📰 Landslip, not glacial lake burst, probable trigger for Uttarakhand flood
Nothing out of the ordinary was observed in satellite images, says CWC
•Though the jury is still out, glaciologists and experts in rock sciences are converging around the view that the cause of the Chamoli deluge was most probably a landslip and not a glacial lake burst.
•Glacial Lake Outburst Flooding (GLOF) occurs when a breach in the glacial lake causes an outpour downstream. Such lakes are formed when glaciers erode land, melt and over time become a large mass of water in the depression formed and these can be breached, causing floods downstream. However, several scientists based on an analysis of satellite images have failed to spot any such lakes.
•The Central Water Commission monitors and prepares monthly reports on the state of glacial lakes and water bodies 10 hectares and above via satellite and nothing out of the ordinary was observed. However, it is possible that smaller pockets of water exist that haven’t been caught in the satellite images, that may have flooded. “There’s a bit of a mystery and it will be some time before the causes can be determined,” Sharat Chandra, Director, CWC told The Hindu.
•The CWC constituted a team of experts on Monday to investigate the possible causes.
•Other experts opine that large mass of rock or debris might have impacted the glacier and triggered an avalanche.
Extremely steep
•Kalachand Sain, Director, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, said apart from glacial lakes not being observed, the glaciers were extremely steep and preventing water from accumulating enough to form such lakes. “A sudden surge of water is surprising and had it been from a broken glacier, we would be seeing a continuous flow of water. Right now this appears to have stemmed,” he said.
•On Monday morning, an official Twitter account of the CWC reported a “possible second wave of flood” in the early hours of Monday with water-flow monitors recording a surge and then again ebbing within an hour. “The second wave doesn’t seem concerning and as of now water levels are back to normal.”
•The winter season would make it extremely hard and the ensuing damage to the connecting roadways make access difficult to reach the glaciers.
•Satellite data observations showed that until February 6 there was significant snow but the cover appears to have significantly reduced the next day. “That’s surprising and what we need to find out. What caused this reduction? Did anything happen upstream? Did rocks or boulders fall on the glaciers causing an outpouring of sediment, debris....we need to figure out.”
•Mr. Sain said his colleagues — a team of five — were on the road to Joshimath, close to the spot, for further studies.
•Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary, Canada, said on Twitter preliminary analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the event was a landslip. A part of a glacier — and Mr. Shugar suggested he is unsure if it is the Nandadevi glacier — may have broken off and become rock and ice avalanche that later turned into a flood.
Fracture of a hanging glacier
•Mohd. Farooq Azam, Assistant Professor, Glaciology & Hydrology, IIT Indore, offered a hypothesis again ruling out a GLOF. “We can now say with some belief that the incident occurred due to the fracture of a hanging glacier [about 0.2 sq km in size] together with snow and rock avalanches, at 5,600 metre altitude near the Trishul Peak. Though it is hard to fully ascertain the source of the water and slurry which was seen in the videos yesterday [Sunday], our current hypothesis is that the water accumulated locked in the debris-snow below the glacier was released when the glacier-rock mass fell. This was a drop of almost 2 km before hitting marshy land. Since the temperature in the region is sub-zero, river level is much lower than it would be in the monsoon season.”
•Since 2017, debris and snow had been accumulating at the bottom of the glacier. The stream flowing out from it earlier was very clear, but after 2017 the glacier stream has been hidden below the accumulated debris-snow. It was possible that the debris-snow would have been absorbing and collecting water coming from the upstream glaciers and that could have been released when the ice-rock avalanche hit it, Mr. Azam said.
Draft rules being finalised, says official.
•The new labour codes set to be implemented soon would provide companies the flexibility of reducing the number of working days to four days a week and provide free medical check-ups to workers through the Employees State Insurance Corporation, Labour and Employment Secretary Apurva Chandra said on Monday.
•Speaking to reporters, Mr. Chandra said the draft rules under the labour codes are being finalised. He added that most States were in the process of framing their rules and some, including Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, would be ready with their drafts this week.
•He said the concerns about the working hours going up from 10.5 hours to 12 hours, with one hour of rest, that arose during consultations had been addressed.
•“We have tried to make some changes. We have tried to give flexibility in working days,” he said.
•Under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 draft rules, the limit of working hours for a week was 48 hours. Mr. Chandra said this limit was “sacrosanct” and that employers and workers would have to agree to a change in working days. “It cannot be forced,” he said.
•He added that ESIC would provide free medical check-ups to workers so the employer does not have to bear the costs.
•Speaking about the Budget announcements regarding the Ministry, Mr. Chandra said a portal for collecting information on gig, building and construction workers would be started by May or June. This would help in formulating health, housing, food and other schemes for migrant workers.
•The Budget had included interest from Provident Fund contributions over ₹2.5 lakh being taxed. Mr. Chandra said 1.23 lakh people out of the 6.5 crore PF contributing accounts would be impacted by this.
📰 Sri Lanka clears Chinese energy project, 50 km off Tamil Nadu
The site’s proximity to the Indian coastline can be a cause for concern
•Sri Lanka’s recent decision to pull out of the East Container Terminal (ECT) deal with India and Japan is not the only challenge to New Delhi’s interests emerging this year. A week before reneging on the 2019 Colombo Port terminal agreement, Sri Lanka cleared a Chinese energy project in three islands off Jaffna peninsula that are barely 50 km from the Tamil Nadu coast.
•On January 18, the Cabinet approved a proposal to involve Sinosoar-Etechwin Joint Venture in China to install ‘hybrid renewable energy systems’ in Nainativu, Delft or Neduntheevu, and Analaitivu, located in the Palk Bay. The islands are connected to the Jaffna peninsula by a limited ferry service, managed mostly by the Sri Lankan Navy.
•India has not commented on the development, but sources in Colombo said: “concerns were raised”, citing the project site’s proximity to the Indian coastline. Delft island is one of the closest points to India from northern Sri Lanka. The three islands, where the energy systems are coming up, are home to a few thousand people. Several families residing in these islands fled the civil war, and crossed over to Tamil Nadu in boats, according to residents. Following years of neglect, the islands have remained much less developed compared to Jaffna peninsula.
Housing project
•The energy project is not the first instance of a Chinese role in northern infrastructure in Sri Lanka. In 2018, India voiced concern over China’s $300 million housing project for war-affected areas, accusing the Resettlement Ministry [of the former government] of holding an “opaque” bidding process. The project was eventually dropped.
•Commenting on the development, Austin Fernando, Sri Lanka’s former High Commissioner to India, said the Sri Lankan government cannot be blamed for this decision, because the project is backed by the Asian Development Bank, which has its “own procurement guidelines that should be followed by the borrower”.
•However, India raising concern is “understandable” and “unsurprising”, he said, adding that the reaction was consistent with New Delhi’s positions in the past, when a Chinese submarine called at the Colombo Port in 2014, and when the government had a Chinese offer to develop housing in the north. “The islands chosen now are even closer to the Indian border. India would not like another source of tension at a time when the confrontation with China in Ladakh is yet to be resolved,” Mr. Fernando said.
📰 Panel slams DoT for delay in 5G trials
‘India unprepared for roll-out, partial deployment of 5G tech possible only by end 2021 or early 2022’
•Slamming the government for its ‘laid-back approach’ and delay in conducting 5G trials, a Parliamentary Panel has said that sufficient preparatory work had not been undertaken for introducing 5G services in India and that the country was likely to witness only partial deployment by 2021-end or early 2022.
•In the report tabled in Parliament on Monday, the committee, headed by Shashi Tharoor, added that it was very likely that after missing the 2G, 3G and 4G buses, India was going to miss out on 5G opportunities, unless time-bound action is taken in core areas where governmental intervention is required.
•“The committee, while deploring the Department’s [Department of Telecom’s] unconscionably long delay in auctioning of spectrum, recommends that spectrum auction including auctioning of 3300 MHz to 3600 MHz be conducted at the earliest,” the report said, adding that the DoT had assured that 3300 MHz to 3600 MHz, to be used for 5G, was going to be auctioned in the next six months or so.
•As per the panel, inadequate availability of spectrum, high spectrum prices, poor development of use cases, low status of fiberisation, non-uniform right-of-way issues and deficient backhaul capacity are some of the factors coming in the way of a 5G services roll-out in India.
•The committee noted that telcos had submitted 5G trial applications in January, 2020 but that till date, the guidelines for trials had not been made clear and there was no set date for commencement of these trials. “It is really disturbing to note that 5G trials have not yet been permitted. This is in complete contradiction to what the Department had informed the Committee...in February, 2020, that the government has allowed all applications for 5G trials in limited areas and for limited time to test potential 5G India-specific use cases.” The panel has sought the reason for delay from the Department of Telecom (DoT).
•The DoT Secretary Anshu Prakash informed the committee that in India, 5G technology would initially ride on 4G technology, as per the report. “The committee have been informed that by the end of calendar year 2021 or beginning of 2022, there will be some roll-out in India for some specific uses, because 4G should continue in India for at least another 5-6 years. From the foregoing, the committee [is] inclined to conclude that sufficient preparatory work has not been undertaken for launching 5G services in India.”
•The panel expressed disappointment that the DoT had ‘hardly learnt’ from the past delays as the vision for 5G which was reflected in the constitution of the High Level Forum and Expert Committees had not been transformed into action on the ground.
•The committee was of the view that the issue of allocating the right amount of spectrum as demanded by the industry needed to be addressed by the DoT if India were to realise the benefits of 5G. “The committee recommends that the Department needs to have fruitful deliberation with the Department of Space and Ministry of Defence and an understanding must be reached at the earliest for identification of adequate spectrum for 5G services.”
•Further, the committee pointed out that while sectoral regulator TRAI had, in 2015, recommended that there was an urgent need for audit of all allocated spectrum, both commercial as well as spectrum allocated to various PSUs/government organisations, the government’s decision in the matter was still awaited.
•“The committee is of the view that audit of spectrum is essential for detecting under-utilisation of this precious natural resource and also to assess the adequacy and operating effectiveness on management control framework in order to make its utilisation more efficient. It is deplorable that the Department has neglected such an important recommendation of TRAI…”
•On spectrum pricing, the committee found that there were fundamental differences between the versions of telcos and TRAI on fixing of spectrum prices in India, and suggested that there was a need to review the spectrum-pricing policy.
•The DoT had informed the committee it had not specifically banned any company, including Huawei and ZTE, and was closely watching 5G development around the world and would take an appropriate decision after evaluating all the pros and cons on the 5G ecosystem including social, economic and security considerations.
•The committee also expressed concern that 4G spectrum had still not been allocated to BSNL/MTNL, even though the Cabinet, in its meeting held on October 23, 2019, had approved the administrative allotment of spectrum for 4G services through capital infusion.
•“The committee observes that the revival of BSNL/MTNL is critical for domestic telecom manufacturing industries as they are the only ones purchasing Indian manufactured goods, and they have been implementing important schemes in remote rural areas and LWE affected areas. In such circumstances, the survival of BSNL/MTNL is in the national interest,” it said, adding that the DoT should take adequate measures to ensure that 5G spectrum be allocated to BSNL/MTNL at the same time as private players, so that they are in a position to compete and stay relevant in the market.
📰 Troubled mountains: On Uttarakhand glacier disaster
The Uttarakhand glacier burst should prompt a review of how the Himalayas are treated
•The staggering collapse of part of a glacier in Uttarakhand’s Nanda Devi mountain and the ensuing floods that have claimed many lives come as a deadly reminder that this fragile, geologically dynamic region can never be taken for granted. A significant slice of the glacier, dislodged by a landslide, according to some satellite images, produced roaring torrents in the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga rivers in Chamoli district, trapping unsuspecting workers at two hydro power project sites. Scores of people are still missing in the wave of water, silt and debris that swamped the rivers and filled tunnels in the Tapovan power project, although the immediate rescue of nearly 15 people by the ITBP, the Army and other agencies brings some cheer. The rescuers face a challenging environment as they try to locate more survivors and bring relief supplies to paralysed communities. These immediate measures are important, along with speedy compensation to affected families. But the Centre and the Uttarakhand government cannot ignore the larger context of the State’s increasing frailty in the face of environmental shocks. Once the crucible of environmentalism, epitomised by Sunderlal Bahuguna, Gaura Devi and the Chipko movement, the State’s deep gorges and canyons have attracted many hydroelectric projects and dams, with little concern for earthquake risk. Red flags have been raised repeatedly, particularly after the moderate quake in 1991 in the region where the Tehri dam was built and the 2013 floods that devastated Kedarnath, pointing to the threat from seismicity, dam-induced microseismicity, landslides and floods from a variety of causes, including unstable glacial lakes and climate change.
•India is heavily invested in dam development and growth of hydropower, largely in the Himalaya region — especially to cut carbon emissions. By one estimate, if the national plan to construct dams in 28 river valleys in the hills is realised in a few decades, the Indian Himalayas will have one dam for every 32 km, among the world’s highest densities. Yet, as researchers say, this may be a miscalculation for reasons, including potential earthquake impacts, monsoonal aberrations that could repeat a Kedarnath-like flood, severe biodiversity loss and, importantly, extreme danger to communities downstream. There is also some evidence that the life of dams is often exaggerated, and siltation, which reduces it, is grossly underestimated: in the Bhakra dam in Himachal Pradesh, for instance, siltation was higher by 140% than calculated. The need is to rigorously study the impact of policy on the Himalayas and confine hydro projects to those with the least impact, while relying more on low impact run-of-the-river power projects that need no destructive large dams and reservoirs. Unlike what the NITI Aayog seems to think of environmental accounting, this would be a sound approach.
📰 Improving Covishield efficiency
There are big benefits in delaying the second dose to 12 weeks and starting the first dose for the elderly and vulnerable
•On January 16, large-scale vaccination of healthcare workers began across India. Two vaccines are in use — Covishield and Covaxin — both rolled out under emergency use authorisation (EUA) by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), with the condition that all information on adverse reactions following immunisation (AEFI) be collected. For Covishield, the responsibility of AEFI monitoring is with the Government of India, since the authorisation for restricted use is at the discretion of the government. The government has defined who should be prioritised for vaccination — the first priority is healthcare workers.
•Since the epidemic was transitioning to the endemic phase (when, on average, each infection reproduces another and the effective reproduction number or R0=1) from the third week of January, the vaccination is not expected to impact on the epidemic, but offer protection to healthcare workers since repeated exposure to infection is an occupational hazard. The vaccine roll-out is without a need assessment and includes those previously infected. It is essentially a token of appreciation to the healthcare workers who stoically faced the brunt of the epidemic and efficiently managed infected individuals.
Longer interval
•The Lancet has just published a paper (that is not yet peer-reviewed) describing the clinical protective efficacy of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (called Covishield in India) in Phase 3 clinical trials conducted in the U.K., Brazil and South Africa. The critical lesson is that the efficacy after the second dose was only 54.9% when given 4-6 weeks after the first dose but 82.4% when the second dose was delayed to 12 weeks. It is an accepted principle in vaccine immunology that the second dose of a vaccine administered after 28 days functions as a booster and the longer the time interval between the two doses — upto six months — the higher the booster response. The results of the Oxford vaccine trial are therefore no surprise.
•For the vaccine roll-out in India, the due date of the second dose will begin from February 13 to 27 if at 4-6 weeks, but April 10 if delayed for 12 weeks. Which is preferable for India under the present endemic phase of infection (by our estimates) — early low efficacy or delayed but high efficacy? This is a question that the government must answer immediately, so that the due dates for the next dose can be revised in case the longer interval is chosen.
•Had we begun the vaccine roll-out in the middle of the epidemic, early protection by two doses would have been preferred in order to accelerate the decline of the epidemic curve. But now that we are in the endemic phase, the 12-week interval between doses would be more appropriate. If the longer gap is chosen, a larger number of persons would be able to access the first dose and this would ensure better community coverage.
•The present COVID-19 vaccination roll-out in India has completed first dose administration of vaccine to 43.9 lakh (47%) out of 92.6 lakh registered healthcare workers from the public and private sectors by February 3, 2021. It is important to understand that in this group, the earlier infections would have been much more than in the general population figure of about 60% at endemicity — may be 70%-80% already.
•The vaccination centres are achieving only 50%-60% of their potential (50-60 vaccinations per day as against the possible 100). These slots are sought to be filled by other essential workers like the police and those in public service.
Slots for the elderly and vulnerable
•It would be important to start registering the empty slots for the elderly and vulnerable and to administer the first dose of the vaccine to these subjects who are at high risk of serious disease and death from the novel coronavirus infection. After all, a single dose of the Covishield vaccine has some degree of protective efficacy starting about three weeks after the vaccination lasting up to 12 weeks. Delaying the second dose to 12 weeks and starting the first dose of the vaccine for the elderly and vulnerable will ensure that vaccination centres run to full capacity and the elderly and vulnerable are protected against serious disease or death. This is very important because, with relaxation of curbs on assembly and reopening of schools, these so far cocooned subjects will be exposed to the infection. The U.K. is already following the schedule of delaying the second dose of the Oxford vaccine by 12 weeks. It is important that India does the same and ensures that serious disease and death are prevented in elderly and vulnerable subjects.
📰 First steps in the journey to universal health care
The lesson of COVID-19 is to go on a steady, incremental path given the weak fund capacities in the backward States
•About 20 years ago, Thailand rolled out universal health coverage for its population at a per capita GDP similar to today’s India. What made this possible was a three decade-long tradition of investing gradually but steadily in public health infrastructure and manpower. This meant that alongside the availability of funds, there also existed robust institutional capacity to assimilate those funds. For India, the lesson of COVID-19 entails setting forth on a steady and incremental path to universal health coverage; not attempting a sudden and giant leap. This is important because enough evidence exists on weak fund-absorbing capacities particularly in the backward States — at times, such unused funds have been to the tune of over half of the State’s public health expenditure.
Budgetary allocations
•The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare budget for 2021-22, viz. ₹73,932 crore, saw a 10.2% increase over the Budget estimate (BE) of 2020-21 — a modest increase even nominally. Also, a corpus of ₹64,180 crore over six years has been set aside under the PM Atma Nirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, (PMANSBY) for strengthening health institutions, and ₹13,192 crore has been allocated as a Finance Commission grant. While the allocations still leave a lot to be desired, these could make the first steps of a journey that steadily builds towards sustainable universal health coverage through incremental strengthening of grass-root-level institutions and processes. Two important and prominent arms of universal health coverage in India merit discussion here.
Universal insurance
•The BE for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which covers over 50 crore poor Indians for hospital expenses up to ₹5 lakh per annum, has stagnated at ₹6,400 crore for the current and the preceding couple of years. And so have the actuals and revised estimates at around 50% of the BEs, which should be cause for concern. Large expenditure projections and time constraints involved in input-based strengthening of public health care have inspired the shift to the insurance route for achieving universal health coverage.
•However, insurance does not provide a magic formula for expanding health care with measly levels of public spending. Available estimates have pegged the costs to be between ₹62,000 crore and ₹1,08,000 crore for 2021, if PM-JAY is to meet its stated commitments. Given these circumstances, making do with such paltry spending year after year would mean that the scheme benefits are being spread out too narrowly or too thin, implying the inability to afford enough protection against catastrophic health expenses to the poor. Beyond low allocations, poor budget reliability merits attention. Another related issue is the persistent and large discrepancies between official coverage figures and survey figures (for e.g. the National Sample Surveys, or NSS, and National Family Health Survey) across Indian States, indicating that official public health insurance coverage fails to translate into actual coverage on the ground. This is particularly intriguing for forward States such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka, where state-level public health insurance schemes have been operational for around a decade. Robust research into the implementational issues responsible for such discrepancies and addressing them is warranted. Without the same, the PM-JAY’s quest for universal health coverage is likely to be precarious.
•Finally, even high actual coverage should not be equated with effective financial protection. For example, Andhra Pradesh has among the highest public health insurance coverage scores (71.36%, NSS 75), but still has an out-of-pocket spending share much above the national average (72.2% of total health expenditure). In contrast, Himachal Pradesh (H.P.)with a much lower public health insurance coverage (3.87%, NSS 75) has a lower out-of-pocket (46.4%). Among other factors, this could be attributable to the much higher per capita public health spending in H.P., more than twice that of Andhra Pradesh, which highlights the importance of government investment.
Comprehensive primary care
•Health and Wellness Centres — 1,50,202 of them — offering a comprehensive range of primary health-care services are to be operationalised until December 2022. Of these, 1,19,628 would be upgraded sub health centres and the remaining would be primary health centres and urban primary health centres. Initially, most States prioritised primary health centres/urban primary health centres for upgradation over sub health centres, since the former required fewer additional investments. Till February 2, 58,155 health and wellness centres were operational, of which 34,733 were sub health centres and 23,422 were primary health centres/urban primary health centres. This means that of the remaining 92,047 health and wellness centres to be operationalised by December 2022, 84,895 will be sub health centres. This offers huge cost projections — as per early (conservative) estimates, turning a sub health centre into a health and wellness centre would require around ₹17.5 lakh, and around ₹8 lakh annually to run it thereafter.
•The current allocation of ₹1,900 crore, an increase of ₹300 crore from previous year, is a paltry sum in comparison. Since 2018-19, when the health and wellness centre initiative began, allocations have not kept pace with the rising targets each year. Additional funding under the PMANSBY and Finance Commission grants is reassuring, but a greater focus on rural health and wellness centres would be warranted.
Issues with funds
•Two untoward implications could result from under-investing and spreading funds too thinly. Continuing the expansion of health and wellness centres without enough funding would mean that the full range of promised services will not be available, thus rendering the mission to be more of a re-branding exercise. Second, under-funding would squander an opportunity for the health and wellness centre initiative to at least partially redress the traditional rural-urban dichotomy by bolstering curative primary care in rural areas. This opportunity arises on account of the expanded array of services that health and wellness centres are supposed to provide, and the fact that an overwhelming majority of them will be in rural areas. Since curative care implies larger costs, they could be largely confined to delivering merely preventive, wellness, and referral services without adequate funding.
•COVID-19 has prodded us to make a somewhat stout beginning in terms of investing in health. The key, and the most difficult part, would be to keep the momentum going unswervingly.
📰 The long and the short of India’s Naypyitaw dilemma
The February coup has undone the comfortable space New Delhi’s Myanmar policy occupied for close to a decade
•The long-lingering power struggle in Naypyitaw has finally ended, and the Myanmar junta, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, has won the struggle, dashing decade-long hopes for a truly democratic Myanmar. The future of Myanmar’s democracy is uncertain, but the country, sandwiched between two powerful states competing for power and influence, is certain to be a key piece in the region’s geopolitics. Given its high-stakes in Myanmar, New Delhi would need to be nimble-footed and creative in its responses with well-thought-out strategic choices taking precedence over knee-jerk reactions.
Coup, politics and geopolitics
•If Myanmar’s democracy prior to the February 2021 coup was inadequate and intolerant towards minorities, its political future will be a lot more complicated, making the choices of outside powers far more constrained. Strong reactions and the threat of sanctions from the United States and the West in the wake of the recent coup could lead to unique political realignments in Myanmar. As a result, even though the democratic credentials of the former State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, remain deeply diminished today, thanks to her shocking justification of the ill-treatment meted out to the Rohingya, the international community may not have any alternatives when it comes to pursuing the restoration of democracy in the country. Ms. Suu Kyi no doubt made a Faustian bargain to cling on to power, certainly since the bloody crackdown against the minority Muslim community in 2017, and yet the recent events have brought her right back into the centre of the international community’s political calculations in Myanmar.
•Sometimes, good intentions have deeply compromised outcomes. To rebuild the charisma of the fallen messiah, those batting for Ms. Suu Kyi in the international community may have to condone her government’s past actions against the Rohingya in order to highlight her suitability to be the saviour of democracy in Myanmar once again.
•She will now be the poster girl for the international campaign to restore democracy in Myanmar and the case against Myanmar’s conduct during her government’s tenure at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will most likely be put on the backburner. In this process, the plight of the hapless Rohingya will take a backseat or be conveniently forgotten. Put differently, increasing global support for Ms. Suu Kyi could potentially spell doom for the persecuted Rohingya.
The China factor
•This is a coup that seems to suit no one except the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. In the short run, the coup stands to hurt the interests of China, India and even the rest of the international community, all of whom were able to do business with Myanmar in their own unique ways.
•However, the international community’s sharp reactions will likely force the Tatmadaw to turn to China. Even though international sanctions are unlikely to have a major impact on the country’s largely inward-looking junta and its Generals with little external interests, it would still expect Beijing to give them political and diplomatic support both within the region and globally.
•For China, the coup has complicated its larger regional economic plans in Myanmar, at least for the time being. Beijing has recently been cultivating Ms. Suu Kyi, who was keen on a strong relationship with China given the growing criticism she was facing from the West. But the junta’s jailing her could complicate Beijing’s plans for the country.
•On the positive side for Beijing, decisive western sanctions will force the military to get closer to China. For Beijing, given that it does not come with the ‘baggage’ of democratic norms, it may simply be a matter of rejigging its schedule in Myanmar and getting used to the new scheme of things there. To that extent, China will be its biggest beneficiary of the February coup by default.
•China, therefore, has every reason to go easy on the junta and offer them support in return for increasing the Chinese footprint in the country. On its part, the Tatmadaw, which has traditionally not been an ardent fan of Beijing, would have to change its tune.
•While China’s choices are straightforward, it is far more complicated for others, especially India.
New Delhi’s quandary
•New Delhi faces the most challenging dilemma on how to respond to the military coup in Myanmar. The dual power centres of the military and the civilian government that existed in Naypyitaw until recently, suited New Delhi quite well as it did not have to worry about hurting the international community’s normative concerns or sacrificing its national interests while engaging them both. More so, until recently, New Delhi’s Myanmar policy was not shaped by a difficult choice between norms and interests: neither was Ms. Suu Kyi’s political experiment without its faults nor were India’s national interests hurt by the Tatmadaw.
•The February coup has undone that comfortable space New Delhi’s Myanmar policy occupied for close to a decade. While India’s national interests, under the new circumstances, would clearly lie in dealing with whoever is in power in Myanmar, India would find it difficult to openly support the junta given the strong western and American stance.
•On the other hand, it can ill-afford to offend the junta by actively seeking a restoration of democracy there. Being a close neighbour with clear strategic interests in Myanmar, offending the junta would be counter-productive. While Ms. Suu Kyi was getting cozy with Beijing, it was the Myanmar military that had been more circumspect, to Delhi’s delight of course. With Ms. Suu Kyi in detention, Beijing will focus its energies on wooing the Generals.
•Although the Ministry of External Affairs statement — “We believe that the rule of law and the democratic process must be upheld. We are monitoring the situation closely” — is definitely in favour of restoring democracy, its past support for the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar is unlikely to return; this is particularly because the nature of the regional geopolitics has changed thanks to the arrival of China on the scene. New Delhi’s new Myanmar policy will therefore be a function of interests rather than norms.
Cooperation, Rohingya issue
•While a friendless Myanmar junta getting closer to China is a real worry for New Delhi, there are other concerns too. For one, Myanmar’s military played a helpful role in helping New Delhi contain the north-eastern insurgencies by allowing Indian military to pursue insurgents across the border into Myanmar. Coordinated action and intelligence sharing between the two forces have in the recent past been instrumental in beating back the insurgent groups in the northeast.
•Equally important is the issue of providing succour to the Rohingya in the wake of the military coup in Myanmar. Unless the military decides to engage in a peace process to gain some brownie points for itself, the Rohingya question is likely to be pushed aside with the campaign against them continuing relentlessly, perhaps with even more ferocity. The inability of the states in the region to address the legitimate concerns of the Rohingya or increased violations of their rights could potentially lead to a rise of extremism within the community, which in the longer run would not be in India’s interests.
•New Delhi then is left with very few clear policy options. And yet, it must continue to maintain relations with the government in power in Myanmar while discreetly pushing for political reconciliation in the country. In the meantime, the focus must be on improving trade, connectivity, and security links between the two sides.
📰 An ecologically illiterate Budget
On several significant items relating to the environment, allocations have remained stagnant or fallen
•In 1991, when the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh ushered in economic reforms that catapulted India into the global economy, I had asked him how he intended to balance rapid economic growth with environmental protection. He said that the experience of the West is that once there is enough money in the economy through growth, it can be put for ecological purposes.
A dismal gap
•Leaving aside the fallacy of believing that all ecological damage can be compensated (a rainforest drowned under a dam can’t be recreated, however much money you pour into it), the truth is that governments have not put in the substantial new financial resources raised through rapid growth into environmental protection. Budgetary allocations for the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) have consistently fallen as a percentage of total allocations. Second, even when there are increased allocations, such as for cleaning up the Ganga, their usage is ridden with such design flaws, inefficiencies and corruption that the environment is no better off than before. Steadily increasing levels of pollution, biodiversity loss, decline in forest health and destruction of wetlands is testimony to the dismal gap between governmental rhetoric and the environment, regardless of the party in power.
•The 2021 Budget is no different. On several significant items relating to the environment, and taking inflation and needs into account, allocations have remained stagnant or fallen. This includes the MoEFCC and crucial institutions such as the Wildlife Institute of India and the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education. As Debadityo Sinha of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy points out, this follows an earlier recommendation by the Ministry of Finance that the government should disengage with many such institutions. One consequence of this is that these institutions are having to raise funds through the private corporate sector, which inevitably compromises their ability to speak the truth when this sector indulges in ecologically damaging activities.
•The government could argue that while direct allocations to environment-related institutions and schemes may not have risen significantly, there are substantial allocations to sectors that have a positive environmental impact. For instance, the 2021 Budget has allocated ₹3,500 crore for wind and solar energy, ₹4,000 crore for a ‘Deep Ocean Mission’, and ₹50,011 crore for urban drinking water. All of these have positive ecological potential, but let’s examine them a bit more closely.
•India’s major push for renewable energy (RE) has earned it global appreciation. Back home, it is not so rosy. For one, there is no intention to phase out fossil fuels; on the contrary, coal mining and thermal power are being promoted under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package. And large hydropower is being promoted as RE, though its massive ecological and social impacts are well documented. Finally, even much of the solar and wind energy is coming in the form of massive energy parks that take up huge areas of land, displacing people and wildlife.
•There is no indication in the Budget that the RE push would be predominantly decentralised, community-managed, and with full environmental impact assessments (currently not required for RE projects). Nor does the Budget have anything on curtailing wasteful and luxury consumption of energy or other products and services by the rich. Without controlling demand, even a complete shift to RE will be unsustainable; after all, silica has to be mined somewhere.
•According to Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, the same issue bedevils the drinking water allocations. In principle any scheme for urban drinking water is positive. But with the continuation of a highly centralised approach to all such schemes, there is a ‘one size fits all’ approach, heavily focused on expensive infrastructure like big reservoirs and pipelines. Instead, a decentralised approach that uses a mix of local rooftop and backyard harvesting, restoration and conservation of urban wetlands, and regenerating groundwater could achieve much better results. And as in energy, there is no focus on incentivising responsible consumption, restraining luxury uses, and redistributing water more equitably, without which no amount of infrastructure will be enough.
•The ‘Deep Ocean’ allocation is intriguing. It is being projected as a programme for conservation of biodiversity in the depths of our marine areas. This would be cause for cheer, given the serious neglect of our oceanic areas. But the institutions that are given responsibility under this are the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Defence Research and Development Organisation, the Department of Atomic Energy, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Department of Biotechnology, and the Indian Navy, none with expertise in or even significant focus on marine conservation. Instead, this could become a project for deep sea mining, for which already explorations are going on.
•Potentially, an allocation of ₹18,000 crore for public transport could have significant benefits for people and the environment if it helps to reduce private vehicle density in cities. But if much of this is allocated to the metro rather than to buses and other such earthy alternatives (including last mile connectivity, incentives for walking and cycling), the picture becomes murky. Experience with the metro so far in India’s cities is one of significant environmental impact, as also eventual lack of affordability for the poor.
Some worrying allocations
•There is then the very worrying issue of allocations to non-environmental sectors that have a negative impact on the environment. For instance, the Budget proposes 11,000 km more of national highway corridors. In the last few years, massive road and dam construction has fragmented fragile ecosystems and disrupted local community life in the Himalaya, Western Ghats, north-east India and elsewhere. It is not only the road itself but what it brings with it that results in opening up previously intact ecosystems. As Kanchan Chopra of the Institute of Economic Growth says, how much more can we afford to destroy our ‘natural capital’ without it rebounding on us in forms like COVID-19?
•Given that this could have been the occasion to climb into a green, nature-and-land based livelihoods recovery that could create tens of millions of jobs as also regenerate India’s depleted environment, this Budget is disappointing. But it is not surprising. It is in the logic of neoliberal ‘development’ planning, with a blind trust in growth as the panacea for all ills, to treat nature as a commodity for exploitation, or a ‘sink’ into which to dump waste. With global alarm about the ecological catastrophe we are rushing headlong into, COVID-19 recovery packages announced by the Indian government since mid-2020 ought to have put environmental regeneration and conservation, and self-reliance built on this, at the core of the Budget. That has unfortunately not happened.
