspectives on nature described above tend to be from the human-gaze where nature is merely an object of human interest. Further, “whether their emphasis has been on nature’s material transformation or on its changing meaning, these are geographies whose only subject or active inhabitants are people, while everything else is consigned to nature and becomes putty in our hands” (Johnston 1981, 493). Feminists have also critiqued how women tend to be equated with nature, while men are seen separate from nature, and this has led to women being similarly objectified in the hands of men (Rose 2006; in Cresswell 2013).

These debates within ecofeminism have further highlighted this constant duality between nature/culture, in which everything is cast in a way that things either belong to nature or culture, feminine or masculine, emotion or reason, slave or master – all in which one is weaker than the other. In all these dualities, the latter tends to have more power over the former, an idea so deeply imbibed within us that it has driven us to believe that we have not just affected an irreversible change in the Earth’s system, but that we have the power to reverse it.

How do these ‘positions of power’ inform our actions and priorities?

Our actions to overcome the impacts of the Anthropocene are wide and varied, but, in many ways, are fundamentally flawed.

Most actions towards environmental protection, are dominantly and ultimately aimed at the self-preservation of the human race. Approaches centered on ‘protection’ also give rise to questions such as protection of what and to what state? How far back in time can and should we go to define the ‘origins’ of this ‘ideal natural state’? Rewilding projects have been critiqued on these grounds of the irrational reliance on a specific (often mythical) imagination of the past “to govern the present and to anticipate a particular future” (Lorimer and Driesseny 2016, 623). Besides, in the conditions of global environmental change, the ‘rightful’ natural condition may not even be viable (Robbins and Moore 2013). In such a scenario, how do we assume we have the ability to revert back to what was?

In some climate change scientific and advocacy fronts, such as those by the Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change, there is a strong push towards transformative adaptation, one that promotes “the idea of major, fundamental changes in society or natural systems as opposed to changes that are minor, marginal or incremental” (Ara Begum et al. 2022, 125). However, the report also recognizes our lack of current knowledge on adaptation outcomes and potential maladaptation at play. In such a scenario, this is akin to a crisis mindset causing an action bias overdrive. A call for large-scale transformative adaptations can indeed create greater future risks, irreversible environmental outcomes, and especially be detrimental for the least represented and most marginalized communities.

In other recent developments, however, such as in Earth System Science (ESS), the “Earth is [finally] understood as a single system, comprising of ‘coupled spheres’ characterized by boundaries, tipping points, feedback loops and other forms of non-linear dynamics” (Lorimer 2017, 119). ESS has inspired other disciplines to also embrace the systems thinking. Despite the calls for a ‘second Copernican revolution’ in how the world is understood, several global actions pursuing this framework are still falling short. For instance, the most recent United Nations Human Development Report 2020 – The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene, while there is a recognition that planetary and societal imbalances are intertwined in a vicious circle such that one affects the other, the aim is still towards achieving nature-based human development, i.e. primarily using nature as a vehicle for human well-being (UNDP 2020).

Time for recognizing “Nature Agency”

It is time to recognize nature having its own agency and extending the discourse of rights to non-human nature as well as those who have remained unseen this far (Gandy 2019). This would imply viewing and valuing nature for its own sake, and positioning ourselves with greater modesty than our current demeanors rely on. This would, potentially, still be the ‘most humanist’ action we could take (Lorimer 2017). Human moral force is strong, and we know it. So far, we have put it into practice against those with less power and voice. By convening, what Robbins and Moore propose “a liberal ‘parliament of things’ in a more democratic fashion… would allow us to outline the division of powers that could govern how humans and non-humans are represented” (2013, 15).

Recognizing that nature and culture are integral part of the same system is a good first step. But we also need to avoid falling back on the past in an attempt to recreate what is lost, rather, prepare ourselves to adapt to novel realities. We need to accept that our knowledge is limited, and hurried actions for big wins might only create more unseen challenges. Rather, we need to commit to taking many “modest actions”, modest both in terms of scale and moral compass, such that there is time to reflect and change the course if required.

Ultimately, our signatures of the past cannot be erased, and our impressions going forward cannot be avoided.  The Anthropocene will continue; however, it can take a different and potentially more positive trajectory in which both nature and humans can flourish.

“The future of the biosphere… depends partly on economics, partly on politics, but also partly on vision. It depends on what people’s values are.”

~ Erle EllisEnvironmental Scientist, in Bloomberg [5]

Footnotes

[1] Taking inspiration from the “anthropo-not-seen” by De la Cadena (2015).

[2] See an interesting infographic illustrating our presence within the history of the Earth – https://deeptime.info/

[3] Humans inhabit less than 1% of the land and have transformed about 14.6% of the total land on earth (Theobald et al. 2020).

[4] Humans are less than 0.01% of the species on earth – https://ourworldindata.org/life-on-earth

[5] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-09/climate-change-will-reshape-earth-as-human-land-use-did. Accessed on 06 Nov 2022.

References

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Cresswell, Tim. 2013. “Feminist Geographies.” In Contemporary Geographical Thoughts, edited by Tim Cresswell. https://doi.org/10.1080/00291950310002107.

Cronon. 1995. “In Search of Nature.”

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Few, Roger, Hazel Marsh, Garima Jain, Chandni Singh, and Mark Glyn Llewellyn Tebboth. 2021. “Representing Recovery: How the Construction and Contestation of Needs and Priorities Can Shape Long-Term Outcomes for Disaster-Affected People.” Progress in Development Studies 21 (1): 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464993420980939.

Gandy, Matthew. 2019. “The Fly That Tried to Save the World: Saproxylic Geographies and Other-than-Human Ecologies.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44 (2): 392–406. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12281.

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Lorimer, Jamie, and Clemens Driesseny. 2016. “From ‘Nazi Cows’ to Cosmopolitan ‘Ecological Engineers’: Specifying Rewilding through a History of Heck Cattle.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106 (3): 631–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1115332.

Maskrey, Andrew, Allan Lavell, and Garima Jain. 2022. “The Social Construction of Systemic Risk: Towards an Actionable Framework for Risk Governance.” 74. GAR 2022. UNDRR. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269107473_What_is_governance/link/548173090cf22525dcb61443/downloadhttp://www.econ.upf.edu/~reynal/Civil wars_12December2010.pdf%0Ahttps://think-asia.org/handle/11540/8282%0Ahttps://www.jstor.org/stable/41857625.

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Rose, Gillian. 2006. “Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Why should the South Indian states be more worried about the Central Vista redevelopment project in Delhi?

The Central government has swiftly got all approvals needed to redevelop the Central Vista, including a new Parliament building, by the 2022. The project received serious resistance from the architecture and planning communities for an opaque bidding and land-use conversion process; heritage conservationists for not giving credence to the area’s history and ignoring its cultural landscape; from environmentalists for infringing Delhi’s already poor air quality by cutting trees and not following required environmnetal guidelines; and from several citizen groups (largely from Delhi) for taking away public lands, grave lack of public participation, and spending 20,000 Cr. at a time of a pandemic and growing economic crisis. All very valid concerns, but there has been one big constiuency that this project will likely affect the most, and most deeply, but are currently missing from the table. The South Indian states.

Overt vs. Covert reasons

Some opponents of the redevelopment project have pointed out that there are several covert reasons that are driving this agenda by the Modi led BJP government. They point out that what is shown to be a gift to India on its 75th anniversary is in fact meant to gain favors with their followers in the RSS, who will be celebrating their 100th anniversary in 2022.

In a similar vein, one of the many arguments that the government gives to justify the redevelopment is that the existing structures (besides being a “symbol of British rule over India”) are “too old and small” for the needs of the functioning of the government. The “too old” argument is clearly a farce, considering some of the oldest Parliaments in the world (of which the Indian Parliament building is relatively new) have been successfully upgraded to continue functioning with the most modern equipment and layouts (incl. France, USA, as well as the British Parliament). But it is the “too small” argument that reckons more thought.

The current seating capacity of the Parliament is 550, which for the number of Members of Parliament (MPs) as of now, 542, is more than sufficient. So why do we need a bigger Parliament building with over 850 seats? And this is where the most dangerous covert reasons come along, for which we need to remind ourselves of the upcoming delimitation process.

Delimitation of constituencies

To understand in detail the history and process of the delimitation of the constituencies in India, I highly recommend listening to the Maha Bharat podcast by Druv Rathee on delimitation, although it is in Hindi.

But briefly, the delimitation of constituencies in independent India was first done in 1953 after the 1951 census was conducted, such that each constituency represented nearly the same number of people and areas, and each elected legislator represented the same number of people . The number of constituencies was due for reconsideration based on changes in population, instead it was frozen in 1976 on the grounds of incentivising family planning and controlling population explosion. It was due for reconsideration again in 2002, but the burgeoning population challenge was still ongoing, and therefore the the number of seats were again left untouched, to be reconsidered in 2026.

In these decades, while the South Indian states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have done exceedingly well in controlling their population through well organised family planning programmes and increasing awareness, the Northern states, primarily UP and Bihar, have continued on the old trends such that each of their constituencies by now has two to three times the number of people as a Southern constituency.

If the delimitation exercise is undertaken in 2026 and the number of seats are increased commesurate with the population numbers, it will, to no one’s surprise, allocate many more seats to the North Indian states than those that actually achieved the family planning goals. This “democratically valid” increased number of seats and representation in the parliament will give a huge advantage to northern states like UP and Bihar, than the South Indian states.

Bigger Parliament will bring in a different “New India”

The Central Government’s ongoing narrative is that this redevelopment will be symbolic of the new “Atmanirbhar India”. But what is currently made to look like a simple redevelopment and building upgradation, is covertly paving way for a “New India” with very new constitutional realities. The increased representation of the Northern states in the legislatures, which are historically right leaning with fast growing hindutva roots, is likely to give an irreversible advantage to the BJP/RSS in the future of the largest democracy of the world.

The opposition for this redevelopment, therefore, cannot be limited to a few disparate communities of practice and activism, but to all citizens of India who will be deeply affected if the “majoritarian” agendas are allowed to succeed. What seems like a big financial and environmental burden on the Indian economy at the moment, is merely a small investment towards a much bigger political master stroke.

Police were never meant to keep people safe: Police Act, 1861

Police atrocities in the country are on a never-before high. They are found persuing the objectives of those in power rather than the safety of the people and the innocent. They lack the willingness to file First Information Reports (FIRs) against the perpetrators, rather are seen filing cases against the innocent. Counterintuitive one may think, but the issue lies not in their actions, but in how they are governed.

Police Act, 1861

The Police Act of 1861 (‘the Act’ from hereon) governs most police forces in India. Some states, such as Delhi,  Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Kerala have their own legislation, but even these closely resemble the 1861 Act as they were primarily modeled on it.

This legislation was enacted by the British, as a response to the 1857 Mutiny, or India’s first war for independence. This Act, similar to other Indian administrative legislations from that time, was meant to rule and not to serve the citizens. Its purpose was not to keep people safe, rather enable an oppressive regime and crush dissent or any movement for self-government. Unsurprisingly, the word ‘safety’ does not find a single mention in the Act, whereas preserving “peace” is repeated six times. 

In contrast to establishing the colonial dominance in the ruled lands, the Metropolitan London police model was of course created with very different objectives. Its main principles emphasize prevention, winning the trust and cooperation of people, integrating itself into the neighborhoods and advocate restraint on the use of force. The officers were also drawn from the local community, and therefore reflected its values rather than that of the government.

At present, the Act ensures that the police are accountable only to the state government, and not the people. This leaves the gratuitous scope for political and other undesirable interference in police work. There is no scope for consultation between police and people. While they must be seen as a provider of a key service to the people, they are currently seen as a force to subdue and subject them. Rather than being a trusted ally, they are feared, or worse condemned.

Misplaced incentives

As per the Act, their duties include to (1) obey and execute orders issued by a ‘competent authority‘; (2) communicate information that would help ‘maintain peace‘; (3) prevent public nuisances; (4) detect and bring offenders to justice by apprehending people they are ‘legally authorized’ to and when ‘sufficient’ ground exists; and (5) enter and inspect any drinking-shop, gaming-house or “other places of resort of loose and disorderly characters“. In light of knowing their established allegiances, if we take the recent incidences from Jawaharlal Nehru University, the police have acted on precisely these duties assigned to them in law. So, in principle, we cannot question their ‘competence’, but we need to question their entire being.

Even the individual personnel cannot act of free-will, because as per the Act, the subordinate personnel can be dismissed, suspended, fined, or demoted by their superiors (Inspector- General, Deputy Inspectors- General, Assistant Inspector- General and District Superintendents of Police) at any time if found negligent in discharging their ‘duties’.

And ensuring people’s safety is not among those. Nor is it an outcome that is important in their performance measures. There is no requirement to set objectives or standards, and no independent and accountable mechanism to monitor and inspect their performance. If the objective is to resolve as many FIRs filed as possible, it is only likely that the easiest of cases accusing the weak and the powerless will be filed.

Meanwhile, there’s also no incentive for any government in power to re-assess and re-design such laws because the laws as they are, ensure the power asymmetry between the government and the citizens. While the current government has spoken loud and clear about replacing the physical remnants of British legacies such as by redeveloping the Central Vista, it is time to ask them to use the resources better instead by reforming the archaic laws.

Needed reforms

The National Police Commission (NPC) appointed in 1977 gave its recommendations over eight reports, but the Model Bill based on those was never executed. Following a Public Interest Litigation filed by two police officers demanding to execute the NPC recommendations, the Ribeiro Committee was instated by the Supreme Court that also produced two reports. Subsequently, there have been a few other commissions with similar pursuits, but have largely remained on paper. Some of the recommendations enshrined in these reports, only if they were also in practice, could have avoided the misgivings following the last few weeks. A 2005 paper by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative articulates the urgent need for police reforms succinctly. 

The police are an essential part of democracy: to maintain law and order essential to guarantee people’s freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. At the same time, the police are accountable for their conduct and for the service they are expected to provide. The Act must represent the ethos of a modern democratic nation that India is. The legislation must ascertain that the police have functional autonomy combined with a high performance alongside strong mechanisms of accountability directly to the people. There must be institutional provisions, such as an independent body governing the police, to insulate them from undesirable and illegitimate outside pressures, and influences, and where political control may only be limited to executive oversight.

The Act must articulate the community’s role in establishing law and order. Apart from consultation platforms, an institutionalized role of community policing could also be evolved. India might even learn from other Commonwealth nations that have evolved from a similar regime. The South Africa Police Act, 1995, establishes the Community Police Forums at the police station level to act as a liaison between the police and the community.  Their Constitution itself makes it the responsibility of each province to ensure and promote good relations between the police and the community.

The Act needs to prescribe a new Charter of Duties, such that the police are not merely meant to investigate crime and apprehend offenders but their preventive role in the protection of the vulnerable in danger of physical harm and thereby maintaining a feeling of security is also fortified. The duties must include their effective working relationship with other sub-systems of the Criminal Justice System and communities. The police could also play a counseling or a mediating role in relevant situations.

The NPC prescribed additional duties on these lines including that would require the police to file all cognizable offenses, assist in preventing the vulnerable from being exploited, prevent harassment of women and children in public places, ensure that arrested persons are not denied their rights and privileges, and see that victims of road accidents are given prompt medical aid without waiting for formalities.

Effectively, a mere amendment may not be sufficient, rather the Police Act, 1861, needs to be replaced by a new code, driven with the core objective of safety and security of the civilians in the country. Instead of focusing on making a museum of democracy, let’s strive to re-write the colonial legacy laws to prove that we are.

My objective reasons for why I object to the CAA+NRC+NPR

India is burning with protests and counter-protests ever since 12 December 2019 when the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) was enacted and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register 2020 (NPR) gained prominence. I have tried to follow the discussions as closely and as objectively as possible, and I see fundamental flaws at multiple levels, giving me enough cause to vehemently oppose the CAA, NRC, and NPR, especially when seen in combination.  

The act of amending the Act

The first question that arises is if there was a need for amending the law through a Parliamentary process when India already has legal provisions to grant citizenship to immigrants based on the merits of their claims? But the answer to this question is found not so much in the legal domain alone, but the politics and ideology of those in power.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) was first introduced in the Lok Sabha on 19 July 2016. It was referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on 12 August 2016, and the JPC submitted its report on 7 January 2019 to Parliament. Based on the recommendations, the CAB was revised to include three of the recommendations, leaving out the rest. The Bill was passed by Lok Sabha on 8 January 2019. It was pending for consideration and passing by the Rajya Sabha but it lapsed following the dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha.

Revisions made in the CAB 2019

(1)  the provisions on citizenship for illegal migrants will not apply to the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, or Tripura, as included in the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution.  These tribal areas include Karbi Anglong (in Assam), Garo Hills (in Meghalaya), Chakma District (in Mizoram), and Tripura Tribal Areas District.  It will also not apply to the areas under the Inner Line” under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873.  The Inner Line Permit regulates visit of Indians to Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Nagaland.

(2) reduces the period of naturalisation for such group of persons from six years to five years.

(3) on acquiring citizenship such persons shall be deemed to be citizens of India from the date of their entry into India, and all legal proceedings against them in respect of their illegal migration or citizenship will be closed.

The Bhartiya Janata Party had promised to extend Indian citizenship to the religious persecuted minorities from neighboring nations as part of their 2019 election manifesto (see 07, 08, and 12). Following up on their commitment, it was re-introduced in the 17th Lok Sabha on the 09 December 2019 by the Home Minister Amit Shah and was passed on 10 December 2019 (311 MPs voting in favor and 80 against the Bill). The bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 11 December 2019 (125 votes in favor and 105 votes against it). Clearly, much of the support in either house was garnered on the party lines, and not strictly on the basis of principles. After receiving approval from the President of India on 12 December 2019, the bill assumed the status of an Act. So with not much opposition in the houses, in three days, the Act came into being.

Composition of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in December 2019

Lok Sabha (545 seats): National Democratic Alliance (led by BJP) = 338 seats ; Opposition = 207 seats. [Leader of the House – Narendra Modi. Leader of the Opposition – Vacant (since 2014)]

Rajya Sabha (245 (233 Elected + 12 Nominated)): National Democratic Alliance (led by BJP) = 115 seats ; Opposition = 125 seats ; Vacant = 5 seats. [Leader of the House – Thawar Chand Gehlot. Leader of the Opposition – Ghulam Nabi Azad]

Benevolent amendment?

On a cursory look, one may think that the amendment made to the 1955 Citizenship Act is rather benevolent on the part of the Indian government, in line with its humanitarian values, and is meant to be ‘inclusionary’ by offering greater dignity and rights to those persecuted from the neighboring countries currently living in India as refugees or ‘illegal migrants’. The amendment seeks to offer citizenship to those who (1) have been living in India, at least before 31 December 2014, but (2) are from either Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh, (3) have been persecuted there on the grounds of religion (intent and not in words), and (4) are either Hindus, Christians, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists, or Sikhs. I’ll try to discuss the issues embodied in each of these conditions, from the perspective of equality, to show that the CAA is against the fundamental right to equality, and is largely exclusionary only in a garb of inclusion, potentially to garner popular support.

Article 14 of the Indian Constitution provides that “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India”. This equality is guaranteed to all present on the Indian territory, irrespective of their nationality, religious beliefs, caste, class, gender, or date of entry into the country.

Meanwhile, the JPC defends the amendment (page 51) “any legislation may withstand challenge on the ground of discrimination and violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, in case the classification created by it is founded on an intelligible differentia which distinguishes persons or things that are grouped together from others left out of the group, and that differentia has a rational relation to the object sought to be achieved by the statute in question…the positive concept of equality does not postulate equal treatment of all persons without distinction but rather stresses on equality of treatment in equal circumstances as to similarly situated persons and the Bill appears to have the object of facilitating all such members of minority communities without any discrimination”.

This argument is premised on the same reasoning that all affirmative action and personal laws are based on: all in equal circumstances are treated equally. With the following cases, I’d like to prove that identifying people based on the specified grounds, (date of entry, country of origin, cause of persecution and religious affiliation) may indeed exclude some people, where everything else remaining constant, and despite experiencing similar poor circumstances, some people will receive unequal treatment under the CAA and therefore a violation of their fundamental rights.

(1) Date of entry: The specified date of entry (31 December 2014) may exclude many of those who may have moved to India more recently, despite fulfilling conditions 2, 3 and 4. This would mean that these people will be dealt ‘unequally’ for the said law, despite experiencing “equal circumstances”.

Apart from the fact that the same date was notified in the Gazette notification made on 08 September 2015 for the Foreigners Act 1946 (which was based on the last prepared voter list date at that time), it is still largely unclear how the date of 31 December 2014 is still (after 5 years of that notification) being used as a deadline for entry into the country.

Moreover, the documentation required (and available) to prove the entry date into the country would also lead to some erroneous exclusions. For the sake of giving a benefit of the doubt, we can assume that such numbers of immigrants may be very low (although no real data is available for such numbers), and therefore small implications for Type 1 error (i.e. false positives of people getting excluded despite fulfilling the criteria). Considering not much would change for these people from the status quo, it can be argued that the government can deal with this challenge by improving implementation processes, and considering cases on a one-on-one basis through the already-in-place legal provisions of granting citizenship.

(2) Country of origin: The country of origin criterion is relatively more exclusionary, as it does not show similar ‘benevolence’ to other ethnically persecuted communities from countries other than the three mentioned. The amendment does not include the Sri Lankan Tamils (Hindu) who fled Sri Lanka between the 1980s to early 2000s due to systematic violence. Many of them have been settled in Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country since. The numbers may be as high as 100,000 people including at least 29,500 “hill country Tamils” living in Tamil Nadu. This criterion further excludes over 94,203 Tibetans (Buddhist) who faced ethnic persecution in China since the 1950s, and have been living in India in exile for several decades now, without the right to be citizens. Nepalis living in India have also been raising concerns especially after the NRC in Assam declared about 100,000 of them ‘D-Voters’ or doubtful voters. Their concern is valid considering the amendment makes no mention of including them. There are over 1.9 million of them spread across the country, who fear they may not be treated equally after the amendment. Smaller in number, but this condition also excludes other national exiles such as the about 5,000 Ugandan Asians living in India who were expelled in 1972 by the Idi Amin government during its attempt at “giving Uganda back to ethnic Ugandans”. Overall, everything else remaining constant (including fulfilling conditions 1 and 4), at least 2.1 million people will receive unequal treatment, despite their plightful conditions.

[Note: Besides, positioning this amendment as a means to fix the mistakes made during partition, by including millions of citizens of undivided India explains why Pakistan and Bangladesh would be included, but still does not justify Afghanistan. In fact, India does not even share a border with Afghanistan (except PoK). If they were included, then why not African countries like Nigeria and Uganda from where persecuted minorities have escaped over years and found refuge in India?]

(3) Cause of persecution: The criterion of including only those who were persecuted on the grounds of religion excludes all those who are living in exile in India due to other ethnic and political reasons (such as the Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamilians, and Ugandan Asians mentioned in (2) above). Therefore, despite living in exile in poor circumstances, (and fulfilling criteria 1 and 4), they will still be treated unequally. 

Besides, this criterion assumes the premise that the neighboring countries with the Islamist state religions are brutal to the religious minorities living there, and therefore India must give them protection. But this excludes other religious neighbors: Buddhist – Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan, Tibet; and Hindu – Nepal. It is assumed that religious minorities, including Muslims, are not persecuted there. Also, as explained in greater detail in (4 ) below, some Muslim minorities facing serious persecution in the approved countries of origin are still excluded by the CAA. They fulfill criteria 1, 2, and 3, and yet will be treated unequally.

Further, from an implementation perspective, it may be difficult to prove if one is or isn’t persecuted on the grounds of religion. This may lead to Type 1 error, where although people may fulfill the criteria, they will still be left out due to poor documentation. This would mean that just being of a certain religion and originating from a certain country will be sufficient proof. This, although not as bad as Type 1 error, will also give rise to  Type 2 error whereby some of those living in India for reasons other than religious persecution (e.g. marriage), will still be able to become citizens. 

(4) Religious affiliation: Religion-based identification criterion is by far the most contentious and ‘unequal’. While it seeks to include those who ‘belong to’ Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian communities, it excludes all others. For a moment, let’s keep the equality argument aside, based on the counter-argument being made that the neighboring countries are theocratic (primarily Islamic), and people of certain religions (primarily non-Muslims) are persecuted more than others. Do the numbers justify this claim? According to the Intelligence Bureau, the number of such immigrants from these said countries and religions who are anticipated to benefit from this amendment is about 31,313: 25,447 Hindus, 5,807 Sikhs, 55 Christians, 2 Buddhists, and 2 Parsis (notice there are no Jains in this list, but they are still included in the CAA). That’s about 0.002% of the Indian population.

The largest community this identification criterion excludes is Muslims, even those persecuted from the mentioned three countries on religious grounds. Ahmadiyyas from Pakistan (approximately 2-4 million people from Islamic communities) were declared non-Muslims in 1972 and are being persecuted primarily on religious grounds. They claim to belong to the Gurdaspur district of Punjab in India (the birthplace of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement) and have been demanding to be allowed to come back. But apart from the fact that they have not been on the Indian land since the cut-off date,  they will remain excluded simply because they are not one of the six-religions mentioned. Hazaras (approximately 6 million people) are another large Muslim community facing religion-based violence by the Taliban in Afghanistan but find no benevolence in the CAA. One of the largest refugee crises the world has witnessed in this decade is that of the Rohingyas. Large masses of people, including women, old and children,  persecuted from Myanmar on the grounds of religion are facing deep survival challenges. According to UNHCR, about 40,000 Rohingya refugees are in India, and so far the country’s stand is to deport them on the grounds of national security. The CAA does not offer them any respite. There are also reports of atheists in Bangladesh who are persecuted there by fundamentalists who may be looking for refuge in India but will not be granted under the CAA. Given that the objective of CAA is to provide citizenship to migrants escaping from religious persecution, it is not clear why those suffering on similar grounds but belonging to other religious minorities from these countries have been excluded, even when their numbers are potentially much larger. Why are we only ‘benevolent’ to people belonging to these 6 religions? 

In conclusion, many, despite experiencing “equal circumstances”, are not being seen “equal before the law” and are differentiated based on certain criteria of religion and origin, and therefore, the CAA violates their fundamental right to equality under Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. 

[Note: The BJP 2019 election manifesto had only mentioned “Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs” but then what could have made them add Parsis and Christians? I speculate that since the Parsis, even though small in number, are among the most educated and richest communities in India (think Tatas), excluding them could have far-reaching political and economic repercussions. Kerela, a big political priority for the current government is primarily Christian and (for now) they cannot be alienated.]

[Note: ‘Belonging’ to these communities would mean people need to simply have been born in or married into these communities. They need not be ‘practicing’ or following these religions since there’s no real way to prove religion apart from the family or name unless one has formally converted.]

CAA alone

Let’s even keep the equality argument aside for a while. Let’s give a further benefit of the doubt to the government, and assume that the CAA is indeed meant to be inclusionary, and inclusionary alone. None of the anti-CAA protestors are against giving persecuted communities and vulnerable refugees (in this case ~32,000 people) citizenship. Please be our guests (literally!) and give them the right to dignity, a right everyone deserves (irrespective of the criteria set out).

Extend these ‘illegal migrants’ Indian Citizenship, assuming they want it too. If they indeed do, they can self-identify themselves, approach the Registrar General of Citizen Registration / Bureau of Immigration / Citizenship Bureau / Foreigners Division / Home Ministry, submit the relevant papers, go through the required checks, and get Indian citizenship. And end it at that.

What could be the financial cost of doing that? Assuming a generous  INR 10,000 per person (NRC in Assam cost the Indian government about INR 6,400 per illegal immigrant), it will barely amount to less than INR 32 Crore (that would be no more than what PM Modi might have spent on the 60 international travel trips since 2014, in the private jets with security and associated paraphernalia. Tops!)

So, why not just stop at CAA? Why go out and personally search for these people by conducting door-to-door surveys, document checks, and assessments? What would be the financial cost of doing that? The Union Cabinet has recently approved a budget of INR 3,941 Crores to conduct the National Population Register exercise (more on this below), along with the Census 2021, for which an additional budget of INR 8,754 crore is approved. Just to give a comparison, the cost of conducting the 2011 Census was about INR 2,200 crore which works out to a per-person cost of Rs.18.19. Despite the humungous financial cost, the modus operandi chosen is to conduct a survey-based search. Why? Why is it willing to go through even greater social, political and economic costs in the process in the face of nation-wide protests and resistance? Because CAA might be, but the NPR/NRC is certainly not just about inclusion. CAA, framed in the language of inclusion, is simply a pretext to garner support from the otherwise well-meaning but naive citizens (and diaspora) and fulfill other agendas (potentially rooted in the political ideologies of those in power) using ‘simple implementation mechanisms’: NPR and NRC. 

[Note: Some people give counter-arguments that the so-called-liberals are opposing the CAA simply because it is led by the BJP. They are reminding everyone that it was originally a Congress’s idea. You know what – nobody cares about whose idea it was. It would have faced similar resistance if they had brought this upon us. But they didn’t. Or maybe people of India didn’t vote for the Congress precisely for this reason, so shouldn’t they feel cheated when the BJP government after winning is still implementing Congress’ ideas… hmm… thoughts? Anyway, I will try and keep my arguments as non-aligned with any political party as possible. Because this is not about party lines, but principles.]

CAA + NRC + NPR = Exclusion

CAA is not here alone. It has in its tow the NRC and NPR. Let’s first establish the relationship between the CAA, NRC, and NPR and if they act together. The BJP speakers and other CAA supporters have constantly maintained that (A) CAA has nothing to do with the NRC and NPR, considering the recent amendment itself does not mention either of these and (B) NPR is simply a ‘regular census exercise’ and is a requisite for all countries to maintain a register of its citizens. But the legal reality is far from this.

(A) In 2003, the BJP Vajpayee government had introduced the Citizenship
(Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 as part of the Citizenship Act, 1955. These rules define and establish the National Population Register (see section 2(l)) as well as the National Citizenship Register (see sections 3). A simple reading of these rules further establishes that the NPR will form the basis of the NRC (see section 3(5)).

Extracts from the 2003 Rules that define the NPR and NRC and their connection

Section 2(l) : ‘Population Register’ means the register containing details of persons usually residing in a village or rural area or town or ward or demarcated area (demarcated by the Registrar General of Citizen Registration) within a ward in a town or urban area;

Section 3(1) : The Registrar General of Citizen Registration shall establish and maintain the National Register of Indian Citizens. (2) The National Register of Indian Citizens shall be divided into sub-parts consisting of the State Register of Indian Citizens, the District Register of Indian Citizens, the Sub-district Register of Indian Citizens and the Local Register of Indian Citizens and shall contain such details as the Central Government may, by order, in consultation with the Registrar General of Citizen Registration, specify.

Section 3(5) : (5) The Local Register of Indian citizens shall contain details of persons after due verification made from the Population Register.

Note that the NPR need not always be accompanied by an NRC. The first nationwide NPR exercise was conducted in 2010, although this was not followed by an NRC. But the inverse is not true. A nationwide NRC cannot be established without conducting the NPR, making it a necessary condition, and which will eventually form the basis for who will make it to the National Register of Indian Citizens or not. Therefore, although seemingly simple instruments of implementation, NPR and NRC have far-reaching implications on an individual’s citizenship status.

The rules also make reference to the identification of “doubtful citizens” (see section 4(4)). This is arbitrary and left at the discretion of the surveyor and subjective interpretation of the administration. The “doubt” can arise out of anything – presence/absence of documentation, the sufficiency of documentation, plausibility of the documentation, or any other reasons deemed fit by the surveyor. In such “doubtful” cases identified, Section 5(a) further puts the onus of proving their citizenship on the people, on which decision would be taken in 90 days. This particular clause single-handedly can be used as a means to delegitimize someone’s citizenship status. Although these rules don’t explain any further on what happens to those who are identified as “doubtful citizens” in the NPR, it potentially has implications for these people to be included or excluded from the NRC.

Extracts from the 2003 Rules that establish the category of ‘doubtful’ citizens

Section 4(4) : During the verification process, particulars of such individuals, whose Citizenship is doubtful, shall be entered by the Local Registrar with appropriate remark in the Population Register for further enquiry and in case of doubtful Citizenship, the individual or the family shall be informed in a specified proforma immediately after the verification process is over.

Section 5 (a) Every person or family specified in sub-rule (4), shall be given an opportunity of being heard by the Sub-district or Taluk Registrar of Citizen Registration, before a final decision is taken to include or to exclude their particulars in the National Register of Indian Citizens.

This gets us to yet another important amendment that will have implications here. In 2003, by the same Vajpayee government, another significant amendment was made to the Citizenship Act 1955: the introduction of the term “illegal migrant”. According to this, “an illegal immigrant is a foreigner who: (i) enters the country without valid travel documents, like a passport and visa, or (ii) enters with valid documents but stays beyond the permitted time period. Illegal migrants may be imprisoned or deported under the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920.  The 1946 and the 1920 Acts empower the central government to regulate the entry, exit and residence of foreigners within India.”

Once identified as ‘doubtful citizens’, and unlisted as ‘usual citizens’ from the NRC, these people become ‘illegal migrants’. This is also when the CAA kicks in again. As long as you belong to any of the 6 religions, you may be rescued by the CAA and regranted citizenship, but it does not safeguard Muslims and people belonging to other faith groups the same way, and maybe further disproportionally represented in this group of ‘doubtful citizens’ and ‘illegal migrants’.

Therefore, CAA has a dual function. While it can work independently of the NRC and NPR, but with them, it offers an additional route to citizenship but only to the 6 stated religious communities, by [plausibly] offering them a recourse of a lower burden of proof. As the graphic below explains, the CAA disproportionately excludes those not from the 6 said religions in the process of proving citizenship. This promotes a citizenship regime based on religion, the first in ‘secular’ India.

Graphic source: Collective authorship – translations available in Hindi, Kannada, English, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, & Marathi (via by Gautam Bhan)

Meanwhile, apart from the 2003 Rules and CAA, there has been a recent amendment made to the Foreigners Act, 1946 called the Foreigners (Tribunals) Amendment Order, 2019, which now authorizes the District Collector or the District Magistrate (see section 2.A.a), who are also in charge of the NPR-NRC, to refer the ‘excluded’ (those unable to provide sufficient documentation to prove citizenship) to a Foreigners Tribunal. These not-usual-citizens or ‘illegal migrants’ and can then be deported [Note: although not sure to where because many of them native to India wouldn’t have actually come from anywhere else but India] or worse, sent to detention centers. 

Extract from the 2019 Foreign Tribunals amendment order

Section 2A(a): for the words “the Central Government may,”, the words “the Central Government or the State Government or the Union territory administration or the District Collector or the District Magistrate may,” shall be substituted

(B) Don’t make the mistake of assuming that NPR is a ‘regular census process’. Census is conducted under the Census of India Act, 1948 whereas the NPR is mandated under the Citizenship Act, 1955 (as pointed out in the 2003 amendment above). While providing information to Census is voluntary and does not require document verification, not complying with NPR has penal consequences with fines (see sections 7 and 17 of the 2003 rules) and it would require the furnishing of documentation (e.g. proof of place of birth of self and parents) (see section 8). In practice, NPR is a ‘Schedule’ or a list of questions that may be asked at tandem with the Census house listing survey questions, even though they are meant for completely different purposes and governed by different laws. Census data meant for counting is aggregated (with no way of recognizing the individual-level information) and published as such, whereas the NPR data with an individual’s information will be used for the purposes of creating and publishing the NRC, through which the lists of inclusion and exclusion could be viewed online.

Extract from the 2003 Rules that make NPR mandatory

Section 7: It shall be compulsory for every Citizen of India to assist the officials responsible for preparation of the National Register of Indian Citizens under rule 4 and get himself registered in the Local Register of Indian Citizens during the period of initialization.

Section 8: The District Registrar, Sub-district or Taluk Registrar or the Local Registrar of Citizen Registration may, by order, require any person to furnish any information within his knowledge in connection with the determination of Citizenship status of any person and the person required to furnish information shall be bound to comply with such requisition.

Section 17: Penal consequences in certain cases – Any violation of provisions of rules…shall be punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees.

Assuming that we still go with the argument that NRC is a register of citizens that all countries must own, and therefore so must we. But wasn’t that the purpose of Adhaar? Why not strengthen that process instead? Some will counter-argue, I presume, that since that is still a voluntary exercise (although for all practical purposes it isn’t anymore) it leaves out all the other residents who continue to live on the land as illegal migrants. So, therefore, this exercise is to go and fix the mistakes done retrospectively by trying to identify and remove all those who are ‘illegal migrants’. So the cost we are willing to incur is indeed to take away (i.e. exclude) some people’s place in the country, strip them of their livelihoods, make them stateless, and take away their dignity (whatever little they have of it). Very ‘benevolent’ investment, indeed.

Another argument often heard is that the ‘illegal migrants’ are a drain to the limited resources. Do we have an estimate of how much that would be, based on which we are willing to make such large investments to curb the ‘infiltration’? Not really. We don’t even know how many illegal migrants there are, who they are (after all that’s why this exercise), and obviously have no estimates of what proportion of resources they are consuming. So this argument is merely a speculation.

Most certainly, the ‘illegal migrants’ put together are not draining as many resources as this NRC exercise as an attempt to removing them will. In truth, illegal migrants make up one of the poorest and most marginalized communities in India. They take up work others are not willing to do at wages no one else is willing to accept. They live in poor conditions because they are unable to access services meant for citizens. They are most certainly not stealing the resources, rather far from it. They are possibly subsiding our privileged lifestyle and system. But unfortunately, for now, they are used as a bait for fulfilling the bigger ideological agenda of those in power.

Instead of going and finding and deporting these illegal migrants, why don’t we just accept that our borders have not been managed as well in the past, and our birth and death record management has been dismal? Why don’t we spend these resources and energy in making these systems more efficient, and monitoring more effective, so going forward we don’t continue having the same doubts (or worse conduct this exercise again after 10 years)? But there’s hardly any investment being done on that front.

A question that may be raised is why wasn’t the NPR 2010 opposed the same way as the NPR 2020 is? Because there are seemingly minor but additional data points added that can have far-reaching consequences. What are these key differences in data collected between NPR 2010 and 2020? The questions asked under the NPR 2010 is available, but NPR 2020 questions can so far be gleaned from the NPR pilot announced in West Bengal recently. Broadly the key difference is in the additional information required on the date and place of birth of parents which for the first time can be linked with other biometric information of the individual such as Aadhaar. Other information such as religious affiliation, even though also asked for earlier, will also now be linked to a person’s identity and location. The government is then free to make use of this information in any way it wants for the NRC and target them in any way.  Note that there are currently no manuals publicly available for training the Census enumerators for conducting the NPR or to know what documents they would be checking. Is this vagueness also deliberate?

Lessons from the NRC conducted in Assam

The nationwide NRC is different from that conducted in Assam, based on the special exemptions made for Assam. As per this rule, the NRC in Assam is completed by “inviting applications from all the residents for collection of specified particulars relating to each family and individual, residing in a local area in the State including the citizenship status based on the National Register of Citizens 1951, and the electoral rolls up to the midnight of the 24th day of March 1971”. Whereas, the nationwide NRC will be based on enumeration conducted as NPR.

Following the notification made on 05 December 2013, the process of NRC was initiated in Assam and was originally meant to be completed in 3 years. By 2015, 3.3 crore people submitted an application to be included, of which only 2.8 crore people were found eligible by 2018. Further, 36 lakh people filed against exclusions. The final NRC listed about 19.1 lakh people, who could either not provide sufficient proof or who did not file the claims. Following this final NRC publication, these now stateless people were asked to file claims to the Foreign Tribunal. What was originally an exercise to determine “illegal migrants” became an exercise on proving citizenship. 

All those who had been ardent supporters of the NRC as a means to deal with the issue of “illegal migrants” in Assam found the final number of people excluded to be either too small or disproportionally higher with non-Muslims and therefore demanded reconsideration. The BJP, which is in power in the state, too opposed the NRC in its present form, pitching for 20% re-verification of the names claiming that most people, especially those bordering Bangladesh, have used fake documents to prove citizenship. The exercise took several years, 52,000 government employees, and Rs. 1,220 crores, all to no avail. What is the chance a similar failure may not occur in the nationwide exercise? Low, at best.

Who is likely to get affected by the NPR and NRC? 

Make no mistakes. The NRC/NPR will not just affect Muslims. It will affect all, but most of all the vulnerable minorities. The implications will be inversely proportional to socio-economic privileges, level of education and documentation. Rural populations may be more disproportionately affected than their urban counterparts. Dalits will be worse-off than dominant castes, women more than men and transgendered more than cis-gendered. Informal workers more than formal workers, and tribal communities possibly worst of all. But eventually, each and every person will have to go through the trauma of proving your position in the country, at costs that would go well beyond financial. 

Hurried implementation 

Implementation of the National Population Register is being done on the sly. A pilot was announced to be conducted in West Bengal but faced resistance. As per the recent extraordinary gazette notification by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the NPR “with house-to-house enumeration throughout the country (except Assam) for collection of information relating to all persons who are usually residing within the jurisdiction of Local Registrar shall be undertaken between the 1st day of April 2020 to 30th September 2020.” That is a year before the Census is meant to be conducted (2021). 

Meanwhile, many state governments [curiously all BJP led] including Karnataka and Assam, have already started adding to the already existing detention centers, some claiming them to have ‘no links with the NRC’. Is this purely coincidental that they are getting built soon after the CAA is passed? The conditions of living in a detention center will be an entirely new debate enough for an article of its own, but some already emerging examples highlight that public buildings available are being repurposed for this new function, which may be extremely small to house the number of people anticipated, creating conditions of extreme overcrowding, leading to unhygienic and even inhuman living environment.

Then are the anti-CAA protests valid? 

In a large country fraught with corruption and illiteracy, limited resources and poor development indicators, high inequity and skewed power dynamics, the trade-offs of conducting a massive exercise such as this can have grave long-term social, economic, and political implications. Let’s weigh in the costs and supposed benefits to see if resisting these changes is worth the effort. 

Benefit – 31,000 people will get citizenship and with that more dignity and a right to vote. Some even argue that this number might be higher given that some may have been hiding for all these years but will now emerge considering they are legitimized. But all this can still be achieved without incurring any of the following costs by simply stopping at the CAA, and not proceeding with the NRC/NPR.

Costs – There will be financial, social, political, and environmental costs associated with this. If the government does proceed with the NRC/NPR, the financial cost of conducting the exercise at present is budgeted at INR 3,941 Crores. To give context, the government spent INR 1220 crore in the Assam NRC alone (approximately Rs 6,400 per illegal migrant) and yet failed miserably. Hence, there is no guarantee that after spending all these financial resources, the said objective of identifying ‘illegal immigrants’ will be achieved (at least not fairly). 

Even if we assume no malafide intentions on the part of the government behind these recent set of actions, simply the errors as faced in any administrative process can still have far-reaching consequences. The State of the Aadhaar report by IDInsight indicates that demographic error-rate in Aadhaar self-reporting was 8.8% vs. 5.7% for voter ID. These errors may be simply due to mistakes in name, age, address or other required information. In the case of NRC in Assam, a small spelling error in the name led to exclusions from the list. Even if the lower of the two error rates were assumed, it would still mean 74 million people may get erroneously left out from the NRC and their claim to Indian Citizenship delegitimized. An exceptionally superior implementation compared to some of the Nordic governments, would still mean an error rate of 1%, which in the case of India is still a significantly large number – 13 million people. Following the CAA, not all will be at equal risk, despite being left out erroneously. People not belonging to the 6 said religious communities will have no real recourse.

According to the last Census 2011, India had people from groups that do not conform to the six religions mentioned in the CAA.  People belonging to Judaism, tribal religions, Baha’i faith, as well as those who did not state their religion make a total of 1% of the Indian population (13 million people). Muslims make up 14.2% of the population. [Note: these are based on what people stated at the time of the Census Survey, apart from what the surveyor may have noted based on the signaling from the names]. Even if only 1% of this 15%  are unable to prove their citizenship during the NRC process, and are also unable to find a safety net in the CAA, it would imply an statelessness of over 1.9 million people (a very conservative estimate), their loss of dignity, right to vote, and to a large extent their lives.  

Where would these people go? The cost of building one detention center for 30,000 people is 46 Crores (i.e. INR 1600 per person). The financial cost of building similar detention centers to house 1.9 million people alone would mean INR 3 billion. This does not account for the cost of land which is already a scarce resource. It also does not account for the operations and maintenance, after all, as seen from the case of Assam it will take several years to resolve these issues, and there will be both social and financial costs of that.

More significantly, all these financial costs are at the same time opportunity costs on development. What alternative uses could these resources have? Investing in quality education, creating more jobs, improving health systems and roads to access all these, providing safe drinking water and sanitation systems, and indeed making ‘Bharat Swatchh’.

All these excluded people (irrespective of whether they are legal/illegal/religious/non-religious) overcrowded in detention centers are likely to face extreme trauma and indignation. Such living conditions violating human rights might attract a global political backlash, which may have second and third-order repercussions for the country’s economy. But most importantly, the potential for an assault on so many people is so high, that any supposed benefit cannot be worth these serious implications. 

Let’s not make the same mistake as we did during the demonetization exercise, where we agreed to pay a price in exchange for reducing corruption, black money, and counterfeit notes. Yes, we paid the price. Many lost productive hours standing in ATM queues, many (especially women) lost financial security, some even lost lives. Many small enterprises shut shop. Banks lost several hours and resources processing exchanges and reprinting new notes. And we as a nation lost economic growth. What did we achieve in exchange? Some counterfeit notes. Worth it? You decide for yourself.  

In light of this discussion, it is fairly clear why so many people are out on the streets trying to stop the government from taking such knee-jerk actions, which can potentially have wider grave consequences than benefits for a few. The nation-wide peaceful protests are not to prevent certain people from getting citizenship. They are to protect the ones who have it but fear the risk of losing it. 

[Note: The BJP speakers and many supporters are blaming the opposition for instigating protests across the country. A simple common-sense tells me that if the opposition indeed had that kind of power to get people out on the streets, they wouldn’t have been in the opposition but running the government. The other argument people are making to support the CAA is that they are against violent protests. So are the protestors. After all, who does violence benefit? Not the protestors who get beaten up. Not the opposition, because they are on the same side as the protestors and beating them up to silence them would hardly make sense. And isn’t violence a convenient distraction from the key issues at hand? Why is it that most of the violence is happening in BJP led states?]

India’s position on citizenship, illegal migration, and refugees

Citizenship in principle is inherently a paradox. It is both inclusionary and exclusionary at the same time. To keep some people in, many are kept out. The process of making a list of citizens in itself will also delegitimize many. The list can further be used as an instrument to harass people, instigate fear, and spark violence.

Despite its size and claims of being an economic power, India is way lower in the rankings for hosting refugees than its neighbors Pakistan and Bangladesh. According to UNHCR “While India endorsed UNHCR’s Global Compact for Refugees (GCR), the protection environment facing people of concern to UNHCR is expected to remain quite restricted in 2020. Refugees can be expected to continue receiving exit orders, be at risk of detention and face return to their countries of origin. Opportunities to achieve self-reliance and economic inclusion for people of concern will remain limited.”

Meanwhile, India lacks a holistic refugee policy. In the absence of such a law, there is no mechanism available with the Government to determine who a refugee is, and what should be their rights and India’s responsibility towards them. While CAA on the cursory look seems to be inclusionary, played in conjunction with the NRC and NPR, it is extremely exclusionary and unequal and can produce many more refugees than there already are. And once they are, we don’t have a mechanism in place to deal with them.

In the end, NRC may not just be a means to exclude Muslims or make social divisions based on religion. It will be a means to start the process of ‘othering’, which has no end unless we end it now.

The not-so-smart SMART cities

This post was written on 03 September 2015, but I had (at that time) decided to not publish it. Looking at it 4 years from then, I do recognize that it is written from a place of frustration and is probably weak on specific evidence. Yet, since the issues raised here are probably still valid, I am now publishing it here for comments and inputs – and maybe a follow up write up.

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Just imagine a world where the cars will drive themselves, and humans will take instructions from machines. Oh wait – isn’t that already happening, with google and uber taking yet another leap over technology? Do we know what the world will be like in the next ten or twenty years—the world in which our cities are going to live? Well, not quite. So then what are we planning our ‘smart cities’ for? MoUD recently came up with a note in which they described as the ‘Smart city scheme’. While they rightly note the inevitable growth of urbanisation and its linkages with economic development, but they lack any imagination further than that. The note is dreaming and promising a future for these cities that is, unfortunately, unreal.

Advancements in technology in the last decade have been astounding, and it will only continue to be so at least in the near future. This may eventually inverse the primacy of humans over machines, and we might increasingly see jobs skewing towards making and servicing these machines. Do we know, then, where the people living in these future cities would work and sustain a decent and deserved livelihood? With this will also increase the already expanding inequality gap. The rich would make and own these machines, and the poor would merely service them. It will get harder (and harder) to move up the ladder, where there won’t be a middle. Then imagine the current middle class that would have no choice but to move downwards economically as well as socio-politically. The culture would change. The people and their aspirations would change. The economic structure would change. The nature of democracy itself might change. New forms of surveillance are already questioning this democracy, where people would have continually less control over their actions and movements, which we are aspiring to improve. After all, isn’t that a condition on which many such assumptions and plans are being made?

Going forward, limited natural resources will only be more contested. Water scarcity and sky-rocketing land prices are not just the results of a bubble, rather a reality that needs to be addressed for the long term. Increasing pollutants in the air and water, are direct consequences of consumerism, for which again there is no plan or policy envisioned. These would also result in health impacts and new diseases for which we are currently not adept to dealing with. Hopefully, medical advancements will catch up quickly, but are we prepared to remain at pace?

With the changing climate, the intensity and frequency of natural hazards will increase— evidence for which IPCC has recently presented and is now already accepted globally. But not in this note. There is no plan yet to deal with such extreme events. There is a mention of ‘sustainability’, but there is no clarity what this ‘sustainability’ is and, not surprisingly, no imagination of how it would be achieved. All these cities we are creating, and making people live in, will be exposed to hazards that we will have no control over and no funds to manage either.

Are we prepared for this future we don’t know? Remember, there may not be a plan B after we have built these cities. It may not be an option to go back in time to rebuild again. The smart cities envisioned are simply reminiscing (and recreating) pasts of many other cities, and barely managing to realise the needs for today, leave alone for the future. The vision for these cities is rosy, but unfortunately, the world won’t be. There will be risks that these cities will have to face and yet sustain themselves. Flourishing will be far-fetched when mere sustainability will be a challenge.

There is a clear case of making the cities resourceful and inclusive, but more importantly, making them reflective is pertinent. In-building redundancies and flexibilities in these plans could help cities be resilient in the face of such changes. So then why don’t we attempt to make our cities truly ‘smart’?

September 2014 Srinagar Floods: Stale News? (post written on 09 April 2015)

Well, not quite. Especially as Kashmir faces another bout of extreme rains and flood in March 2015 and reminds us of what happened six months ago. Srinagar and its neighbouring districts were hit by a severe flood on the night between September 6 and 7, 2014, after which some areas stayed deluged for over three weeks. Red ‘HFL’ marks (Highest Flood Level) have been painted on a number of buildings and city infrastructure, where many are above the second floor levels of some mud and wood constructed houses. Most people in the country have probably forgotten all about what they saw on their televisions six months back, but these lines are not the only reminders of the trauma for the residents in this city. For them, after spending a cold winter in damp and unsafe houses, worse is still to come as they stare in the face of more spells of extreme rains.

Apart from investing in infrastructure, the State is required to provide the people with some compensation but it is almost always insufficient for recovery. In Srinagar, the state and district administration undertook a door to door assessment of the damages to houses promptly within a month of the floods. But this could not catch the more severe cracks which appeared after a few months, following sinking foundations. While houses in the first round got ‘compensated’, the re-evaluation process is still on-going. These interim compensations are measly (amounts of Rs.3,800,  Rs.12,600 and Rs.75,000  for partially, severely and fully damaged houses respectively, and a provision of rents up to Rs. 5000 for fully damaged houses for up to 6 months), but the cumulative compensation has already set the State back by more than Rs.156 crore. Additional losses, including those to trade and commercial enterprises, are estimated to be nearly Rs.44 thousand crore.

Sadly, these assessments fail to quantify the many intangibles, which are likely to set almost the entire state back by a few years, and potentially also cause some irreparable damage. In Srinagar, apart from the damage to heritage structures all over the city, rare items in a museum including the Gilgit manuscripts, which are some of the oldest scripts in the world for Buddhist philosophy, religion and astronomy, were damaged. Can any financial assistance ever quantify this loss?

Schools have been rendered dysfunctional for months. Those who have to compete at national level entrances have not only lost time but also their books and certificates. They now have nothing to prove their past records, which is, unfortunately, a necessary evil in our system. Those who can might move out of the country, and those who can’t, might waste a productive year of their lives. Their families aren’t dealing with their children’s troubled future as they are currently preoccupied with bringing their basic lives back into some order.

Most people are either busy rebuilding their houses, or scrambling to get compensation or loans, while having lost 5-6 months of their livelihood. These people are often also the most vulnerable and least secure. While a few people did have insurance to help them recover some of their asset losses and rebuild their lives, most do not subscribe to such practices—either due to lack of knowledge or access, or because of their religious belief that considers getting insurance ‘haram’ or forbidden—making it a futile exercise to promote the use of this instrument for future safeguards.

The agro-forestry industry of which apples and lotuses are a big revenue generator, have been washed away, and will take years before they bear fruit again.  Most potential tourists overlook the lovely winters of Kashmir out of fear, and this drop in tourism has further left many jobless and savings-less.

Such instances remind us of the importance of planning ahead for reducing risks to people’s lives and well-being. Many people send the much needed relief support and many NGOs come forward to help in face of emergencies, but we need to constantly remind ourselves that it takes a long time for a system to heal. It takes a holistic, focused and persistent effort to rebuild lives, livelihoods and institutions to help pull back the economy, and help transform these places of trauma into better and safer places to live in.

failing to be kevin carter

As a group of young researches, we set out to rural Odisha, all excited to do ‘fieldwork’, having rigorously read ethics notes and guidelines and leading ourselves to believe what we could or could not do as researchers. All set, we start meeting people and their families—families who had suffered massive losses during cyclones, and deaths, and those who didn’t even need the cyclone to put them in the conditions they were probably in already and families who are struggling every day in the anticipation of yet another wrath of nature they are hearing rumors about. We wanted to find out about what happens to those families who are moved from their villages and homes where they had lived for years, to locations kms away in the hope of taking them out of harm’s way. And we met many heroes, those who have been fighting for themselves and their communities, and we found ourselves inspired by their courage. Each one opened up their personal lives to us. But of course, we being researchers stayed bound by our interview instrument, and even as we took copious notes, we stayed as disconnected as we ought to.

except for today. today a mother lost a three-day-old baby. a baby who she had delivered herself, alone. in a house that is three houses down where we spent an entire day doing a ‘focus group discussions’ with the villagers. in a village full of people, of which none belonged to her caste. so no one touched her. or her dead baby. or her two other one and three-year-old kids who walked around with no clothes asking us with all smiles to take their pictures even as their mother sat with a dead being in her hands.

her alcoholic husband, who she had managed to bring out on bail after leasing a small piece of land for 10000 rupees, came visiting her this afternoon and left soon after to a town close by as her wife suffered and cared for their coughing baby. Not having eaten much herself since the delivery two days ago, she decided to walk to the closest medical store to get some medicines for her child, only to find her dead when she got back. And yet the villagers stood around—as they did before with no action.

What would a professional do? Stay, of course, to get a good case study in its entire truth, but not intervene to change the normal course of action. I would too, except that I couldn’t.

How could I just stand there and watch people wait for her uninterested relatives to come to do the last rites, as the dead baby decayed in her mother’s lap? While we thought of all the possible things that could be done, we could hardly really do anything! We stood there for hours, standing, waiting for her relatives, hoping someone would find some ice to keep her baby on. Someone to get her food, just so that she herself could survive (if not for herself at least for her two other kids). We had two cabs with other Odiya drivers, but could we offer their cars to this ‘low cast’ woman? Could we force them knowing or unknowingly to help her go to a hospital? Could we offer her some money, and leave her to pray to more thieves, or leave some with some respected head of the village, who wasn’t even present despite all those hours? whatever though, we ought to do something. and something we did. still hoping it was for her good.

and now many hours later, I sit here and wonder if it would have made a difference if her cast was considered before moving her to this new relocation site? Would she be better off in the old village where she lived in a house much smaller and broken by the cyclone, but with her kins? what goes on in the decision making processes in an archaic cultural context such as these? what are the various risks created and recreated despite all good intentions? how could those be avoided? While I have questions, I so far only sit and wonder…

Kathmandu | ‘No-more-disaster’ Planning

A team from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements visited Kathmandu and a few neighboring villages in the week between the two earthquakes of April and May 2015. This note is based on the quick assessment that was made right after and presented at a few conferences and public foras in the last few months, in the hope that better planning in Kathmandu, and many other places around the world that are exposed to external hazards, can save them from disasters.

The key research questions we started the mission with included:
1. What are the key causes of damages, and what can be done to abate them in the future?
2. How can we build people’s capacities and knowledge about earthquake-resistant building technologies? And yet, how can we ensure proper shelter for the displaced people before the upcoming monsoon season?
3. How can we strike a balance between building new houses and toilets in the immediate future and long-term building stock resilience in Nepal?
4. What are the gaps in planning instruments and their implementation?

While walking around the city, we could notice that while many structures had fallen off, many remained intact. It was only curiosity that led to connecting the dots between the damaged structures, to know why they failed and others didn’t. This piece outlines the resulting Rapid Visual Damage Assessment done leading into a needs assessment.

TYPES OF DAMAGES

There was a typology or pattern of damages that was observed, described with some illustration below:

D1 – Differential sinking

Many buildings were seen to have collapsed due to partial or complete sinking of the land below. When mapped together, it is easy to see that many of them were located on what used to be the flood plains, wetlands, and soft sub-soil conditions and technically development should not have been allowed in those areas. When searching for a soil quality map of the city, to overlay on this map, one could not be located. In the absence of such information, how does the city plan its future construction? In such soil conditions, additional structural measures must be taken (if at all buildings are allowed to be built) with tie beams and floor beams, but unless such areas are demarcated differently, it is difficult for people to know and adhere to any requirements. The cities need to have a detailed soil map with zones clearly demarcated (at least 5mx5m resolution) and building codes should be made per zone.

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D2 – ‘Soft storey’ failures

Many buildings were seen collapsed with a sole cause being ‘soft storey’ construction. For the uninitiated, when a building is constructed with no walls and only columns, it lends less rigidity to the structure and is deemed to be inappropriate for seismic locations. Kathmandu being one of those, should not have approved such constructions. But then Kathamndu is not unique in that. Cities like Delhi, also located in seismic Zone 4, required by law (a.k.a. building bye-laws) to build most new residential and commercial structures to be built on such soft storeys to provide for adequate parking. This is a regulation completely devoid of any understanding of risk, and only attempts at addressing a problem that is caused by other reasons (ease of buying and owning cars, etc.) This is a systemic problem and can take an entire city down in case of an event, which could have been easily avoided with better integration of risk mitigation measures in the building bye-laws.

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D3 – Poor quality concrete framed structures

Concrete construction is only a few decades old and comparatively a recent phenomenon in Nepal. This might explain why many masons and contractors are probably unaware of the right techniques for the use of steel and concrete. Right after the earthquake, when the debris was still present on sites, many buildings were seen with poor quality construction practices. This included large stirrup distances, insufficient overlaps in steel and insufficient torred steel sizes. Poor concrete mixes leading to honeycombing effects were also seen in many instances. Poor structural designs were determined with heavyweights on cantilevers and in many cases cantilevers resting on no beams. Most of these can lead to partial or complete building collapses. Poor quality brickwork and mortar were also noticed, although these mostly only lead to cracks, but can still be fatal to people living in or around such structures. Many multi-story structures were also seen with serious cracks and damages, although none had collapsed entirely. This is not necessarily an outcome of bad building codes, but poor implementation and monitoring. This needs to improve substantially, and rather quickly as many people have started rebuilding already, recreating the same mistakes again.

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D4 – Poor quality mud mortar structures

All construction was using mud, timber and clay bricks for the longest, until a few decades ago when many aspired to have concrete structures. While most mud-mortar structures have collapsed anyway, the ones that have led to greater life and material loss are the ones that were a combination of mud walls and concrete slabs. Heavy concrete slabs were seen to have fallen flat, taking down anything below with them. The walls were unable to support the weight on top of them, more so as they lacked sufficient intermediate columns. While in the villages where most construction is still in mud-mortar, concrete structures are not much of an option (at least in the short term) because access to material is very difficult. Many villagers were seen to be collecting bamboo from the neighboring sites and rebuilding what they could. But with better knowledge and training, and use of cross beams in walls amongst other practices, bamboo and mud could be used as much more resilient construction materials as being tested and promoted by many scientific NGOs.

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D5 – Differential bulging of soil/liquefaction

Liquefaction is a phenomenon in which the strength and stiffness of soil are reduced by earthquake shaking or other rapid movements. In many cases, the soil below the buildings looked like it experienced liquefaction, and bulges on the ground could be seen in many parts of the building. Undermining the foundations and base courses of the buildings can lead to liquefaction causing serious damage. Areas which are water-saturated, or with unconsolidated sediments can lead to such outcomes and must be treated with additional care at the time of design and construction.

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D6 – Bulging of walls

In many instances, walls on the lower floors were seen to bulge with the load on top. Predominantly in mud wall structures, but was also observed in many brick and mortar structures as well. This is potentially due to insufficient column sizes and distances, and overloading of the structure. In many locations, people had used props to support such bulging structures temporarily, but the hope is that many were brought down before the second massive quake in the following week.

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D7 – Dangerous design elements

Many buildings were also seen to have poor design features such as overhead water tanks on single columns, column-free corners (3-4 story cantilevers), false walls as add-on false walls on facades with insufficient cross tying. Such elements should not be approved at the design level, as well as monitored closely at the time of construction completion.

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D8 – Other types of damages

Boundary collapses were common as most of them used unburnt clay bricks, insufficient spacing columns or reinforcement, and bad joinery details. These may not have led to any serious direct losses but can cause serious disruption for access roads and emergency service delivery.

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Many instances of open wires and electric pole failures were observed across the city. This is primarily as electric poles are non-structural in nature, with an overload of wires on them.

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There were also cases where fire had broken following the quake. Usual causes were electric shortcuts, gas cylinder bursts, or combustible substances coming in contact with potential fuel (wood, fabric, etc.).

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These instances can be reduced with proper public awareness and precautionary measures taken by all individuals, families and commercial enterprises.

SPECIAL MENTIONS

“The Curious Case of 100 houses”

There’s a case of a housing development, next to a dried water channel. The development is less than 5 years old, but almost all structures have suffered severe damages. Why? What went wrong? There could be many reasons, but some that seemed to have evidence included multi-level construction with potentially insufficient ground leveling measures, uneven foundation levels leading to partial settling, questionable quality of construction and ground ramming. This is a case where almost all the above types of damages were observed, all in one location. The question arises as to why was the development located where it was, what was the process undertaken for design approvals, why was the quality of construction poor despite people having paid matching market rates, and what access did most people have to insurance as a means to recovery? This also leads to further questions with regards, what is safe failure, and how can that be incorporated in physical infrastructure?

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Schools and other social infrastructure

Many primary, secondary and higher secondary schools were damaged to a large extent – most of them being fully or partially constructed in mud mortar. Many vocational institutes were also damaged. Many students had lost their books and certificates. This is worse, as this was also the time for Indian graduate level competitive exams, and many potential applicants from Nepal are likely to have lost the chances to apply, while their families might be busy recollecting the missing pieces. There needs to be a special support or offering for the students hailing from Nepal such that they don’t lose a precious year if their lives.

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Heritage Structures

Heritage sites like Bhaktapur and Patan, which formed the back bone of the cultural and social space for the locals, were severely damaged. Palace precincts had also suffered sever losses. Many other temples, shrines, old libraries, etc. have also suffered irreparable damages. There’s extensive work being done by UNESCO and other agencies in recovering pieces from the rubble, that need special care and protection in the time of crisis and protected from vandalism and theft. Bringing these areas back will be critical for bringing back normalcy to the people of Nepal.

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Roads and infrastructure

While some of the major roadways have suffered severe damages due to partial sinking of the ground, many bridges across the city have remained intact.

Rebuilding in a week

People had begun rebuilding in the first week itself, using recovered material from the debris and similar construction techniques as before. Many had started filling visible cracks with plaster in an attempt to hide what could be more severe structural damages. Special attention needs to be taken immediately so the same mistakes are not repeated, and risks are not recreated.

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SUMMARY OF INTERVENTIONS

There is an observable pattern in the kind of damages that were noticed which can be mitigated in the future if better planning approaches are taken in time. Leading from the above analysis of the types of damages, following potential actions must be taken for reconstruction:

Planning Interventions

• Collect systematic information about soil types in the city, and identify zones for silt and black cotton soil. These zones must require special building codes.
• Zones close to river beds must be prevented from building construction, or must require special building codes and FAR regulations
• Underground aquifers must be mapped, and dried aquifers must be treated. Load bearing capacities of such areas must be tested and incorporated in soil zonation plan.

Building code and monitoring

• New building codes to be in place incorporating earthquake resistant techniques and use of local materials. Building sample structures in different zones maybe a possibility to build awareness.
• Besides building plan and structural drawing approvals, regular monitoring of construction site along with progress and completion reports
• Pre-mix concrete could be made available to standardize quality of concrete mixes

Capacity building and awareness

• People using old material to rebuild, with same old technology and knowledge. Dangers of rebuilding risky structures : Training for constructing earthquake resistant housing using local materials available, especially in villages. Contractor, mason and labor training programmes for construction techniques could be very useful.
• People need to made more aware of what to do in case of such an event, and what are the fire safety measures to be taken at all times

Early action

• Labor rates and material prices are likely to increase substantially, especially as many laborers come from neighboring villages and material from other countries like India and Bangladesh and could took advantage of the surge in demand. There’s an immediate need to manage and regulate labor and material prices, along with rebuilding damaged brick kilns.
• Rebuild villages to help the city – most people who work in the city, live in the villages, and unless their homes are brought back to safety, it would be difficult for them to get back to work – without pushing their families to help sustain themselves in the villages without their support.
• Interim shelters could become shanties in the long run. Need to replace the temporary shelters with permanent ones soon, particularly before the monsoons.

Although not in the ambit of this research, but here are additional mentions of socio-economic aspects for long-term recovery which we came across over various discussions and reflections from previous experiences. These need just as much attention in the short to mid-term for complete and sustainable recovery:

• As noted above, schools have fallen apart. They need to be rebuilt soon, to not just save students time but also expedite psychosocial normalcy
• Provision of clean water and toilets is absolutely necessary as the slow gains of building toilets in the last decade have now been set back. If not done in advance of the monsoons, could lead to other health hazards.
• Sex-trafficking has long been a battle in many parts of Nepal and now that many more women and children are being pushed into temporary shelters with ever high vulnerabilities, it may become easier to lure them with work and other resources to across the borders. Particular attention is required to protect them from such inhuman actions.
• It is learnt from other experiences such as in Haiti, that too much relief can lead to growing dependence, which in turn could be a hazard for long term recovery. There needs to be a solid exit strategy by all he donors and funding agencies currently working for aid.
• While the National Government is doing all that it could, other international agencies also need to recognise their leadership and work in coordination with them for a more holistic recovery and long-term resilient outcomes.

The team that went to Nepal consisted of the author along with colleagues Teja Malladi and Kunal Deshpande. The thoughts shared above are solely the authors and not representative of the organisation or other individuals. The author is particularly grateful to Sraddha and Namrata and their families for being immensely helpful hosts and Pranita for making the connection. The author would also like to thank Kumar Dhamala and all the other experts we met during the course of our stay for all the insights that they shared with us.

This article was written and published on 22 May 2015. Any new information hence may not be updated.

Food in-security

This is a long overdue post. I have been trying to follow the debates, but this NDTV news flash I received just now inspired me to finally write. Enough and more has been said about food security in the last few weeks, especially after the bill got introduced midst the political drama. Some are dozing about details of the bill, others about the instigation behind the timing. But everyone has an opinion. And I guess, so do I.

Rights Based Approach. ‘Roti Kapda aur Makaan‘ are basic requirements for a dignified life, and everyone has a right to live so. There is no denying that. But whether this ordinance is the instrument to assure this, is the question. The recognition of this as a right has been much awaited indeed, but is the rights based approach entirely feasible? We have seen many examples where galvanised efforts of people have transformed the imaginations of our systems such as with the recent Street Vendors Bill, and others like MGNREG Act, RTI Act, right to education, et al. But the resulting ‘transformations’ are admittedly varied within the spectrum. This particular moment could have offered an opportunity to people, especially those who are far removed from the policy making process and have the least access to resources, to finally get access to the basic right to food. But if only a promise to an entitlement would match the needs for actual provisions. I have my reservations that I’d like to share, and why I feel this approach may not necessarily be enough.

Mismatched Demand and Supply. Whereas the act has increased the demand, by giving two-thirds of the population legal entitlement to highly subsidized food grains, it has taken almost no measures to address the lag in food supply. There are no measures for increasing food production – by subsidizing agricultural seeds and fertilizers, increasing access to better technology, improving storage facilities or incentivizing farming – none. With the mismatch of an increased demand and supply remaining at status quo, prices are bound to rise in the regular market. This would in turn increase incentives for blackmarketeers to gain greater profits by selling the PDS food grains outside. Even the clause where a compensation will be made in cash if food is not available at the PDS, may not work, since the amount of money may not actually be enough to match this market price, and the people might still go hungry. With all this, one can only hope that the situation doesn’t actually become worse than what it currently is.

Less farm labor at increased prices. While MG NREGA has certainly improved daily wages in both farming and non-farming sectors in the rural areas, it has also made it more unaffordable for small farmers to employ wage labour. While the increasing demand and prices maybe an incentive for farming, but it may still not match the non-remunerative prices for small and marginal farmers. Labour intensive crops like ragi, bajra and jowar, are getting most severely hit. These also have increasingly smaller markets now, and are thereby slowly going out of production.

Less Agricultural Land, More Urban Population. While food security is at the helm of discussions, the land acquisition bill and land pooling notifications that are simultaneously being concretised, are not getting as much news-space. While the food bill strongly depends on food production and agriculture – still primarily a rural activity – the latter intends to stimulate conversions of agricultural lands into urban areas. This conversion will be irrespective of the productivity and fertility of the soil, and be only contingent on the contiguity of the area with the urban agglomerate city. The incentives for this – conversion of land-use to residential/commercial/industrial, ‘growth’ and ‘development’ in a city, 4 times the market land value, et al. – seem to be much stronger than to stay in rural areas, even with whatever technological advances being made to improve food productivity per unit area and increase in food prices (unless they start matching land prices!). It’s not rocket science to deduce that this would only lead to reduced land for agriculture and thereby reduced food outputs, for an increased urban population.

Neither Quantity, Nor Quality is assured. Although the act claims “Pregnant women and lactating mothers will get a maternity benefit of Rs. 6,000 and pregnant women and children under 14 will get nutritious meals, with higher nutritional norms for malnourished children” , it doesn’t necessarily define nutritious. Besides, there is another danger of it being a central government scheme with a central distribution system – the regional autonomy to promote staple grains is reduced, and everyone, especially the marginalised, are forced to eat rice and wheat, despite their traditional food habits. Certainly, more needs to be researched on this aspect, and I don’t feel qualified enough to comment more, but yes, with the coming up of GM foods et al. this danger will continuously increase if not strictly regulated and monitored.

Challenges of Targeting. The debate around using BPL as a measure of poverty is already archaic, albeit with no better alternative still at hand. A large population that should get access to ration cards, is still struggling to get one. And making sure that only the deserving people get access, is yet another challenge. The PDS system, since independence, was always meant to be for universal access – and rich or poor all ate the same food. But the World Bank argued that this was increasing the burden of subsidies on the government, and converted this system to a targeted one. But in turn, the government is spending more and targeting wrong – the food subsidy bill was for Rs 2,500 crore in 1991. It was Rs 50,000 crore in 2012 and this year, it would be Rs 60,000 crore. (Reminds me of the mobile company (metro pcs?) case where they actually reduced majority of their costs by simply stopping call logs for billing, and thereby offered cheaper flat rates to everyone). Maybe we are spending more on targeting, than on food subsidy itself?!

No commitment to buying grains from Indian sources. Ordinance must be read with other policies that impact the livelihood of farmers and the right to food, like FDI in retail, changes in the State Ag­ri­cultural Produce Mar­keting (Regulation) Ac­ts, Seed policies, the Bio­technology Regulatory Act etc. which are all in the direction of economic “reform” and “promoting” agribusiness. Since the Act makes no commitment on where the food grains will be sourced from, to meet this new demand, the supply will obviously have to be matched from external sources and corporations – in turn buying at monopolistic higher prices, using more tax payers money. Although, no packed food is included in the provisions for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers, which at least secures some protection from the pro-profit / monopolising sellers / corporates. Besides, we shouldn’t forget the mass farmer suicides after the last round of reforms in this sector. Maybe there are more indigenous ways of promoting agriculture in the country, and use this as an opportunity to create a better and more sustainable market.

Near impossible timeline for implementation. It has been mandated that the National Food Security Ordinance needs to be implemented in the next 6 months by all states. Some states have shown stand-out, perhaps misplaced, bravado to implement this even sooner. While Fair Price Shops are being added to the distribution system, their viability and institutionalisation, what has to be done and how it has to be done, is not specified.

(I may add more on packaged food, security during disasters, the dysfunctional public health system, and similar policy examples from Thailand at a later stage) 

By the end of this, it may start looking hopeless, but that is not the case at all. There are ways and means to make amends and fill these gaps. Some are suggested here. I’m certain there are many more, and it may require a more rigorous research than this three hourly work. I will try my best to get back with a more optimistic perspective (soon enough!) Till then, go ahead and leave your comments 🙂

REFERENCES:

Bill approved by Lok Sabha : http://www.livemint.com/Politics/vqUdJeKgesXbG2NdZ6e5PM/Food-Bill-Govt-reaches-out-to-political-parties.html

Coverage : http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/3854-rural-4726-urban-population-to-be-covered.html

Food Insecurity : http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130717/commentary-op-ed/commentary/food-insecurity

Rocky road to food security: http://www.financialexpress.com/news/the-rocky-road-to-food-security/1155871

Rights Based Approach : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/food-bill-is-a-rightsbased-approach-feasible-yes/article4909057.ece

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/food-bill-is-a-rightsbased-approach-feasible-no/article4909054.ece?homepage=true

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/food-security-becoming-legal-right-says-thomas/article5019346.ece

Food Security Bill : http://www.livemint.com/Politics/JhxXgOZFMhh23Ghi9YE7xJ/How-will-government-make-right-to-food-a-reality.html

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/food-security-bill-a-game-changer-113070800849_1.html

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1860822/report-food-security-only-two-congress-states-ready

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/let-s-not-get-hyper-about-the-food-security-bill/1137753

Bill in Delhi : http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/after-ordinance-delhi-first-to-announce-food-security-scheme-113070800577_1.html

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-07-15/delhi/40589386_1_senior-most-female-member-food-security-scheme-first-phase

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-09-01/news/41663388_1_food-grains-food-security-programme-scheme

Bill in three states : http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Food-bill-test-in-House-today-rollout-in-3-states/Article1-1110067.aspx?htsw0023

Congress Bill : http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-07-10/india/40491330_1_food-security-scheme-job-guarantee-scheme-food-law

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/food-bill-will-wipe-out-hunger-sonia/article5061041.ece?ref=wl_industry-and-economy

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/the-modest-food-security-bill-113071001005_1.html

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/upa-all-set-to-push-for-ordinance-on-food-bill-today/article4807919.ece

Rice Bowl by Congress : http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/bpl-rice-bowls-to-overflow-from-july-10/article4898999.ece

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/345270/subsidised-rice-scheme-hits-rural.html

Challenges : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/preparing-the-ground-for-food-security/article5049187.ece?homepage=true

Tale of two bad Food Policies : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/tale-of-two-bad-food-policies/article4853597.ece

Govt. Willing to make amendments to the bill : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/352125/govt-open-making-workable-amendments.html

Food for Poor : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/why-that-clamour-over-food-for-the-poor/article4900227.ece

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/356796/centre-okays-additional-foodgrain-bpl.html

Battle about Beneficiaries :http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/talk-about-food-the-coming-battle-over-beneficiaries/article5079997.ece

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/77-93-lakh-from-city-Thane-to-be-excluded-from-food-security/Article1-1116167.aspx

Ration Cards : http://newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/Getting-new-ration-card-no-easy-task-in-Karnataka/2013/07/12/article1679765.ece

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-matters-food-secure-in-the-capital-421603

Changes in Ration Card : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/353915/food-bill-norms-may-force.html

Adhaar Cards : http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130903/news-current-affairs/article/aadhaar-card-must-bpl-status-minister

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/we-re-rolling-out-2-crore-aadhaar-numbers-a-month/1163585

Insufficient farm labour : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/356110/diminishing-farm-labour-could-impact.html

Lack of storage space : http://newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/40-percent-of-foodgrains-wasted-every-year-due-to-lack-of-storage/2013/09/08/article1773844.ece

Financial Estimates : http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rotting-food-rotten-arguments/1164123/

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/food-bill-less-painful-now-future-uncertain-113082900814_1.html

Politics of Food : http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/VZoYbzzEYlag4OfFntx09I/The-politics-of-hunger-games-in-India.html

No packed meal : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/352329/no-packaged-meal-food-security.html

Nutrition : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/355360/food-security-bill-may-tackle.html

http://www.thinkindia.net.in/2013/09/urban-malnutrition-is-a-major-cause-of-concern-say-health-experts.html

Food During Disasters : http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1857546/report-no-food-security-in-the-time-of-disaster

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/a-recipe-for-disaster/1140322

Dysfunctional Public Health System : http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/5LmvHf6cujXz9YmMEMkTYJ/Indias-dysfunctional-public-health-system.html

Similar Case as Water : http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/right-to-water-bill-will-it-increase-water-supply-in-bangalore

Other rights based approach – Street Vendors Bill : http://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the-street-vendors-protection-of-livelihood-and-regulation-of-street-vending-act-2012-2464/

Better Options : http://www.navdanya.org/news/273-vasundhara-2012-

IN FAVOUR OF THE BILL- Dipa Sinha the contributor to the bill: http://www.livemint.com/Politics/rGREVWNZqNNKVdEJmo7a2K/To-criticize-the-food-Bill-is-scaremongering-its-an-invest.html

In favor of the poor : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/this-perverse-rage-against-the-poor/article5073753.ece

AGAINST THE BILL : http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-the-food-security-bill-myth-113090301128_1.html

jugaad – I

I’m convinced that innovation sits deep in dearth. Fewer resources force you to use them in the most efficient and sustainable way. Deep adversity gives rise to jugaad, which is a term thrown around very commonly in India. It is one word that describes a gutsy on-the-roll-off-the-cuff ingenious solution to a problem at hand. Indians seem to swear by it. You can find it in any house to a cycle/shoe repair or a curio-shop. The scale changes, the purpose changes, but jugaad is always original, and uses minimum time and resources to arrive at a solution. The more I thought about it, the more I started noticing it everywhere, and the more I got convinced about reading Simone-Jaideep-Navi’s “Jugaad Innovation”.

In their book, they convincingly argue that jugaad has 6 principals :

• It seeks opportunity in adversity
• It does more with less
• It lets you think and act flexibly
• It includes the margins and is equitable
• It is simple
• It stems from passion

Maybe there is a need to learn more from contexts that have less resources and do more jugaad – in turn giving rise to solutions that are contextual, and in most cases are more ‘green’.

But can jugaad not be scaled up? Can bigger institutions, and agencies incorporate it? Or do they already? And shouldn’t they? How well does it score against structured innovation? These are questions I’d try and come back to shortly in following posts.