NEW DELHI: People in the city are getting the whiff of two different worlds: one that lives along the Yamuna; the other, which is enlivened by the Elbe.
Visitors to 'The Yamuna-Elbe - Public.Art.Outreach Project' on Wednesday were actually offered two bowls that had water from both these rivers. They were asked to smell the water and then share their feelings with a German artist, who later put them down on the canvas.
The location of the exhibition - the Yamuna bank - has created an impact. It's happening in the area that will be developed into the Golden Jubilee Park. The entire span of the Old Yamuna Bridge is visible from the banks; the soft, uneven ground has patches of tall grass, and an attenuated form of the Yamuna (replete with filth) flows by. "This is a historic setting. The bridge was built in 1866. It's a complete span and it is still there. You should see it at night. It is itself art," says curator Ravi Aggarwal.
An initiative of the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan (New Delhi), the City of Hamburg and the Delhi government, the project will include an art exhibition with the two rivers as theme, and a range of activities, including walks, music shows and discussions.
Artists Sheba Chhachhi and Asim Waqif placed their works on the river itself. Chhachhi places a 'form' - "It can be anything, a seed or a human body" - made of thermocol and iron wrapped in bandages. "The idea is of a wounded organic form," says Chhachhi, "A metaphor for wounded river." In the dark, flames (created with the help of a projector on the bank), engulf it.
"Water that has a lot of toxins can catch fire," she adds. Her work is best viewed from atop a staircase put together with bags of sand with excerpts from the Yamuna Ashtakam, a 14-century hymn to the Himalayas. Waqif's work included a row of plastic bottles tied to a rope that was dragged through the river by a motor-boat.
Bottles also featured in the work of Atul Bhalla, who has also participated in the Hamburg part of the Yamuna-Elbe project. Giant bottles were embedded in the ground and had questions from the 54 questions Yaksha asked Yudhisthira in the Mahabharata. It invites viewers to contemplate their treatment of the river, the attempts to "control the river", the waste, and the "ecological catastrophe" it could all lead to. Gigi Scaria's "Fountain of Purification" - a 24-foot tower representing an apartment complex - draws water from the Yamuna, runs it through a few levels of purification, and dispenses clean water from the top.
There's also a lot for the visitors to do at the exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition will be asked to sniff the water of the Yamuna and the Elbe and express what they feel for "research for an Elbe-Yamuna perfume" that Berlin-based artist, Ines Lechleitner, is developing with the help of Vienna-based Indian perfumer, Yogesh Kumar. "I've brought Elbe in a bottle," says Lechleitner. She conducted the same exercise in Hamburg and recorded the reactions of those who'd tried it. "I'm working on a perfume that combines my associations with the two rivers," she says.
Lechleitner is one of the five German artists featured at the exhibition; Jochen Lempert, Michael Clegg, Martin Guttmann and Nana Petzet are the others. Petzet has created a biodiversity patch using an existing patch of grass and planting photographs of birds, insects and flowers in them. "A patch is not just a patch, it's full of life," says Aggarwal. The event in Hamburg, says curator Nina Kalenbach, was different in that it included artists from countries other than India and Germany. "There are a lot of artists in Europe, who are working on research-art," says Kalenbach.
Golden Jubilee Park was chosen by Aggarwal. Toxics Link is his day job and this is his first shot at being a curator. There are bamboo benches and light poles and an amphitheatre made of piles of gunny bags with soil from the riverbank. "This place is a cusp between Old Delhi and New Delhi. New things are coming up here. It's like the city is seeking a new proposition," he says. The exhibition will continue till November 20.
Friday, November 11, 2011
NGO for demolition of Games Village (The Asian Age) 5 Nov 11
As various Commonwealth Games projects are already under the scrutiny of different probe agencies, a new front was sought to be opened on Tuesday in the Supreme Court with an NGO seeking demolition of the Games Village as it is allegedly built on Yamuna bed in violation of “wetland” norms.
A public interest litigation filed by the NGO, Foundation of Indian Wetland, came up for hearing before a bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices A.K. Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar with its counsel highlighting the “violations” of wetland norms in the construction of CWG village.
“Wetlands are nature’s bounty. They help maintain the delicate ecological balance and need to be protected for that reason. Flood plains of Yamuna are such wetlands,” the PIL said.
“Wetlands are regulators of water flow. Many a rivers remain a reliable source of water throughout the year because their flow is impeded by swamp lands so that seasonal downpours drain away slowly and water continues to flow during the dry seasons. Wetland also protect many of our sources of drinking water,” the NGO stated.
Claiming that it had opposed all types of constructions on Yamuna bed, the NGO said since the CWG complex has served its purpose, all the buildings constructed there “illegally” should be demolished to restore the flood plains to its original form.
In support of its demand, the NGO cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hinchlal Tiwari case of 2001, in which it had ordered demolition of all structures raised on a wetland in Sant Ravidas Nagar, UP.
However, during the hearing, the CJI reminded its counsel Krishnan Venugopal about another order of the apex court related to the Yamuna bed construction with regard to Akashdham Temple case.
The top court reminded that in that case, the government had placed on record the findings of experts that the construction in the area did not violate any environment norms.
In view of this, the NGO’s counsel sought two weeks’ time to study the order related to the Akshardham case and prepare his case accordingly.
A public interest litigation filed by the NGO, Foundation of Indian Wetland, came up for hearing before a bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices A.K. Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar with its counsel highlighting the “violations” of wetland norms in the construction of CWG village.
“Wetlands are nature’s bounty. They help maintain the delicate ecological balance and need to be protected for that reason. Flood plains of Yamuna are such wetlands,” the PIL said.
“Wetlands are regulators of water flow. Many a rivers remain a reliable source of water throughout the year because their flow is impeded by swamp lands so that seasonal downpours drain away slowly and water continues to flow during the dry seasons. Wetland also protect many of our sources of drinking water,” the NGO stated.
Claiming that it had opposed all types of constructions on Yamuna bed, the NGO said since the CWG complex has served its purpose, all the buildings constructed there “illegally” should be demolished to restore the flood plains to its original form.
In support of its demand, the NGO cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hinchlal Tiwari case of 2001, in which it had ordered demolition of all structures raised on a wetland in Sant Ravidas Nagar, UP.
However, during the hearing, the CJI reminded its counsel Krishnan Venugopal about another order of the apex court related to the Yamuna bed construction with regard to Akashdham Temple case.
The top court reminded that in that case, the government had placed on record the findings of experts that the construction in the area did not violate any environment norms.
In view of this, the NGO’s counsel sought two weeks’ time to study the order related to the Akshardham case and prepare his case accordingly.
Irreversible climate change in five years, says energy agency (The Hindu) 11 Nov 11
Fiona Harvey
The world is likely to build so many new fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever,” according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
Anything built from now on that which produces carbon will continue to do so for decades to come, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this infrastructure is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.
“The door is closing,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA). “I am very worried — if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.” Every month now counts: if the world is to stay below 2°C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world's existing infrastructure is already producing 80 per cent of that “carbon budget”, according to a new analysis by the IEA, published on Wednesday. This gives an ever-narrowing gap in which to reform the global economy on to a low-carbon footing.
If current trends continue, and we go on building high-carbon energy generation, then by 2015 at least 90 per cent of the available “carbon budget” will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all — the whole of the “carbon budget” will be spoken for, according to the IEA's calculations.
Forthcoming talks in Durban
Birol's warning comes at a crucial moment in international negotiations on climate change, as governments gear up for the next fortnight of talks in Durban, South Africa, from late November. “If we do not have an international agreement, whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to [holding temperatures to 2°C of warming] will be closed forever,” said Birol.
But governments around the world are preparing to postpone yet again a speedy conclusion to the negotiations. Originally, the aim was to agree a successor to the 1997 Kyoto protocol, the only binding international agreement on emissions, after its current provisions expire in 2012. But after years of setbacks, an increasing number of countries — including the U.K., Japan and Russia — now favour postponing the talks for several years.
Both Russia and Japan have spoken in recent weeks of aiming for an agreement in 2018 or 2020, and the U.K. has supported this move. Greg Barker, the U.K.'s Climate Change Minister, told a meeting: “We need China, the U.S. especially, the rest of the Basic countries [Brazil, South Africa, India and China] to agree. If we can get this by 2015 we could have an agreement ready to click in by 2020.”
Birol said this would clearly be too late. Nor is this a problem of the developing world, as some commentators have sought to frame it. In the U.K., Europe and the U.S., there are multiple plans for new fossil-fuelled power stations that would contribute significantly to global emissions over the coming decades.
Emissions have risen
It was revealed in May that an IEA analysis found emissions had risen by a record amount in 2010 despite the worst recession for 80 years. Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel, a rise of 1.6Gt on the previous year. At the time, Birol said that constraining global warming to moderate levels would be “only a nice utopia” unless drastic action was taken.
The November 9 research adds to that finding, by showing in detail how current choices on building new energy and industrial infrastructure are likely to commit the world to much higher emissions for the next few decades, blowing apart hopes of containing the problem to manageable levels. The IEA's data is regarded as the gold standard in emissions and energy, and it is widely regarded as one of the most conservative in outlook — making today's warning all the more stark.
The central problem is that most of the industrial infrastructure already in existence around the world — the fossil-fuelled power stations, the emissions-spewing factories, the inefficient transport and buildings — are already contributing to the current high level of emissions, and will continue to do so for decades to come. Carbon dioxide, once released into the atmosphere, stays there and continues to have a warming effect for about a century, and industrial infrastructure is built to have a useful life of several decades at least.
Yet, despite intensifying warnings from scientists over the past two decades, the new infrastructure even now being built is constructed along the same lines as the old, which means that there is a “lock-in” effect — high-carbon infrastructure built today or in the next five years will contribute as much to the stock of emissions in the atmosphere as previous generations.
This “lock-in” effect is the single most important factor increasing the danger of runaway climate change, according to the IEA in its annual World Energy Outlook, published on Wednesday.
Fukushima effect
Climate scientists estimate that global warming of 2°C above pre-industrial levels marks the limit of safety, beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible. Though such estimates are necessarily imprecise — warming of as little as 1.5°C could cause dangerous sea level rises and an increased risk of extreme weather — the limit of 2°C is now inscribed in international accords, including the partial agreement signed at Copenhagen in 2009, by which the biggest developed and developing countries for the first time agreed to curb their greenhouse gas output.
Another factor likely to increase emissions is the decision by some governments to abandon nuclear energy, following the Fukushima incident in Japan early this year. “The shift away from nuclear worsens the situation,” said Birol. If countries turn away from nuclear energy, the result could be an increase in emissions equivalent to the current emissions of Germany and France combined. Much more investment in renewable energy will be required to make up the gap, but how that would come about is unclear at present.
Birol also warned that China — the world's biggest emitter — would have to take on a much greater role in combating climate change.
In addition, by 2035 at the latest, China's cumulative emissions since 1900 are likely to exceed those of the EU, which will further weaken Beijing's argument that developed countries should take on more of the burden of emissions reduction as they carry more of the responsibility for past emissions.
In a recent interview, China's top climate change official, Xie Zhenhua, called on developing countries to take a greater part in the talks, while insisting that developed countries must sign up to a continuation of the Kyoto protocol — something only the European Union is willing to do. His words were greeted cautiously by other participants in the talks.
The IEA's World Energy Outlook, published annually, provides the touchstone for global energy trends. This year's outlook is unusually gloomy, following one of the deepest recessions on record for the developed world.
The IEA said: “There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is under way. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable five per cent in 2010, pushing CO{-2} emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn.” Meanwhile, an “unacceptably high” number of people — about 1.3bn — still lack access to electricity. If people are to be lifted out of poverty, this must be solved — but providing people with renewable forms of energy generation is still expensive. (Fiona Harvey is the environment correspondent.) — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
The world is likely to build so many new fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever,” according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
Anything built from now on that which produces carbon will continue to do so for decades to come, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this infrastructure is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.
“The door is closing,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA). “I am very worried — if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.” Every month now counts: if the world is to stay below 2°C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world's existing infrastructure is already producing 80 per cent of that “carbon budget”, according to a new analysis by the IEA, published on Wednesday. This gives an ever-narrowing gap in which to reform the global economy on to a low-carbon footing.
If current trends continue, and we go on building high-carbon energy generation, then by 2015 at least 90 per cent of the available “carbon budget” will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all — the whole of the “carbon budget” will be spoken for, according to the IEA's calculations.
Forthcoming talks in Durban
Birol's warning comes at a crucial moment in international negotiations on climate change, as governments gear up for the next fortnight of talks in Durban, South Africa, from late November. “If we do not have an international agreement, whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to [holding temperatures to 2°C of warming] will be closed forever,” said Birol.
But governments around the world are preparing to postpone yet again a speedy conclusion to the negotiations. Originally, the aim was to agree a successor to the 1997 Kyoto protocol, the only binding international agreement on emissions, after its current provisions expire in 2012. But after years of setbacks, an increasing number of countries — including the U.K., Japan and Russia — now favour postponing the talks for several years.
Both Russia and Japan have spoken in recent weeks of aiming for an agreement in 2018 or 2020, and the U.K. has supported this move. Greg Barker, the U.K.'s Climate Change Minister, told a meeting: “We need China, the U.S. especially, the rest of the Basic countries [Brazil, South Africa, India and China] to agree. If we can get this by 2015 we could have an agreement ready to click in by 2020.”
Birol said this would clearly be too late. Nor is this a problem of the developing world, as some commentators have sought to frame it. In the U.K., Europe and the U.S., there are multiple plans for new fossil-fuelled power stations that would contribute significantly to global emissions over the coming decades.
Emissions have risen
It was revealed in May that an IEA analysis found emissions had risen by a record amount in 2010 despite the worst recession for 80 years. Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel, a rise of 1.6Gt on the previous year. At the time, Birol said that constraining global warming to moderate levels would be “only a nice utopia” unless drastic action was taken.
The November 9 research adds to that finding, by showing in detail how current choices on building new energy and industrial infrastructure are likely to commit the world to much higher emissions for the next few decades, blowing apart hopes of containing the problem to manageable levels. The IEA's data is regarded as the gold standard in emissions and energy, and it is widely regarded as one of the most conservative in outlook — making today's warning all the more stark.
The central problem is that most of the industrial infrastructure already in existence around the world — the fossil-fuelled power stations, the emissions-spewing factories, the inefficient transport and buildings — are already contributing to the current high level of emissions, and will continue to do so for decades to come. Carbon dioxide, once released into the atmosphere, stays there and continues to have a warming effect for about a century, and industrial infrastructure is built to have a useful life of several decades at least.
Yet, despite intensifying warnings from scientists over the past two decades, the new infrastructure even now being built is constructed along the same lines as the old, which means that there is a “lock-in” effect — high-carbon infrastructure built today or in the next five years will contribute as much to the stock of emissions in the atmosphere as previous generations.
This “lock-in” effect is the single most important factor increasing the danger of runaway climate change, according to the IEA in its annual World Energy Outlook, published on Wednesday.
Fukushima effect
Climate scientists estimate that global warming of 2°C above pre-industrial levels marks the limit of safety, beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible. Though such estimates are necessarily imprecise — warming of as little as 1.5°C could cause dangerous sea level rises and an increased risk of extreme weather — the limit of 2°C is now inscribed in international accords, including the partial agreement signed at Copenhagen in 2009, by which the biggest developed and developing countries for the first time agreed to curb their greenhouse gas output.
Another factor likely to increase emissions is the decision by some governments to abandon nuclear energy, following the Fukushima incident in Japan early this year. “The shift away from nuclear worsens the situation,” said Birol. If countries turn away from nuclear energy, the result could be an increase in emissions equivalent to the current emissions of Germany and France combined. Much more investment in renewable energy will be required to make up the gap, but how that would come about is unclear at present.
Birol also warned that China — the world's biggest emitter — would have to take on a much greater role in combating climate change.
In addition, by 2035 at the latest, China's cumulative emissions since 1900 are likely to exceed those of the EU, which will further weaken Beijing's argument that developed countries should take on more of the burden of emissions reduction as they carry more of the responsibility for past emissions.
In a recent interview, China's top climate change official, Xie Zhenhua, called on developing countries to take a greater part in the talks, while insisting that developed countries must sign up to a continuation of the Kyoto protocol — something only the European Union is willing to do. His words were greeted cautiously by other participants in the talks.
The IEA's World Energy Outlook, published annually, provides the touchstone for global energy trends. This year's outlook is unusually gloomy, following one of the deepest recessions on record for the developed world.
The IEA said: “There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is under way. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable five per cent in 2010, pushing CO{-2} emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn.” Meanwhile, an “unacceptably high” number of people — about 1.3bn — still lack access to electricity. If people are to be lifted out of poverty, this must be solved — but providing people with renewable forms of energy generation is still expensive. (Fiona Harvey is the environment correspondent.) — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
Brick by brick, the litany of a river (The Sunday Standard) 6 Nov 11)
Last Updated : 06 Nov 2011 09:13:16 AM IST
NEW DELHI: The Yamuna is dying a slow death in Delhi. At least 40 per cent of the Yamuna floodplain has already been claimed by ‘development’ activity, and though the Delhi government appears to be doing its best to save the remainder, encroachment along the riverbed continues unabated.
Despite a moratorium on construction on the riverbed, imposed by Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor (LG) Tejendra Khanna in 2007, two controversial projects still managed to get clearance to be located on it. They are the Millennium Bus Depot (MBD) near the CWG Village, and the DMRC flats being constructed at the Yamuna Bank metro station. Neither project has, however, been cleared by the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC), set up by Parliament in 1973 to maintain the aesthetics of Delhi’s urban space. “No riverbed project, including the MBD, has got clearance from the DUAC since 2007,” said K T Ravindran, former Chairman of the commission.
The MBD was originally permitted on the Yamuna floodplain with the assurance that it would be a temporary structure for the duration of the 2010 CWG. Subsequently, the DTC has refused to budge from the 60 acre area. Their argument: as a heavy investment of `60 crore of public money has already been made, it ought to be used to park the thousands of buses required for the city’s public transport system. A PIL, seeking demolition of the depot has been filed, and the matter is pending before the Delhi High Court. When contacted, the LG’s office refused to comment, stating that the matter was sub-judice.
At Yamuna Bank metro station, mean-while, DMRC is building around 90 flats to house its maintenance staff. This is also on the floodplain, and has been opposed by DUAC, which earlier said it was misled by DMRC about the project. DUAC maintains that DMRC had not informed it about the staff quarters when it sought clearance from it for the project.
According to the zonal development plan for the river, the stretch of the river from Burari in the north, to Jaitpur in the south, falls in the ‘O’ Zone. No construction activity is permitted in this area, as the 22 km stretch includes the entire floodplain of the river, and is its water recharge zone. “Unfortunately, at the moment, there’s no legal protection for the river. It is being viewed as a waterbody, rather than a complete ecosystem that needs to be preserved,” said Suresh Babu, Director, Water Policy and River Basins, WWF.
Over the past 10 years, the floodplain has witnessed large scale construction, with housing colonies coming up in east Delhi. The Shastri Park metro station and the Akshardham temple were among the first structures on the riverbed. “The CWG Village, bus depot and several new roads and flyovers, like the Ring Road Bypass, are all located on the floodplain. Over the years, development along both its banks has led to gradual narrowing of the river. During the monsoons, these areas get flooded, as the additional water has no place to go,” says Manoj Mishra, convenor of the NGO Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, involved in its restoration.
NEW DELHI: The Yamuna is dying a slow death in Delhi. At least 40 per cent of the Yamuna floodplain has already been claimed by ‘development’ activity, and though the Delhi government appears to be doing its best to save the remainder, encroachment along the riverbed continues unabated.
Despite a moratorium on construction on the riverbed, imposed by Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor (LG) Tejendra Khanna in 2007, two controversial projects still managed to get clearance to be located on it. They are the Millennium Bus Depot (MBD) near the CWG Village, and the DMRC flats being constructed at the Yamuna Bank metro station. Neither project has, however, been cleared by the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC), set up by Parliament in 1973 to maintain the aesthetics of Delhi’s urban space. “No riverbed project, including the MBD, has got clearance from the DUAC since 2007,” said K T Ravindran, former Chairman of the commission.
The MBD was originally permitted on the Yamuna floodplain with the assurance that it would be a temporary structure for the duration of the 2010 CWG. Subsequently, the DTC has refused to budge from the 60 acre area. Their argument: as a heavy investment of `60 crore of public money has already been made, it ought to be used to park the thousands of buses required for the city’s public transport system. A PIL, seeking demolition of the depot has been filed, and the matter is pending before the Delhi High Court. When contacted, the LG’s office refused to comment, stating that the matter was sub-judice.
At Yamuna Bank metro station, mean-while, DMRC is building around 90 flats to house its maintenance staff. This is also on the floodplain, and has been opposed by DUAC, which earlier said it was misled by DMRC about the project. DUAC maintains that DMRC had not informed it about the staff quarters when it sought clearance from it for the project.
According to the zonal development plan for the river, the stretch of the river from Burari in the north, to Jaitpur in the south, falls in the ‘O’ Zone. No construction activity is permitted in this area, as the 22 km stretch includes the entire floodplain of the river, and is its water recharge zone. “Unfortunately, at the moment, there’s no legal protection for the river. It is being viewed as a waterbody, rather than a complete ecosystem that needs to be preserved,” said Suresh Babu, Director, Water Policy and River Basins, WWF.
Over the past 10 years, the floodplain has witnessed large scale construction, with housing colonies coming up in east Delhi. The Shastri Park metro station and the Akshardham temple were among the first structures on the riverbed. “The CWG Village, bus depot and several new roads and flyovers, like the Ring Road Bypass, are all located on the floodplain. Over the years, development along both its banks has led to gradual narrowing of the river. During the monsoons, these areas get flooded, as the additional water has no place to go,” says Manoj Mishra, convenor of the NGO Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, involved in its restoration.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The risks arising from Asia's water stress (The Hindu 29 October 2011)
Brahma Chellaney
The Hindu STATECRAFT: The Asian economies must make do with their own water resources, a significant share of which is in transnational watercourses. This fact only serves as a strong incentive for some nations to try and commandeer internationally shared waters before they leave their national borders. Pictured here is the Brahmaputra flowing through Morigaon district of Assam. Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar
The fastest-growing economies in the region are all in or near water-stressed conditions, with huge implications for economic growth and inter-riparian relations.
Water, the most vital of all resources, has emerged as a key issue that would determine if Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. After all, the driest continent in the world is not Africa but Asia, where availability of freshwater is not even half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic metres per inhabitant.
When the estimated reserves of rivers, lakes, and aquifers are added up, Asia has less than one-tenth of the waters of South America, Australia and New Zealand, not even one-fourth of North America, almost one-third of Europe, and moderately less than Africa per inhabitant. Yet the world's fastest-growing demand for water for food and industrial production and for municipal supply is in Asia, which now serves as the locomotive of the world economy.
Today, the fastest-growing Asian economies are all at or near water-stressed conditions, including China, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia. But just three or four decades ago, these economies were relatively free of water stress. Now if we look three or four decades ahead, it is clear that the water situation will only exacerbate, carrying major implications for rapid economic growth and inter-riparian relations.
Water, the new arena of conflict : Yet Asia continues to draw on tomorrow's water to meet today's needs. Worse still, Asia has one of the lowest levels of water efficiency and productivity in the world. Against this background, it is no exaggeration to say that the water crisis threatens Asia's economic and political rise and its environmental sustainability. For investors, it carries risks that potentially are as damaging as non-performing loans, real estate bubbles, and political corruption. Water has also emerged as a source of increasing competition and discord within and between nations, spurring new tensions over shared basin resources and local resistance to governmental or corporate decisions to set up water-intensive industries.
These developments raise the question whether the risks of water conflict are higher in Asia than elsewhere in the world. With Asia becoming the scene of increasingly fierce intrastate and interstate water competition, the answer clearly is yes. Water is a new arena in the Asian Great Game.
In fact, water wars — in a political, diplomatic, or economic sense — are already being waged between riparian neighbours in several Asian regions, fuelling a cycle of bitter recrimination and fostering mistrust that impedes broader regional cooperation and integration. Without any shots being fired, rising costs continue to be exacted. The resources of transnational rivers, aquifers, and lakes have become the target of rival appropriation plans.
Grand projects; crisis factors : With a river or groundwater basin often becoming tied with a nation's identity, ownership and control over its resources is considered crucial to national interests. That has helped give rise to grand but environmentally questionable ideas — from China's Great Western Route to divert river waters from the Tibetan Plateau to its parched north and South Korea's politically divisive four-rivers project, to India's now-stalled proposal to link up its important rivers and Jordan's plan to save the dying Dead Sea by bringing water from the Red Sea through a 178-kilometre-long canal, which is also to serve as a source for desalinated drinking water.
Several factors have contributed to the Asian water crisis, which is leading to river and aquifer degradation. One key factor responsible for the water crisis is that Asia is not only the largest and most-populous continent but also the fastest-developing continent. How the swift economic rise of Asia has brought water resources under increasing pressure can be seen from the fact that most Asian economies now are water-stressed. The exceptions are few: Bhutan, Burma, Papua New Guinea, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and Malaysia.
Unlike fossils fuels, mineral ores, and timber that they import even from distant lands, the Asian economies must make do with their own water resources, a significant share of which is in transnational watercourses.
This fact only serves as a strong incentive for some nations to try and commandeer internationally shared waters before they leave their national borders. Given the critical role of water in economic modernisation, this continent has emerged at the centre of the global water challenges.
Another factor is consumption growth, as a consequence of rising prosperity. The plain fact is that the average Asian is consuming more resources, including water, food, oil, and energy. The consumption growth is best illustrated by the changing diets, especially the greater intake of meat, whose production is notoriously water-intensive.
A third factor is the role of irrigation in accentuating the Asian water stress. Asia more than doubled its total irrigated cropland just between 1960 and 2000. Once a continent of serious food shortages and recurrent famines, Asia opened the path to its dramatic economic rise by emerging as a net food exporter on the back of this unparalleled irrigation expansion.
Asia now boasts the leonine proportion of the world's surface land under irrigation. About 70 per cent of the world's 301 million hectares of land equipped for irrigation is in Asia alone, making it the global irrigation hub. Just three sub-regions of Asia—South Asia, China, and Southeast Asia — by themselves account for about 50 per cent of the world's total irrigated land.
It is thus hardly a surprise that Asia leads the world in the total volume of freshwater withdrawn for agriculture. Indeed, almost 74 per cent of the total global freshwater withdrawals for agriculture by volume are made in Asia alone.
Water literally is food in Asia. Yet the growth of rice and wheat output in Asia, after the dramatic increases of the previous quarter century, has actually slowed since the late 1990s, raising concerns that Asian countries will become major food importers, roiling the international market. The international food market is not large enough to meet major import demands from Asia.
A fourth factor is that the fastest increase in water demand in Asia is now coming not from agriculture but from the industrial sector and urban households, in keeping with the fact that this continent has become the seat of the world's fastest industrialisation and urbanisation.
A final factor linked to Asia's water stress is the large-scale impoundment of water resources through dams, barrages, reservoirs, and other human-made structures without factoring in long-term environmental considerations. Dams, to be sure, bring important benefits. But upstream dams on rivers shared by two or more nations or provinces in an era of growing water stress often carry broader political and social implications, especially because they can affect water quality and quantity downstream. Dams can also alter fluvial ecosystems, damage biodiversity, and promote coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion.
Most number of dams : Asia is not just the global irrigation hub; it is also the world's most dam-dotted continent. China, the world's biggest dam builder, alone has slightly more than half of the approximately 50,000 large dams on the planet. Most of the best dam sites in Asia already have been taken. Yet the numerous new dam projects in Asia show that the damming of rivers is still an important priority for policymakers. Such a focus on dam building has only intensified intrastate and interstate water disputes and tensions in Asia, with implications for regional security and stability.
The countries likely to bear the brunt of upstream diversion of waters are those located farthest downstream on rivers like the Brahmaputra, Mekong, and Tigris-Euphrates: Bangladesh, whose very future is threatened by climate and environmental change; Vietnam, a rice bowl of Asia; and Iraq, still internally torn. Cross-border water appropriations from the Illy River threaten to turn Kazakhstan's Lake Balkhash into another Aral Sea, which is dying.
A way out : So, the big question is: How can Asian nations prevent the sharpening struggle for water resources from becoming a tipping point for overt conflict? To contain the security risks, Asian states must invest more in institutionalised cooperation on transboundary basin resources in order to underpin strategic stability, protect continued economic growth, and promote environmental sustainability.
The harsh truth is that only four of the 57 transnational river basins in Asia have a treaty covering water sharing or other institutionalised cooperation. These are the Mekong, Ganges, Indus and Jordan river basins. The absence of a cooperative arrangement in most Asian transnational basins is making inter-country water competition a major security risk, increasing the likelihood of geopolitical tensions and instabilities.
With its multitude of inter-country basins, Asia cannot continue to prosper without building political and technological partnerships to help stabilise inter-riparian relations, encourage greater water efficiency, promote environmental sustainability, take on practicable conservation strategies, and invest in clean-water technologies. If Asian states are to address their water challenges, they will need to embrace good practices on the strategic planning and management of water resources.
(Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research. The article is adapted from the author's newly released book, Water: Asia's New Battleground, Georgetown University Press and HarperCollins.)
The Hindu STATECRAFT: The Asian economies must make do with their own water resources, a significant share of which is in transnational watercourses. This fact only serves as a strong incentive for some nations to try and commandeer internationally shared waters before they leave their national borders. Pictured here is the Brahmaputra flowing through Morigaon district of Assam. Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar
The fastest-growing economies in the region are all in or near water-stressed conditions, with huge implications for economic growth and inter-riparian relations.
Water, the most vital of all resources, has emerged as a key issue that would determine if Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. After all, the driest continent in the world is not Africa but Asia, where availability of freshwater is not even half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic metres per inhabitant.
When the estimated reserves of rivers, lakes, and aquifers are added up, Asia has less than one-tenth of the waters of South America, Australia and New Zealand, not even one-fourth of North America, almost one-third of Europe, and moderately less than Africa per inhabitant. Yet the world's fastest-growing demand for water for food and industrial production and for municipal supply is in Asia, which now serves as the locomotive of the world economy.
Today, the fastest-growing Asian economies are all at or near water-stressed conditions, including China, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia. But just three or four decades ago, these economies were relatively free of water stress. Now if we look three or four decades ahead, it is clear that the water situation will only exacerbate, carrying major implications for rapid economic growth and inter-riparian relations.
Water, the new arena of conflict : Yet Asia continues to draw on tomorrow's water to meet today's needs. Worse still, Asia has one of the lowest levels of water efficiency and productivity in the world. Against this background, it is no exaggeration to say that the water crisis threatens Asia's economic and political rise and its environmental sustainability. For investors, it carries risks that potentially are as damaging as non-performing loans, real estate bubbles, and political corruption. Water has also emerged as a source of increasing competition and discord within and between nations, spurring new tensions over shared basin resources and local resistance to governmental or corporate decisions to set up water-intensive industries.
These developments raise the question whether the risks of water conflict are higher in Asia than elsewhere in the world. With Asia becoming the scene of increasingly fierce intrastate and interstate water competition, the answer clearly is yes. Water is a new arena in the Asian Great Game.
In fact, water wars — in a political, diplomatic, or economic sense — are already being waged between riparian neighbours in several Asian regions, fuelling a cycle of bitter recrimination and fostering mistrust that impedes broader regional cooperation and integration. Without any shots being fired, rising costs continue to be exacted. The resources of transnational rivers, aquifers, and lakes have become the target of rival appropriation plans.
Grand projects; crisis factors : With a river or groundwater basin often becoming tied with a nation's identity, ownership and control over its resources is considered crucial to national interests. That has helped give rise to grand but environmentally questionable ideas — from China's Great Western Route to divert river waters from the Tibetan Plateau to its parched north and South Korea's politically divisive four-rivers project, to India's now-stalled proposal to link up its important rivers and Jordan's plan to save the dying Dead Sea by bringing water from the Red Sea through a 178-kilometre-long canal, which is also to serve as a source for desalinated drinking water.
Several factors have contributed to the Asian water crisis, which is leading to river and aquifer degradation. One key factor responsible for the water crisis is that Asia is not only the largest and most-populous continent but also the fastest-developing continent. How the swift economic rise of Asia has brought water resources under increasing pressure can be seen from the fact that most Asian economies now are water-stressed. The exceptions are few: Bhutan, Burma, Papua New Guinea, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and Malaysia.
Unlike fossils fuels, mineral ores, and timber that they import even from distant lands, the Asian economies must make do with their own water resources, a significant share of which is in transnational watercourses.
This fact only serves as a strong incentive for some nations to try and commandeer internationally shared waters before they leave their national borders. Given the critical role of water in economic modernisation, this continent has emerged at the centre of the global water challenges.
Another factor is consumption growth, as a consequence of rising prosperity. The plain fact is that the average Asian is consuming more resources, including water, food, oil, and energy. The consumption growth is best illustrated by the changing diets, especially the greater intake of meat, whose production is notoriously water-intensive.
A third factor is the role of irrigation in accentuating the Asian water stress. Asia more than doubled its total irrigated cropland just between 1960 and 2000. Once a continent of serious food shortages and recurrent famines, Asia opened the path to its dramatic economic rise by emerging as a net food exporter on the back of this unparalleled irrigation expansion.
Asia now boasts the leonine proportion of the world's surface land under irrigation. About 70 per cent of the world's 301 million hectares of land equipped for irrigation is in Asia alone, making it the global irrigation hub. Just three sub-regions of Asia—South Asia, China, and Southeast Asia — by themselves account for about 50 per cent of the world's total irrigated land.
It is thus hardly a surprise that Asia leads the world in the total volume of freshwater withdrawn for agriculture. Indeed, almost 74 per cent of the total global freshwater withdrawals for agriculture by volume are made in Asia alone.
Water literally is food in Asia. Yet the growth of rice and wheat output in Asia, after the dramatic increases of the previous quarter century, has actually slowed since the late 1990s, raising concerns that Asian countries will become major food importers, roiling the international market. The international food market is not large enough to meet major import demands from Asia.
A fourth factor is that the fastest increase in water demand in Asia is now coming not from agriculture but from the industrial sector and urban households, in keeping with the fact that this continent has become the seat of the world's fastest industrialisation and urbanisation.
A final factor linked to Asia's water stress is the large-scale impoundment of water resources through dams, barrages, reservoirs, and other human-made structures without factoring in long-term environmental considerations. Dams, to be sure, bring important benefits. But upstream dams on rivers shared by two or more nations or provinces in an era of growing water stress often carry broader political and social implications, especially because they can affect water quality and quantity downstream. Dams can also alter fluvial ecosystems, damage biodiversity, and promote coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion.
Most number of dams : Asia is not just the global irrigation hub; it is also the world's most dam-dotted continent. China, the world's biggest dam builder, alone has slightly more than half of the approximately 50,000 large dams on the planet. Most of the best dam sites in Asia already have been taken. Yet the numerous new dam projects in Asia show that the damming of rivers is still an important priority for policymakers. Such a focus on dam building has only intensified intrastate and interstate water disputes and tensions in Asia, with implications for regional security and stability.
The countries likely to bear the brunt of upstream diversion of waters are those located farthest downstream on rivers like the Brahmaputra, Mekong, and Tigris-Euphrates: Bangladesh, whose very future is threatened by climate and environmental change; Vietnam, a rice bowl of Asia; and Iraq, still internally torn. Cross-border water appropriations from the Illy River threaten to turn Kazakhstan's Lake Balkhash into another Aral Sea, which is dying.
A way out : So, the big question is: How can Asian nations prevent the sharpening struggle for water resources from becoming a tipping point for overt conflict? To contain the security risks, Asian states must invest more in institutionalised cooperation on transboundary basin resources in order to underpin strategic stability, protect continued economic growth, and promote environmental sustainability.
The harsh truth is that only four of the 57 transnational river basins in Asia have a treaty covering water sharing or other institutionalised cooperation. These are the Mekong, Ganges, Indus and Jordan river basins. The absence of a cooperative arrangement in most Asian transnational basins is making inter-country water competition a major security risk, increasing the likelihood of geopolitical tensions and instabilities.
With its multitude of inter-country basins, Asia cannot continue to prosper without building political and technological partnerships to help stabilise inter-riparian relations, encourage greater water efficiency, promote environmental sustainability, take on practicable conservation strategies, and invest in clean-water technologies. If Asian states are to address their water challenges, they will need to embrace good practices on the strategic planning and management of water resources.
(Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research. The article is adapted from the author's newly released book, Water: Asia's New Battleground, Georgetown University Press and HarperCollins.)
As the Yamuna ebbs away, water-birds give Delhi a miss (The Hindi 21 October 2011)
Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
The Hindu Spot billed ducks seen at the Okhla Bird Sanctury in Delhi. Photo: S. Subramanium
While the fish are dying, chances are many migratory water-birds may not make it to the Okhla Bird Sanctuary this year
The depleting water levels of the Yamuna, brought about by the twin impact of less water flow into Delhi and a mechanical fault with the Okhla barrage, have had a tragic effect on the fish in the river and on the arrival of migratory birds at the Okhla Bird Sanctuary.
According to avid bird-watchers, this year could prove to be particularly bad for the arrival of migratory birds at the sanctuary since the river has almost dried up at the point where it leaves Delhi. Also the fish, which are now confined to the small pools, are quickly dying.
“The water levels at Okhla Bird Sanctuary have never been this low. The reason is that very little water is entering Delhi. Also, due to the repairs being carried out at the barrage the gates remained open and the water which should have been retained in the sanctuary flowed out,” says Asian Waterbird Census coordinator Tarun K. Roy who has been following the situation closely.
He adds that while some local migratory water-birds like brahminy ducks, northern shovelers, pied avocets, whiskered terns, green sandpipers, wood sandpipers and ruffs had been spotted at the sanctuary in the first week of October, they are quickly vanishing from there due to the sharp fall in availability of water.
The sanctuary on the Delhi side of the Yamuna is almost non-existent now due to rampant encroachment by illegal colonies. It is on the other side of the Yamuna that the sanctuary supports some bird life. Incidentally, this area is located barely a couple of kilometres from the Dalit Prerna Sthal, which was inaugurated recently by U. P. Chief Minister Mayawati.
“On this side too, the small fish are almost dead and only a few large ones remain in the small pools that now exist. The birds are fast exiting the area,” says Mr. Roy.
Having carried out the bird census on behalf of Wetlands International's South Asia Division for many years, he is concerned that the arrival of the migratory birds from abroad this winter may be affected by the water crisis.
“Already about a dozen resident water-bird species like the Indian moorhen, purple swamphen, little greeb and march harrier, have given Delhi a go-by. And it now seems that birds like the Eurasian wigeon, tufted pochard, comb duck, bar-headed geese and grey leg geese which come in from abroad may also give the Okhla sanctuary in Delhi a pass on not finding water here,” Mr. Roy warns, demanding a minimum water level in the sanctuary that could support fish and bird life.
The Hindu Spot billed ducks seen at the Okhla Bird Sanctury in Delhi. Photo: S. Subramanium
While the fish are dying, chances are many migratory water-birds may not make it to the Okhla Bird Sanctuary this year
The depleting water levels of the Yamuna, brought about by the twin impact of less water flow into Delhi and a mechanical fault with the Okhla barrage, have had a tragic effect on the fish in the river and on the arrival of migratory birds at the Okhla Bird Sanctuary.
According to avid bird-watchers, this year could prove to be particularly bad for the arrival of migratory birds at the sanctuary since the river has almost dried up at the point where it leaves Delhi. Also the fish, which are now confined to the small pools, are quickly dying.
“The water levels at Okhla Bird Sanctuary have never been this low. The reason is that very little water is entering Delhi. Also, due to the repairs being carried out at the barrage the gates remained open and the water which should have been retained in the sanctuary flowed out,” says Asian Waterbird Census coordinator Tarun K. Roy who has been following the situation closely.
He adds that while some local migratory water-birds like brahminy ducks, northern shovelers, pied avocets, whiskered terns, green sandpipers, wood sandpipers and ruffs had been spotted at the sanctuary in the first week of October, they are quickly vanishing from there due to the sharp fall in availability of water.
The sanctuary on the Delhi side of the Yamuna is almost non-existent now due to rampant encroachment by illegal colonies. It is on the other side of the Yamuna that the sanctuary supports some bird life. Incidentally, this area is located barely a couple of kilometres from the Dalit Prerna Sthal, which was inaugurated recently by U. P. Chief Minister Mayawati.
“On this side too, the small fish are almost dead and only a few large ones remain in the small pools that now exist. The birds are fast exiting the area,” says Mr. Roy.
Having carried out the bird census on behalf of Wetlands International's South Asia Division for many years, he is concerned that the arrival of the migratory birds from abroad this winter may be affected by the water crisis.
“Already about a dozen resident water-bird species like the Indian moorhen, purple swamphen, little greeb and march harrier, have given Delhi a go-by. And it now seems that birds like the Eurasian wigeon, tufted pochard, comb duck, bar-headed geese and grey leg geese which come in from abroad may also give the Okhla sanctuary in Delhi a pass on not finding water here,” Mr. Roy warns, demanding a minimum water level in the sanctuary that could support fish and bird life.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A new tragedy of the commons (Hindu 20 October 2011)
The mega-city's unquenchable thirst for land is the backstory of the recent communal clash in Gopalgarh.
As the dust settles on the Gopalgarh firing in Bharatpur, in which nine Meos were killed, State and community versions have begun to unravel. Recent conversations with Gujars highlight the shocking role of the administration. This had already been pointed out by the Citizen's Report coordinated by the PUCL to which I was signatory. It would seem that the order to fire was given under pressure from right-wing leaders and an aggressive section of Gujars. Two, it was signed purportedly on the basis of false information that the Meos, who had collected in the local mosque, were about to commit martyrdom, were armed and had already killed five persons. Whatever the flaws of the draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, its strength is that it clearly puts the onus of inter-communal peace on the administration. In sum, Gopalgarh only proves what we already know about ethnic conflict: that in most cases it can be prevented given administrative and political will.
‘Not communal'
Further, the dispute between the Meos and Gujars of Gopalgarh was not “communal” to begin with, contrary to media and administrative versions. Instead, it approximated a feud, an essential aspect of the subcontinent's intercommunal and intracommunal life. The conflict was over their respective claims to a piece of land that both sides saw as their respective common property resource, the Meos as a graveyard, the Gujars as a pond (jauhar). The land was levelled in order to dig graves after the administration declared that in the Revenue Settlement it had been acknowledged as Meo “commons.”
Tension heightened and the Imam was assaulted by a few Gujars on September 13 having been proactive in the legal dispute. Crowds collected on both sides the following morning from surrounding villages, again typical of the numerous feuds that Meo/Gujar/Jat/Ahir clans have fought. The term “riot” is equally questionable as eventually both the police and an aggressive segment of the Gujars seem to have turned on the Meos in Gopalgarh's mosque, leaving nine dead and 22 injured after some 219 rounds of firing. That only 3 died of bullets and the rest of knife and other injuries is indicative of the nefarious collusion of the State and a segment of the local community and the tragic deployment of the ‘riot control' armoured vehicle that could have been used to disperse crowds on both sides instead of being used eventually as a death van. Indeed, the judicial commission must also look into why Gopalgarh was not instead brought under Section 144 or curfew by noon of September 14.'
Disrupting the communal fabric
The greater tragedy is the rupturing of the region's inter-communal fabric. Gujars and Meos have lived together in intimacy in villages for centuries, addressing each other by kinship terms, sharing languages and mythologies, practices and pilgrimages including to the Siva temple at Jhir. They have even intermarried in the past, as their common clan names suggest. The friendship between a Meo and a Gujar chief is described by the metaphor of “dant kati roti,” i.e. sharing the same bread! If the Meos were recognised as “marginally Muslim,” the Gujars have been “marginally Hindu” in the period preceding Partition. In a folk epic from the Meo oral tradition dating to the late 19th century, a Gujar woman weeps in the hills for the tiger has eaten her only cow. The Meo brothers, Ghurchari and Meo Khan, the “good” bandits, rescue her cow and dare to kill the tiger “protected” for the kingly kill, an act of supreme defiance against the Rajput-ruled kingdom.
In the rural areas of Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana, Gujar and Meos live in mixed or adjacent villages. An everyday cosmopolitanism marks local cultures, impossible to capture in the theory of high cosmopolitanism. Without it, one cannot understand peasant-pastoral lifeworlds of bare sustenance that many Gujars and Meos share. The upward mobility of other OBC peasant castes bypassed both groups in the previous two centuries until recently, when we witness the phenomenon of “city as imperium.”
Changing land regime
The background of a land dispute culminating in firing, vandalism and scorched bodies in Gopalgarh's mosque is constituted by Delhi's changing land regime and its fallout which seems to be escaping economists, urbanists, and planners. The entrepreneurial governance and spider-like agility of the “global city” has been highlighted by David Harvey and Aihwa Ong. But they fail to recognise how the mega-city in both China and India depeasantises and depastoralises. The urban corridor from Mehrauli to Mumbai — termed a “megalopolis” — gobbles land at a frenzied pace. Between Delhi and Ajmer, the industrial areas of Bhiwadi, Neemrana and Bagru thrive and are fast dissolving the cultural regions known for centuries as Gujarvati and Mewat. Gujars and Meos are both communities whose primary identity derives from land. And that land is now being sought by others willing to pay vast sums.
The genocide of 1947 against the Meos was a traumatic event and Gopalgarh suggests at its continuing reverberations. The new phenomenon is a politico-cultural ethnocide as Meo and Gujar landholders increasingly join the race to make quick money from land sales. Gurgaon was built on a few Gujars and others exchanging their land for thousands of crores.
The mega-city covets agricultural land, “wastelands” and the commons including its water bodies and waqf-owned land. Stone from the Aravallis is being mined at a furious pace. Six thousand truckloads from one village alone daily feed Delhi's limitless appetite for construction despite a Supreme Court stay order. The Aravallis are the oldest mountains in the world and responsible for the region's rainfall, fertility and the ways in which the scarce resource of water has been maximised by communities for a millennia.
Bhiwadi is one of the utopias that have mushroomed in this new landscape: Sunshine City, malls, real estate agent offices, gated apartment buildings and billboards provide incessant temptation to the capital's middle classes. Ranajit Guha described colonialism as dominance without hegemony. In this new mode of imperialism, hegemony is absolute, based on the total consent of the governed, urban and rural. Delhi's rise and Gopalgarh's descent are intrinsically connected. Indeed, the very conceptions of “urban” and “rural” are being transformed. Empire and nation have been older and established modes of imperialism. The 21st century is witness to the city as imperium.
(Shail Mayaram is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Delhi)
As the dust settles on the Gopalgarh firing in Bharatpur, in which nine Meos were killed, State and community versions have begun to unravel. Recent conversations with Gujars highlight the shocking role of the administration. This had already been pointed out by the Citizen's Report coordinated by the PUCL to which I was signatory. It would seem that the order to fire was given under pressure from right-wing leaders and an aggressive section of Gujars. Two, it was signed purportedly on the basis of false information that the Meos, who had collected in the local mosque, were about to commit martyrdom, were armed and had already killed five persons. Whatever the flaws of the draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, its strength is that it clearly puts the onus of inter-communal peace on the administration. In sum, Gopalgarh only proves what we already know about ethnic conflict: that in most cases it can be prevented given administrative and political will.
‘Not communal'
Further, the dispute between the Meos and Gujars of Gopalgarh was not “communal” to begin with, contrary to media and administrative versions. Instead, it approximated a feud, an essential aspect of the subcontinent's intercommunal and intracommunal life. The conflict was over their respective claims to a piece of land that both sides saw as their respective common property resource, the Meos as a graveyard, the Gujars as a pond (jauhar). The land was levelled in order to dig graves after the administration declared that in the Revenue Settlement it had been acknowledged as Meo “commons.”
Tension heightened and the Imam was assaulted by a few Gujars on September 13 having been proactive in the legal dispute. Crowds collected on both sides the following morning from surrounding villages, again typical of the numerous feuds that Meo/Gujar/Jat/Ahir clans have fought. The term “riot” is equally questionable as eventually both the police and an aggressive segment of the Gujars seem to have turned on the Meos in Gopalgarh's mosque, leaving nine dead and 22 injured after some 219 rounds of firing. That only 3 died of bullets and the rest of knife and other injuries is indicative of the nefarious collusion of the State and a segment of the local community and the tragic deployment of the ‘riot control' armoured vehicle that could have been used to disperse crowds on both sides instead of being used eventually as a death van. Indeed, the judicial commission must also look into why Gopalgarh was not instead brought under Section 144 or curfew by noon of September 14.'
Disrupting the communal fabric
The greater tragedy is the rupturing of the region's inter-communal fabric. Gujars and Meos have lived together in intimacy in villages for centuries, addressing each other by kinship terms, sharing languages and mythologies, practices and pilgrimages including to the Siva temple at Jhir. They have even intermarried in the past, as their common clan names suggest. The friendship between a Meo and a Gujar chief is described by the metaphor of “dant kati roti,” i.e. sharing the same bread! If the Meos were recognised as “marginally Muslim,” the Gujars have been “marginally Hindu” in the period preceding Partition. In a folk epic from the Meo oral tradition dating to the late 19th century, a Gujar woman weeps in the hills for the tiger has eaten her only cow. The Meo brothers, Ghurchari and Meo Khan, the “good” bandits, rescue her cow and dare to kill the tiger “protected” for the kingly kill, an act of supreme defiance against the Rajput-ruled kingdom.
In the rural areas of Delhi, Rajasthan and Haryana, Gujar and Meos live in mixed or adjacent villages. An everyday cosmopolitanism marks local cultures, impossible to capture in the theory of high cosmopolitanism. Without it, one cannot understand peasant-pastoral lifeworlds of bare sustenance that many Gujars and Meos share. The upward mobility of other OBC peasant castes bypassed both groups in the previous two centuries until recently, when we witness the phenomenon of “city as imperium.”
Changing land regime
The background of a land dispute culminating in firing, vandalism and scorched bodies in Gopalgarh's mosque is constituted by Delhi's changing land regime and its fallout which seems to be escaping economists, urbanists, and planners. The entrepreneurial governance and spider-like agility of the “global city” has been highlighted by David Harvey and Aihwa Ong. But they fail to recognise how the mega-city in both China and India depeasantises and depastoralises. The urban corridor from Mehrauli to Mumbai — termed a “megalopolis” — gobbles land at a frenzied pace. Between Delhi and Ajmer, the industrial areas of Bhiwadi, Neemrana and Bagru thrive and are fast dissolving the cultural regions known for centuries as Gujarvati and Mewat. Gujars and Meos are both communities whose primary identity derives from land. And that land is now being sought by others willing to pay vast sums.
The genocide of 1947 against the Meos was a traumatic event and Gopalgarh suggests at its continuing reverberations. The new phenomenon is a politico-cultural ethnocide as Meo and Gujar landholders increasingly join the race to make quick money from land sales. Gurgaon was built on a few Gujars and others exchanging their land for thousands of crores.
The mega-city covets agricultural land, “wastelands” and the commons including its water bodies and waqf-owned land. Stone from the Aravallis is being mined at a furious pace. Six thousand truckloads from one village alone daily feed Delhi's limitless appetite for construction despite a Supreme Court stay order. The Aravallis are the oldest mountains in the world and responsible for the region's rainfall, fertility and the ways in which the scarce resource of water has been maximised by communities for a millennia.
Bhiwadi is one of the utopias that have mushroomed in this new landscape: Sunshine City, malls, real estate agent offices, gated apartment buildings and billboards provide incessant temptation to the capital's middle classes. Ranajit Guha described colonialism as dominance without hegemony. In this new mode of imperialism, hegemony is absolute, based on the total consent of the governed, urban and rural. Delhi's rise and Gopalgarh's descent are intrinsically connected. Indeed, the very conceptions of “urban” and “rural” are being transformed. Empire and nation have been older and established modes of imperialism. The 21st century is witness to the city as imperium.
(Shail Mayaram is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Delhi)
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