📰 CJI Misra names Gogoi as successor
He will hold the post for 13 months
•Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Tuesday recommended Justice Ranjan Gogoi as his successor and the 46th Chief Justice of India.
•Law Ministry sources confirmed the receipt of the recommendation letter of the Chief Justice.
•If the government approves the recommendation, Justice Gogoi would have a tenure as Chief Justice of India of about 13 months, from October 3, 2018 till his retirement on November 17, 2019. Chief Justice Misra has followed convention by recommending the next senior most Supreme Court judge, Justice Gogoi, as his successor.
•Justice Gogoi, born on November 18, 1954, is a native of Assam. He joined the Bar in 1978 and practised mainly in the Gauhati High Court. He was appointed as permanent judge of the High Court on February 28, 2001. He was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on September 9, 2010 and appointed its Chief Justice in February 2011. He was elevated to the Supreme Court on April 23, 2012. He would be the first CJI from the north-eastern region. He is the son of Keshab Chandra Gogoi, a former Assam Chief Minister during the Congress regime in 1982.
•Justice Gogoi was one of the four most senior Supreme Court judges who held the January 12 press conference bringing up the issue of selective assignment of sensitive cases by recent CJIs to certain judges in the Supreme Court.
•Chief Justice Misra subsequently published a subject-wise roster of cases assigned to judges. In various judgments, one of them by a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Misra himself, the Supreme Court went on to declare the CJI the ‘master of roster’.
•In a recent lecture, Justice Gogoi said the country needs independent journalists and “noisy judges”.
📰 Google to help EC track online political ads
IT giant will help ensure pre-certification of ads, and share expenditure details with Election Commission
•With poll season round the corner, Google, which controls the lion’s share of the digital advertising market, will soon be helping the Election Commission (EC) keep tabs on online political advertising. The tech giant will develop a mechanism that will not only ensure pre-certification of political advertisements but also enable it to share with the authority, details about the expenditure incurred on its platforms.
•Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat on Tuesday said that a Google representative met a committee that had been set up to explore possible modifications in Section 126 (election silence) and other provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 in view of the expansion and diversity of media platforms.
•At the meeting, the representative told the Commission that the company would keep track of political advertisements and ensure that they are pre-certified by the EC’s Media Certification and Monitoring Committees. This would entail Google asking prospective clients, whenever an order is placed, whether they have been pre-certified. The Commission is the nodal body for pre-certification of advertisements of a political nature, released by either an individual or an organisation.
•Google has also assured the committee that it would set up a mechanism for sharing information on the cost of the political advertisements. This would be of use to Returning Officers when it comes to calculating the election expenditure of individual candidates.
•“As soon as someone is declared a candidate for any election, all the money spent by the person for campaigning gets added as election expenditure. The Commission also asks the candidates to declare their official social media accounts,” an Election Commission official said.
Facebook tools
•The EC’s committee had earlier held meetings with Facebook, which has also agreed to develop tools for removing any content pertaining to election matters during the 48-hour period when the ‘prohibition protocol’ is in place. It is working on ways to check fake news and share details of expenditure on poll-related advertisements.
•During the Karnataka Assembly polls, Facebook tied up with the Indian fact-checking agency, Boom Live, which confirmed over 50 cases of “fake news.” Twitter representatives have also met the EC’s committee.
📰 Routes to Afghanistan: on 2+2 talks
The 2+2 talks must take into account U.S. policy as well as India’s own role in the region
•A year after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his “South Asia policy” for Afghanistan, senior American officials will be in the region for talks this week. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary James Mattis visit Delhi for the first 2+2 talks on Thursday with their Indian counterparts, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Mr. Mattis is expected to come via Kabul, while Mr. Pompeo and U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, will swing by Islamabad.
A year later
•Afghanistan today is by no means how Mr. Trump had envisioned it last August: in terms of the security situation, regional solutions for the peace process as well as economic development. The past few weeks have seen a spike in violence, with the Taliban carrying out a set of coordinated assaults around Afghanistan, rejecting an offer of a three-month ceasefire by President Ashraf Ghani and laying siege to Ghazni city. Before U.S. Special Forces and the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces were able to clear them out, the Taliban had shown up the fragile hold Kabul has on this provincial capital less than 150 km away. The fight against the Taliban took massive U.S. air fire power as well to finally secure Ghazni, with the once bustling city now war-torn. While the Taliban suffered heavy casualties, so did the Afghan Army.
•The impact of the Taliban assault in Ghazni and other cities in August, including the deadly bombing of a Kabul school, was three-fold. It cast serious doubt on any U.S. plans to draw down troops as Mr. Trump may have envisaged; it blew to bits the hope that the June Id ceasefire and the meeting between U.S. special envoy Alice Wells and Taliban officials in Doha in July meant that the Taliban was committed to the peace process; and it also showed that despite six months of concerted American punitive actions on Islamabad, the Pakistan establishment is not shutting down support for Taliban fighters. In an emotional public statement, Mr. Ghani accused Pakistan of treating the terrorists in hospitals close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, while his Ministry of Defence said Pakistani fighters, including from the Lashkar-e-Toiba were among the insurgents. Pakistan denied the charges, suggesting that the dead Pakistanis were actually “labourers” working in Ghazni. The violence this year has also put 2018 on course to be the deadliest year for Afghan civilians, with an average of nine people killed every day, according to UN data.
•Kabul’s security structure has seen a dramatic series of sackings and resignations in the aftermath. National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar has been replaced by Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., Hamdullah Mohib. The Defence Minister, Interior Minister, head of the National Directorate of Security and deputy chief of the National Security Council all tendered their resignations, reportedly over differences with Mr. Ghani’s working; he hasn’t accepted them. The developments, along with the faltering peace process, will make the task of holding parliamentary elections due in October, as well as presidential elections in April 2019, much more challenging.
•If the U.S.’s efforts inside Afghanistan have fared badly this past year, its strategy in the region, particularly with reference to Russia, China and Iran, has been even more perplexing. Last week, Russia put off multi-nation talks in Moscow scheduled for September 4, which would have also brought a Taliban delegation to the table, after Mr. Ghani, ostensibly under U.S. pressure, pulled out. However, the U.S. has itself entered into direct engagement with the same delegation led by “political chief” Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, a UN-sanctioned former Minister in the Taliban government, when Ms. Wells went to Qatar, making U.S. disavowal of the Moscow process seem more churlish than principled.
The Iran angle
•The Trump administration’s collision course with Iran is another hurdle to realising its South Asia policy. Iran is a neighbour to both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and any action against Tehran will have consequences on the region. Second, the new American push to sanction and isolate Iran by November will undoubtedly shift the focus from the task of resolving the situation in Afghanistan. This mirrors earlier U.S. offensive actions — in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2014 — each of which took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan. Finally, Iran is also an alternative route for landlocked Afghanistan’s trade routes to the sea, which ties in with India’s desire to circumvent Pakistan by developing the Chabahar port. In fact, if Washington wasn’t at odds with Tehran, it may have benefited from access to the alternative supply lines to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Insisting instead on India cutting off ties with Iran, as successive U.S. delegations have done in the past few months, will only jeopardise this route, and affect Iran’s desire to assist with the access.
•As a result, India, which Mr. Trump named as a “critical part” of his South Asia strategy last year, has to balance its many bilateral and regional commitments to Afghanistan, while discussing the next steps at the 2+2 talks. To begin with, it is necessary that the Narendra Modi government spells out clearly its policy towards talks with the Taliban. Before Afghanistan pulled out of the Moscow talks, for example, the government had given Russia the impression that it would be willing to participate in the talks. If that is the case, India would also have to become party, hypothetically, to any future agreement that brings the Taliban into a power-sharing arrangement in Kabul, and the government must carefully study the implications of that departure from past policy.
•Next, India must focus on assisting Afghanistan in every manner possible to ensure that the country’s elections are as peaceful and participative as possible. India’s development assistance has been the source of its considerable influence and goodwill among Afghan citizens, and this is not the time to make cuts. The outlay for 2017-18 at ₹365.96 crore was far lower than its commitment in 2015-2016 at ₹880.44 crore, according to figures tabled in Parliament. Officials say this is because major projects, such as the Salma Dam and Parliament building in Kabul, that began in 2008-09, have now been completed. But this begs the question, why are more ambitious projects not being planned? While the current crop of Small Development Projects launched in 2016, encompassing drinking water plans for several cities including Kabul, supply of buses, construction of low-cost housing, and assistance in health and education are important, India’s regional status demands more.
Time to be double-quick
•On the military front as well, India must move quickly to provide helicopters as well as engineering/tech support for Afghan hardware. India’s plans at Chabahar are equally important to its efforts at keeping its lines to Afghanistan independent of other considerations, and Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s visit to Kabul next week for a trilateral India-Afghanistan-Iran meeting will be important to take them forward.
•Lastly, the government must realise that its consistent undermining of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) because of problems with Pakistan is also weakening Afghanistan’s engagement with the subcontinent, which India had worked hard to foster. The conversations at the 2+2 meet on Thursday must take into account not just India’s role in Mr. Trump’s South Asia policy but its own role in its neighbourhood.
📰 Youth more likely to choose protests over vote
A survey across 128 countries found more young adults, who are interested in politics, rejecting formal political engagement for street activism
•Kimberley Kute’s introduction to democracy was traumatic. As a teenager, Kute helped her mother deliver meals to brutalised supporters of Zimbabwe’s political Opposition while they recovered from the burns and shattered bones of a violent 2008 election campaign.
•The memory of raw flesh and swollen faces endured. “What I took from it was, maybe you should not be involved in politics,” Kute, 24, recalled. “Don’t do anything. Don’t even vote.”
•Now, Kute was eager to take part in Zimbabwe’s first election since the Army removed long-time ruler Robert Mugabe last year. “Your vote is your say, it’s your voice,” Kute said in the clear days before polls opened. “I’m very hopeful.”
•But in a contest where both major presidential candidates claimed to represent change, would Zimbabwe’s alienated youth participate?
•Around the world, fewer are willing to get involved.
•A growing number of younger adults, who say they are interested in politics, are nevertheless rejecting formal political engagement in favour of street protest, an Orb Media analysis of data from 9,79,000 people in 128 countries found.
Demographic divide
•Adults under 40 are between 9% and 17% more likely to take part in demonstrations than those older than 40 — a marked increase from the early 2000s, when under-40s were only 3% more likely to protest.
•“Voting is a form of influencing something very formally,” said Dominik Puchala, 20, a left-wing Polish activist. “But sometimes, especially in societies that are not civil societies, it is not enough.”
•“We need a more participative young generation to come up and raise their voices and play a bigger role in democracy,” said Shahrul Saari, 43, acting chair of Bersih 2.0, a Malaysian democracy watchdog.
•Youth have always voted in lower numbers. But while surveys show that democracy remains the most desired form of government, fewer young people take part as volunteers or party members. Other modes of influence, from street demonstrations to digital campaigns, are increasingly prominent.
•The gap is widening. As more youth choose informal politics, more older adults avoid protest.
Networked movements
•There are different reasons for this ambivalence. Many activists prefer networked, horizontal movements to top-down legacy organisations. Another factor is the exclusion of new voices. (Just 2% of the world’s parliamentarians are younger than 30.) Many see mainstream politics as morally compromised.
•“Younger adults prefer the anti-establishment,” said Mattia Forni, 27, an analyst for the pollster Ipsos.
•In Poland’s 2015 elections, many leftist youth “decided not to vote for the lesser evil, and to oppose the system in general,” Puchala said. The government is right wing, and the youth vote went to the far right. “Was it dangerous? Probably, yes,” Puchala said, sipping coffee in a Warsaw bookshop. The next day, he triggered a hot-pink smoke bomb during a demonstration outside the Polish parliament.
•The street can be a preference, or a last resort.
•In Bangladesh last month, protesting students were attacked by police and ruling party activists when thousands blocked traffic to demand road safety after two teens were killed by a speeding bus in Dhaka, the capital.
•“I am not expected to protest, but I had to,” a Bangladeshi architecture student said. “The political leaders, they are all corrupted. They are doing nothing.”
•“I will never vote,” the 20-year-old said, her arms in bandages. “Our vote doesn’t even matter.”
•Youth-led street movements have toppled leaders in Slovakia, Guatemala, Tunisia and Egypt. In each, the establishment reasserted itself.
•“If young people only employ civil disobedience, they will inevitably be left out of many decisions,” a report by the U.S.-based Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening noted.
•Two-thirds of non-voters in the 2016 U.S. election were younger than 50. Only one-third of youth approve of Donald Trump as president. The gap is obvious.
Entry barriers
•But formal parties must adjust to younger citizens who expect to be heard before reaching middle age. “There’s a problem with the more traditional forms of politics,” said Ben Lake, 25, Britain’s second-youngest Member of Parliament. “I don’t think parties in the U.K. have woken up to it.”
•Joining the system isn’t always easy.
•“In our society there is no room for young people’s voices,” a 22-year old Nicaraguan activist, who asked to be called Maria, said. She is currently in hiding from security forces that have killed hundreds of youth since anti-corruption protests exploded in April. “They tell us: If you were not part of the revolution in 1979, you have no say.”
•Generational chauvinism — known as “adulterismo” in Nicaragua — cuts across continents.
•Zimbabweans born after white-minority rule was overthrown in 1980 are called “Born Free.” “It sort of says that you did not fight for the liberation of the country, so your opinion doesn’t really matter,” Kute said. Born Frees felt trapped under an ageing, corrupt elite.
•Corruption also depresses the youth vote. In Zimbabwe, youth who perceived corruption were 21% less likely to vote, according to 2016 data.
•Orb Media’s analysis found that, worldwide, under-40s who think their government is corrupt were 7% to 15% less likely to vote than peers who don’t perceive corruption. Over-40s who saw corruption were only 4% to 7% less likely to vote.
•But a galvanising candidate or issue can still captivate.
•In 2015, when demonstrations forced Poland’s government to block resettlement of 6,200 African and Middle Eastern refugees, “we really felt that we won,” said Mateusz Marzoch, 24, spokesman for a far-right youth group.
•The line between formal and informal has always been permeable. The street and the Internet can’t help but influence policy.
•In the U.S., survivors of a school shooting that killed 17 children in Parkland, Florida, are working to boost first-time voters in the November congressional elections. Time will tell if they succeed.
•“Treat every election like it’s the last one you’ll ever have,” Parkland activist David Hogg, 18, tweeted recently. A telegenic presence, Hogg has used a social media following of nearly 1 million to force major brands to cut ties with the U.S. gun lobby.
•After voting with her mother on July 30, Kimberly Kute posted a celebratory photo on Twitter. The celebrations didn’t last.
•Soldiers opened fire on demonstrators, killing six amid allegations of election fraud, and Zimbabwe fell into uncertainty and gloom. Incumbent president Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, was declared the winner over youth favourite Nelson Chamisa, 40.
•Days after Zimbabwe’s election, some streets were still littered with rifle shells and blood stains.
•“When I voted I was very, very hopeful,” Kute said of the violence. “Because of this, my faith was broken. But I believe at some point there must be some change. I will always exercise my right to vote.”
📰 Breakthrough achieved in RCEP talks, claims India
‘Key demands accepted by members’
•Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday said that the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) would not end in 2018, but would spill over to 2019, even as officials said there was a breakthrough in understanding India’s concerns at the meeting in Singapore on August 30-31.
•According to Mr. Prabhu, the 16-nation group accepted some key demands from India: on differential tariff regimes for different country groups like China, and in allowing a 20-year implementation period of the agreement.
•“The RCEP negotiations will not end in 2018 that has been agreed at the level of the leaders. But it will go on in 2019 as well,” the Minister said, speaking at the sidelines of a Coffee Board event, indicating that a “package of substantial deliverables” would be agreed to in November this year, but not the preferential trade agreement, which has been negotiated for more than six years, itself.
•Earlier reports had indicated that India would face a stark choice between agreeing to end RCEP negotiations by a deadline at the end of 2018, or to step back from the negotiations, while other countries including the 10 ASEAN nations, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, went on.
•Another key area where India scored, according to officials, was in establishing a linkage between services and goods negotiations, given that some countries were not as welcoming of allowing movement of labour.
•“We have clearly said that the RCEP stands for regional cooperation in economic partnership. It is not goods partnership alone… economic partnership envisages that services must be integral part of the trade. So this…linkage that has been accepted,” Mr. Prabhu said.
Separate negotiations
•Of the 16 countries that have been negotiating for the RCEP, India does not have Free Trade Agreements with three countries — Australia, New Zealand and China, for which negotiations will now be separately held, in a “bilateral pairing mechanism”.
•“We have been highlighting that we cannot negotiate through RCEP route… With these three countries, we have to separately negotiate… I am happy to say that India’s decision has been accepted,” Mr. Prabhu added, calling the new understanding at the RCEP grouping a “significant change” from the past, when India was seen as the outlier of the group.
📰 State panels to track hip implant patients
Central, regional committees will decide on relief
•The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said that State-level committees consisting of two orthopaedic surgeons or physical medical rehabilitation experts and one radiologist from government hospital, a representative from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) and drug controller of respective States should be formed to identify patients who have received the faulty hip implant by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson.
•The notification made public on Tuesday also said States should advertise widely to reach out to the patients.
•“The committee [of the Ministry which submitted its report recently] has recommended, among other things, the constitution of [a] Central Expert Committee and Regional Expert Committees for determining the exact quantum of compensation after taking into account the minimum amount of Rs. 20 lakh,” the notification stated.
•The compensation amount will be further calculated based on other factors such as the degree of disability and loss of wages.
•“Patients can now reach out directly to the committees”, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), Dr. S. Eswara Reddy told The Hindu, adding that more and more patients should now come forward. J&J’s Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) hip implant manufactured by its subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics was recalled globally in 2010 after reports of it leaching metals and causing severe pain, fluid accumulation, and metal poisoning in patients. However, till date, only 1080 patients have reached out to the ASR helpline set up by the pharma company for guidance on revision surgeries and reimbursement process and 275 have undergone revision surgeries.
•In 2011, the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first initiated action against the pharmaceutical giant by registering an FIR at the Mahim police station in Mumbai and also alerted the DCGI.
•“The police and the DCGI turned a blind eye to the matter,” said Dombivali resident Vijay Vojhala who underwent a hip implant surgery in 2008.
•“I approached the Maharashtra government too but did not get any response”, he said.
•Soon after the surgery, the implant caused him severe pain. Tests revealed extremely high levels of cobalt and chromium deposits in the body. In 2012, Mr. Vojhala underwent a revision surgery funded by the pharmaceutical company. “The onus of ensuring that the affected patients come forward for compensation was on the government. But all the authorities have been grossly negligent,” he said.
•Dr. Reddy said a lot of work was done over the years which finally culminated in the report submitted to the Health Ministry. “It would be wrong to say that the DCGI had not acted”, he claimed.
•Former FDA commissioner Mahesh Zagade who filed the FIR said the police initially were very active in the investigation. “I made my staff available for the investigating police officers as the case was not like other routine police matters. The company had approached the court to quash the FIR but they never got an order in their favour,” Mr. Zagade told The Hindu, adding that he later pushed for a CBI inquiry as well. “I feel that the DCGI was extremely slow in pursuing the case”, he said. After Mr. Zagade’s transfer in 2014, the FDA has seen three commissioners but the case lost its pace. The current commissioner Pallavi Darade said there is no action pending with the FDA.
📰 ‘Drugs are not sweets’
A clear message must be sent out to multinationals that the lives of Indian patients matter
•The details of the story of a metallic medical device gone awry are well reported — debilitating a number of patients, and leaving them with excruciating pain, disability and, in some alleged cases, even death.
A timeline
•The brief facts: DePuy, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), engineered a hip replacement device that used metal in both the ball and the socket. Commonly called the “Articular Surface Replacement or ASR hip implant”, this device soon turned toxic, owing to the release of metal debris, resulting in inflammation, tissue damage and profound pain.
•While one is not certain of the precise date on which DePuy first knew of the various problems with its device, there are indications that doctors began warning the company as early as 2005. Court testimonies suggest that doctors who brought it to the repeated attention of DePuy were ignored — or had their research funding cut off. In fact, the Australian registry took issue with the high failure rates of the allegedly superior metal implant as far back as 2007.
•So DePuy clearly had knowledge of this problem by then. Yet it issued a global product recall only in 2010. Worse still, it renewed its Indian import licence in 2010 — just a few months prior to the global product recall.
•More unfortunately though, it took a full three years for the Indian drug regulator (Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, or CDSCO) to wake up and issue a product alert.
Lip service
•But what of the hapless patients such as Vijay Vojhala who have had to go though enormous pain and suffering in the interim? Losing their jobs, mobility and much more.
•While DePuy reimbursed victims such as Mr. Vojhala for their revision surgeries (to replace the “metal” with other materials such as ceramic or polyethylene), they refused to compensate. Reimbursement is not the same as compensating a patient for the pain, suffering, disability and loss of work. Illustratively, consider the first law suit that went to trial in the U.S. against DePuy, where a jury awarded approximately $8.3 million as damages. Of this, only $338,000 was meant to reimburse the aggrieved patient for costs associated with surgery. The major chunk ($8 million) went towards compensating him for pain and suffering. It bears noting that most legal actions in the U.S. allege that despite knowledge of high failure rates, J&J failed to issue prompt warnings and take appropriate remedial steps.
•The Indian government finally constituted an investigative committee in 2017. Its report (just made public) is a telling indictment of DePuy and its attempts to evade responsibility. It decries DePuy’s rather evasive responses: while 15,829 ASR hip implants were imported in India, only 4,700 surgeries were performed. Worse still, only 1,295 unused implants had been returned to the company. Where did the rest go? Is it not J&J’s responsibility to ensure that the recall is properly implemented and to account for all the missing pieces?
•Unfortunately, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (DCA) is woefully inadequate when it comes to victim compensation. The Act problematically presumes even a “device” to be a drug. And it penalises all those who sell adulterated, spurious or sub-standard drugs. It will take a stupendous stretch to argue that a faulty medical device amounts to a “spurious” or “adulterated” drug.
•As such, invoking the DCA may not be a legally robust option. However, patients can invoke traditional tort law remedies and the Consumer Protection Act to claim damages. Some actions are pending before Indian courts and consumer fora which need to be consolidated and fast tracked.
Status quo since Bhopal
•This is where memories of the Bhopal gas tragedy and a rather remorseless corporation (Union Carbide) spring to mind. The message at the end seemed clear: Poor hapless Indians are used to so much worse than their developed country counterparts. We can do with far less compensation, or even none at all.
•Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much since then. A couple of years ago, when hit with a compulsory licence for its prohibitively priced anticancer drug Nexavar, Bayer went on record to state that it does not make its drugs for Indians. India needs to send out a clear message to multinationals that enough is enough: the lives of Indian patients matter as much, if not more.
•Strangely, the government has been rather timid in taking on J&J. It even blocked a potential CBI inquiry, despite a former drug commissioner recommending this. This has forced patients to turn to the one institution that has fared a bit better when it comes to protecting public interest. But will our courts step up? If a recent court ruling in Mumbai is anything to go by, there is some hope. In Glenmark Pharmaceuticals v. Galpha Laboratories, the court imposed a whopping ₹1.5 crore as damages. Taking note of the fact that the defendant was a reckless violator of drug safety norms, the court issued a stern warning that could well apply on all fours to the controversy at hand: “Drugs are not sweets. Pharmaceutical companies which provide medicines for health of the consumers have a special duty of care towards them... However, nowadays, the corporate and financial goals of such companies cloud the decision of its executives whose decisions are incentivised by profits, more often than not, at the cost of public health. This case is a perfect example of just that.”
📰 Addressing soil loss
Floods often wash away rich, weathered soil. Rehabilitation programmes must consider this loss
•As the rains abate in Kerala and parts of Kodagu district in Karnataka, the loss of lives and the devastation of infrastructure and crops is apparent. However, as rebuilding is planned, what is often ignored is the soil that has been washed away. While roads and houses will be rebuilt, and crop losses compensated partially through insurance, the gradual loss of soil productivity can have a lasting impact on the local economy.
•Soil degradation due to flooding is a serious concern. A 2014 review of soil degradation in India by multiple institutions shows that an estimated 14 million hectares suffer soil degradation due to flooding annually.
•The impact of floods on soil was also studied in detail following the 2009 floods in North Karnataka, which killed over 170 people and caused an estimated loss of over Rs. 16,500 crore. Researchers from the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS&LUP) and other institutes estimate that 13 flood-hit districts lost 287 million tonnes of top soil and soil nutrients across 10.75 million hectares of farmland. Under market prices, the replacement of nutrients such as nitrates, phosphates and iron would have cost Rs. 1,625 crore, while another Rs. 853 crore would have been spent on replenishing organic material lost. To recover and replace would take a “considerable” amount of time, and a steadfast programme of recovery, they noted. Nine years later, there is no comprehensive scheme for recovery, and the effect of the floods is still visible on the ground. A soil profile of a few affected districts, done under the State’s integrated watershed scheme, shows large swathes of these areas having “shallow or very shallow” soil depth, organic carbon deficiency, and low productivity of land.
•In the case of Kerala and Kodagu, the undulation and force of the water would have led to severe soil and land erosion, says Rajendra Hegde, Principal Scientist of NBSS&LUP in Bengaluru. “You can see it in the murky colour of the rivers and swollen stream,” he says. “Soil, which has taken thousands of years to form through natural processes and through recent inputs by farmers, is being swept away, to be dumped in reservoirs or in the sea.”
•Not all floods are bad for the soil, as seen in the oft-occurring floods along the banks of the Ganga, Kosi, Brahmaputra and other rivers taking birth in the Himalayas. There, the gushing river emanating from the mountains carries with it loosened alluvial soil, and not only washes over farmlands, but also replenishes flood plains with fertile soil. However, in south and central India, floods wash away rich, weathered soil, which are deposited in reservoirs or as sand bars along the river bed or in the sea. Any rehabilitation programme must consider this lost soil.
