📰 Ways to read the Constitution
‘Sabarimala’ is a test case for freedom of religion, women’s rights and also constitutional interpretation
•The arguments before the Supreme Court around the entry of women of a certain age to the Sabarimala temple in Kerala raise issues about religious freedom, gender equality and the right of women to worship. The petitioners have argued that discrimination based on biological reasons is not permissible going by the constitutional scheme. They maintain that due to the current exclusion, the right of women to worship the deity, Ayyappa, is violated.
•On the other side, the Devaswom Board and others in support of the ban have cited it as an age-old custom. It forms a part of ‘essential religious practice’ of worshippers under Article 25 of the Constitution. It was also urged that matters such as who can or cannot enter the temple are covered under the rights to administer and manage religious institutions, under Article 26.
•A specific argument made in the court, based on Article 17, triggers interesting thoughts on constitutional interpretation. In support of the petitioners, it was argued that the exclusion is a form of ‘untouchability’ since the exclusion is solely based on notions of purity and impurity. But this argument was resisted on the contention that the prohibition of untouchability was historically intended only to protect the interests of the backward classes. The claim is that the makers of the Constitution never envisioned including women within the ambit of untouchability.
Two approaches
•The two arguments reflect the two approaches to reading the Constitution. The first is the ‘original intent’ approach which is based on the intent of the framers of the Constitution when they drafted the text. For example, an originalist will adopt a certain understanding of a constitutional right — say, the right to same-sex relationships under the right to liberty promised under Article 21 only if she is convinced that the drafters intended that. She may argue that the framers never thought of such a situation and, therefore, a same-sex couple cannot have a constitutional right under Article 21.
•In fact, a similar argument has been made in the debates in India on homosexuality. Article 15 enjoins the state from discriminating on grounds such as religion, caste and sex. By relying on the originalist approach, it was asserted that the makers of the Constitution meant the word ‘sex’ under Article 15 only in the binary sense of ‘male and female’.
•Over time, originalism as a method of constitutional interpretation has been subject to serious criticism for being too rigid and inflexible. In B.C Motor Vehicle Reference (1985), the Canadian Supreme Court, while rejecting originalism, said that such a method would mean that “...the rights, freedoms and values embodied in the Charter in effect become frozen in time to the moment of adoption with little or no possibility of growth, development and adjustment to changing societal needs.”
•The second approach — the ‘living tree’ doctrine — is very prominent in Canadian jurisprudence. It involves understanding the Constitution to be an evolving and organic instrument. For the living tree theorists, it matters little what the intentions were at the time of Constitution making. What matters the most is how the Constitution can be interpreted to contain rights in their broadest realm. The moral reading of the Constitution, propounded by Ronald Dworkin, also complements the living tree approach. Dworkin says in Freedom’s Law that “according to the moral reading, these clauses must be understood in the way their language most naturally suggests: they refer to abstract moral principles and incorporate these by reference, as limits on government’s power.”
A specific acknowledgment
•Certain observations about the abolition clause are important. Article 17 is emphatic in its wording: “Untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of untouchability shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.” It is peculiar since it abolishes a social practice in any form. All the other provisions in the same chapter lay down substantive fundamental rights.
•In spite of the specific equality and anti-discrimination guarantees in the Constitution, Article 17 is inserted to specifically acknowledge and remove the social stigma associated with certain castes. It was enacted in an attempt to eradicate historical inequality. V.I. Muniswamy Pillai said in the Constituent Assembly that “the great thing that this Constitution brings to notice, not only to this country but to the whole world is the abolition of untouchability.”
•The ‘living tree’ approach — being an alternative and a finer reading of the Constitution — supports a broader interpretation of Article 17. Now, even if the framers of the Constitution intended this provision to address a specific category of discrimination, what prevents the constitutional court from adopting an interpretation to include women under Article 17?
•Women have been kept out of Sabarimala because of menstruation. As a distinct class, they are being discriminated against. If certain castes are considered ‘impure’ because of their social status, menstruating women are considered to be so because of their gender. The criteria are different but the effect of exclusion is common. It seems that such an interpretation does not do any violence to the language and content of Article 17, but only emancipates it.
•In Living Originalism in India: Our Law and Comparative Constitutional Law (2013), Sujit Choudhry argues that untouchability and the exclusion of the homosexuals are comparable. He says that “the treatment which homosexuals experience today is similar in kind to that which ‘untouchables’ experienced and which prompted the adoption of Article 17, in that the treatment of homosexuals likewise flows from their social status.” This is a case where discrimination is based solely on sexual orientation.
•Therefore, in essence, the Sabarimala case is a test case not only for freedom of religion and women’s rights but also for constitutional interpretation. It presents to the court an exemplary opportunity for an alternative reading of the Constitution. If the court indeed reads Article 17 to have a wider meaning, it will signal a new era of transformative constitutionalism in Indian jurisprudence.
📰 Restoring dignity: on stigma attached to leprosy
The time has come to end the stigma and discrimination against the leprosy-affected
•It has long been a blot on Indian society that while leprosy is completely curable, there lingers a social stigma attached to it. Even more shocking is that colonial laws that predate leprosy eradication programmes and medical advancements remain on the statute book. These were unconscionably discriminatory from the beginning, but even in independent India, where the law has been an instrument for social change, the process of removing them has been bafflingly slow. The Lepers Act of 1898 was repealed only two years ago. It is time for concerted action to end the entrenched discrimination in law and society against those afflicted by it. Two recent developments hold out hope. One was the introduction of a Bill in Parliament to remove leprosy as a ground for seeking divorce or legal separation from one’s spouse, and the other was the Supreme Court asking the Centre whether it would bring in a positive law conferring rights and benefits on persons with leprosy and deeming as repealed all Acts and rules that perpetuated the stigma associated with it. The Personal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2018, is only a small step. An affirmative action law that recognises the rights of those affected and promotes their social inclusion will serve a larger purpose. It may mark the beginning of the end to the culture of ostracisation that most of them face and help remove misconceptions about the disease and dispel the belief that physical segregation of patients is necessary. It is sad that it took so long to get such proposals on the legislative agenda.
•Since last year, the Supreme Court has been hearing a writ petition by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy seeking to uphold the fundamental rights of people with leprosy and the repeal of discriminatory laws against them. The court has been approaching the issue with sensitivity and is seeking to find legal means to ensure a life of dignity for them. The 256th Report of the Law Commission came up with a number of suggestions, including the repeal of discriminatory legal provisions. It listed for abolition personal laws and Acts on beggary. The report cited the UN General Assembly resolution of 2010 on the elimination of discrimination against persons with leprosy. The resolution sought the abolition of laws, rules, regulations, customs and practices that amounted to discrimination, and wanted countries to promote the understanding that leprosy is not easily communicable and is curable. The campaign to end discrimination against those afflicted, and combating the stigma associated with it, is decades old. While governments may have to handle the legislative part, society has an even larger role to play. It is possible to end discrimination by law, but stigma tends to survive reform and may require more than legal efforts to eliminate.
📰 The big squeeze: on U.S.-Iran relationship
With sanctions taking a political toll in Iran, allies should facilitate talks with the U.S.
•Iran is reeling under the impact of reimposed sanctions after the U.S. walked out of the nuclear deal in May. But the crisis is exposing the strains between the moderate and hardline sections within the Islamic Republic’s leadership. Masoud Karbasian, who was removed as Finance Minister on Sunday, is the latest high-profile political casualty in Iran’s attempts to counter the effects of a weakening currency and crippling U.S. sanctions. The rial has lost over 50% of its value this year, pushing up prices and compelling consumers to convert their savings into gold and other assets. With mounting public anger over high inflation and alleged corruption, any additional squeeze could worsen domestic tensions. In a prelude to Mr. Karbasian’s sacking, through impeachment by parliament, President Hassan Rouhani had in July dropped Valiollah Seif as the central bank governor, for incompetence in handling the fallout from the currency crisis. Thanks to the relief from punitive sanctions after the nuclear deal had taken effect, Tehran managed to double its oil exports, climb out of a deep recession and contain inflation. With the return of economic sanctions, Iran has been prohibited from using the U.S. currency, and faces a bar on trade in cars, metals and minerals. In an effort to mitigate their impact, Abdolnaser Hemmati, the new central bank chief, has announced a relaxation of foreign exchange rules, creating access to subsidised hard money for purchase of essential commodities. He also declared the reopening of currency markets. But more difficult times loom, with the next round of sanctions that kick in by November aimed at impeding Iran’s energy exports and financial dealings with its central bank.
•The global community must weigh in to ease U.S.-Iran tensions. There is little appetite in the U.S. for a direct military confrontation; Iran too is under no illusion about its military capability. But there remains the risk of an Iranian blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for about a third of global seaborne oil shipments. It would disrupt supplies and cause panic in global markets. Despite the hawkish tone adopted by his National Security Adviser John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump has offered to hold unconditional talks. Rather than prejudge any possible outcome that could result from engaging an unpredictable Mr. Trump, the Iranian leadership should respond favourably to the idea. With much to lose from Iran’s international isolation, the European Union should exert diplomatic pressure to renew talks. A fresh nuclear agreement appears to be a remote possibility at this stage. Conversely, even small relief from economic sanctions would bring some leverage at home for the beleaguered Mr. Rouhani. Recent protests have reflected a yearning for progress and greater freedom among ordinary Iranians. The centrist President should help advance such an agenda.
📰 UN team: Myanmar Army had ‘genocidal intent’
UN report says persecution of Rohingya Muslims amounted to ‘crimes against humanity’
•Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with “genocidal intent” and the Commander-in-Chief and five generals should be prosecuted for the gravest crimes under international law, UN investigators said.
•In a report, they called for the UN Security Council to set up an ad hoc tribunal to try suspects or refer them to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The Security Council should also impose an arms embargo on Myanmar and targeted sanctions against individuals most responsible for crimes.
•They blamed the country’s de facto civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, for failing to use her ”moral authority” to protect civilians.
Human rights abuses
•The report also criticised Facebook for allowing the world’s biggest social media network to be used to incite violence and hatred. Facebook responded on Monday by announcing that it was blocking 20 Myanmar officials and organisations found by the UN panel to have “committed or enabled serious human rights abuses”.
•A year ago, government troops led a brutal crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 Myanmar police posts and a military base. Some 7,00,000 Rohingya fled the crackdown and most are now living in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. The UN report said the military action, which included the torching of villages, was “grossly disproportionate to actual security threats”.
•Ms. Suu Kyi’s government has rejected most allegations of atrocities made against the security forces by refugees. It has built transit centres for refugees to return, but UN aid agencies say it is not yet safe for them to do so.
•In the final 20-page report, the panel said: “There is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw (army) chain of command, so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine state.”
•Marzuki Darusman, chair of the panel, said commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing should step down pending investigation.
•The UN panel, set up last year, interviewed 875 victims and witnesses in Bangladesh and other countries, and analysed documents, videos, photographs and satellite images. Decades of state-sponsored stigmatisation against Rohingya had resulted in “institutionalised oppression from birth to death”, the report said.
📰 Wuhan spirit should spur ‘natural partner’ India to join Belt and Road initiative: China
Bilateral differences on the project have been overridden by the rapid turnaround in their ties after the Wuhan summit, says official
•China on Monday called India its “natural partner” in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and advocated better ties between New Delhi and Islamabad within the Eurasian framework.
•At a media conference on the BRI, Zhang Jun, China’s assistant minister of foreign affairs, threaded India and China’s deep bonds established during their far history with recent diplomatic initiatives, including the Wuhan summit in April between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
•Asked to respond to India’s objections to the China-Pakistan Economic Project (CPEC) on grounds of sovereignty, Mr. Zhang focused on the big picture. He signalled that differences between New Delhi and Beijing on the project were overridden by the rapid turnaround in their ties after the Wuhan summit.
•The Chinese official stressed that, “CPEC is an economic initiative. Implementing CPEC does not jeopardise China’s position on Kashmir.”
•Mr. Zhang spotlighted that India-China ties, had “entered a new phase of development” since the Wuhan informal summit.
Xi-Modi meetings
•Citing the summit and the follow up meetings between Mr. Xi and Mr. Modi, as benchmarks of the shift in the relationship, Mr. Zhang said: “I think we can all recall that since April, it has been only three months, President Xi and Prime Minister Modi met in Wuhan, in Qingdao, and in Johannesburg in South Africa.”
•“(These are) three important meetings of the two leaders and they have reached important understandings which (have) added fresh and strong impetus to our bilateral ties.”
•Refusing to accept India’s permanent exclusion from the BRI in the post-Wuhan scenario, Mr. Zhang said that “historically India was an important country on the ancient Silk Road, and it is fair to say that India was a natural partner on the ancient and (is one) in the Belt and Road Initiative.”
•So far India has not formally endorsed BRI, and last year New Delhi did not participate in a summit of the grouping, leading to considerable consternation in Beijing.
•Mr. Zhang cited India and China’s collaboration in the infrastructure arena through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — one of the pillars that also props BRI projects. “India is a founding member of AIIB and second largest shareholder of the bank. My colleague told me that 20% of AIIB’s projects are based in India.”
•Speaking briefly with a couple of resident Indian journalists, Mr. Zhang said: “We are neighbours, we are partners…historically we were together and in future I never believe that anybody can separate India and China...”
•Separately, the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday welcomed India and Pakistan’s joint participation in a Eurasian counterterrorism military exercise under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
•Applauding participation of the two estranged neighbours in the exercise, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said ties between New Delhi and Islamabad were “significant to the peace and development of the region and the whole world”.
•She added: “We sincerely hope that they could enhance their dialogue and cooperate both bilaterally and within multilateral mechanisms like the SCO, work together to improve their ties and jointly maintain regional peace and stability.”
📰 Iran asks UN to act against ‘economic strangulation’ by U.S.
Says reimposition of sanctions amounts to ‘aggression’
•Iran on Monday demanded the UN’s top court to suspend U.S. nuclear-linked sanctions against Tehran, accusing Washington of plotting its “economic strangulation”.
•The Islamic Republic launched a suit at the International Court of Justice over U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to reimpose the sanctions that had been lifted in a 2015 accord.
•Iran says Mr. Trump’s move breaches a 1955 treaty.
•Mr. Trump says the sanctions are needed to ensure Iran never builds a nuclear bomb. But Iran’s representative Mohsen Mohebi branded them “naked economic aggression”. His team of lawyers told the court in The Hague the measures were already devastating Iran’s economy and threatening the welfare of its citizens.
•“The United States is publicly propagating a policy intended to damage as severely as possible Iran’s economy and Iranian nationals and companies,” said Mr. Mohebi. “Iran will put up the strongest resistance to the U.S. economic strangulation, by all peaceful means.”
•The sanctions target financial transactions and imports of raw materials, cars and aircraft among other things. A second wave of punitive measures is due to hit Iran in early November, targeting its vital energy sector including oil exports.
•Iran’s lawyers said the sanctions would cause it “irreparable prejudice”. They urged the court to order the suspension of the sanctions pending a definitive ruling.
📰 Indus treaty talks to begin tomorrow
India, Pakistan will hold two-day discussions
•India and Pakistan will resume their talks on various aspects of the Indus Waters Treaty in Lahore on Wednesday, the first bilateral engagement since Imran Khan took office as Prime Minister.
•India’s Indus Water Commissioner P.K. Saxena was expected to reach here on Monday for the discussions with his Pakistani counterpart, Syed Mehr Ali Shah, on August 29 and 30, said the Pakistani daily Dawn , quoting a government official.
•The last meeting of the Pakistan-India Permanent Indus Commission was held in New Delhi in March, during which both sides had shared details of the water flow and the quantum of water being used under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty.
Pak.’s objections
•The Pakistani side will reiterate its objections over two water-storage and hydroelectric projects being built by India during the talks.
•The official said Pakistan would raise its concerns over the 1000-MW Pakal Dul and the 48-MW Lower Kalnai hydroelectric projects on the Chenab river.
•The session is also expected to discuss ways and means for the timely and smooth sharing of hydrological data on shared rivers.
•The official said the two sides would finalise the schedule of future meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission and visits of the teams of the Indus commissioners.
•He said the water commissioners of Pakistan and India were required to meet twice a year and arrange technical visits to project sites and critical river head works, but Pakistan had been facing a lot of problems in timely meetings and visits. The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, brokered by the World Bank and signed by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and former Pakistan President Ayub Khan, administers how the waters of the Indus River and its tributaries that flow in both the countries will be utilised.
📰 Jatropha powers India’s first biofuel flight
•A blend of oil from jatropha seeds and aviation turbine fuel propelled the country’s first-ever bio jet fuel-powered flight on Monday between Dehradun and Delhi. The 43-minute flight was operated by SpiceJet’s Bombardier Q-400 aircraft, with 20 officials and five crew members on board.
📰 Rescue, relief and renewal
The Kerala model of disaster management shows how we can rethink our style of governance
•Disasters as narratives tend to follow a predictable grid. They begin with a moment of scandal or crisis, move to limited period of action, and slowly fade into indifference. People get tired of consuming disasters and move on. Policy echoes the usual clichés and fades away, only the victim continues to struggle fighting to recover her sense of citizenship. But disasters as narrative clichés eluded the Kerala floods of 2018.
Leading from the front
•The Kerala flood has been huge in scale and almost unprecedented. One has to go back to 1924 to think of a flood of a similar scale. Yet this is one disaster that has avoided exaggeration. A wise observer, in fact, said, “This is a flood that has avoided sentimentality. The response is realistic and pragmatic. Citizens have moved into action and yet they knew the limits of aid and relief.” Central to this, in style and leadership, is the role of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who has been a hands-on administrator. Interestingly, he has set a style emphasising concern with no self-denial, a clear-cut statement of the scale of the problem and the long-range effort required to address it.
•Mr. Vijayan has no time for blame games or electoral politics. His even-tempered handling of the Centre and the southern States reflects a maturing of leadership. By avoiding nitpicking, he has brought a new maturity to the discourse on floods. There are no blame games but he is clear about the chain of responsibility. He has signalled that his concern is with people first, regardless of ideology or religion. He has made sure that relief is not parochialised or seen through a party lens. He might be of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), but he has convincingly acted as the Chief Minister of Kerala. All the malignant rumours spread by the right wing asking people to deny aid to Kerala as it helps missionaries leave him cold. He is clear about focus and priority, clear that this is not the time for electoral bickering or factional politics.
•The very style of Mr. Vijayan’s presence has opened up the discourse. The debate now is not a short-run narrative about relief, but a larger discussion on the flood as a metaphor for Kerala’s development. People are listening to each other. One saw it when Madhav Gadgil, our leading ecologist, argued that heroism is not enough. The Kerala flood has to be read also as a man-made disaster. It could not be dismissed as originating in excess rain.
•Mr. Gadgil, people realised, was raising a set of long-range questions about the nature of Kerala’s development which both the CPI(M) and the Congress have been party to. The general response was open-ended because the audience realised that he was not arguing for his report. What he was looking at is the mitigation of future suffering. Politics and science met to create this mutual responsibility for the future.
•The power of the narrative is that timelines were established, and timelines also defined the nature of responsibility. The quality of the debate, in fact, borrowed from the tenor of the response of the people. Kerala responded with dignity and courage. Over a million people went to temporary camps, realising that their houses had been destroyed or damaged.
A social solidarity
•The responses, especially of older people, added to the dignity of the discourse. Kerala did not behave like a victim population. It insisted on agency and created the ground for citizenship. Keralites outside the State responded immediately; and between the style of governance and the spirit of voluntarism, Kerala created a social solidarity which was almost unique. People owned up to each other and voluntarism added a powerful sense of competence and sympathy. It is this exemplary notion of citizenship that set the contours of the debate. The survivor and the victim insisted that they are citizens, and this elaboration of citizenship in disaster situations makes Kerala an exemplar of a democratic imagination. Suffering found a language beyond the political economy, but suffering also found a long-range locus in ecology and development. The flood became not an act of god or nature, but a social event to be analysed sociologically.
•Even if the Centre responds locally and parochially, the Government of Kerala realised that in the long run, floods not only challenge the democratic imagination but ask us to reconsider the future of federation. When there were suggestions from West Asia of a grant beyond the Centre’s dreams, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime at the Centre refused. The question was whether old dreams of statist autonomy could be questioned or does foreign aid still carry that touch of stigma. Sadly, the BJP goes ecstatic over NRIs in Silicon Valley but understands little of their role in the political economies of the Gulf states.
•But more than state, what was renewed was a sense of the social. There was a recognition that the floods have erased the Kerala of the last phase. A new society has to be invented to replace the old. The standard disaster narrative of rescue, relief, rehabilitation is yielding to rescue, relief, reconstruction. Mr. Vijayan is clear that a new Kerala reflecting on ecology and development has to be invented. The old resilience has to be backed by a new infrastructural sustainability. As Mr. Vijayan himself said, during the 1924 flood there was one dam, “while today there are a total of 82 dams, including 42 major ones”. New forms of control and sustainability have to be invented. Behind it there was a sense that governments must use disasters as moments of paradigmatic change. To build infrastructure of the kind Kerala need will take at least two decades. A flood becomes an initiation to rethink democracy and governance, reconnecting it to issues of environment, culture and livelihood.
•Yet there are issues still to be worked out. Mr. Gadgil is right. One needs an ecological insight both as a moral and economic imagination. Nature has to be rethought as an act of trusteeship. Its force and fury have to be understood. A survivor was cited as claiming that the river has reclaimed its lost self. Maybe it is time Kerala, which combines traditional and global in creative ways, rethinks its lost ecological self beyond consumption and the amnesia of development.
Learning to remember
•Finally, one has to emphasise the biggest danger, one of the greatest faults of the old model of disasters. For all their scale and the scandals of new ideas they raise, disasters as policy memory are forgotten too easily. Old lessons are never learnt and new ones also forgotten. A disaster as a narrative must possess the quality of storytelling. Like a fable it must be repeated again and again, retold and rethought. The storyteller and the policy-maker must weave a new tapestry where the floods renew and rebuild a new Kerala. Talk of suffering has be translated into new models of justice. One hopes Kerala creates new panchayats of the mind to work on this problem.
📰 How dams can control floods
There should be space for greater storage of water in reservoirs before the onset of monsoon
•In the aftermath of any tragedy, people struggle to comprehend what happened and how to cope. Kerala is no different. With the floodwaters finally receding, a number of experts and politicians have stated various possible reasons for the tragedy. Some have cited ill-thought-out development plans that have affected the sustainability of the Western Ghats, arguing that without thoughtful conservation, this was a tragedy waiting to happen. Some have said that the rainfall was unprecedented. Some others have said that Kochi airport was bound to flood given that it has been built on fields and wetlands adjacent to the Periyar river which swelled to dangerous levels during the floods. And some have blamed dams, which were all opened when they were nearly full, causing heavy floods downstream and greatly affecting the lives of the people there. While criticism and suggestions are natural after a tragedy of this magnitude, we should learn lessons from the experience. The question is, how do we avoid or minimise destruction after such an event?
The purpose of dams
•The world over, dams are constructed mainly for the purposes of irrigation, power generation, and flood control. While the first two roles are acknowledged, the role of dams in flood control has always been underestimated. It is unfortunate that in both irrigation and hydel projects, flood control is completely ignored. Authorities always look to store the maximum amount of water in reservoirs during the monsoon season, which is then used for irrigation and generation of electricity during the summer months. It is an internationally accepted practice that the water level of a reservoir should be kept below a certain level before the onset of the monsoon season. This is so that when the monsoon rains come, there is space to store the excess rainwater and also so that water can be released in a regulated manner, thus preventing floods downstream when there is heavy inflow to the dams. In May, Thailand, for instance, wisely brought down the water level in the dams in the country to below 60% of the storing capacity before the rainy season.
•However, it is unfortunate that the maximum amount of water is stored in reservoirs even before the close of the monsoon, only to ensure greater electricity generation and irrigation. How the reservoir water was managed in the dams prior to the Kerala floods requires no explanation. While earlier too there was no practice of keeping space for greater storage of water, rainfall has never been as torrential as it was this year. Hence, there were no floods either. It is difficult to predict what will happen during the ensuing northeast monsoon in Kerala in case of heavy inflow. Whatever be the extra quantity of electricity produced and area of land irrigated because of the risky storage of water in our dams, that cannot compensate for the loss of human lives, infrastructure and agricultural land. Nor can the agony caused by such destruction be compensated for. The estimated loss to the State runs into thousands of crores. It will take years to rebuild Kerala.
Space in reservoirs
•In view of all these problems and to ensure that the flood control purpose of dams is met, it is important that at least 30% of the storage capacity of dams be kept free before the monsoon. While simultaneously allowing discharge of water, it is possible to increase storage slowly as the monsoon progresses. Kerala receives rainfall mainly during the southwest monsoon (June-September) and northeast monsoon (October-November). These rains are controlled by winds that carry clouds from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Atmospheric depression that controls wind movement cannot be predicted months in advance. The meteorological department can predict rains or cyclones only a few days in advance. Therefore, keeping space in reservoirs before the monsoon begins must be done whether or not there are heavy rains, as no State can afford to take risks in the manner that Kerala did.
•Some argue against the existence of dams, but it is an irrefutable fact that dams are useful. We need them for irrigation and electricity generation. However, even if the monsoons fail and dams fall short of water and there is a shortfall in electricity generation, this is not a loss compared to the possible loss of lives in the event of a flood of this magnitude.
Ensuring thoughtful policies
•It is time for the government and the public to formulate water management policies for reservoirs in such a manner that dams are used to control floods, not cause them. In 2015, hydropower generation was only 16.6% of the world’s total electricity production. The tendency to hold the maximum amount of water in our reservoirs while ignoring the high risk involved in doing so can be attributed to our over-dependence on hydel projects to produce electricity. Therefore, it is time to think of non-conventional sources for electricity generation such as solar, wind and tidal power. The practice of solar power generation in Kochi airport can be copied in similar large-scale projects by other government agencies. The public too should be encouraged to adopt the practice of solar power generation. This will greatly reduce our dependence on dams for power generation.
•It is also crucial to follow good reservoir water management policies. At present, the task of dam and water management is vested with the Public Works Department, the Electricity Board, and the Irrigation Department. Even in normal conditions, given contradictory opinions from various departments, it is difficult to implement decisions. Hence, the State Dam Security Authority, if competent, should be entrusted with the task of water management in reservoirs and with taking decisions in emergency situations.
•The State government, the State Dam Security Authority and the National Water Commission should all be prepared to take bold decisions together on water management so that there are no such devastating floods in the future. If this happens, we hopefully won’t see another day where we rue decisions of the past that are causing untold suffering to millions in the present.
