Confining childhood in India

Do child rights activists need to step out of the boxes of ‘development’, ‘survival’, ‘protection’ and ‘participation’ into which they have confined India’s children? Do we need to interrogate child rights programming and the somewhat limiting notions of childhood around which it is built?

By many accounts, childhood in India consists of various conglomerate experiences that get clothed in ‘universal’ beliefs about the nature of children and the ‘essence’ of childhood. Many of these ‘universals’ are echoes of the colonial past of this country, and emerge from the fact that the middle class is routinely brought up on Rousseau-esque notions of the innocence of childhood through our education system. Some of these notions have been reinforced in the last few years with the urban upper-crust moving towards an increasingly ‘globalised’ lifestyle.

Structures and agencies that engage extensively with children also demonstrate a more or less unitary approach to children and childhood. NGO interventions, for instance, approach children and their worlds largely through the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a document that was ratified in 1992 and which reinforced the duties of the state towards the children citizens who inhabit it. The document, while internationally lauded, is often critiqued for generating a standard of childhood that has come to be seen as the norm and on which all interventions are modelled (1).

The education system plays a crucial role in institutionalisation approaches to childhood. A cursory look at textbooks reveals that they too are by and large written for the normative child -- male, upper-caste, middle class, urban. In many, there continues to be a gender bias with most stories/narratives/pictures excluding girls or reinforcing stereotypes about girlhood. Not only this, tribal children, children from dalit families, children from rural India might find it difficult to identify with the children in these books because they are inevitably modelled on a dominant image of childhood.

In cinema, children continue to be cute voices of conscience, with very few roles written for children as persons rather than instruments in the unification of the male and female heroes. Coverage in newspapers invariably focuses on stories of children being violated in some way -- children dying of malnourishment, children run over by vehicles, children neglected by parents, children committing suicide. Of late, with the focus on the Right to Education Act, 2010, it often seems as though childhood and the rights of children all centre on and are determined by the schooling system.

So what does childhood in India mean? And how do we understand it?

Perhaps it would be best to start at the beginning and ask, instead, why we are asking these questions.

Over the past two decades, children have made a significant contribution to the consumer market, with specific segments of goods being made available to them. In order to ensure the success of these goods, there has been extensive investment in advertising and here the visibility of children has increased manifold in the last 20 years. They are cast in the role of salesperson (in advertisements, convincing people -- not just other children but adults as well -- to buy particular goods) as well as consumer. Given the monumental takeover of public mindspace by the audiovisual media over the last 20 years, this means that even at the most superficial level, children have a much higher presence in public life than they did in the pre-liberalisation years.

Aside from their presence in advertising there is also an increasing visibility of children in television serials, reality shows, cinema, game shows, etc. This has been a particular kind of visibility, associated with many things that are part of the globalised image of India -- intense competition, high drama, bright lights and costumes and, on several occasions, what many see as an uncomfortable masquerading of children as miniature adults. All this has sparked off debates on how children are growing up too fast, and of how much and what kind of exposure to media is desirable for children, at what ages. This discussion is grounded within the discourse of concern and protection that is frequently in use when matters pertaining to children are brought up.

Simultaneously, and in almost diametric opposition to the lifeworlds of children portrayed in the electronic media, there is increasing light being thrown on the great numbers of children who get insufficient food, medical treatment, shelter, water, access to quality education and so on. Currently, funds are being mobilised both by the government and non-government sector in the name of these children of the country. Most funds are generated based on sectoral interventions -- for food, education, vaccination, play space, etc -- and interventions designed accordingly.

When NGOs write about their work, or go into a field area for an assessment of the situation with regard to children, children’s lives are bracketed into the compartments of ‘development’, ‘survival’, ‘protection’ and ‘participation’. While most people accept that these four categories of child rights often intersect and overlap, few think of childhood outside of these compartments, mostly because the UNCRC remains the framework within which funding strategies are built and proposals structured.

In other words, children who are seen as requiring state intervention in their lives (less privileged or marginalised children) get broken down into their ‘needs’, which fit within the UNCRC format, and are then addressed by various policies, programmes and schemes.

Olga Nieuwenhuys very rightly asked in a 2009 editorial in Childhood, “Is there an Indian childhood?” (2). Her argument is that childhood in India continues to be thought about mainly in terms of issues that children face, and problems that they may create. The focus on issues, according to her, casts “Indian children’s lifeworlds in a series of binaries that divide their childhood into what is undesirable and therefore must be addressed and rectified, and what is not and can therefore be ignored” (3). So, for instance, that children go hungry or remain uneducated is something we as a society find ‘undesirable’ and therefore there are engagements in place from government and non-government bodies, as well as individuals, to address these issues or at least address these problems for one/two children. There is also the belief that children should not be alone or in child-headed families -- so interventions ensure that children are ‘sheltered’ by putting them in institutions, in foster care, etc. However, play is an aspect of children’s lives that often gets ignored. One assumption may be that all children find time to play in some manner or the other, so this aspect of a child’s life is rarely seen as a feature of NGO programming (4). Another possibility is that play is not seen as an essential component of the lives of ‘deprived children’, and therefore is an issue that can be ignored (5).

In India, where there continues to be a reluctance to engage with the politics of deprivation, perhaps it can be argued that there is a need to focus on ‘important’ issues and ensure rights to all children. What Nieuwenhuys’ question offers us is an opportunity to reconsider how we engage with this politics of deprivation. It is a chance to see whether we are able, at some point in the process, to put all the sectoral interventions together and to understand if, in their totality, they are able to engage with the nature of, the reasons for, and the existence of deprivations of childhood in the country. What she also compels one to do is think about whether indeed children are at the centre of these interventions, as is regularly claimed, or if children are incidental to the programmes.

***

Some writers and activists have engaged with concepts of childhood in India -- with issues of inconsistency in the constitutional engagement with children, hidden inequalities that bias policymaking and implementation and a concern over the continued engagement with polarised understandings of childhood.

In 1996, Asha Bajpai (6) listed the various ways in which the Indian Constitution engages with childhood and showed how there are variations in the age of maturity/boundary of childhood depending on the legislation. Interestingly, a male person aged 18 can vote but is not free to marry. He is not considered capable of managing an inheritance at 18 either; the suitable age for that is 21. The age at which a person can begin to earn money legally is 14. The age until which the government takes responsibility for one’s health is 6. The age at which one is held accountable for one’s criminal offences is 18. Enveloping all these legal boundaries at which activities are allowed/disallowed is the UNCRC, the international document that stipulates that all individuals aged 18 and under are to be considered ‘children’. In the context of legislation, therefore, there are several ambiguities regarding the age at which children are considered vulnerable/capable and with reference to what aspect of their lives. A closer interrogation of this might reveal a few biases regarding sexuality, wealth and citizenship which possibly have their basis in colonial and brahmanical notions of identity. The relationship of the state and the child is also ambiguous -- till what stage in life the state is willing to take responsibility for different aspects of a child’s life varies from 6 to 21.

Krishna Kumar is among those who have written about the essentially masculinist bias of the education system in the ways it precludes and excludes girlhood in India. Work done by activists such as Debolina Dutta and Oishik Sircar in West Bengal shows that children of sex workers conceive of themselves in terms that emphasise the dignity of the lives of their mothers -- a very different vision from the perennially exploited colours the NGO world paints them in (7). Authors from Anveshi (a Hyderabad-based NGO) have recently brought out a series of storybooks that engage with everyday issues in the lives of non-mainstream children. Purnima Mankekar (8) analyses the incident of a very young Muslim girl (Ameena) to show how, in public discourse, the identity of childhood seems to subsume all other identities -- in doing so she unveils some of the politics in which children’s identities are deployed as nation-building exercises in the public sphere.

There are a dedicated few in India who are committed to grappling with the paradoxes and nuances of childhood in the country, to develop an understanding that will both allow for and engage with the plurality of experience as well as the many commonalities that cast children as a structural category.

***

In Europe, almost all scholars agree that there was a surge of interest in the study of childhood following the publication, in 1967, of Philip Aires’ work Centuries of Childhood. He argued that the notion of childhood as a distinct and separate stage from adulthood is a modern one, and that in medieval times children were understood more as little adults rather than separate beings altogether. Aires’ work has been engaged with at multiple levels, with critiques of his assumptions, methodology and framework. But it does seem to be largely accepted that this work initiated an interest in childhood as a concept that had not been seen before in the study of the social sciences. This interest is often called the Social Studies of Childhood.

Discussions about childhood within the Social Studies of Childhood have been centred along the structure/agency axes, with scholars invariably arguing that childhood is a social structure that determines the way power is shared within society. However, within this structure there is engagement by children at the individual and collective level, which is what allows us to engage with childhood in more than simply deterministic terms. So, for instance, two of the most widely published authors in this field write: “Childhood is imaged as a social space that is continuously located within and shaped by the social structure of a given society, but that is also shaped by the actions of successive generations of children who succeed in creating and re-creating diversity within this common socially constructed category.” (James, Allison and Adrian. 2001. p 34)

Leena Alanen sees childhood as a generational structure in which, through a set of processes, some people get characterised as children and others as adults. This then becomes the basis through which one can understand inequalities pertaining to access to resources, children’s subordination and the general underestimation of their contribution to society. Her approach allows us to explore ways in which power gets shared in our society using the yardstick of age.

Alan Prout makes a case in The Future of Childhood (2005) for moving beyond the structure/agency, child/adult, capability/vulnerability arguments on childhood. He argues for making childhood studies truly interdisciplinary by suggesting the use of understandings of juvenility from biology, the possibility of understanding childhood using the framework of the Actor-Network Theory (taken from Deleuze and Guattari) and Complexity Theory, and enabling a questioning of the polarisations that childhood studies often finds itself swinging between.

In her recent editorial in Childhood, ‘Keep Asking, Why childhood? Why children? Why global?’ (9), Olga Nieuwenhuys also makes this last argument. Insisting on keeping the field fresh and critical she exhorts researchers to continue to ask the fundamental questions regarding childhood and to keep questioning whether indeed “children are interesting otherwise than as carriers of traits that turn them into the target of global childhood governance…” (p 295)

***

With that last statement we come back to the question that was posed by the same author a year ago -- Is there an Indian childhood? To this we must add our own questions -- Is childhood to be studied, understood, and engaged with only insofar as it impacts the future of the nation? Is there an intrinsic instrumentality in our engagement with childhood that comes from our belief that children inevitably become adults and that is when their participation in the socio-political fabric of society becomes real? Is there a need for practitioners in the field of child rights and child welfare to engage with issues pertaining to the dominant understanding of childhood, and does that need interrogation? How does legislation shape childhood in the country and how has legislation and its implementation in India impacted our understandings of equity and justice as they pertain to childhood?

Child rights programming is inevitably driven by a certain understanding of who children are, what they need, and how these needs should be addressed. Only rarely are organisations in touch with the fact that in designing a certain kind of programme they are also endorsing a certain kind of idea of childhood. For example, while many who work with children under the age of 12 focus on the need for safe spaces/shelters, schools, anganwadis and healthcare services, people who work with adolescents are seen to focus more on ‘life skills’, ‘vocational training’, ‘anger management’, participatory citizenship and other such issues. Few focus on the need for health and education rights for adolescents. Simplifying somewhat, there is an endorsement in this manner of at least two assumptions regarding a phase of life that loosely gets called ‘childhood’:

• Children below the age of 12 need protection; children above the age of 12 need disciplining and guidance.
• Children below the age of 12 need health and education; children above the age of 12 need to be trained to become ‘good citizens’ by ensuring a set of behaviours and skills which will make them amenable to civilised society.

It is possible that these are not the beliefs of those who run programmes or work with children in some way. It is also true that both kinds of work are necessary with both age-groups. What one is trying to illustrate here is that an objective look at the manner in which child rights programming happens reveals that there are patterns to the work that reinforce somewhat limiting notions of childhood, and that these need interrogating.

Legislation in India also seems to perpetuate this dichotomous understanding of childhood. Children below the age of 14 are to be protected from child labour and must be in school. These issues are addressed both by the Right to Education Act, 2010 and the Child Labour (Prevention and Regulation) Act, 1986. However, neither of these Acts addresses the rights of children between the ages of 15 and 18. Children in this age-bracket are therefore not protected by these legislations and can indeed be legitimately deprived of their rights to education and against employment.

Until we begin to think about and engage with some of the issues listed above, programmes and legislation that are ostensibly for all children may continue to address only those who fit within the dominant understanding of childhood. It is only when a problematisation of this conception of childhood happens that one can begin to engage with real children in real spaces, rather than with a generalised notion of what children ought to be.

(By-Havovi Wadia is a development professional with experience in the field of child rights and human rights. She is currently a PhD student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences)

Infochange News & Features, February 2011

Exciting opportunities in the social change and development sector for communications and development professionals

CCDS (www.ccds.in) is a leading social change resource centre based in Pune. We:

• Manage www.infochangeindia.org, a leading web resource base on social justice and sustainable development issues
• Conduct research, capacity-building and advocacy on issues related to social and economic rights, democratic governance etc
• Publish high-quality dossiers and information packages, and
• Run a unique civil society outreach programme called Open Space (www.openspaceindia.org), using literature, cinema, art, workshops, seminars etc to reach out to people and promote debate and action on social justice issues.

We’re looking for motivated professionals committed to human rights for the following positions:

Programme Director
This is a senior position. You will be responsible for building a strong team and promoting institutional stability and long-term growth, managing programmes, networking with national/international organisations and preparing regular reports. You should have a background in development and/or communications, with strong management and people skills, and excellent writing/communication skills.

Programme Coordinator, Open Space
To strengthen and coordinate our social and cultural initiatives amongst citizens in Pune and at the national level. You must have excellent interpersonal and organisational skills, and the ability to inspire and initiate change and citizens’ action/advocacy. You should have a background and interest in the social sciences, human rights and social justice issues, and combine that with strong communication and leadership skills.

Researchers
You need to be a young and committed media/development research professional, to research, compile, travel and report on human rights and sustainable development issues related to South Asia. You need to have excellent writing skills in English.

Manager, Resource Mobilisation
To build and implement models of institutional sustainability, and find new ways to reach out to wider audiences. You must have excellent skills in networking, the ability to increase outreach and circulation of our publications and develop and strengthen revenue-generating models for our publications and capacity-building programmes. Prior experience in resource mobilisation and social marketing is essential. We are looking for young and energetic management graduates or someone with a track record in resource mobilisation and marketing.

Send your application and CV by email, within the next 10 days to: infochangeindia@dishnetdsl.net. State the position applied for in the subject line of your email.

All positions are based in Pune. UGC payscales are applicable for programme staff

The powerful get water, the powerless don’t: UNDP report

The UNDP’s annual Human Development Report for 2006 focuses on water and advocates small-scale solutions and efficiency improvements to tackle the global water crisis

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in a report released on November 9, 2006, has said that lack of water is caused by lack of power, rather than by limited resources. “The scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and equality, not in physical availability… There is more than enough water in the world for domestic purposes, for agriculture and for industry. The problem is that some people -- notably the poor -- are systematically excluded from access by their poverty, by their limited legal rights or by public policies.”

The UNDP’s annual Human Development Report for 2006, that focuses on water, advocates an approach to tackling the global water crisis that is radically different from that advocated by the likes of the World Bank and the Indian government’s water resources ministry. Storing water in large centralised reservoirs centralises political power. The benefits of big, capital-intensive water investments tend to be captured by the rich and powerful. “The danger is that the claims of the politically and commercially powerful will take precedence over the claims of the poor and the marginalised,” the UNDP warns.

Illustrating the argument with an example from India, the report says: “In water-stressed parts of India, irrigation pumps extract water from aquifers 24 hours a day for wealthy farmers, while neighbouring small holders depend on the vagaries of rain.”

Advocates small-scale solutions

The report, titled ‘Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis’, argues that decentralised, small-scale solutions and efficiency improvements are more likely to reach the poor than centralised reservoirs and canals. “For much of the past hundred years, water shortages in agriculture have been countered by dams and large-scale irrigation works. In the years ahead, the focus will shift decisively to demand management. Getting more crop per drop, rather than more water to the fields, is becoming the central concern in public policy debates.”

This should open the eyes of India’s water resources ministry that is dominated by the big dam lobby. The performance of India’s irrigation infrastructure, which is the largest in the world, is among the poorest, India’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in his budget speech last year.

There is huge scope for improvements in the performance of existing infrastructure, noted the mid-term appraisal of the Ninth Five-Year Plan. A 10% increase in irrigation efficiency (which would still not be the most efficient performance) could increase irrigated area by 14 million ha, an agenda of about 10 years at the current rate of growth in irrigated areas.

But there is little progress in that direction. On the contrary, due to siltation, about 1.95 billion cubic metres of reservoir capacity are getting silted up each year. This means that two-thirds of the nation’s storage capacity is being silted up annually, and nothing is being done about it.
Similarly, if the system of rice intensification (SRI), a new and efficient method of rice cultivation, is adopted in even half the irrigated rice area of around 24 million ha in India, it could help add at least 6 million ha of additional irrigation, at the same time increasing production by at least 50%. This is what the UNDP report advocates when it says more crop per drop should be the approach. Precious little is being done at the national level in India to adopt the SRI, except for paying lip service to it.

Large irrigation projects won’t alleviate poverty in an unequal society

Such efforts are also much more likely to help in poverty alleviation, says the UNDP report. Dispelling the myth that canal irrigation necessarily implies poverty alleviation, the report says this is true only where there is greater equity in landholdings. It gives the example of Pakistan (and India) where poverty levels have been found to be as high inside irrigation networks as they are outside them.

Illustrating with an example from India how the benefits of irrigation from large projects are cornered by the powerful, the report says: “In India, about 13% of the population has access to irrigation. Within this group, the richest one-third of farmers receives 73% of the subsidy.”

The more than 500 million small farming families are the world’s “epicentre of extreme poverty”. Most of these poor farmers work marginal, rain-fed lands. They are far more likely to benefit from modest investments in decentralised water storage and supply than from large dams and riverlinking projects, as advocated in India. The UNDP report says that with an initial investment of $ 7 billion, extending small dams to store water and recharge groundwater could increase the value of the country’s annual rain-fed crop from $ 36 billion to $ 180 billion. This approach would also help increase employment in rural areas, reducing migration from rural areas and cutting the pressure on urban infrastructure. It would also empower the rural poor and help them gain excess to water.

Climate change will impact water-stressed areas more

The report warns that global warming will transform patterns of water availability. The overwhelming weight of evidence can be summarised in a simple way: “Many of the world’s most water-stressed areas will get less water, and water flows will become less predictable and more subject to extreme events.” In South Asia, the report predicts that there will be disruptions in monsoon patterns, with potential for heavier rain but fewer rainy days, and more people affected by drought.

Access to water is a right, not an “optional extra”

The hard-hitting report argues that access to 20 litres per capita per day of safe, affordable and clean drinking water is a fundamental right, and governments cannot shirk from the responsibility of providing the same. “Human rights are not optional extras.” It estimates that 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhoea (due to lack of access to clean drinking water), and this death toll is six times more than that of armed conflicts. The report says: “No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation.”
But more water is getting polluted due to lack of effluent treatment from urban areas and industries. The UN report is particularly critical of Delhi in this regard. “Delhi has many of the trappings of a developed country sanitation model,” but “less than a fifth of the city’s waste is processed before it is dumped into the Yamuna river, transmitting risks downstream.”

Privatisation is not the “magic bullet”

The report says that recent examples of spectacular failures in privatisation show that it is no magic bullet: “From Argentina to Bolivia, and from the Philippines to the United States, the conviction that the private sector offers a “magic bullet” for unleashing the equity and efficiency needed to accelerate progress towards water for all has proved to be misplaced.”
Lack of sanitation kills five times more people than terrorism or wars

On sanitation to the poor, the report says: “Toilets may seem an unlikely catalyst for human progress -- but the evidence is overwhelming.” However, the UNDP’s advocacy of flush toilets for all might not be appropriate everywhere, as different solutions may be appropriate
depending on the conditions of the area.

There is a lot that Indian planners and policymakers can learn from this landmark report from a mainstream agency. Unfortunately, the Indian government is proceeding down a suicidal path in pushing for commercial and corporate agriculture. There are many indications of this: the increasing number of farmer suicides is one of the clearest. And if another were needed, the UNDP report provides it. “While many governments extol the virtues of small-holder farming, most concentrate scarce public investment on relatively large-scale, capital-intensive commercial farming areas. That approach may be bad for long-run growth and for poverty reduction.”

InfoChange News & Features, November 2006

Killing ourselves slowly

With growing calls for the reintroduction of DDT to fight the resurgence of malaria worldwide, we must not forget the reasons why many countries have banned this toxic substance and other dangerous chemicals that cause cancers and other persistent diseases that impair health and possibly prove fatal

Chemicals are so ubiquitous that we often forget about them. They range from plastics to pigments for use in paint and dyes, to precursors for pharmaceuticals, computers, toys, perfume, T-shirts, shoes and products that we use every day. There are now a staggering 100,000 chemicals currently in commercial use. Indeed, with the proliferation of the IT industry, the spectre of “e-waste” or electronic waste is now hovering over poor societies.

We are all aware of the ubiquity of chemicals in our daily lives. Or are we? At a recent meeting of international environmental journalists, organised by the NGO Greenaccord in Rome, a WWF representative, Eva Alessi, emphasised how chemicals have permeated every nook and corner of human existence, often with disastrous consequences.

The WWF took blood samples of 13 families across Europe, across three generations. To drive the point home, these were not your average persons-on-the-street, the hoi polloi, but some of the most influential people in their societies. They included members of the European Parliament, 14 directors of newspapers and magazines, and other VIPs.

The findings were nothing short of shocking: all the samples were contaminated by a cocktail of hazardous chemicals. That is literally close to the bone.

As Alessi cited: “Blood samples were analysed for more than 100 persistent, bio-accumulative and/or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, many of which are found in everyday consumer products, like organochlorine pesticides (including DDT).” At a time when pesticide companies are renewing attempts to popularise DDT in India, also as a weapon against malaria, this new evidence from Europe, where DDT has been banned for several years, will fan the flames of the old controversy over whether DDT is beneficial or harmful to human life.

The WWF says: “The results of these surveys show that every person, from grandmothers to children to VIP to MEP, is contaminated by a cocktail of at least 20 different man-made chemicals. Some of the identified chemicals, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and DDT, have been banned for decades but persist in the environment and continue to contaminate new generations.”

Some key findings are:

• Of the 107 chemicals analysed, a total of 73 were detected in the whole survey. Sixty-three were found in grandmothers, 49 in mothers, and 59 in children.
• Brominated flame retardants, organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, perfluorinated chemicals and artificial musks (fragrances) were found in the blood of every family member tested, including children as young as 12.
• The children’s generation had the highest median level of PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) flame retardants, PFCs (perfluorinated compounds) and artificial musks.
• Of the 31 different PBDEs analysed, 17 were found in children compared to 10 in grandmothers and 8 in mothers

Chemicals are so ubiquitous that we often forget about them. They exist in products that range from plastics to pigments for use in paint and dyes, to precursors for pharmaceuticals, computers, toys, perfume, T-shirts, shoes, items that we use every day. There are now a staggering 100,000 chemicals currently in commercial use. Indeed, with the proliferation of the IT industry, the spectre of “e-waste” or electronic waste is now hovering over poor societies. At last year’s Vatavaran environmental film festival in Delhi, for example, a film depicted how uninformed recyclers of e-waste in the capital were salvaging materials from computers that had been junked, at huge risk to their health.

If, as the WWF alleges, little is known about the impact of these chemicals in Europe, the situation in this country can well be imagined. There are 30,000 industrial chemicals in use in Europe, but the public is not informed about the consequences of using most of them. While some monitoring of chemicals was introduced after 1981, the persistent prevalence of chemicals introduced earlier -- as the WWF survey shows -- is seldom, if at all, addressed.

A growing number of industrial chemicals are known to contaminate people. Some recent examples:

• Brominated flame retardants: Contaminates people and wildlife across the world. Two were phased out in Europe (penta and octa). Deca is increasingly being used, despite contaminating polar bears, birds of prey and people.


• Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs): Used in Scotchguard, teflon-manufacture. Action to phase out such chemicals has been slow and ineffective.

How should we tackle this problem? A sustainable chemical regulatory system requires substantial improvements in current systems, to first ensure availability of safety data on all chemicals. Secondly, there is a need to create effective methods of restricting and phasing out problem chemicals. Thirdly, downstream users need to be educated in safe use (and disposal) of chemicals. Chemical manufacturers should take more responsibility for what they produce, and safer products or substitutes must be promoted.

The WWF’s initial concern began when it discovered chemicals like DDT and PCBs in the bodies of wildlife in the 1990s. It didn’t take rocket science to conclude that if polar bears and the like were being affected, humans could not escape this fate. This, among other things, is what led much earlier to the furore over DDT. While proponents of its use pointed out that it killed pests that would otherwise deplete foodgrain stocks and cause starvation, critics alleged that it would, in the long run, cause cancers and other persistent diseases that would impair health and possibly prove fatal. It was once cited how Indians had more DDT in their bodies than any other nationals in the world. One has only to recall the WHO poster a few decades ago, which showed a bare breast with the caption: “Milk in these containers is unfit for human consumption.”

Perhaps the most startling finding by the WWF (and Greenpeace) is the emergence of endocrine-disrupters. Because these toxic chemicals hit humans -- more particularly macho males! -- where it hurts most (below the belt!) by lowering fertility or even causing changes in sex, they have caused worldwide alarm. The WWF and Greenpeace have been accused by the chemicals industry of spreading unnecessary alarm about these chemicals, but their consequences cannot be simply dismissed as scare-mongering. It is now common knowledge that the sperm count of males worldwide is declining.

Alessi observed: “These chemicals, which have recently attracted great public and scientific attention, are a structurally diverse group of compounds that may adversely affect the health of humans and wildlife and/or their progeny, by interacting with the endocrine system, and particularly influencing reproductive function. They can mimic endogenous hormones, disrupt reproductive functions and cause developmental abnormalities (such as intersexes) in wild animal populations. They include chemicals heavily used in the past, in industry and agriculture, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and organochlorine pesticides, and chemicals currently used as plasticisers and surfactants.” Sources of these chemicals include farming, livestock, forestry, industrial chemicals, waste incineration, consumer products, food, pharmaceuticals and sewage discharge.

In Stockholm, at the recent annual congress of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists, participants were taken to a marine research station some distance away from the city where researchers provided a graphic example of such processes at work. Since Sweden is largely composed of islands, and the people there are sea-loving, they tend to go boating a great deal. When the Swedes found that their boats were getting encrusted with shellfish and other marine life, which impeded speed, a special paint was devised which deterred these creatures from attaching themselves to the vessels. However, when the researchers began examining life in the shallow Baltic Sea, they found that the paint had begun to lead to sex changes in snails and other marine life. This led to a ban on such paints in Europe.

One of the little known facts about DDT is that it is also an endocrine-disrupter, according to research carried out only last year. It was developed in the 1940s and used as an insecticide against a very wide range of pests, particularly malarial mosquitoes, and as an agricultural insecticide. It is a long-lasting toxic chemical that builds up in the tissue of living organisms like plants and in the fatty tissue of animals and humans. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, it may cause cancer in humans. The US Environment Protection Agency too states that DDT probably causes human carcinogens. DDT sticks to soil, can travel long distances and causes widespread global dispersion. It has been banned in many countries, including the EU, since 1970 (regulated by international treaty as a “POP” or persistent organic pollutant). It is still used in some developing countries.

The dilemma of whether to ban toxics like DDT or restrict and control their use has been compounded by climate change. At the Rome meet, Dr Andrew Githeko of the Kenya Medical Institute listed how the 1990s was the hottest decade in the world’s recorded meteorological history (and 1998 the hottest year since 1861). We are witnessing the resurgence not only of malaria, but also dengue, chikungunya and even the dreaded yellow fever. North America is experiencing cases of Lyme disease and West Nile fever due to very warm summers; malaria has raised its head in eastern Europe. All this has revived demands for the use of DDT and similar chemicals -- very much a Faustian bargain.

Without sounding alarmist, the WWF points to the need to take proper measures. As Alessi said: “A new principle for guiding human activities, to prevent harm to the environment and to human health, has been emerging during the past 10 years. It is called the ‘principle of precautionary action’, or the ‘precautionary principle’. In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation (as endorsed at the Wingspread conference in Wisconsin in the US in 1998). In view of the magnitude of the potential risks associated with endocrine-disrupters, scientific uncertainty should not delay precautionary action on reducing the exposure to and from the risks.”

Needless to say, all this is a far cry from the situation in this country where the indiscriminate use of pesticides like endosulphan in cashew nut plantations in Kerala has caused the most horrific abnormalities. While these cases have been documented to some extent, the “slow poison” associated with widespread use of chemicals is proceeding unabated. In 2001, the UN Environment Programme laid down a treaty on POPs, which also governed the “dirty dozen” -- 12 chemicals that include DDT, aldrin and chlordane. Apart from pesticides and fungicides, there are PCBs, which are primarily used in capacitors and transformers, paint, adhesives, as well as dioxins, by-products of combustion, of chlorine bleaching and paper bleaching. These chemicals surround us “every step we take”.

The Delhi-based NGO, Toxics Link, has done some pioneering work in making us aware of this slow poison. But much more needs to be done. For a start, the chemicals industry needs to become more proactive in disclosing the ingredients of its products and by-products, and what these may entail. And, to draw a parallel with the earlier phase of the campaign against child labour, the more hazardous occupations involving toxics, like ship-breaking and recycling waste, ought to be strictly monitored, if not banned outright. The counter argument, that we cannot afford to do this in a poor country, will not wash. On the contrary, if people are poor, illiterate and undernourished, their degree of protection against such contamination should be enhanced rather than lowered.

InfoChange News & Features, November 2006

Playing God: The arbitrary nature of capital punishment

The Supreme Court has stated that the death penalty is to be awarded only in the rarest case of exceptional depravity and brutality. But human judgement, as several recent court cases have revealed, is totally subjective

The death sentence awarded to Mohammed Afzal Guru, accused in the 2001 Parliament terror attack case, has brought the issue of capital punishment centrestage once again. A clemency petition by his family is pending before the President, and the execution has been stayed for the time being.

Recently, the Delhi High Court pronounced the death penalty on Santosh Kumar Singh for the murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo. The trial court had acquitted Singh. In the Parliament attack case, along with Afzal, S A R Geelani was sentenced to death by the trial court. The Delhi High Court acquitted Geelani, as did the Supreme Court. Today he is a free man.

In the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the trial court awarded capital punishment to all the 26 accused. The Supreme Court acquitted 19 of the accused -- it found them innocent of any crime.

The facts speak for themselves.

All the evidence for and against an accused individual is adduced before the trial court. The prosecution and police produce whatever material evidence they have to establish the guilt of the accused. The individual accused of a crime adduces witnesses and material to show that he is innocent. Generally, no additional evidence is produced by either side at any stage after the trial is over. Thus, it is on the very same evidence that the Supreme Court found that there was no material to show the culpability of 19 of the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi case, while the trial court directed that they be “hung by the neck till dead”. The evidence for acquittal and the death penalty in Geelani and Singh’s case remained the same.

The fallibility of human judgement cannot be more clearly demonstrated. The criteria formulated by the Supreme Court that the death penalty is to be awarded in the “rarest of the rarest” case of exceptional depravity and brutality ultimately depends on the judge’s feelings of moral outrage and lie in the realm of the totally subjective. In fact, the award of the death penalty to Nalini in the Rajiv Gandhi case, is illustrative of the role of subjectivity in the imposition of capital punishment. Justice Quadri, after observing that “the taking of life, when it cannot be given, is a divine function,” went ahead and awarded the death penalty to Nalini. Justice Quadri, while resolving his dilemma in favour of death for Nalini, observes that Rajiv Gandhi “was a young popular leader so much loved and respected by his fellow citizens”. The judge goes on to say that Nalini joined the gang of conspirators “only because she was infatuated by the love and affection developed for Murugan (A-3)”. These factors seem to have weighed strongly with the judge.

But what if a judge did not have such a high opinion of Rajiv Gandhi? In fact, it is possible that a judge may think that the crowning of Rajiv Gandhi as leader of the Congress and prime minister was the perpetuation of dynastic rule, which has no place in a modern democracy.

The presiding judge, Justice Thomas, commuted Nalini’s capital punishment to life imprisonment. The fact that Nalini had a small child born in captivity, and that the death sentence on Murugan, the child’s father, had been confirmed, weighed with the judge. Concern that an innocent child is not orphaned through judicial decree appears to have swung the balance in favour of life in Justice Thomas’ mind. However, this factor did not influence the other two judges on the bench who confirmed the death sentence on Nalini.

Unfortunately, judges are as subjective as any other human being. There can be no doubt that caste, class and gender biases operate in decisions to award capital punishment. Even to non-believers, the decision to order the cold-blooded execution of a human being seems like the arrogation of God-like powers by mere mortals. The South African Constitutional Court, while declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, reached the conclusion that “poverty, race and chance play roles in the outcome of capital cases and in the final decision as to who should live and who should die”. Studies the world over have found that the percentage of poor persons being awarded the death sentence is much higher. In the words of a condemned prisoner: “Them that have the capital, never get the punishment.”

The general arguments in favour of awarding capital punishment are those of deterrence and retribution. However, the onus of establishing the deterrent value of capital punishment is on those seeking to retain it. Till today, there are no scientific studies to show that the death sentence acts as a deterrent. Rather, the abolition of the death penalty in the princely state of Travancore, between 1947 and 1950, did not result in any proportionate increase in the number of murders. The hanging of Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh for the murder of Indira Gandhi does not seem to have deterred Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins.

As far as retribution is concerned, the less said the better. At most it may be understandable in a mob, anguished over the murder of a beloved leader, that screams, “Hang the villains!” It should have no role to play in the psyche of a judge who is not expected to be swayed by populist sentiment and on whom has been conferred the power of life and death over a fellow human being. The calculated and cold-blooded execution of a person convicted of murder does not serve any purpose. In the case of Nalini, as the majority of two out of three judges awarded capital punishment, it was the President who commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.

A long illegal incarceration by the armed forces, a six-year-old child, and the fact that Afzal was neither the main conspirator nor actively participated in the attack should prompt the President to exercise the noble power of compassion and commute the death sentence to life imprisonment.

The global trend is towards abolition of the death penalty. Eighty-eight countries, including England, Germany, Brazil and Nicaragua, have abolished the death penalty as a means of securing human rights.

In the face of the contemporary reality of escalating violence and killings, the words of Bernard Shaw ring true: “And so to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour and peace, until the Gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.” However, God may well turn out to be on the side of the bigger battalion, and blood, death and destruction. It is time for mere mortals to work towards the abolition of capital punishment in this country, as it annihilates the dignity and sanctity of human life.

InfoChange News & Features, November 2006

‘Donors are stuck in sympathy mode’: Ingrid Srinath

CRY, which has just changed its nomenclature from Child Relief and You to Child Rights and You, is trying to bring about an attitudinal change to children’s issues, from charity-focused to issue-based support. It has also changed its approach to middle class citizens -- from merely asking them to write out a cheque to getting them to volunteer to advocate the cause of child rights, says Ingrid Srinath, CEO of CRY

“I’d rather accept a cheque for $20,000 than have a donor write out a cheque for $40,000 because of the sympathy factor,” declares Child Rights and You Chief Executive Officer Ingrid Srinath. Her statement is a reflection of how important the rights-based approach is to the organisation. It is also ready acceptance of what the three-decades-old CSO stands to lose in terms of funding as it seeks to supplement (not substitute, as Srinath is at pains to clarify) its stupendously successful relief-based strategy with a rights-based approach to children’s issues in India. An interview with the MBA and former advertising executive, who says she chucked up a cushy job as an accounts executive because she was convinced she could do things other than boosting some shareholder’s bottom line


What were the key issues that CRY was engaged with three decades ago? What are they now?

In 1979, CRY was very education-focused. Education was the great big hope for us then. But there were a dozen other things that were keeping kids out of school. We had to address those issues by interfacing with local government, through policy implementation. To make a significant dent in the problem, we had to start looking at national policy and we were only going to be able to do that if we created alliances, first at the state level with partners we were already working with.

What’s changed today is that education is not the end – now we see education as more an outcome, not an input. We’re trying to get communities to see the linkages between education and what they see are the other important issues for them – livelihoods, migration etc – and get them to see that education is a way out of these problems. Today we are committed to ensuring the quality of education available to children, to ensuring that the government system works.

Earlier we would run balwadis, substitute wherever the government was lacking, whereas now the approach is to make sure that the government is accountable, that the system works. In fact the balwadi often lets the government off the hook. We need to ask the government, when you say education is a fundamental right, what is the minimum quality of education that you will deliver?

What is the most pressing children’s issue at the moment?

The child’s right to survival is a key concern – maternal health is a key determinant of infant health, female foeticide and infanticide, malnutrition, and the availability and quality of healthcare services. There has actually been a decline in government services offered in everything from the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to the primary healthcare centres (PHCs). For example, women in Thane (self-help groups) are being expected to fund the ICDS programme. On the one hand you advocate community participation but on the other hand that has become an excuse for the government to completely absolve itself of the responsibility of running these services.

Why has CRY chosen to take the rights-based approach now? To what extent will the change in nomenclature impact the care and delivery aspect of CRY’s work?

The national campaign for the right to education was the template for our future strategy. Right from 1979 we have had state-level alliances and grant-making relationships with other organisations and groups. But in 1997-98, when the nationwide campaign for the right to education began, we realised there was strength in numbers…. the government took us that much more seriously because there were so many of us coming together. The education campaign was the template.

Donors are stuck in sympathy mode. CRY has never done sympathy. However, now we are looking to bring about an attitudinal change to the whole business of children’s issues, from charity-focused to issue-based support. If this approach means getting less donor support, that’s a risk I’m willing to take, in the interests of bringing about long-term changes in donors’ mindsets.

Even today, only 14% of donors are institutional donors, the rest are individuals. And all they ask is that we make it convenient for them to donate and be accountable, using their money honestly and effectively. CRY has been successful because we have been able to do that.

Will CRY’s focus on rights advocacy affect its care and delivery services?

No. You need direct action in the here and now in the form of balwadis, you need the community mobilisation component, but you also need the advocacy. What has changed is how we approach the middle classes, in terms of what we’re asking them to do. Until now in many ways it hasn’t really been about volunteerism, it’s primarily been about them giving up money. For example, we set up these community action groups in five cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore -- where we’ve got a range of people, educated urban middle class, slumdwellers, professionals, the entire microcosm of that community coming together to see what are our issues and how are we going to deal with them collectively, not as adversaries, as urban middle class vs slumdwellers’ associations. Some of these groups are working on identifying how many children in their neighbourhoods are in school or out, why, what their conditions are, how they can improve them, using the right to information to get better services from the government.

The response you or I would get if we started asking questions in a government school is very different from the answer a parent of one of these students would get. It's about getting them to see that any solution that gives priority to one group's concerns over the others' is inherently unsustainable.

What are the strategies and methods that CRY will employ to advocate child rights?

We have been fairly successful in getting local, tribal communities to mobilise their resources within their specified area. Over the years we’ve discovered that community participation works. One of our most successful community participation initiatives was in Uttar Pradesh in an area called Ghorawal where we ran a joint programme with a group called Child Welfare Services. This was a district where zero children were in school -- a carpet-weaving hub with a mostly adivasi population. Drought was common. Most children were employed in the carpet factories. Instead of haranguing people to get their kids into school, we began with evening classes, then campaigned for minimum wages so that adults could earn a decent wage, and the movement spread like wildfire, to 26 villages within months. The locals then reclaimed 250 acres of land that had been expropriated and used it for community farming of medicinal herbs. Eventually, 98% of the children were in school and from two primary schools the area now has 17.

The thing is, how do you scale that up, how do you build a coalition of communities everywhere -- of the marginalised, the middle class, media, bureaucrats, the administration, judges, the corporate sector and so on -- who can be persuaded to actually work together .We think child rights should be a national priority. Millions of children are dying every year before they reach their fifth birthday: that’s a national calamity on a scale much bigger than the tsunami and everything else put together

The methods will be largely the same – advertising, direct mailing, events, the Internet. It will be the same media-type advocacy, but focusing all these methods into a rights-based message rather than a relief message.

What about the Charter of Child Rights that CRY recently presented to the President of India?

Most important is a uniform definition of a child as defined by the United Nations. A child is simply everyone 0-18. Currently the definition varies depending on what you’re talking about -- if it’s the Child Labour Act it is 14 years, for some other laws it is 12 or maybe 15 years.

Other key demands are: make available at least 10% of GDP for education and make the fundamental right to education available to all children 0-18; ban child labour in all sectors, not just for hazardous industries but for all sectors including agriculture; make child labour illegal; expand coverage of the mid-day meal scheme to all children, regardless of whether they are in school or not. The right to survival is universal, why should it be restricted to just the children who are in school? That's just wrong. You can do it through the ICDS programme that covers children 0-6, you can technically use the PHCs, there is existing infrastructure that can be deployed to deliver these services.

We need a better definition of the poverty line -- for example, we are told that 27% are below poverty line but 51% of children are malnourished .Evidently, there are families above the poverty line who are unable to feed their children adequately. What kind of measurement is that? Originally, the poverty line was a calorific count, based on how many calories a person consumed a day. Then the government went and changed it to the number of goods a person owned etc and the whole thing got skewed. All sorts of people got excluded from the list. We would like a return to the earlier definition.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Why some civilisations survive and others die

Is it ecocide and the depletion of natural resources that is responsible for the collapse of the Mayan and other civilisations? Is it natural disasters, or socio-political cataclysms that are responsible for societal decay? Jared Diamond’s new book discusses these issues

When Satish Sahaney, director of the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, recently asked me to take part in a discussion on Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Penguin, London, 2006, ₤ 6.99 in India), I was intrigued. I was intrigued merely because the title of Diamond’s previous book sounded strangely radical: Guns, Germs & Steel (Vintage, Random House, London, 1998). I had imagined that these were the three ingredients that determined how some societies conquered others.

I had not read that book and, for that reason, was not acquainted with its sub-title: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. When I did some research, I felt that Diamond’s earlier book was far too ambitious, if not arrogant. “Everybody,” really? Can anyone paint on such a vast canvas and yet not leave some areas untouched? In fact, the title is derived from a question that a New Guinea islander (off the Australian coast) put to the author, who is an evolutionary biologist by training: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

Perhaps unknown to him, Diamond carries a great deal of baggage himself, not all of it visible. In his current book, Penguin leaves no stone unturned in going for the jugular: ‘The No 1 International Bestseller’, it crows above the title.

I delved into the book and found it difficult going, because it is so densely argued, packed with case studies of why certain societies flew out of the pages of history books while others survived to tell the tale.

Diamond was a psychology professor at UCLA Medical School but branched off into a study of the ecology and evolution of birds in New Guinea. I suspect both the careful observation enjoined by ornithology, coupled with a study of the birds’ exotic habitat, led him to examine much more fundamental issues -- the terminal decline of civilisations or, in his own words, ‘ecocide’.

I once asked Dr Salim Ali, India’s pre-eminent birdman, how he was qualified to pronounce on such complex issues as the controversy over the hydroelectric dam in Silent Valley in Kerala or the threat to the Taj Mahal from the Mathura oil refinery. He said that if anyone had spent a lifetime, as he had, painstakingly studying the life of birds he was capable of understanding the impact on the environment of big projects.

At the Nehru Centre, each discussant chose some chapters, so that s/he could do justice to parts of the book.

Diamond’s thesis is that there are eight factors that are seminal to survival or demise: deforestation, habitat destruction, soil, hunting, fishing, population, the human footprint (referring to the actual area that a person uses to obtain all the natural resources he consumes) and the intrusion of foreign species. That’s a fairly comprehensive list and no one would quarrel with these being responsible, in various permutations and combinations, for societal decay.

To begin with, there is the collapse of the Mayan empire. Diamond’s interesting observation is that because the Mayans did not keep proper records of such ‘mundane’ things as drought -- they restricted their notings to the deeds of kings -- they could not learn from history. Droughts, it is now learned (presumably from carbon dating or some other such modern tools), had occurred some two centuries before the collapse of this empire (or more properly, empires), but there was no way that the people knew this.

Diamond refers to ‘Twilight at Easter’, the huge, enigmatic, carved stone faces left on Easter Island, while other traces of human habitation have been totally wiped out. This must have led, in the days before archaeology, to people speculating whether this was the handiwork of visitors from another planet! Some of the statues weighed as much as 80 tonnes, which must have been as much an artist’s masterpiece as it was a marvel of engineering to erect. The story, it seems, is that the islanders, closed to outside societies, farmed far too intensively and in the process robbed the soil of its support systems. There was no escape for them by way of migration.

Diamond also speculates that the construction of the stone visages must have itself taken a terrible toll of the ecology. The builders, who must have numbered several hundred, had to be fed; they were doing ‘unproductive’ work, reminiscent of the pyramids of Egypt. There are archaeological traces of ferocious fighting between clans as well as cannibalism. The Easter islanders had a particularly grisly curse: “May the flesh of your grandmother stick in my teeth!”

There are also historical records that when a French ship sailed past a few centuries ago, the islanders called out in desperation -- not to be rescued from their isolated hell but for the timber embodied in the vessel, a resource they had overexploited to the point of no return. The author wonders, as many environmentalists do today, what it was like when the islanders decided to cut the very last tree. Was it everybody for himself (or herself, in these days of politically correct herstory)? During the Silent Valley controversy, the well-known poet Sugatha Kumari, who is an avid environmentalist and social activist, composed a poem called Maram (‘tree’ in Malayalam), where the last monkey on earth mistakes an electric pole -- Kerala sorely lacked electricity in the 1970s, as it does today -- for a tree, jumps on it and electrocutes itself.

The Mayan civilisation melted into the jungle -- as did some which bear a Hindu hand, the spectacular ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobodur in Indonesia -- till it was ‘re-discovered’ in the 18th century. The Mayans consumed corn, which contained less protein than other staples. What’s more, they couldn’t store it, given the primitive methods of that era, for more than a year, which made them highly vulnerable to famine. There may have also been shortages of freshwater: even though some cities were a square mile in area there were no rivers nearby, especially at those heights, and they had to harvest the rain. As cities grew, it is conceivable that they ran out of this most precious of resources. After all, closer home, Tughlaqabad and Daulatabad have suffered the same fate.

Additionally, stripping the forest slopes to cultivate crops may have caused the downfall, since it would have led to erosion, especially when coupled with population pressures. Unfortunately -- once again, the vital importance of communication -- Spanish bishops burned historical records for being ‘pagan’, leaving no trace of why this most sophisticated civilisation had to bite the dust.

The discussants raised a most fundamental issue. How does Diamond judge which society is successful and which is not? By any yardstick, the US is the most successful economy (as distinct from society!) in the world. But by ecological standards it is a disaster. This is why his overall thesis is flawed: while North Americans and Europeans are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, it is their insatiable appetite for natural resources, and energy in particular, that is destabilising the entire climate regime of the world and causing tremendous havoc globally. Might there be a Diamond -- or ‘Heera’ in this neck of the woods -- who, in the 23rd century, excavates the tip of the Empire State Building or similar skyscrapers in Manhattan and analyses the causes of the collapse of this affluent society?

Diamond employs a comparative approach, which was endorsed by some of the discussants. Citing the absence of traces of animals in the Mayan and Easter Island societies, one pointed out how rhino bones have been discovered in Harappan towns. These two early societies must have depended on wild nuts and other sources of protein.

A great deal depended on the presence or absence of ruling elites in early societies, as well as what produce they marketed or bartered. Ecocide, in Diamond’s words, was more of a process than an event or sudden calamity. In Harappa there was a co-existence of city and countryside, with agriculture and animal husbandry continuing alongside. Out of 132 Indus Valley civilisations, as many as 101 were abandoned. These populations didn’t simply disappear, they must have voted with their feet -- an option that the Easter islanders didn’t possess. Elsewhere, in the Saraswati Valley, the population actually increased. The Indus Valley decline was more of a socio-political-economic disaster than a cataclysmic event.

There is speculation in our country on how the vegetation around Lothal consisted of thorn and dry deciduous forests, which were used to make charcoal. There are also traces of teak growing near what is now Ahmedabad. Ultimately, whether due to climate, or population, or over-intensive agriculture, only acacia was left. Interestingly, in Harappan culture, we find deodhar logs brought all the way from the Shivaliks.

Metallurgy gave rise to several ecological problems. To produce a single kilo of smelted copper -- recall the Indus Valley figurines which have given this country one of its most potent iconic images -- it took 620 kg of charcoal: convert that into trees lost. Incidentally, the Bishnois have a long tradition of protecting the sparse natural terrain around them in memory of their fellow community members who were hacked to death when a king wanted to cut down their kejri trees to fire bricks for his palace. Verrier Elwin has recorded how the Agaria tribe in Madhya Pradesh had to search for trees for their livelihood as traditional ironsmiths.

There are also records of how the Harappan civilisation prompted soil salinity and massive erosion. It is difficult to say what population pressures there were between 2600 and 1800 BC. In Mohenjodaro it is possible to speculate that the widespread cultivation of wheat and barley required cattle to plough. In turn, the cattle had to be given fodder, which would have impacted on the local vegetation. The huge quantities of bricks found there would have lopped off the topsoil; there are records of some 700 wells, which would have been affected too.

A discussant who is a sociologist had difficulties with Diamond’s methodology, which all research depends on. He ascribes far too benign a role to business, even if one subscribes to neither environmentalism nor anti-environmentalism. The reference to ecocide would also trigger off the “deepest anxieties” in western readers, with visions of an apocalypse. This is reminiscent of Samuel P Huntington book, Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (Simon & Schuster, 2004) where the best-selling author raises fears of Americans being swamped by the Hispanic culture.

Similarly, I was uneasy about the glib assumptions that the best-selling Diamond makes, like the two maps showing how there is congruence between the political and environmental ‘trouble spots’ in the world, which include Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan (fortunately, we have escaped!). Only recently, a study by the New Economics Foundation and the Open University in the UK pointed out that the United Kingdom is “eating the planet” -- in other words, depleting the earth of natural resources far faster than it is able to replenish them. If global consumption levels reached those of the UK, it would take 3.1 earths to meet the demand. Needless to add, neither the UK nor Europe, and least of all the US, figure in Diamond’s demonology.

I have even greater problems with the author’s assertion that business can play a constructive role in protecting the environment, which he illustrates by his experience as a consultant with an oil company in New Guinea. Anyone who is painting a picture of entire societies in decline cannot fail to see how the oil companies have contributed to global warming for 150 years. And, as for the record of companies like Shell in Nigeria, where the earlier military government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, the celebrated opponent of its oil fields in a tribal region, the less said the better...

In conclusion, what does one make of this book? There is a danger, like in the mainstream American media, that most Americans will derive their notions of why societies collapse from books like these that catch their attention as they wait to pay their bills at the supermarket. Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel that pooh-poohs the whole science of climate change, is an even worse example of preaching scepticism to the ignorant. There is a great deal of fact in Diamond’s book, but there is some fiction as well. Indeed, his thesis resembles a rough, uncut gem, which deserves to be polished to reflect its myriad facets, not to present a unilateral view of the world.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Public sector research and agricultural biotechnology

Over 20 research studies related to GM crops are ongoing in the public sector in India. It is important that public sector research be supported in order to facilitate a level playing field with resource-rich private sector companies

At the third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Curitiba, Brazil, from March 13-17, the role of public sector research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) received considerable attention. One of the concerns raised by public sector scientists is that under the Protocol the information requirements for small-scale confined field trials and risk assessments have to undergo a lengthy documentation process similar to that of bulk shipments meant for commercial use. Though the motive is not to undermine the objectives of the Protocol, the information requirement, the public sector scientists argue, should be commensurate with the lower level of risk involved in research activities. There is growing apprehension that in the long run this could hinder public sector research and instead increase the influence of the private sector as knowledge providers. It would hamper the attempts of civil society organisations to curtail private sector research and influence, which in a way defeats the purpose of the Protocol. Currently, the public sector in India has over 20 research activities related to the development of genetically modified crops. The government projects agricultural biotechnology as an important instrument in achieving food security in India. It is therefore important that public sector research gain necessary support in order to facilitate a level playing field with the resource-rich private sector companies, else the latter stand to gain.

Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP3)

The third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol (MOP3) held in Curitiba, Brazil, reached a landmark decision on the documentation requirements for living modified organisms (LMOs). After hours of deliberation a consensus was reached: it was agreed that shipments that are identified and separated as containing transgenics will carry the label ‘Contains LMOs’. This landmark, as argued by some, will have a crucial impact on international trade in products derived from genetic engineering.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is a legally binding international treaty that governs the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms. Adopted in 2003, the Protocol aims to ensure safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on biodiversity and human health.

In 2005, two years after its adoption, the MOP2 at Montreal was to resolve issues on information requirements for documentation of LMOs for food, feed or processing (LMO-FFPs), but failed to do so, due to conflicting trade interests. It was apparent at MOP3 that countries were eager to reach a decision on the controversial issue of documentation. However, the article remained the bone of contention till the final hours when Mexico, supported by Paraguay, delayed the proceedings by resisting the clause on mandatory labeling of transboundary shipments containing LMOs, and instead suggested the insertion of brackets, implying that the topic was not completely resolved but open to future dialogue. After further negotiations, the signatories reached a consensus; they agreed to review country experiences on the implementation of documentation requirements in 2010 at MOP5, after which a final decision will be made at MOP6 in 2012. Mexico insisted on adding a clause which states that mandatory labeling does not apply to transboundary movement between parties and non-parties. Mexico is a major trading partner of LMO exporting countries such as Canada and the US, a non-party to the Protocol.

MOP3 also took decisions on other matters, including biosafety capacity-building activities, risk assessment for GMOs, and the operation of the Biosafety Clearing House, the web-based information exchange portal established by the Protocol.

Public sector research and the Protocol

The debate over LMOs at MOP3 was largely dominated by trade interests and therefore much of the implications of the Protocol are assessed in terms of its impact on trade in agricultural commodities. On the other hand, the “side events” were dominated by civil society organisations targeting their scepticism at big transnational companies that develop these genetically modified crops and also the socio-economic implications of such crops on small farmers. In hindsight, what seems to have emerged at the Protocol is the presence and importance of public sector research in agricultural biotechnology. Though public research was debated more informally at the side events than at the formal negotiation table, discussing its role in agricultural biotechnology itself underlines the fact that public sector research has wider policy ramifications. Particularly since the Cartagena Protocol is seen as a model on which countries formulate their biosafety policies. The larger picture that emerges from this debate is whether certain provisions in the Protocol can have a restrictive effect on public sector research -- a large number of which is carried out in developing countries -- as it requires lengthy information for small-scale confined field trial research and risk assessment where the level of risk is considered lower than shipments intended for commercial purposes. Is it possible to evolve a regulatory response that does not undermine the objectives of the Cartagena Protocol? At present, the Protocol does not accord separate treatment to LMO shipments for commercial purposes and for public research. Public sector researchers express concern about the implications of such decisions in the Protocol.

This lengthy documentation requirement can delay research and lead to increase in opportunity cost and utilisation of public funds. A study by the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC) shows that for China, the cost involved in meeting strict documentation requirements for soybean imports amounted to US$ 13.98 million in 2005. Public sector scientists claim that the information required is so exhaustive that sometimes it is not available since research is ongoing or yet to be conducted. For instance, confined small-scale research on fruit and shoot borer resistant Bt brinjal in the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines, Los Banos College, experienced a setback as the documentation process for importing the Bt gene from India took almost a year, instead of the expected three months. Scientists explain the need to define LMOs for confined field trials as public research could suffer serious setback worldwide.

The public sector initiative

Recognising the crucial role of the public sector in biotechnology and also the need to explain the implications of the Protocol on public research, several public research scientists from different parts of the world with similar concerns and objectives united to form the Public Research and Regulatory Initiative (PRRI). Most international negotiations such as the Biosafety Protocol are discussed and debated at length among country policymakers, many of whom may not be trained to handle complex scientific issues such as biotechnology. On the other hand, scientists work in isolation in laboratories knowing little about the implications of these negotiations on their research. It has been observed that the international negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol which began since 1995 have always been well represented by NGOs and the private sector. However, public sector researchers were conspicuous by their absence, despite the fact that the Protocol could have a direct impact on their research. The PRRI is an initiative to involve public researchers in international negotiations that have a direct impact on their work, such as the Cartagena Protocol.

One of the major reasons for participation in the Protocol is to make delegates aware of the substantial role played by the public sector on research in modern biotechnology worldwide. The team is represented by public research scientists from different parts of the world concerned about the importance of disseminating science-based information and to explain in layman’s terms, the science of agricultural biotechnology and to dispel certain misconceptions about crop biotechnology. The PRRI seeks to clarify that it does not align with private sector companies that develop GM crops, since both private and public sector are developers of GM crops, and are therefore considered to have similar profit motives.

Public sector research in developing countries

Since most public sector research is not profit driven, but more directed towards the needs of local farmers, the products derived from the sector have wider acceptance among farmers and sceptics, as no conditions are imposed on them. Besides, the products are distributed at costs that are lower than those of the private sector companies.

The role of the public sector in the research and development of crop biotechnology, particularly in developing countries, is often undermined. A study conducted by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), released in 2005, shows that there are more than 200 types of research conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops in 15 developing countries. The largest number of research studies was in Asia (109) of which 21 are in India. About 85% of the genetic resources used for developing these GM crops were sourced from locally available materials. Farmers seem to prefer the local variety as they adapt better and are also devoid of the intellectual property issues associated with the most of the private sector developed genetic materials. In most developing countries, examples of public-private partnerships in plant biotechnology are rare.

In many Asian countries the focus is on food crops and crops of high commercial value to increase food production in order to meet the demands of the burgeoning population and also to assist resource-poor farmers with marginal land holdings. These crops are developed to respond to local needs, in the form of drought and salinity resistance, insect, fungal and bacterial resistance, reduction in the use of agrochemicals, prolonged shelf-life, nutritional improvement, etc. In India where almost 70% of the population is still dependent on agriculture, these varieties can offer tremendous benefits.

Despite the large number of ongoing public sector research studies in developing countries, only seven have been commercially released. In India, crop biotechnology research in the public sector is at all various of development -- from the experimental to the pre-commercial stage, but none are approved for commercial cultivation. In China, public sector developed GM vegetables have been approved for cultivation. Currently, there are more than 44 ongoing confined field trials in developing countries and most of them have problems in moving on to the next phase, the pre-commercial trial stage. This is partly due to the confusion regarding the amount of information required for the confined and open field trials. One of the reasons for this delay, as cited by IFPRI research, is the implementation process of the Cartagena Protocol. This involves huge regulatory costs and can be carried out either by sharing these with government seed production facilities or seed companies. There is a need to expedite regulatory decisions and testing of public sector developed GM crops. Though it is widely accepted that public research can deliver GM crops in response to local needs, the regulatory procedure necessary to gain approval for commercial use can delay the process as these are novel crops that have not been tested earlier. The irony is that the GM crops in the West get speedier approval in developing countries as they have already been tested. As a result, crops developed by the public sector remain at the pre-commercial stages and farmers continue to wait.

Biotechnology is considered by many in the public and private sector to have enormous potential in achieving food security. At the same time, the scepticism of critics of agricultural biotechnology has been directed largely towards issues surrounding the technology, such as the transnational companies that develop it, the royalties involved, the socio-economic implications etc, but the focus has rarely been on the technology per se. Public sector scientists claim that genetically modified crops developed by public research can contribute to meeting the needs of the local farmers and that scientifically unfounded claims about the technology need to be dispelled. They emphasise that their role is to present the scientific facts of genetic engineering as they are, without any particular agenda. Transnational companies have the financial resources, but lack the trust of the general public. On the other hand, public research institutes have limited financial resources but are trusted to develop crops in response to specific local needs.

In India, the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority suggested the speeding up of approval process for transgenic crops through a single window clearance mechanism. This is particularly significant for the public sector as it would minimise the public funds as well as the opportunity cost. At the same time, it would be important to examine the health and environmental safety aspects of the novel transgenic crops. Once the regulatory and safety aspects are in place, it is the farmers who would ultimately have the last word.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Refugees are not illegal migrants

Though India plays host to over 300,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, the country has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and protection

India plays host to approximately 332,300 refugees (World Refugee Survey 2003), and is the second largest refugee-receiving country in South Asia, after Pakistan. India’s multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society has made it an attractive destination for a lot of asylum-seekers. Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, the Jumma people from Bangladesh, the Chin and other tribal refugees from Myanmar, refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and even Sudan comprise the bulk of India’s refugee population.

But the enormity of the situation is discussed only with regard to the political rhetoric on ‘illegal migrants’ who, the government claims, have become an economic burden on the country and need to be deported. This claim works as a strategy for playing the ethnicity card, to create vote-banks before the elections. At other times, people rejoice when census figures show that the number of ‘illegal migrants’ has actually gone down. How the government deals with the ‘illegal migrants’ and the process of their determination and deportation is seldom questioned. Not by the media, not even by civil society.

As a major player in South Asian politics, and indeed world politics today, issues regarding India’s economic might have become central to its attempts at claming South Asia’s ‘big brother’ status. As a rapidly ‘developing’ nation, free movement of capital in and out of the country is supported by a structured regime of national economic policies that adhere to international trade-law obligations through the WTO, World Bank and IMF and regional trade cooperation treaties through SAARC. However, we know very little about India’s state obligations towards respecting and protecting the human rights of people who are labelled ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘aliens’, arrested as criminals under the Passport Act 1967, the Registration of Foreigners Act 1939 or the Foreigners Act 1946. In spite of the presence of such large numbers of people in the country who have fled persecution in neighbouring countries, India has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and selective protection.

The government officially recognises only Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and provides them state protection. For all other refugee populations -- the Burmese Chin, Chakmas and Rohingyas from Bangladesh, Sudanese and Afghans, etc -- it’s left to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi to administer operations to provide refugee identity certificates to those belonging to communities/nationalities not recognised by the government.

So, people fleeing persecution and ending up in India are left at the mercy of the government’s ad hoc policies and the limited operations of the UNHCR. All this, despite a Supreme Court judgment (NHRC vs State of Arunachal Pradesh) that categorically states that all ‘refugees’ within Indian territory are guaranteed the right to life and personal liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution.

This judgment, passed in the year 1996, has not yet prompted the Indian government to accede to the 1951 UN Refugees Convention. According to the government, the convention is Eurocentric in nature and does not reflect the special needs of the countries of the Global South. This, however, has not prompted India to take proactive steps towards a national law on refugee protection or to initiate a dialogue to develop a regional refugee protection regime. In fact, the country’s fears of an economic burden created by ‘illegal migrants’, and also the security threat posed by ‘terrorists’ could actually be allayed by the setting up of a national or regional refugee protection regime.

Although the UNHCR has done some commendable work in the country, in the absence of any national law, India’s ad hoc refugee policy curtails a lot of its work. In India, the UNHCR provides only de facto protection to its mandate refugees and relies on the tolerance and goodwill of the Indian government. The government only partially recognises the UNHCR mandate; mandate refugees therefore have no formal recognition and are subject to the same municipal laws as foreigners. This lack of formal status weakens the UNHCR’s role in advocacy and intervention for refugee rights.

This situation is mirrored in other South Asian countries that have not acceded to the 1951 convention or the 1967 protocol, thus undermining the international legal regime for the protection of refugees. Though the Indian government proceeds on the assumption that India has a strong humanitarian tradition of hosting refugees, which was present even before the drafting of the convention, lack of accession or the development of a national or regional refugee legal regime is cause for concern.

Even with its limited capacities, the UNHCR itself flagrantly ignores guidelines for the treatment of refugees while conducting interviews to determine and adjudicate refugee status.

Ravi Nair, director of the Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) observers: “The cardinal problem arises when both the UNHCR and the Government of India (GoI) violate their own standards and principles. While it is possible to bring the GoI under the scrutiny of quasi-judicial bodies like the National Human Rights Commission and the judiciary, there is no such mechanism to scrutinise the UNHCR. Official rules and procedures have become an excuse to raise the veil of secrecy and to resort to arbitrariness at the expense of the refugees.”

Consider an incident that took place in October-November 2003, when Burmese Chin refugees and asylum-seekers staged a protest against the UNHCR for not processing their applications in time and humiliating them during the assessment process. Following the protest, the police arrested around 25 demonstrators. It took more than three weeks for organisations working with refugees in the capital to arrive at a consensus on how to bail the demonstrators out!

This was a point where the UNHCR’s New Delhi office required security protection -- fearing attacks from Burmese Chin refugees it claimed to assist. When the demonstrations turned slightly volatile, the UNHCR actually got them arrested, knowing full well that some of the protestors were asylum-seekers and could now be deported. Those arrested were remanded to custody for over two weeks without any intervention by the UNHCR. The Socio-legal Information Centre (SLIC), one of the UNHCR’s implementing partners responsible for providing legal assistance to refugees, also turned a blind eye to the events. It was only when other civil society organisations took up the issue that the UNHCR responded.

This is just one of the many instances where the UNHCR has violated its own standards.

Given the realities in South Asia, efforts should be geared towards developing comprehensive national laws that uphold the universal principles of international refugee protection, while at the same time taking into account the distinctive traits of the region. This would be a more solution-oriented approach; one that is both pertinent and fair in light of current displacements within the South Asia region.

“If such a national legislation were adopted by South Asian states without acceding to the refugee convention, it would be a rare example of national legislation superseding international obligations,” says Brian Gorlick, a former legal officer with the UNHCR, New Delhi. “The absence of national laws has meant that refugees are dependent on the benevolence of the state rather than on a regime of rights to reconstruct their lives in dignity. A consistent legal framework is vital for the prevention of political ad hocism, which often translates into forcible repatriation for refugees,” adds Nair.

The first attempt at formulating a draft regional law for refugee protection was formulated in 1966, when the African-Asian Legal Consultative Committee, an inter-governmental organisation, adopted the Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees. These principles have since been kept in cold storage; only the text was finalised at a meeting in New Delhi in 2001.

In November 1997, the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) for South Asia, put together by the UNHCR, approved a model national law at its Dhaka Consultation. This model law is the first step in the process of building a consensus on preventing, managing and solving the problems accompanying refugee flows within South Asia in a comprehensive and humane manner. The purpose of the law is to establish a procedure for granting refugee status to asylum-seekers and those forced to migrate due to a well-founded fear of persecution; to guarantee them fair treatment and to establish the requisite machinery for its implementation. The model law provides a comprehensive definition suiting the needs of the region. Unfortunately it has remained a legal fiction, with states showing no inclination towards incorporating it in their respective national legislations.

Since India is one of the largest receiving countries in South Asia, it should take the initiative in establishing a refugee law regime in the region by first making a national law on refuge protection. This would be an extension of India’s obligations under various international human rights instruments that it has acceded to. Such an initiative would also show that India takes its membership of the UNHCR EXCOM (executive committee) seriously, and wants to strengthen its role there. As Professor B S Chimni, an international law expert and vice-chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, points out: “To remain a member of the EXCOM without either acceding to the 1951 convention or passing a national legislation shows an opportunistic attitude towards UN institutions that does the image of the country little good in the international community.”

Post September 11 and July 7, political realities and trends in immigration policies inevitably lead to the conclusion that refugee rights protection in South Asia can only be made effective if efforts are focused on improving the national legal and judicial practices to supplement the existing conventional international refugee law framework. A regional refugee treaty would be the most effective way of making sure that states remain bound to their obligations. It is also recommended that a treaty-monitoring body be established with powers similar to those of human rights treaty bodies. This body should have the authority to issue general recommendations, view state reports and receive individual complaints from people facing persecution.

The process of developing an ‘asylum law’ regime in South Asia must include governments, NGOs and protection agencies alike because it is important to take a holistic view of this phenomenon. Along with advocating and campaigning for the establishment of a national/regional ‘asylum law’ regime, civil society institutions must urge states that are not signatories to other international human rights law instruments to accede to them and also press those states that have acceded but have not made enabling legislation to do so.

“Governments must be more concerned about the protection of people facing persecution, rather than thinking about how a refugee regime might open the floodgates to illegal immigrants. It is a substantive law that would facilitate states to identify illegal immigrants from refugees,” says Chimni.

A step in this direction would not only be a landmark achievement in the development of asylum jurisprudence in the region, it would also be a major addition to intervention mechanisms for the protection of human rights globally.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006