Delhi: The ecological disaster to be.

Visits to many European countries and their capitals sometimes mandatorily include a walk down the river side or lake shores. The river/lake ecosystem is carefully maintained and managed not only from an ecological point of view but also from a tourism point of view. The same cannot be said of Delhi and Yamuna. Crossing the Yamuna over to East Delhi, means a foul nauseating stench along with a sorry side of a dying river system. The growth, population and administration failures have killed a once flourishing eco system.

And if that was not enough, the Common Wealth Games 2010 will ensure that the final nail on the Yamuna coffin is pressed down in a haste. There is a hyperactivity along the floodplains of Yamuna as shopping malls, residential and commercial complexes and now a 47.3 hectare $40 million CWG village do quick and irreversible damage to the fertile alluvial plains of Yamuna.

In as far as CWG is concerned, the inability of the government to plan and execute the games infrastructure on time, has induced a knee jerk reaction. The quickest and easiest development alternatives are being invested upon largely ignoring and discounting the long term economic and environmental perils of the actions. The 10 day CWG will showcase the strides that India has made in the recent times and will spawn a wanton destruction of the environment.

Yamuna is already one of the most polluted rivers in the world and the Delhi stretch is particularly a disaster for the river eco-system. The Governments, ministries and departments have "action plans" to their credit. The first one being a Rs.10000 crore farce which did little and achieved a zilch. A second (better and bigger) plan is on the anvil. This one is for Rs.20000 crores and there is little or no doubt to the discerning thought that this money will serve more to increasing bank balances of the influential and responsible members of the system than doing anything on Yamuna.

Also, the unrestricted growth of the city has pressured the river system and attempts to clean it have been hampered by high population density of the city, unplanned city development, dumping of sewage and solid waste into the river, inadequate government monitoring and mismanagement of projects (like the Rs.10000 crore Yamuna Action Plan Fiasco). Delhi pumps out 3296 million litres of sewage to Yamuna per day. The systematic encroachments (by housing and comercial complexes) and building of walls and bunds on the flood plains have led to drying up of lakes and ponds in East Delhi. The Ground water levels are falling by 1 to 3 metres per year in many parts of Delhi. This large scale devastation of the Yamuna river system will impact water security of Delhi in Long term and will alter the character of the river.

Amidst all this, a glimmer of hope have been efforts of the Jal Biradari (National Water Brotherhood), who are raising a grass roots campaign which involves people in terms of creating awareness, educating masses to stop polluting the river, stopping encroachments, rainwater harvesting, better management of water resources and raising the citizen activism bit around the Yamuna issue. However, unlike the political awakening that followed 26/11 Mumbai, a trigger is what may be required to get the threshold citizen activism on the same.

Source Sites:

http://www.tarunbharatsangh.org/yamuna/jal_satyagraha.htm

http://www.tarunbharatsangh.org/yamuna/index.htm

http://www.indiaedunews.net/In-focus/September_2007/Yamuna_river_finds_new_saviour_-_tech_savvy_youth_2061/print.asp

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=096eb8c8-dbc6-414d-bfb6-4df32a0d2d97&&Headline=EMSatyagraha+%2fEMto+save+Yamuna+riverbed

http://www.toxicslink.org/nalert-view.php?id=179

Of Economy, Environment and Human Development: Failure of the GDP concept!

Gross Domestic product (GDP) as a progress indicator/paradigm was a part of the post 1940s era world reconstruction. Over the last 70 years GDP has become a construct for mesauring guman progress and all economic policy making is directed squarely at increasing/maximizing GDP! GDP as a part of national accounts was created by Richard Stone and James Meade with support from John Maynard Keynes as a means to keep track of the economic activity in a state.

However, the challenges faced by the world have now grown from economic/financial to environmental in nature. Then there are challenges on the human development side of things as well. Unfortunately, both the environment and the socio demographic human state is not measured as a indictator of progress. For example, the rich oil producing countries in middle east are the richest in nature and yet most parts of it have people living in the 17th century with no access to basic amenities. Likewise, China is a model for economic growth and yet its Human rights index and environment development index is amongst the poorest!

Interestingly Richard Stone, in his Nobel Memorial Speech in 1984 had himself stated that apart from economic growth, the analysis of a society's progress has to be based on socio demographic as well as the environmental phenoma. To be quoted "...environmental issues, such as poluution, land use and non renewable resources offer plenty of scope for accounting". Unfortunately, the world has continued to pay attention to the economic activity side stepping the environmental and human issues.

Given the socio demographic and environmental issues faced, the world today needs to create additional metrices such as Human Developmental Index and Carbon Footprint. There is a possibility that three metrics may not be preffered, in which case GDP has to be recaliberated to reflect genuine values to things like air and water pollution, deforestation, land degradation, use of alternate energies, health, education, crime etc. The result would be a new GDP number that would truely reflect value generated/consumed by human activities. A striking instance of how the new GDP calliberation would affect the old GDP system is the case of Uttar Pradesh. In just accounting for water quality in rivers in UP, 17.5% of the old GDP would be reduced! Imagine China going from a 11% GDP growth economy to 3% economy GDP growth economy because of the heavy inductrial pollution and bad human development indicators! US would go negative by two digit decimals!

What this would also mean is viability studies that are more rounded. For instance the economic surplus because of a new dam could get negated fully and more by the deficit in the ecological shifts and change in population demographics! That would provide an excellent allround development metric. It is time to move towarsd this sooner!