The subcontinent’s leaders never learn from mistakes—their own, or one another’s. Nawaz Sharif’s White Elephant M-2 expressway was one of the greatest scandals in global infrastructure development history. Now, India is about to produce its match—in aviation, by building a $4 billion (Rs12,700 crore) new terminal at Delhi airport. Terminal-3, to be opened soon, is claimed to be the world’s fifth-largest airport terminal, and bigger than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and Singapore ’s Changi. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh euphorically described T-3 as signifying the “arrival of a new India , committed to join the ranks of modern, industrialised nations …”.
Tag - Environment
Major Blow To Carbide’s Victims: Bhopal’s unended tragedy
The victims of the world’s worst chemical disaster abandoned hope of securing real justice a long time ago. As someone who covered the gas leak at Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticides plant in Bhopal from an early stage and has probably written more on the issue than any other journalist, I would put the date at February 1989, when the Indian government reached an atrociously inadequate out-of-court settlement with Carbide for $470 million, totalling no more than UCC’s insurance cover plus interest. The Supreme Court put its imprimatur on the deal and extinguished Carbide’s liability, civil and criminal, thus shattering the victims’ hopes of getting enough compensation to pay even for their medical treatment, leave alone damages for prolonged suffering
Yawning nuclear void
The Mayapuri cobalt-60 episode shows Delhi University scientists were reprehensible and proves again that the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is too inept, unreliable and compromised to perform its assigned functions. We need another agency.
No global “nuclear renaissance”, only limited nuclear power expansion in India
No other industry in the world has painted as rosy a future for itself—only to belie the projection—as has nuclear power generation.
Countering the deniers
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should create a special commission to scrupulously cross-check all the references in its report. Or else, the climate change-denial lobby will try to exploit a handful of errors to discredit climate science and delay remedial action.
Reworking our climate policy
Since the Copenhagen summit ended two months ago without producing a binding multilateral agreement, there have been further setbacks to the agenda of combating climate change, both globally and in India. The hollowness of the so-called Copenhagen Accord—the collusive, ineffectual deal between the United States and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China), with no emissions-reduction targets, timelines or obligations—later signed by less than 30 of the 193 governments present at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference, is unfolding week after week.
Reason Triumphs Over Bt Brinjal: For consultation-based governance
India has done something unusual in defying the long-established trend of capitulating to corporate power. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh must be complimented for imposing a moratorium on the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) brinjal (baigan, aubergine, eggplant) developed by Mahyco-Monsanto in collaboration with two Indian agricultural universities. He deserves encomiums for consulting stakeholders in major brinjal-producing states like West Bengal, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. This public consultation approach sets a good precedent. This deserves to become a model for governmental decision-making on all issues that concern people’s livelihoods.
Himalayan blunder
The IPCC should create a special commission to cross-check all references in its report if errors such as the one on Himalayan glaciers are not to recur.
Expert Body Slips Over Pace of Melting: Himalayan glaciers are receding
The world’s dirtiest industries like oil, coal, automobiles, chemicals, cement and steel, and their supporters in the climate change-deniers’ lobby, must feel elated at recent developments which detract from the agenda of fighting climate change. Their greatest source of joy lies in the failure of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference at Copenhagen to produce a strong, effective, legally-binding agreement which imposes deep emissions-cut obligations on the industrialised countries.
Bhopal - 25 years of shame
The government’s deplorable response to the Bhopal gas disaster and its attempt to shield the polluter constitute a blot on our democracy.
Technical Committee Approves Bt Brinjal: Paving the way for Frankenfoods?
The future of Indian agriculture and food security doesn’t lie in GM foods. They are unsafe, deliver no real benefits, and are bad for the environment and human health.
Spurring nuclear Bhopals?
U.S. and Indian industry pressure to cap liability for civilian nuclear accidents will create a regime that shields offending corporations and punishes the public.
'World's Cheapest Car Environmentally Costly'
Inter Press Service, 16 January 2008
by Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Jan 16 (IPS) - Nothing has generated as much hyperbole in the global automobile industry in recent years as the unveiling, last week, of an ultra-cheap bare-bones car made by the Tatas, India’s steel and engineering giant.
Priced at 2,500 US dollars, the 'Nano' is arguably the world’s cheapest four-wheeled passenger vehicle.
However, the ‘dream car’ may turn out to be an ecological nightmare and a not-so-safe driving machine, without airbags to protect riders or anti-lock braking systems. It could prove a menace to India’s already congested roads, and a source of enormous pollution and of health damage, besides becoming a drain on public resources.
Above all, it will set back the all-important fight against global warming, in which the Indian government is at best a reluctant partner who refuses to accept any time-bound commitment to reduce his greenhouse emissions, now growing three times faster than the world average.
According to management experts, the car has created a new paradigm of "frugal engineering" and will trigger breathtaking innovations in manufacturing technology in the global automobile industry based on severe cost-cutting.
Yet, despite stripping the Nano down to its most rudimentary dimensions to produce what a United States media presenter termed as "a golf cart crossed with a jelly bean", Tata Motors is unlikely to be able to fulfil its 2,500 price promise for long.
"In fact, the figure is an introductory offer excluding taxes and local duties; on the road, the car will actually cost between 3,310 – 3,819 dollars,’’ says Dinesh Mohan, a transportation expert and professor of biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. "And that’s the initial cost of the bare-bones model. Other versions, including an air-conditioned model, will cost more."
Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata has already hinted that the introductory price may not last long. "We may not be able to hold the price emotionally. We have to understand that steel and tyre prices … are rising," he said, while launching the car last week.
He recalled that in 1983, the Maruti 800 car made in India by Suzuki too was offered at 1,145 dollars, but the price almost doubled within a year.
The Nano’s ultra-low price tag covers major subsidies offered by the Marxist government of West Bengal, where the car will be manufactured. According to former state finance minister Ashok Mitra, the subsidies (210 million dollars) work out to one-fourth of the car project’s initial capital cost.
The Left Front state government has leased 997 acres of land to the Tatas virtually free, with no down-payment. It’s also advancing them a 50 million dollar loan at one percent interest and further granting an exemption from the value-added tax for 10 years, amounting to 125 million dollars.
If the indirect subsidies given to private automobiles through the free use of roads and parking space are added, cars like the Nano would no longer be ultra-cheap to the point of being ironic.
Hype about "the world’s cheapest car" apart, the Nano is deeply flawed because of inadequate safety features and emission standards, say environmentalists and experts.
"This car is likely to have low longevity and high maintenance costs, commented Mohan. It already fails the current Western emission and safety standards, and will soon fail Indian standards too as India adopts the ‘Euro-IV’ emission norms applicable in many European Union countries."
The ruthless way the Tatas have pared down the Nano’s costs has meant cutting many corners to stay focused on frugality and minimalism.
For instance, the Nano's designers reportedly used a hollow shaft instead of a solid beam to connect the steering-wheel to the axle, and plastics and adhesives in place of many studs and bolts. The car’s low-performance wheel bearings may wear out rapidly beyond 70 kmph.
It has only one windshield wiper instead of two. It uses belt-driven continuous variable transmission, which slows down acceleration. To save merely ten dollars the suspension was redesigned to eliminate devices called actuators, which adjust the angle of the car’s lights to the way it’s loaded.
"Such measures are likely to have an impact on the car’s safety, sturdiness and durability/longevity," adds Mohan. "Some of it will only become apparent once the car has been on the road for a few years. It’s premature today to certify that the Nano is safe and reliable."
Tata’s claim that the Nano has passed the crash test and meets the national emission standards called Bharat-II and -III has not been verified by an independent and competent agency. Besides, Tata himself admits that the Nano, as of now, falls short of the Euro-IV standards.
"India should have adopted these norms long ago, but delayed doing so under the automobile lobby’s pressure", says Anumita Roychowdhury of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) an internationally-known green lobby in New Delhi.
Euro-IV norms will come into force in India’s major cities in April 2010 and are considerably stricter than Bharat-II or III, which are 10 to 5 years behind Europe. For instance, under Euro-IV, sulphur emissions must be reduced 35-fold in relation to Bharat-II.
"Similarly, key safety standards are long overdue in India which has unacceptably high road accident and casualty rates,'' adds Roychowdhury. "They are on their way. These include full-body crash tests - which determine how cars will crumple in collisions, minimising the impact on passengers - airbags and anti-lock braking systems. Implementing them will raise the Nano’s claimed costs by 40 to 50 percent."
"It’s not good enough to have safety systems; cars must be frequently and rigorously inspected after they have experienced actual roads conditions, which often affect the systems that control emissions. This rarely happens in India,’’ Mohan said. Michael Walsh, a pollution consultant and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulator, has been quoted as saying that a car as cheap as the Nano is likely to lack the complex technology needed to maintain its initial level of emissions, and it could soon produce four to five times its initial pollution levels. "It strikes me as impossible that such a vehicle will be a very clean vehicle" over its lifetime, he told The New York Times.
The Tata car will set a trend under which industry will take advantage of India’s existing poor emission standards and rush to produce new vehicles before better standards are in place.
Scooter manufacturer Bajaj Auto has already announced that it will make a 3,000 dollar car in collaboration with Renault. Volkswagen, Nissan and General Motors are also considering plans to make stripped-down cars priced between the Nano and the Maruti 800.
The addition of these vehicles will further slow down traffic in Indian cities-whose speed has considerably decreased, and in some case halved in recent years.
It will greatly add to pollution, which has reached critical levels in 57 percent of Indian cities and is generating a health havoc, with disorders ranging from respiratory illnesses and hypertension to obesity.
India and China are emerging as leaders in low-cost car manufacture and consumption. In India, forecasts a consultancy firm, an additional 30 million households will be ready to buy a small car by 2010 -20 times the present market size.
By 2013, India’s car market will be annually growing at 14.5 percent, and China’s at just over eight percent. By 2020, some forecasts say, more than 150 million Indians and 140 million Chinese will have cars.
If this really happens, it will become nearly impossible to achieve major reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. China and India account for 70 percent of the global increase in energy demand over the past two years.
If the "Nano trend" continues, the small window of opportunity to control spiralling energy use and greenhouse emissions will slam shut. If India is serious about reversing climate change, it must rethink its automobile policy.
(END/2008)
Tata Lobbies For Dow Chemicals - More injustice for Bhopal
January 15, 2007
Judged even by a charitable yardstick, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s record on environmental matters is poor, if not appalling. While paying lip service to the cause of reversing global warming, the government has refused targeted reductions in India’s own greenhouse gas emissions, which are rising almost four times faster than the global average. Instead, it’s recklessly promoting private transport and energy-intensive appliances such as air-conditioners and washing machines.
The government has passively watched the unremitting pollution of India's rivers and rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers which feed seven of Asia’s greatest rivers, including the Ganga, Yamuna and Brahmaputra. It has relaxed environmental regulations on high-polluting chemical factories and colluded in promoting an extraordinarily hazardous industry, namely, shipbreaking. Shipbreaking at Alang in Gujarat routinely wreaks a horrible toll on wretchedly poor workers. Last week, three young men died in an accident.
Just last year, the government wanted to welcome with open arms a decommissioned French naval ship, the Clemenceau, for dismantling at Alang although it carried thousands of tonnes of asbestos and a range of toxic chemicals. Receiving and breaking up that ship would have violated the Basel Ban on the trans-boundary movement of toxic wastes. Ultimately, it’s French public opinion, not India’s environment Ministry or Supreme Court, that scuttled the illegal and ultra-hazardous operation.
Worse, the UPA government has been complicit in Mr Narendra Modi’s egregious and unilateral move to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada to 121.92 metres—in violation of the Supreme Court's stipulation that no further construction can be permitted until all those who’ll be displaced are fully rehabilitated in advance.
Raising the dam height is a flagrant breach of the commitment made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, as well as the Narmada Tribunal award which made the project possible in the first place. Dr Singh didn’t play with a straight bat. When the Narmada Bachao Andolan launched a hunger strike last April, he dispatched three Union ministers to the Valley to survey the situation. The Ministers reported that rehabilitation was incomplete. Dr Singh then set up a so-called Oversight Group under former bureaucrat VK Shunglu, overriding his own Cabinet colleagues.
Despite its many flaws, the Shunglu report conceded that some 25,000 families were still to be rehabilitated even at a dam height of 110 m. Little has been done to complete their rehabilitation. Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra say they don’t have the necessary land. Meanwhile, the dam is irrigating only 10 percent of the land it's meant to serve.
But Mr Modi is now preparing to build gates on the dam up to 138.68 metres. This will cause even further displacement—of an estimated two lakh people. This destructive misadventure must be prevented. But it's not clear that the UPA will stand up to the pressure of entrenched interests hell-bent on raising the dam’s height at any cost.
As if this weren’t bad enough, the UPA is vacillating under the pressure of powerful industrial lobbies to further subvert justice for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster—in particular, by letting US corporate interests evade their responsibility to clean up the factory site of poisonous chemicals which have contaminated the city's water.
Under Indian law, Union Carbide, which owned the Bhopal plant, is criminally liable for wilful negligence in causing the world's worst industrial accident. It’s also duty-bound to cleanse the plant site of mercury, lead and other toxins, including cancer-causing agents. After Carbide was bought by Dow Chemicals, a $46 billion US giant, its obligation to clean up stands transferred to Dow. India's Department of Chemicals and Fertilisers has filed an initial claim of Rs 100 crores on Dow in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
However, Dow wants to duck its responsibility. It has drafted the support of the US embassy in India. On December 8, the US Charge d’Affaires urged the government to withdraw the claim on Dow. Now, Dow has found an enthusiastic ally in Tata Industries chairman Ratan Tata. Mr Tata has offered “to lead and find funding” for the “remediation” (cleansing) of the site so that Dow can invest in India.
Dow has long eyed India’s growing market. To acquire a toehold here, it has repeatedly tried to reach technical collaboration agreements with Indianoil and other public companies. But it was stopped in its tracks by the petroleum Ministry. Now it's worming its way back through collaboration with Reliance Industries and offers to set up plants in West Bengal and even Madhya Pradesh, where it has darkly hinted, it could employ relatives of the Bhopal gas victims!
That would only add insult to injury. The gas disaster killed over 3,000 people within the first week and inflicted unspeakable chemical damage upon more than 100,000. This has caused a further 15,000 deaths and terrible suffering for the survivors. Their vital capacity has been undermined by disorders of the lungs, other organs and the immune system.
After 1984, a second tragedy visited Bhopal in the form of a grossly unfair and collusive settlement imposed upon the victims by the Indian government, which settled their compensation claims for a paltry $470 million and totally extinguished Carbide's civil liability. Most victims got as little as Rs 25,000 for a lifetime of suffering. The bulk of this went into the pockets of corrupt officials and usurious moneylenders.
All that now remains of Carbide/Dow's liability is the criminal prosecution of its top directors, including former Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, in addition to the obligation to clean up the factory site. The Indian government has done its best to subvert the prosecution. It claims it cannot trace Anderson to serve a warrant on him—although his address in a posh New York suburb has been widely publicised!
Letting Dow off the liability book will further compound the injustices heaped upon the Bhopal victims and rub even more salt into their wounds. Yet, Dow insists it’s not legally liable despite being Carbide's successor. This claim mocks at all legality and at the elementary “polluter pays” principle, which is respected even in the US. Dow's position is a crude form of blackmail. The UPA will disgrace itself if it succumbs to it.
Mr Tata is pursuing this strange and deplorable pro-Dow role as co-chair of the Indo-US CEO Forum, of which Dow president Andrew N Liveris is also a member. Mr Liveris has met Prime Minister Singh at least twice. These meetings were facilitated by Mr Tata. Congress party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi is Dow’s lawyer. Top UPA functionaries are lobbying for a committee of secretaries to examine Mr Tata's proposal for a corpus fund to be established jointly by Indian and US companies to clean up the Bhopal site—on condition that Dow is let off the hook.
The Forum and the US-India Business Council are rooting for resolving “legacy issues” like Bhopal through “dispute settlement mechanisms”, which would "send a strong positive message to US investors".
There are numerous links between Dow, Tatas and former Indian and US officials. Keshub Mahindra, former chairman of Union Carbide India, and an accused in the Bhopal case, has served as director of several Tata companies. Former State Department official David Good, who worked against Anderson's extradition to India, heads the Tata corporate office in the US.
Mr Ratan Tata's new role raises many questions about the changing nature of Indian business groups. Mr Tata’s family has a formidable reputation as pioneers who set up India's first steel mill and ventured into electrical and automobile engineering, civil aviation and numerous other fields. They were strongly committed to indigenous industrialisation. And they were long known for not asking for favours from governments.
JRD Tata personified some of these values and kept a dignified distance from power-brokers and influence-peddlers. But even he had his weaknesses: obsessions with “discipline” and population control, and the conviction, which he expressed during the Emergency in a New York Times interview, namely, "the parliamentary system is not suited to our needs."
The present, globalising, phase of capitalism has produced further distortions in Indian businessmen’s attitudes. The Tatas are furiously acquiring businesses abroad, including the European steel company Corus, which is four times bigger than Tata Iron and Steel. They used to take pride in contributing to the larger community through education, housing, healthcare and cutting-edge research. They no longer do Once tolerant of trade unionism, they have become increasingly hostile to it.
The Tatas now actively solicit generous government support, protection and patronage, and threaten to pull out of industrial projects if they don't receive it—like any other industrial entrepreneur. Singur is a prime example of this. The Tatas' environmental record, whether in Orissa, Andhra, Gujarat or Jharkhand, is disappointing. They should not tarnish it further by cravenly lobbying for Dow and working against the Bhopal victims.—end--
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