📰 Draft rules seek to make airports disabled-friendly
Civil Aviation Ministry issues norms
•The Government on Tuesday released draft norms for ensuring accessibility for the differently abled at airports, which include reserved parking, passenger lifts for boarding an aircraft, and aisle chairs on flights longer than three hours for in-flight use, among other measures.
•The draft guidelines follow an incident involving danseuse Sudha Chandran who complained that she was often asked to remove her prosthetic leg during security checks at airports. This is despite security norms being amended four years ago which require prosthetics or wheelchairs to be put through an X-ray only on sufficient reason or justification.
•The draft released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation details various infrastructural requirements that an airport must provide, including reserved parking space for the differently abled which is connected to the entrance of the passenger terminal through an accessible route and a tactile path, designated seating spaces, bigger lifts, ramps and handrails with Braille indicators, steps and staircase that conform to the specifications laid down.
•It says that air travellers desirous of bringing a service dog along will have to check with the airline whether they are “agreeable to have service dogs on board”. Air India allows small and inoffensive domestic pets such as dogs, cats and birds, accompanied by valid health and rabies vaccination certificates, on domestic flights in the cabin or in cargo hold.
•Airports will also be required to have toilets for service animals accompanying the differently abled. One “relief area” can serve two or more terminals provided it meets reasonable transit time. These can be either indoor or outdoor facilities, but within the sterile area of the airport.
•The draft follows the Rights of Person with Disabilities Rules, 2017, under which the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is required to frame harmonised guidelines for accessibility standards for persons with disabilities.
Policy provides for private third-party service providers
•The Ministry of Civil Aviation has notified a traffic management policy framework for drones, which envisages private, third-party service providers for ensuring safe operations.
•Under the framework, these Unmanned Traffic Management Service Providers (UTMSP) will extend automated, algorithm-driven software services instead of voice communication as in the traditional Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems. They will primarily be responsible for segregating and separating a drone from other drones and manned aircraft in the airspace below 1,000 feet in the country.
•The traffic management providers will be assisted by Supplementary Service Providers (SSPs), who will maintain data about terrain, weather, location of manned aircraft and provide services such as insurance, data analytics and drone fleet management.
•The drone traffic management policy also requires integration of UTM with ATM so that flight plans and real-time location of manned aircraft can be recorded as well in order to continuously separate manned and unmanned aircraft from each other.
•Law enforcement and security agencies will also have access to some information in the UTM ecosystem on a need-to-know basis.
•The policy also allows UTMSPs to levy a service fee on users, a small portion of which will also be shared with the Airports Authority of India.
•In order to implement this policy, the government is likely to carry out UTM-based experiments in the country and then float a request for proposal for onboarding UTMSPs.
•Following which an evaluation process will be undertaken and successful participants will be awarded regions for establishment of UTM services. UTMSPs will be deployed in small areas to begin with and their geographic presence may be increased subsequently.
📰 Why India shouldn’t sign on to net zero
Doing so would be to accede to further over-appropriation of the global carbon budget by a few
•Despite the net zero campaign by a number of countries and non-state actors, the timing of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions reaching net zero is not the critical parameter for the safety of humanity. As the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it clear, limiting the increase in the world’s average temperature from pre-industrial levels to those agreed in the Paris Agreement requires global cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide to be capped at the global carbon budget. It is a truism that such a cap means that eventually emissions must go to zero, or more precisely, net zero. But reaching net zero by itself is irrelevant to forestalling dangerous warming. This is no more rocket science than saying that the promise of when you will turn off the tap does not guarantee that you will draw only a specified quantity of water.
What promises of net zero do
•What do we know about projected cumulative emissions? The top three emitters of the world — China, the U.S. and the European Union — even after taking account of their net zero commitments and their enhanced emission reduction commitments for 2030, will emit more than 500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide before net zero. These three alone will exceed the limit of about 500 billion tonnes from 2020 onwards, for even odds of keeping global temperature increase below 1.5°C. With these committed emissions, there is no hope of “keeping 1.5°C alive.” The target is dead-on-arrival. For two-to-one odds for the same target, the limit is 400 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, a limit that is even more certain to be breached.
•Neither the Paris Agreement nor climate science requires that net zero be reached individually by countries by 2050, the former requiring only global achievement of this goal “in the second half of the century”. Claims that the world “must” reach specific goals by 2030 or 2050 are the product of specific economic models for climate action. These are designed to achieve the Paris goals by the “lowest cost” methods, foregoing equity and climate justice. They front-load emission reduction requirements on developing countries, despite their already low emissions, to allow the developed world to backload its own, buying time for its own transition.
•These stringent limits on future cumulative emissions post 2020, amounting to less than a fifth of the total global carbon budget, is the result of its considerable over-appropriation in the past by the global North. Less than a fifth of the world has been responsible for three-fifths of all past cumulative emissions, the U.S. and the EU alone having contributed a whopping 45%. Promises of net zero in their current form perpetuate this hugely disproportionate appropriation of a global commons, while continuing to place humanity in harm’s way.
What India must do
•India’s emissions story cannot be bracketed with the top three. India is responsible for no more than 4.37% cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era, even though it is home to more than a sixth of humanity. India’s per capita emissions are less than half the world average, less than one-eighth of the U.S.’s, and have shown no dramatic increase like China’s post 2000.
•For India to declare net zero now is to accede to the further over-appropriation of the global carbon budget by a few. India’s contribution to global emissions, in both stock and flow, is so disproportionately low that any sacrifice on its part can do nothing to save the world. Nor can it proceed with the expectation that the developed world and China would limit their emissions further in the future. If such expectations were belied, it would endanger the future of its own population, subjecting it to unprecedented hardship. The failure of the developed world to meet its pre-2020 obligations along with its refusal to acknowledge this provides little confidence for the future.
•The allocation of property rights, without grandfathering, is essential to ensure equitable access to any global commons. The global carbon budget has been subject to no such restriction allowing the developed countries to exploit it fully, in the past and the present. Only China, from among the rest, has managed to surmount this barrier to access. India, in enlightened self-interest, must now stake its claim to a fair share of the global carbon budget. Technology transfer and financial support, together with “negative emissions”, if the latter succeeds, can compensate for the loss of the past. In the absence of such a claim, India’s considerable current efforts at mitigation are a wasted effort, only easing the way for the continued over-exploitation of the global commons by a few.
•Such a claim by India provides it greater, and much-needed long-term options. It enables the responsible use of coal, its major fossil fuel resource, and oil and gas, to bootstrap itself out of lower middle-income economy status and eradicate poverty, hunger and malnutrition for good. India’s resource-strapped small industries sector, which provides employment and livelihoods to the majority of the population outside agriculture, needs expansion and modernisation. The agriculture sector, the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions for India after energy, needs to double its productivity and farmers’ incomes and build resilience. Infrastructure for climate resilience in general is critical to future adaptation to climate change. All of these will require at least the limited fossil fuel resources made available through a fair share of the carbon budget.
•Developed countries and China, on the other hand, if they are serious about the Paris Agreement targets, must reach net zero well before 2050. For a target of 2°C, there is more room for the rest of the world, since the cumulative emission limit for it, with the same even odds, is 1,350 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. However, without restriction of their future cumulative emissions by the big emitters, to their fair share of the global carbon budget, and the corresponding temperature target that they correspond to made clear, India cannot sign on to net zero.
•Even if India were to enhance its short-term Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement in some fashion, unnecessary as of now, it should do so while staking a claim to its share of the global commons. This will ensure that its efforts will not further enable the free-riding of the developed world and protect its access to this strategic resource, vital to India’s industrial and developmental future.
📰 Clearing the air on water
With political will, Kerala and Tamil Nadu can overcome hurdles to renew the Parambikulam Aliyar Project agreement
•The prosperity of the Pollachi region of Tamil Nadu is attributed to the Parambikulam Aliyar Project (PAP). The project paved the way for surplus waters from eight west-flowing rivers to irrigate eastern Tamil Nadu. Of the eight rivers, six — Anamalaiyar, Thunacadavu, Sholayar, Nirar, Peruvaripallam and Parambikulam — are in the Anamalai hills. Two — Aliyar and Palar — are in the plains. The project is an exemplar of co-operative federalism, in this case between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Using inter-basin diversion, the project irrigates drought-prone areas in the Coimbatore and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. It also stabilises the existing irrigation system in the Chittoorpuzha valley in Kerala.
•The PAP agreement was signed between Kerala and Tamil Nadu on May 29, 1970, with retrospective effect from November 1958. It provides for the diversion of 30.5 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) annually from Kerala to Tamil Nadu. It also provides for Kerala 7.25 tmc ft through the Manacadavu weir and 12.3 tmc ft at its Sholayar dam annually (19.5 tmc in all). This major project with an outlay of ₹138 crore was completed in 1972.
•The agreement ensures Kerala’s riparian share in the Sholayar and Chittoorpuzha sub-basins as a guaranteed annual entitlement without applying the distress-sharing formula. It also ensures four months’ flow (from the Northeast monsoons) from the Upper Nirar weir for Kerala’s exclusive use in the Periyar basin. Except for the Kerala Sholayar dam, the Parambikulam, Peruvaripallam and Tunacadavu dams are situated inside Kerala territory but are controlled and operated by Tamil Nadu.
Reservations
•The agreement provides for review every 30 years since November 9, 1958. This, however, remains inconclusive. Kerala has reservations on the non-realisation of its share of 2.5 tmc of water from the Parambikulam group of rivers for the exclusive use of Chittoorpuzha valley; the failure of Tamil Nadu to give Kerala what it is entitled to at the Manacadvu weir and Sholayar dam in low-yield years from the reservoirs under its control; and construction of some structures in the project area without Kerala’s concurrence.
•Tamil Nadu regrets the non-realisation of the anticipated yield of 2.5 tmc from the proposed Anamalayar project and the expected yield of four months of flow from the Upper Nirar. It also proposes new constructions to augment its share — the Nirar-Nallar Project and Balancing Reservoir above Manacadavu — which have not got Kerala’s consent.
•Tamil Nadu expanded its envisaged ayacut from 2.5 lakh to more than 4.25 lakh acres, in the four zones irrigating on a rotation basis. The deliberations are so far inconclusive because both States have focused on the total average yield and are not exploring furthering the utilisable yield from the available yield. Five decades-long joint gauging data (1970-2020) on yield and utilisation, approved by the Joint Water Regulation Board created inter-governmentally, shows that the actual combined yield of the entire project is more or less equal to the anticipated yield. But if we consider the yield on a sub-basin level, there is huge variation between the actual yield, the anticipated yield, and also the yield available for utilisation.
Trapping the spill
•A closer look at the project hydrology reveals that of the last 20 years, the Chalakudy basin experienced overflow from PAP in 12 years. Similarly, a sizeable portion of the water is lost through Manacadavu as unutilisable flows. These are due to the constraints in the present live storage capacity and the skewed inflow pattern. Kerala had consented to the diversion in the 1960s, anticipating enough storage spaces in both the Periyar and Chalakudy basins to meet its needs, but most of those storage reservoirs were subsequently denied environmental approval. The way forward lies in trapping the existing spill at Chalakudy and Bharathappuzha through new reservoirs, which will substantially alter the present flow regime of PAP.
•Experts of both States could analyse and create working tables based on the observed flow regime to see how much additional water can be made available in the system through new reservoir systems and how that can be shared. Sharing becomes imperative as Kerala has largely transferred its storing options in favour of Tamil Nadu in PAP.
•As new systems considerably alter the flow regime it is imperative that proper checks and balances be agreed upon to ensure the guaranteed entitlements at Sholayar and Manacadavu. Once the benefits are established by the technical officers, the political leadership can deliberate on the principles of sharing to review the agreement.
•The leaders of both States have clear mandates and a reputation for being decisive. They can overcome hurdles for a mutually acceptable renewal.
📰 The vaccination milestone and a distant goal
The Government ought to realise that vaccinating all Indians as quickly as possible is linked to their health and progress
•Our frontline health-care workers deserve our fulsome congratulations for crossing the milestone of 100 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses. They, along with our scientists, researchers, medical professionals, and vaccine manufacturers, have heroically overcome multiple obstacles in the quest to protect our citizens from COVID-19. Thanks to their efforts, our vaccination drive has picked up pace after the initial months of delay, indecision, and confusion.
•This milestone also marks the triumph of science and of India’s research and manufacturing infrastructure built and nurtured over decades. It is opportune to recollect that it is the Patents Act, 1970, that contributed hugely to the development of our drugs and pharmaceutical industry, which has enabled India to become a globally respected manufacturer of vaccines.
The shock of the second wave
•This jubilant mood though must not give way to complacency. It is still fresh in our memory how the Prime Minister told the Chief Ministers early in April that “we defeated COVID-19 without vaccines”. Just months earlier, before the disastrous second wave triggered by premature claims of success and unregulated large gatherings, punctured these claims, he had boasted at the World Economic Forum how well prepared India was to cope with the pandemic, defying the dire predictions of several international experts. With complacency firmly in command, vaccine procurement was not prioritised and crucial efforts, including ensuring supply of oxygen in case of a surge of infections, were neglected. The public also dropped its guard believing the Government’s reassurance. As we all know, disastrous consequences followed, and lakhs of Indians paid with their lives.
•Even as the Prime Minister has heralded in his usual self-promotional style the 100-crore vaccination mark — even though there are only two countries in the world that are called upon to reach this level of coverage and we were not the first to do so — the harsh truth is that the second wave was a colossal tragedy that could have been averted had the Government not let down the people of India. During that horrific, difficult time, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister were nowhere to be seen or heard but reappeared only when the situation improved. This was a repeat of their performance during the first wave, when, after the sudden announcement of the lockdown, lakhs of migrant workers were abandoned, left to themselves to trudge thousands of kilometres home to their villages. Untold numbers perished along the way.
•The nation has not forgotten the heart-rending images of people gasping for breath and of families desperately trying to obtain oxygen and hospital beds. Their enormous suffering is seared in our memory through pictures of bodies scattered in riverbanks and floating on rivers. The Government is yet to give an accurate count of the number of people who died as a result of its negligence. Callously, the Government has yet to provide compensation to bereaved families. Instead, the powers that be have stubbornly doubled down on efforts to divert attention and pass on the blame to others. The Government clearly hopes that denial will cause people to absolve it of responsibility for their miseries.
Vaccine orders
•We applaud science, but we know that our vaccination drive would have rolled out faster if the Government had respected scientific breakthroughs in other countries and placed adequate orders for their vaccines. Indeed, the situation would have been mitigated had the Government had the foresight to place orders with India’s own leading vaccine manufacturer. The Government’s initial “smart” vaccination strategy asserted that “there would be no requirement for vaccination of the whole population of the country”. Thus, India, the biggest manufacturer of vaccines in the world — a status achieved long before May 2014 — only fully vaccinated 0.5% of its population ahead of the second wave.
Another misstep
•The intensity of the second wave demonstrated how wrong the Government’s vaccination strategy was. But the blunders were compounded as the Government rolled out a procurement policy that had cash-strapped States competing with each other over vaccine supply. Sustained pressure from State governments, the Supreme Court of India, Opposition parties, the scientific community, and civil society helped tide over some missteps.
•Unfortunately, the Government continues to treat the fight against COVID-19 as an event management exercise. The Prime Minister’s birthday saw a record two crore inoculations, partly achieved by hoarding vaccines in the run-up to the day to shore up numbers for the ‘event’. Such vanity is inexcusable. It demonstrates that India has the capacity to vaccinate at a faster rate, but for some inexplicable reason the Government has chosen not to. The Government should answer a simple question: if two crore can be vaccinated on one chosen day, why not every day?
The gaps in vaccination
•In the nine months since we started the vaccination drive, we have only been able to fully vaccinate less than a third of our adult population. Countries with comparable COVID-19 figures and even those with smaller or poorer economies have performed much better. Even if manufacturers ramp up production rapidly, our vaccination rate will fail to catch up. In the first three weeks of October it was 50 lakh doses a day. This rate will have to be tripled to inoculate all eligible adults by year-end.
•Not only that, the gap between the proportion of the population that has got at least one dose and two doses is widest in India. This gap is likely a result of domestic supply falling short of the demand. The Government refuses to explore diverse methods, including compulsory licensing, to raise our domestic production of vaccines. Moreover, the Government is yet to roll out a plan to inoculate our children who could be particularly vulnerable to future waves. We must protect our children urgently so they can go back to school. India has had one of the longest school shutdowns worldwide and the damage to their education and growth has been incalculable.
•We are also concerned about people’s immunity waning over time in spite of having been vaccinated or infected. But the Government has dealt with queries about booster shoots with complete opaqueness. It must work out a plan, based on scientific advice, for booster shots, like other countries have done. Most importantly, scientific procedures need to be adhered to during approval and procurement of vaccines. Truth and transparency should be the hallmark of government actions and communication with the public to avoid any vaccine hesitancy.
A shift in policy
•The Prime Minister likes to emphasise that vaccines are free, while conveniently forgetting that they have always been free. It is the Bharatiya Janata Party government that moved away from India’s universal free vaccination policy. A significant section of the population was forced to pay for vaccines as government centres ran out of them. Many better-off citizens pooled in money to ensure the poor could get vaccinated. While commendable, this is an indictment of the Government, which shifted its responsibility to citizens and the private sector. Not even 10% of our population can afford to pay for vaccines, yet the Government continues to allocate 25% of vaccines to the private sector. This is unacceptable — resulting in less, not more vaccination.
•In May 2021, the Government announced that all eligible Indians would be doubly vaccinated by the end of 2021. This hollow announcement has not been accompanied by either appropriate planning or execution. Experts assert that we will miss this target by at least five to six months. The Government must realise that vaccinating all Indians as quickly as possible is linked to not only the health of our citizens but also the wealth of our nation.
•The floundering economy can be turned around if we can drive away the dark clouds of COVID-19. That requires us to ramp up the pace of the roll out of vaccines to all, completely free, including to our children. That is our best hope to protect our citizens, put our children back in school, revive our markets and have a cascading positive impact across sectors, thus ushering in the festive season and the new year with genuine optimism.
📰 Preparing for outbreaks
The Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission aims to build a robust public health infrastructure
•COVID-19 overburdened the country’s health system and services. The early months of the outbreak were particularly taxing for the States with weaker health systems. The inability of the private sector to share the burden drove the point home that healthcare services cannot be left to independent forces.
Aims of ABHIM
•The Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (ABHIM) is another addition to the arsenal we have to prepare for such oubreaks in the future. This was launched with an outlay of ₹64,180 crore over a period of five years. In addition to the National Health Mission, this scheme will work towards strengthening public health institutions and governance capacities for wide-ranging diagnostics and treatment, including critical care services. The latter goal would be met with the establishment of critical care hospital blocks in 12 central institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and in government medical colleges and district hospitals in 602 districts.
•The importance of laboratories and their lack of readiness during an outbreak in terms of having a robust surveillance system and diagnostic interface has never been more pronounced than in recent times. The government will be establishing integrated district public health labs in 730 districts to provide comprehensive laboratory services. The current labs for different programmes shall be integrated to deliver clinical, public health surveillance and diagnostic services for predicting outbreaks, epidemics, and more.
•ABHIM will focus on supporting research on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, including biomedical research to generate evidence to inform short-term and medium-term responses to such pandemics. The government also aims to develop a core capacity to deliver the ‘one health’ approach to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks in humans and animals. The plan to achieve that bio-security preparedness and pandemic research strengthening would be realised via four regional National Institutes for Virology, the regional research platform for the World Health Organization Southeast Asia Region, and nine Biosafety Level III laboratories.
Boosting surveillance
•In India’s endeavour to keep ahead of the infectious organisms that bring our life to a halt, expanding and building an IT-enabled disease surveillance system is on the cards too. A network of surveillance labs will be developed at the block, district, regional and national levels for detecting, investigating, preventing, and combating health emergencies and outbreaks.
•Surveillance will get a huge boost with 20 metropolitan surveillance units, five regional National Centre for Disease Control branches, and an integrated health promotion platform in all the States. The points of entry will be reinforced with 17 new points of entry health units upgrading 33 existing units. The upgraded and intensified system of surveillance will be in addition to a state-of-the-art national digital health ecosystem for IT-enabled healthcare service delivery, for managing the core digital health data and for ensuring national portability in the provision of health services through a secure system of electronic health records. This will be based on international standards and easily accessible to citizens.
•A major highlight of the current pandemic has been the requirement of local capacities in urban areas. The services from the existing urban primary health centres will be expanded to smaller units – Ayushman Bharat Urban Health and Wellness Centres and polyclinics or specialist clinics. The urban primary health centres will be established closer to the community to meet the needs of the urban population and polyclinics willguarantee care through improved access to expanded high-quality services and establish referral linkages.
