The third National Lok Adalat was organised on 14 February 2015

The third National Lok Adalat was organised on 14 February 2015 throughout India involving the Supreme Court, high courts, districts courts and taluka-level courts, except in Assam and Uttar Pradesh.

It was organised under the patronage of Chief Justice of India (CJI) H L Dattu and the leadership of Supreme Court Judge Justice T S Thakur.

Nearly 56,000 cases were disposed of by the third National Lok Adalat in a single day. It also saw disbursal of Rs 265 crore as claims towards final settlement in bank recovery and cheques bounce cases.

Third Lok Adalat was organised by the National Legal Service Authority (NALSA) to disburse cases related bank recovery, cheques bounce cases, particularly under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. Several banks, financial institutions and others had participated in it.

First National Lok Adalats was held in November 2013 and had settled a record 71.50 lakh cases pending in various courts. The second National Lok Adalat was held in December 2014 and had disposed of over 1.25 crore cases.

About Lok Adalats

• Lok Adalats (people’s courts) settle dispute through conciliation and compromise. The First Lok Adalat was held in Una city in Junagarh district of Gujarat in 1982.
• Generally, Lok Adalat accepts the cases pending in the regular courts within their jurisdiction which could be settled by conciliation and compromise.
• The decision of the Lok Adalat is binding on the parties to the dispute and its order is capable of execution through legal process. No appeal lies against the order of the Lok Adalat.

India bucks the trend

Unless the world goes on a frenzy of new construction, for which there is no evidence, nuclear power will vanish from the face of the earth by 2059, according to World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014. In 1996, nuclear power accounted for 17.6 per cent of the world’s electricity. Today it has come down to 10.8 per cent and could drop further in the coming years. Fukushima put paid to Japan’s nuclear power industry. All the 48 nuclear reactors in Japan have been closed down. Germany closed eight of 17 nuclear reactors in 2012 and is in the process of phasing out the remaining nine between 2015 and 2022. Since the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of 1979 in Pennsylvania, the USA has not commissioned a single nuclear power plant, but closed five nuclear power plants since 2012 ~ Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont and two in Canada. The few reactors now under construction from Finland to Vietnam have been bogged down by inordinate delays and cost overruns and their future is uncertain.

China, Russia and India are the only countries where nuclear power has not yet gone out of style. It is therefore not surprising that India signed an agreement with Russia to build 12 nuclear reactors during President Vladimir Puttin’s one-day visit to New Delhi on 11 December. This was coupled with the signing of a contract by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited to start construction of Koodankulam 3 and 4 units. It is not clear whether the 12 include Koodankulam 3 and 4 for which the Congress-led UPA government had already signed an agreement with Russia two years ago.

Any person would normally place a repeat order if satisfied with the outcome of the first order. India entered into an agreement for Koodankulam 1 and 2 way back in 1988 with the erstwhile Soviet Union which was firmed up subsequently with Russia. It is neither possible nor expected of the Prime Minister to keep track of the progress and working of each and every project in the country. But he has the benefit of a high-power 24-member Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, the brain child of the late lamented Rajiv Gandhi. When Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister he thought having SAC to the PM was not sufficient as critical decisions were the collective responsibility of the Cabinet and he wanted a scientific and technology advisory body for his Cabinet colleagues as well. Hence the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet comprising 45 members was constituted. The chairman of the SAC to the PM is not a member of the SAC to the Cabinet but the chairman of the latter is also a member of the former. The SAC to the PM is said to be the “uppermost body that deliberates on various policy issues pertaining to science and technology,” and based on its recommendations discussed with the Prime Minister policies are implemented. The SAC to the Cabinet claims to be the “apex advisory body” on science and technology policies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had the benefit of both the advisory bodies before he entered into an agreement with President Putin to set up 12 nuclear power plants in the country in the next two decades. The sarkari scientists of the two committees have been issuing “the best and the safest” certification to the Koodankulam nuclear power project for the last two years notwithstanding the fact that the first unit continues to limp and tumble while the second unit has been cannibalised to coax the first unit produce some electricity before the 11 December summit. What is surprising is that despite the well-demonstrated appalling performance of the Koodankulam project, any further order, and that too of this magnitude, is being placed on Russia.

The first unit of the Koodankulam nuclear power plant attained criticality on 15 July 2013 and was grid-connected 69 days later. During the last 400-odd days since the grid connection, the reactor was under outage for more than 100 days and on maintenance shut-down for another 60 days. The first outage on the day of grid connection was caused due to ‘reverse power’ which means the generator instead of producing electricity became a consumer of electricity. When the Information and Control system detects a defect in the reactor system which has the potential to result in an accident, a trip is actuated leading to the release of all control rods within three seconds. Too many trips, also known as scrams, place unnecessary strain on plant components. Plant managers announced commercial generation would begin on 22 April 2014. It was postponed twice. Since 25 September the reactor has been shut down indefinitely for replacement of turbo-generator and some other repairs. There is no knowing when commercial generation will start.

The Koodankulam reactors are certified as Generation-3 and are said to be inherently safe. A study by an international team including academics from the Cochin University of Science and Technology, Bremen University, Germany, and Sussex University, the United Kingdom, based entirely on official documents from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, NPCIL and their Russian counterparts, came to the conclusion that major equipment like the reactor pressure vessel and the polar cane were obsolete and counterfeit. The polar crane, a safety related equipment, was found to have only 80 per cent of its rated capacity. Many of the equipment rendered surplus post-Chernobyl and post-Soviet cancellation of more than 25 VVER-1000 reactors had been incorporated in the Koodankulam power plant.

Dr BK Subbarao, nuclear physicist who designed a pressurised water reactor for Indian Navy’s nuclear submarine, in an article described the Koodankulam reactor as a speaking tree. “Since her marriage with the grid, KKNPP-1 has spoken for 4,701 hours in 14 episodes. She spoke for 56 days during the first 90 days. Her eloquence is being progressively replaced by silence. During the past 90 days, we heard her speak only during nine days. The officials of Rosatom and NPCIL are busy in finalising the deal for the fifth and sixth reactors, while the commissioning crew at Koodankulam is experiencing the worst nightmares in their lives. In spite of all the postponements, unmet deadlines, a major accident and very high trip rates unheard of during the commissioning of any modern reactors, it is business as usual. This cannot go on. KKNPP has all the ingredients of a perfect disaster and is a global catastrophic risk. The people of the world, their children and their children’s children to be born yet, expect more proactive decisions from the Government of India at the highest level. All deals should be frozen; the fuel assemblies must be removed from the reactor core and placed in the spent fuel tank immediately before it is too late. This must be followed by an impartial safety audit by a body of independent scientists and a thorough financial audit by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India.”

The most important issue is the very decision of India to push ahead with the nuclear power programme despite it being, as of now, uneconomic compared to conventional and renewable sources of power and intrinsically hazardous as it deals with radioactive substances and there is as yet no foolproof method of waste disposal and decommissioning and disposal of obsolete plants. Globally, nuclear power is on the wane despite vigorous lobbying by the nuclear industry and its cohorts. India should not attempt to swim against the current.

A business plan for space

Who can own the moon? Or an asteroid? Or a homestead on Mars? According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, no nation can claim sovereignty over any part of any celestial rock. But the treaty is less clear on what a company or an individual can do in space—possibly because in the 1960s, the drafters of the treaty might have thought it hard to imagine a space race led by entrepreneurs rather than governments.

For companies today hoping to set up a moon colony or to mine asteroids for platinum, the ambiguity is one more hurdle in attracting investors.
“There has been a chicken-egg conundrum to create a lunar legal framework,” says John Thornton, the chief executive of Astrobotic Technology, a Pittsburgh company that hopes to become the first private company to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon and win the Google Lunar X Prize. “How do you get businesses to invest in the moon if there is no legal framework versus how do you get a legal framework if there are no business operations?”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which licenses private space launchings in the United States, has now provided some clarity.
In reply to a request by Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada, one of those space entrepreneurs, the FAA said it would make sure that American companies did not interfere with one another on the moon or elsewhere.

“We recognise the private sector’s need to protect its assets and personnel on the moon or on other celestial bodies,” wrote George C Nield, the agency’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, in a letter dated December 22. The Reuters news service reported on the letter earlier this month.

Bigelow is developing inflatable habitats for outer space, and this year, a small Bigelow structure is to be added to the International Space Station. In the coming years, it plans to launch larger inflatables as private space stations to be leased by companies or nations.

In December 2013, Bigelow asked the FAA to review a proposal for landing one of its habitats on the moon for use as a lunar base. Bigelow said it might conduct scientific research or commercial endeavors like mining. Robert Bigelow, the company’s founder, has said he is aiming to establish his lunar base around 2025, and the company wanted to start clarifying issues.

“It’s best to avoid these problems now, before operations begin,” says Michael Gold, Bigelow’s DC director of operations and business growth.
In its proposal, Bigelow suggested that the FAA leverage its authority to review payloads and license launchings. In essence, Bigelow requested that the FAA agree not to issue a license to another American company that would land at the same place.

The action does not bestow ownership of the moon on Bigelow or anyone else, and the FAA does not have jurisdiction over foreign companies. But with the FAA’s issuing licenses to American companies, Gold says the state department could more easily work out agreements with other countries regulating their private companies.

“If you don’t have that agency and that paper, then it becomes a Wild West scenario,” Gold says. “This decision has real immediate and real impact on investors who require security and predictability.”

Gold says the FAA’s decision did not violate the Outer Space Treaty and actually helped fulfill the United States’ obligations under the part of the treaty that states, “The activities of nongovernmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate state party to the treaty.”

What is less clear is whether private companies can profit from the moon or other places in space. A follow-up international agreement in 1979, the Moon Treaty, emphatically said no, banning ownership of the moon and other celestial bodies, and declaring that the moon’s riches were to be shared among nations, especially developing countries. But many nations, including the United States, Russia and China, have not signed the treaty.

In Congress last year, Representatives Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, and Derek Kilmer, Democrat of Washington, introduced a bill called the Asteroids Act, which would give companies ownership over any material they mined from asteroids. At least two American companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have announced plans to mine asteroids. After a House sub-committee hearing in September, the bill did not progress, but a spokesman for Posey says it would be reintroduced this year.

Not measure for measure

With a plethora of government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting one another, it is the government’s duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators

Purchasing Power Parity or PPP has validated a long held surmise that the poorer countries are not as badly off as they are made out to be nor the richer ones as well off as they seem. A nominal GDP ranking puts India at tenth place while a PPP one pushes it up to third, behind the United States and China. The Big Mac Index of The Economist loosely corroborates. Travelling to expensive parts of the world from our country brings this home to us tellingly.

A 2011 issue of The Economist published a controversial piece — “Comparing Indian states and territories with countries: An Indian Summary” — which purported to show that for all its size and population, the economy of Uttar Pradesh was roughly just that of Qatar, and Maharashtra’s no bigger than Singapore’s, while that of Tamil Nadu was no larger than Angola’s — all very confusing and probably wrong when in PPP terms, India as a whole is placed third in the world. So, where do we stand and what standard should one pitch for to measure ourselves against the rest of the world?

A land of opportunities

We would be wise to guardedly settle for PPP. The world too has done likewise. India, like those of several other similarly placed countries, does have an economy worth several times larger than its nominal GDP indicates. This fact has not gone unnoticed where it matters, especially in the boardrooms of multinationals or corporate India which indefatigably seek to “add an inch to every Indiaman’s shirt tail”. Some strong endorsement for this comes from the management guru, the late C.K. Prahalad. Unsurprisingly, for companies like Suzuki and Honda, India has emerged as their largest market for cars and two-wheelers and Vodafone, despite an unresolved retrospective tax issue, is very much here to stay. India of course enjoys the sheer strength of numbers. Everything that happens here, as in China, has to necessarily be on a gargantuan scale — invariably in several millions. It takes an outsider to marvel at our scale and make us conscious of it. But the scale exists!

“The game changer will be when India configures the internal rankings of its States for global consumption.”

After China, India has more mobile owners than any other country. The smartphone revolution has just hit us big and India is more likely than not to emerge as the second largest market for that too. India is also one of two largest motorcycle manufacturers. The country continues its run as one of two largest producers of rice and a third of wheat as well as fruits and milk. Of course we know that in per capita in agro and dairy products, we are still way behind much smaller producers but are likely to get “there” thanks to developments in science technology. In all these segments India is sitting on the cusp of an opportunity. If the green revolution surprised us, managed right, the future growth in agriculture will astound the world.

E-commerce is another area we mistakenly thought we had lost out on. Just as we were despairing at the success of Alibaba in China, we now see serious investment coming into e-retailing. It is not for nothing that Japan’s SoftBank is investing heavily in Snapdeal; Ratan Tata, ever ready to spot an emerging opportunity, had bet on it much earlier. The best known of India’s e-retailers, Flipkart, has attracted significant investors too. Meanwhile, Amazon, even as it threatens to leave, is expanding its footprint here. India, it turns out, is a glass half full and filling rather than half-empty and emptying.

Social indicators and evidence

But before we start rejoicing we need to reconcile flattering national economic indicators with some very odious social ones. India’s ranking in the UNDP’s Human Development Report (2011) is 134. In gender inequality, it comes out marginally better but still a rotten 129th out of 187 countries. Then on the ease of doing business, India is a miserable 134th, pretty much at the bottom of the heap. So things are that horrible. Or are they only being made out to be terrible?

Given the scale of poverty in India, it is very difficult not to make these rankings stick and lot of visual evidence exists. Mukesh Ambani’s massive residence in Mumbai coexists with a sea of slums nearby. Get out of many of India’s airports, and most especially Mumbai, and one is confronted with every kind of misery one can think of. Stop at the traffic lights and the poor of India come knocking on your car window. The better off in our country live in sanitised islands of relative calm defended by the very kind drawn from the ranks of those it seeks to keep out. But as we all know, visuals, even powerful ones, do not so much reflect reality as point out the shocking that we tend to ignore or deliberately disregard.

Statewide indices for the world

The country as a whole is nowhere as bad as these indices show but together they do bring out that India is a poor bet only because we have been inept at better stating our strengths while unfailingly adept at inviting attention to our weaknesses. The question to ask is “should India be taken as a country at all for such indicators to stick”? India is more populous than the whole of Africa and roughly equal to Europe and the Americas combined on that count. We need a better way of being compared — clearly, it is absurd to rank the country alongside say Lesotho or Guinea Bissau — the first has a population of less than three million and the other two. Singapore, for all its achievements, is about the size of Bengaluru and its suburbs.

Apart from the absurdity of comparing apples with ladoos, such indices, as The Economist notes, “blacken a country’s name”. It can, as it states, also “spread like wildfire on the web”. India needs to proof itself against this by coming up with some convincing measures of its own that attract rather than turn away potential investors using available data without tweaking. A start can be made by leaving the country’s PPP ranking alone while more effectively highlighting and deploying region-wise as well as State-wise indices for everything, from gender inequality to ease of doing business as well as infrastructure and migration.

Internal rankings of States, as what a leading Indian magazine brings out annually, is so much like water off a duck’s back, that the game changer will be when the country configures the rankings for global consumption. This will become particularly important now when States are competing with each other for investments. This should also make State governments sit up and take note that governance matters. Chhattisgarh is an early mover here. It is carpet bombing the print and television media with advertisements that project it as an investment destination of choice, with a visionary Chief Minister as its efficient CEO. States with poor social indices will strive to match and possibly overtake the better off ones, creating a virtuous circle. Then, there is something called shaming that every State would like to avoid.

Migrant labour

The debt the richer parts of the country owe to its poorer places is one of the dirty secrets we hardly talk about, but look at the vacant eyes of an emaciated young security guard in Kochi or the young woman at a construction site carrying material up precarious ladders in Bengaluru, and you immediately connect to their homes far away.

Millions are spilling out of India’s poorer States to run services in the better off ones. Mumbai would not run for a day without migrant workers and Kerala — the entire State — would come to a grinding halt if the near three million from Assam and Bengal as well as U.P., Odisha and Bihar were to en-masse go elsewhere. The Government of India would therefore do well to bring out an annual State-wise status report on migrant labour detailing where they come from and the jobs they do and how much they contribute to State economies rather than ungratefully treat them as parasites. This should cool rampant xenophobia of the kind the Shiva Sena promotes and make us grateful for a borderless India.

We now learn that the government is about to release the religious mix of the country as brought out by the 2011 census. Leaks indicate that the number of Muslims has gone up marginally, but where? In its most miserable parts, where along with a majority of Hindus, most lead ultra squalid lives and are crying to get better. The most important message, that the Muslims even in very backward parts constitute the underclass, cannot be overemphasised though of course some migration from Bangladesh into Assam and West Bengal cannot be discounted.

We need statistics we can trust and be informed. Unfortunately, with a plethora of agencies, government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting each another, we have very little chance of being properly informed. It is the government’s duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators. Only this can lead to more mature public understanding and reaction than one which suggests that Hinduism is in danger or Muslims are consciously having more children. In the noise, one can ignore that fertility rates have fallen among the Muslims too and if they too could derive the benefits of economic development through education, their numbers will fall just as fast. The last especially deserves to be widely known. In context, statistics can lead to better understandings; deployed out of context, they can kill.

Bumps ahead for Financial Code future

A year-and-a-half has passed since the panel led by Justice B N Srikrishna submitted its report on reforms for Indian financial markets as the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC).

So far, the government has appointed a task force and started the work of setting up four bodies suggested in theFSLRC - Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA), Resolution Corporation (RC), Financial Securities Appellate Tribunal(FSAT) and Financial Data Management Centre (FDMC). The deadline for the task force is October but it is likely to miss it. The infrastructure would be up and running only till the end of the year.

Even though the previous United Progressive Alliance and the current National Democratic Alliance governments agree on a majority of the recommendations under the FSLRC, there are certain areas where the Arun Jaitley-led finance ministry is mulling changes. In legislative reforms under the Indian Financial Code (IFC), the government has started consultation to tweak provisions that define the role and scope of jurisdiction of the seven bodies suggested by the panel.

"We are modifying draft of the IFC. In the best-case scenario, modified draft law IFC should be ready by the end of this year after wider consultation," said a finance ministry official. The changes are being brought as many sections of the financial market do not agree with all the legislative reforms suggested by the FSLRC report.

"The report seeks to give excessive powers to the Unified Financial Authority (UFA). What happens to the other regulators working to reform their respective markets?" said a regulatory source.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan has been vocal in his criticism of FSLRC. He has not shied away from calling some of the recommendations "schizophrenic" on public forums.

At a public forum, Rajan has said: "I will argue that there are two fundamental areas of tension. One is the oversight of regulators. The FSLRC suggests laws that do not micromanage… At the same time, the FSLRC wants to check and balance the activities of regulators through judicial oversight. Too much of checks and balances could completely vitiate the flexibility afforded by rewriting laws. We need to find a proper balance, and the balance may vary with our level of development. I worry we have not thought through this fully. The second area of tension is the appropriate size and scope of regulators. The FSLRC's recommendations seem somewhat schizophrenic here." Inspite of objections from certain quarters, the government is keen to take the reforms forward and the operationalisation of FSAT and FDMC might find a mention in the Budget this month.

But not all is perfect in harmonising all the financial products under one umbrella. The first step in having consumer interest at the heart of IFC was the uniform Know Your Customer and a uniform repository for all financial products. The announcement for it came in Jaitley's maiden Budget but almost a year on, only products of securities market and commodities market have in-principle approvals ready to have a uniform repository.

"Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India and Securities Exchange Board of India are yet to agree to share the database of consumers," said a source from a depository service provider. It is pending from banks, which have the largest consumer base.

Although, the FSLRC report targets and makes customers a priority, it hasn't hinted on the realisation that banks are the core of misspelling of financial products. "So far, the RBI has shown little initiative to tackle this issue and there's nothing in the committee's recommended new structure that would lead to any improvement. An external agency, Financial Redress Agency that responds to consumer complaints could do little else but respond on a case-by-case basis," said Dhirendra Kumar, chief executive officer, Value Research, a mutual fund tracker, earlier.

Though consumer protection is at the heart of Indian Financial Code, the fact remains that the financial machinery will take some time to make that a reality.

7 SAMURAI OF FINANCIAL MARKETS

Public Debt Management Agency: Will manage India's debt and act as an investment manager - task force in place being chaired by Dhirendra Swarup   Resolution Corporation: Will address insolvency, distress and bankruptcy issues in financial firms - task force being chaired by M Damodaran   Financial Redress Agency: Will redress consumer grievance against a financial services provider which has already been addressed once by the company   Financial Sector Appellate Tribunal: Will be a one-stop court to address grievance against regulators and address cases across financial sector - task force in place being chaired by N K Sodhi   Financial Stability and Development Council: Will be the extension for the already in existence informal body the pioneer body under it is Financial Data Management Centre which will act as a uniform repository of information for all financial products - task force being chaired by Subir Gokaran   Unified Financial Authority: Merger of regulatory bodies Sebi, FMC, IRDA, PFRDA and some elements of RBI   Reserve Bank of India: Monetary policy, micro prudential regulations on banking and payments, and consumer protection

Re Roadmap 2030 – NITI Aayog’s First Initiative

The “Report India’s Renewable Electricity Roadmap 2030—Toward Accelerated Renewable Electricity Deployment” was released at the Renewable Energy Global Investors Meet & Expo (RE-INVEST 2015) here today. The report was brought out by NITI Aayog with support of CII, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation and RAP (Regulatory Assistance Project), a global non-profit group, talks about the current scenario of renewable energy in India and what needs to be done for its accelerated deployment to address energy security concerns. Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Coal, Power and New & Renewable Energy, lauded NITI Aayog for the report and said that it has instilled a lot of hope for following more ambitious targets. “We need to create an enabling environment with respect to clearance, land acquisition and other regulatory support.” . The Minister suggested that the land owners, who provide their land for setting up renewable energy projects, could be given a stake in the projects as an incentive. He urged NITI Aayog to help in creating some innovative model for the RE sector. He addressed the panelists while sitting in the audience. . Commenting on the launch of the report, Smt Sindhushree Khullar, CEO, NITI Aayog- Govt of India stated that this is the first initiative of the Aayog. “Energy and renewable energy is a core area in India. We need to see actual movement on whatever the report suggests about,” said Smt Khullar. . Mr Deepak Gupta, Senior Programme Manager- Power, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, said that the report suggests possible roadmap to achieve ambitious targets in the renewable sector after assessing several best practices around the world. . The panelists were of the opinion that India needs to keep renewable energy as a matter of national importance. They suggested that the need of the hour is to move away from the current practice and make RE as an integral part of the power sector. For this a comprehensive national policy framework would be required for smoother renewable projects development in the country. . Mr Mackay Miller, Technology Innovation Analyst, NREL, congratulated the Indian government for its ambitious RE targets and intent to attain that goal. He suggested that there is need to think about policy and financing mechanism so that investments take place. . Smt Varsha Joshi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, lauded the report terming it as a good effort by the compilers. “It’s time that India has to look at RE as a resource across the states. There are a lot of things to be learned and a lot to be done,” she said. . Shri Sumant Sinha talked about thinking ‘out of the box’ to operationalise the issues highlighted in the report. “Why can’t we make renewable energy as the backbone of India’s electricity generation? We have to re-think our entire reliability on coal. Discoms are reluctant on buying renewable power against highly subsidised conventional power,” Shri Sinha noted. . Getting fund is seen as one of the major challenges. However, Shri Rajat Misra, VP, SBI Capital Markets Ltd is of the opinion that funding is not a constraint if there is good policy in place. . Shri SK Soonee, CEO, POSOCO, raised the issue of grid as one of the major hurdles in increasing renewable potential. The experts stressed that renewable energy could be the backbone of Indian power scenario provided existing issues are addressed. They objected to having coal as the preferred power choice just because it is available beneath the earth. . Smt Khullar stated that there is misconception in India that renewable energy is for rich. She asked everyone to be a part of this movement in renewable energy. “We are starting this journey with great hope and we should walk together to make it happen,” Smt Khullar concluded. .

Straw in the wind

What does the decision to save groundwater in Punjab orHaryana have to do with air pollution in Delhi? Plenty. We need to know this because many actions have unintended and deadly consequences.

Groundwater extraction for rice cultivation has created a big problem for Punjab. Over time, water levels have dropped precipitously in the state. To deal with this, it enacted the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act, 2009, which prohibits farmers from transplanting rice in fields before June 10 of each year, or close to the onset of the monsoons. Haryana already had this law. Farmers who defy the law are fined Rs 10,000 per hectare per month. The two states are already recording improvement in their water table.

The downside is that the delay in planting rice results in delayed harvest, which leaves the farmer with little time to prepare the field for the next wheat crop.

This is not all. Over the years, farming has become mechanised. Today, combine harvesters are used to cut paddy. This leaves straw and stubble on the ground. With the planting period between crops shortened, farmers need their fields quickly, so they burn the straw in the field.

Satellite images of the period are stark: red dots of fire are seen across the plains of Punjab and Haryana. A study by the Haryana Space Application Centre, commissioned by the state pollution board, found that between October and November 2013, over 20 per cent of the state's paddy area - some 200,000 hectares - was burnt. Now, when the wind blows, the smoke, full of particles and other toxins, reaches the already polluted airshed of Delhi and its vicinity. People choke.

We have, thus, set into motion a spiral of events that will have major health impacts. On the one hand are the survival emissions of the paddy-wheat farmers and on the other hand luxury emissions of the owners of private cars and diesel sports utility vehicles (SUVs). All add to pollution. The airshed is not separated by class or region.

So what can be done? It is important to note that the two farming states are doing their bit to control this fire. Haryana banned burning of rice straw a few years ago and has made it a cognizable offence under the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. In 2014, Punjab followed suit. News of this is broadcast through mass media and in both states farmers have even been prosecuted for setting fire to their fields. This is more than what happens to polluting factories or diesel car owners.

The real solution, however, lies in finding viable alternatives to the use of straw. This is where big opportunities lie. The fact is that rice straw is a resource; it can be used to generate renewable energy and, thus, reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Additionally, if straw is ploughed back into the soil, it will sequester organic carbon content in the soil, increasing its fertility and also storing carbon. More importantly, not burning straw will reduce black carbon emissions, which are a short-lived climate pollutant, called SLCP in climate jargon. Unlike carbon dioxide, black carbon does not have a long life in the atmosphere, but it is a potent greenhouse gas. Not releasing black carbon into the atmosphere will, therefore, bring quick climate benefits. Rice farmers in Punjab and Haryana can be big players in the climate change story. But all this needs to be handled with care, so that attention on open burning by farmers does not mean that the emphasis on the real culprit in climate change is diluted.

Alternatives exist and are being tried. Punjab, for instance, provides a higher tariff for energy generated from rice straw. As a result, it has set up some 200 megawatts of power plants that use straw. The big obstacle is to bale the rice straw to transport it to power plants. Currently, the state is providing a subsidy to farmers to procure bailers to compress the residue, but more support is required.

Then there is farm equipment that can till the rice straw into the soil while simultaneously sowing wheat seeds. The Haryana and Punjab governments are providing subsidy on this equipment, but it is also insufficient. As a result, farmers continue to burn straw, pollute the air and damage health.

It is time we took responsibility for these unintended consequences. One way would be to pay rice farmers of Haryana and Punjab for providing the ecological and climate service of rice straw reuse and sequestration. The payment should come partly from the people of Delhi and other cities who want clean air. The rest should come from carbon capture service. It would require the world to rethink the infamous carbon credits scheme, so that for once it is the farmers and the poor who benefit. This way we all can win.