Green Weekend Out:Roots Cafe and the Rajiv Gandhi Renewable Energy Park

The daytime weather is nice in Delhi these days, but it won't be for long. So before things really heat up, why not take a green outing with the family? A few weeks back, we headed out to Roots cafe in the Rajiv Gandhi Renewable Energy Park, Gurgaon--and we had a great time.


I confess, I normally avoid Gurgaon.  For one thing, I don't like giant malls, and for another, I don't like traffic. But the metro makes the traffic a non-issue, and the Cafe Roots is not a giant mall. Just hop on the Yellow line and head to the IFFCO Chowk stop.  It's something like 30 minutes from Hauz Khaz station, and it's an interesting ride: once the metro comes above ground, you get all kinds of interesting views out there. 


To get to the Rajiv Gandhi Renewable Energy Park (RGREP) from IFFCO Chowk, head out the door, past the auto stand and turn right (west). It's a 5-10 minute walk. You can see where you are going from this aerial map, or ask they guy in this food stand:

He'll tell you to keep walking and pretty soon you'll come to the RGREP.  It's run by Haryana Renewable Energy Development Authority (HAREDA), and it's goal is to spread awareness about sustainable development. Does it work as a government agency? I have no idea whatsoever, but you can do some research by reading their annual report, or checking out their website.  It may be a complete waste of money, or it may be wonderful.

My goal was to find out if the kids would have fun in the park, and if Roots Cafe was any good. And the answer to both of those questions was a resounding yes.

I once wrote a post about how my kids like to imagine crazy ways to get electricity from playground equipment. This park actually takes those kind of ideas off the drawing board and makes them real...sort of. The slide above was supposed to generate enough electricity to make a light light up, but it wasn't working the day we went.

However, this crazy spinning machine did light up lights and make cool noises when kids ran in it. A little bit like something you might find in an enormous green hamster cage. The kids and I concluded that it probably won't be revolutionizing the power grid anytime soon, but it was pretty cool, nonetheless.

There were plenty of other things to talk with kids about...

Like solar arrays and solar water heaters. There was even a solar powered battery car you could rent, but the Batti kids are skeptical about any form of private motor vehicle and they didn't feel the car was worth the Rs. 20 or whatever was being charged.

While the kids played, Mrs. Batti and I sipped some tea at Roots.

Roots--'a cafe in the park' has a lot going for it. No AC, for one thing, which is necessary in a green cafe. Of course it will get warm in the summer months, when most of us stay inside during the hot hours. But those of us who have learned to live 'AC Free' in Delhi know that shade, moving air, and a little good old fashioned sweat are really all you need to be comfortable on most days--and this cafe has all of those things. 

The food we ordered was good.  Roots does not qualify as one of our Best Dhabas in Delhi, but I liked the fact that it's menu included reasonably priced items. For example, the masala chai was excellent and a generous sized cup sold for Rs. 20, just a few rupees more than the metro fare it took to get there. Roots is a private cafe, with a contract to run in a quasi-governmental space; it is not a revolutionary green organisation. Still, one gets the feeling that it is run by good people. Someone told me that the owner travels only by metro now, and that didn't surprise me.

So if you need something to do on a weekend and are sick of Cafe Coffee Day and all that noise, why not jump on the Yellow line and go check out Roots? I don't think you'll be disappointed.  For more information, you can check out their Facebook group. And if you go on Sunday, you might be able to find some good organic produce at the farmer's market.

For more interesting places to eat, check out out Best Dhaba in Delhi series.

Reviewed: Known Turf by Annie Zaidi

If you haven't read Known Turf: bantering with bandits and other true tales, by Annie Zaidi, then it's time you go buy yourself a copy. Zaidi is a well known blogger, an experienced journalist and an accomplished poet.  Known Turf is a collection of essays based on her years working for Frontline,  but this book does not read like Frontline.  Sure, the issues are similar: communalism, caste oppression, violence against women, environmental destruction, hunger, etc. But the difference lies in the voice--and a willingness to go places journalists are not typically allowed to go: the realm of feelings, for example, and self examination.

Here's Zaidi writing about the time she violated one of her journalistic rules and held a malnourished baby in Madhya Pradesh:

I shouldn't have. Face, name: those things one could forget. But the memory of how such skin feels: baby skin that has gone baggy; like a dull, old woman strung around a small body with tiny wrists and arms. Her neck was so fragile--half the width of my small palm.  Her fingers so thin--I have never seen fingers so skeletal on a tight-curled baby fist--too thin to reach out and grasp your own extended ones...I should not have held her, for I remember now that she weighed less than my handbag. Should not have noticed that she did not cry, not even at the prospect of a bunch of strangers peering at her.  Should not have stopped to think that this is the first baby I've held who seems not to care that she is held. Should not have given way to the sudden terror that, this very instant, in my arms, she might stop moving entirely. (pg. 56)

That, my friends, is a poet reporting. You could call it journalism with a heart. You could call it travel writing with a conscience.Whatever you call it, Known Turf is a book that will stay with you.

Buy it at Friends of Books.

And do check out our review page for more green reviews.

Celebrating Mahatma Gandhi with Children's Author Subhadra Sen Gupta

The text-book version of Mahatma Gandhi--and most other historical figures, for that matter--is typically pretty flat.There are many reasons for this, but you can't really blame the author's of text books alone.  Our system of education requires our children memorize vast amount of content, but does not ask them to think deeply about ideas. It is enough to memorize names and phrases.  My son's fifth standard SST textbook, for example, covers the modern freedom movement in four pages. Two paragraphs are given to the Non-Cooperation Movement, including this beauty:

During the Non-Cooperation Movement, leaders such as Rajendra prasad, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Sarojini Naidu, Maulana Azad, C Rajagopalachari, Chittaranjan Das, Motilal Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru participated actively.  (My Big Book of Social Studies, by Pushpa Jain, p. 107).

We ask our children to commit to memory long lists of names, but we forget to ask them to evaluate and analyze the ideas, politics, and passions that inspired and informed the people that led the movements that made this country what it is--for better or worse. We forget to tell them that these leaders, like all of us, had flaws, that they often looked at each other critically, and that we, in turn, will only move forward if we learn to think critically about our own society and the history that gave rise to it.

In the long run, we need to remake our system of education. But for this Gandhi Jayanti, I'll suggest something more modest. Next time you're in a bookstore, go buy Subhadra Sen Gupta's Mahatma Gandhi and read it with your children.  If you don't have a child, then go buy the book for a child of a friend or relative. 

The Gandhiji in Sen Gupta's book is shrewd, complex and funny. Sen Gupta clearly loves Bapu, but by presenting him as a complex character, she allows young people to engage with his ideas on their own terms. Later, if they encounter less sympathetic portrayals of Gandhi and the movement he helped organize and lead, they will be in a better position to evaluate those ideas as well.  A good understanding and analysis of our history will not help us predict our future, of course, but it can help us to understand our present. 

I realize that the bookstores are mostly closed today. So I asked Subhadra Sen Gupta if we could run an excerpt of her book here at the Dhaba--something about Gandhi the environmentalist. She sent the section below, from Chapter 7, and she even agreed to give us an interview, which we'll run next week.  

As you read, think about the similarities between Gandhiji's ideas and the ideas that inform the best of the environmental movement. Ideas are great that way--unlike paper and plastic, they can be recycled indefinitely, and they often get stronger in the process.

BAPU IN THE VILLAGES

It was while walking from village to village in the Champaran district of Bihar that Gandhiji came face to face with rural poverty for the first time. The hopeless lives of the villagers shocked him to the core. Kasturba who was with him met a family where the women possessed only one sari and lived in that one dirty garment till it was in tatters. They saw the empty huts without a stick of furniture, kitchens with few pots, the filthy streets with open sewers and the constant fear of hunger stalking the land. Gandhiji never got over the experience and the welfare of Indian villagers and finding a solution to their poverty became a constant challenge for him.

He was the first national leader to go deep into the countryside where he sat and listened to peasants and what he heard turned him into a crusader. For the rest of his life he worked ceaselessly to improve their lives. He knew that this was the real India where 85% of Indians lived and it was pointless talking about freedom, democracy and human rights when people were not sure of getting even one meal a day. How could they become a part of the freedom struggle when they were illiterate, burdened with work and afraid and did not even understand what democracy meant?

During his wanderings Gandhiji noticed that farmers sat idle for many months every year once the sowing of crops was over. This was when he wove in the idea of khadi into the old Swadeshi campaign. He spread the message that Indians were not only to use Indian products but those made in villages. He started the All India Spinners Association and began to distribute charkhas encouraging village men and women to spin thread and weave cloth. He also hoped that it would revive India’s dying textile industry which had always been based in the villages.

Today when the world is dazzled by the intricate craftsmanship and variety of Indian textiles remember, it all began with Bapu distributing charkhas to villagers and making leaders start spinning daily to spread the message. From the delicate ikats and pochampallies to the gorgeous patolas, tangails and maheshwaris – all these traditional weaving arts were under threat. They were being systematically killed by high taxes and cheaper British factory products. The weavers of Dacca who were famous for their fine muslin were dying in slums because they had no work. The khadi campaign slowly breathed life into these beautiful crafts.

It is hard to imagine Bapu as a fashion icon but he sent a message when he was photographed walking into Buckingham Palace in his dhoti and chaddar. He was always a shrewd judge of the message a picture could send and knew that when a man from a colonised nation wore his traditional garments to meet a king he was being fearless and also proud of his own heritage. What he was saying with his impish grin was that his khaddar chaddar was just as good as the king’s medal encrusted uniform! The khadi campaign made the wearing of handlooms both patriotic and trendy. At political rallies people saw the handsome Maulana Azad and Jawaharlal Nehru in natty achkans and Subhas Bose in an elegant flowing dhoti and began to wear khadi. When Sarojini Naidu swished up on stage in kanjeevaram saris in brilliant peacock hues, suddenly the socialites of Bombay began to discard their French chiffons for handlooms.

Gandhiji wanted villages to be self-reliant – growing their own food, weaving their own clothes and making their own pots and pans. He spoke constantly about living simply and believed that we should only use the earth’s bounty as much as we need. He opposed the senseless cutting of trees and the destruction of forests. He said, “The earth has enough for our needs but not enough for our greed” and remember he said this at a time when no one was talking of the threats to the environment or the dangers of climate change. And he showed this through his own simple life. All his earthly possessions could be packed into a single cloth jhola bag. He travelled light. There were his dhotis, chaddar, his rosary beads, tin bowl, plate and spoon. And also his spare glasses, false teeth and a copy of the Bhagwat Gita.

From the time he returned to India in 1914 his life became one of ceaseless work as he travelled across the land, often walking. At every village where he stayed he would talk of how the villagers could improve their lives. He tried to break their apathy by teaching them about hygiene and cleanliness, guided them towards cooking nutritious meals, the need to build schools to educate their children, the equality of women and against untouchability. He was keenest on hygiene and the need for clean toilets because he knew that if the sweepers did not have to clean them, then slowly the stigma of untouchability would fade away. Sadly even today many village homes lack toilets.

Even during the Dandi March, at every village where they stopped he spoke of ways in which villages could become self-reliant – dig canals, build roads and schools, clean their streets, start small scale industries like weaving, making baskets, pottery, metal and leather work. What is really amusing is that the government, that did not trust Gandhiji at all, even looked at his social work with great suspicion. Officials and the police were convinced that under the guise of social work he was in fact building up an army of rural Satyagrahis!

If you think villagers always listened and obeyed Bapu you would be mistaken. Many of them looked at him with suspicion and were angered by his talk of the rights of the lower castes and of women. Also many of them did not know how to help themselves and Gandhiji realised that he needed volunteers from the cities to go to work in the villages and among them were people like Vinoba Bhave and Baba Thakkar. So all the Non-government Organisations (NGO) working in villages today are really carrying on the work he began. Today’s Khadi Gramodyogs, Cottage Industries emporia, Dilli Haats and crafts melas are really a continuation of his campaigns and they provide livelihood to millions of crafts people.

The village improvement campaigns he called “a plodder’s work” – slow, laborious and needing endless patience but he persisted with it for thirty years. The poor were never far from his thoughts. It is easy for a politician to strut into a village, stand before a microphone, give a lot of advice at the top of his voice and drive off in a big car. Do you think they are taken seriously? The villagers listen politely to his “bhashan”, shake their heads in amusement and go back to their hard lives. They do not trust politicians.

Bapu walked the talk. Not only did he live simply, he also moved to live in a village. He chose a tiny village called Segaon near Wardha in Maharashtra and in 1936 built a hut there. Segaon had no shops, no post office or school, no roads and forget about electricity or telephones. Slowly a whole community of people interested in social work grew around him, all of them working in the nearby villages and they included a Japanese monk. This ashram was named Sevagram and the Congress leaders had to travel there to meet Gandhiji, at times trudging through ankle deep mud during the rains.

Bapu also decided that the Congress workers should experience village life first hand. So the next annual session of the party in 1936 was held in Faizpur, a village in Maharashtra. The pandal was like a bamboo village designed by the famous artist from Shantiniketan, Nandalal Bose. Delegates were served village food, lived under thatched roofs and they had to do all their sweeping and cleaning and Bapu made sure the Brahmins picked up the brooms. It was his way of introducing future ministers to their real constituents!

Critics of Gandhiji say he was against science and technology and wanted to go back to some ancient pre-industrial time but that is not correct. He was just very suspicious of technology and rightly so. What he did not like was our belief that any new technology is automatically good for us. Every industrialist and his factory are not for the benefit of the nation, take a look at our polluted rivers and our smog filled air and you know he was correct. An industrialist is in it for profit and he is not thinking of the people at all and in most cases industries just make a few people very rich.

Often industries also deprive people of their livelihood - take our tribals who are losing their forests because of the mining industries and this has spurred on the Naxal movement that is leading to so much violence. What Bapu wanted us to do, is judge every technology on its merits and decide whether we really need it or not. He wanted the people to decide, not the bureaucrat or politician. As he used to point out gently, even the charkha or a potter’s wheel is a machine but it does not pollute, it does not take away people’s livelihood, instead it offers them a source of income.

He often spoke of turning “waste into wealth” and was passionate about recycling things long before the word entered our vocabulary. He would use pencils until they were reduced to tiny stubs. He collected all the letters he received and they came by the hundred every day. He opened out envelopes and used the blank sides of letters for his replies. Both his ashrams at Sabarmati and Sevagram were filled with trees, had kitchen gardens and there were cows and goats being tended by the children.

Gandhiji’s ideal village was of a “perfect democracy based on individual freedom” and his villagers would grow their own food, have a school, an auditorium and a medical clinic, good roads and shops. Everyone would find employment in the area and no one would be not forced to migrate to the cities. Here elementary education would be free and children of all castes – girls and boys would study together. People called him a dreamer but in fact he was a supremely practical man devising practical solutions to poverty. And he was not afraid to fight for his dream.

From Puffin Lives: Mahatma Gandhi (2010), by Subhadra Sen Gupta.
Buy it from Friends of Books
For more Dhaba reviews, go to our review page.

Peepli [Live]: Brilliant!

Peepli [Live]

Directed by Anusha Rizvi

Co-Directed by Mahmood Farooqui

Produced by Aamir Khan

Five Green Stars (Extraordinary)

I won't give away the punchline to Peepli [Live], Anusha Rizvi's brilliant political  and social satire which opened Friday across India.  But I will say this: ending the film, as she does, with the jarring transition out of Mukhya Pradesh and the final scene which follows that journey, is one of the bravest things I have seen a filmmaker do in a long time.  The film did not end the way I wanted it to end.  It ended the way it needed to end. And because of that, I can't stop thinking about it.

Peepli [Live] is the story of two men, Natha Das Manikpuri and his elder brother Budhia, who are faced with an absurdly horrifying dilemma: the only way they can save their farm is for one of them to commit suicide.  There are government schemes to help the families of farmers who kill themselves, but there are no schemes to help help desperate farmers before they kill themselves.

Natha tells his brother that he'll take the final step in order to save the family's land.  Word spreads.  Before you know it, a media circus descends on the village and all kinds of cynical political machinations ensue.  Though this is an Aamir Khan Production, it breaks from the Aamir Khan formula in some important ways.  For one, the protagonists of this film are not superheros, as they have been in Aamir Khan's previous hits (superhero peasant-cricketer; superhero teacher; superhero idiot-genius).  Rizvi's protagonists are complex, human, and very funny.  But they are not....Aamir Khan.  And that makes all the difference.

This film is full of all kinds of humour.  Rizvi's portrayal of Natha, his family and the village is comedic, but sympathetic.  When the camera turns toward the bureaucrats, the politicians and the press, on the other hand, the word ruthless comes to mind.

Rizvi reminds us of the difference between satire and comedy.  Both make us laugh, but satire requires one more thing: it requires us to think. And that is what makes this makes this film so powerful: it not only lays bare hypocrisy, cynicism and rot, but it makes us laugh at these things.  This kind of laughter is not always nice, but it is, and always has been, an important kind of political act.

This is Rizvi's first commercial film and the film depends on actors with more experience in theatre than on the big screen.  But in spite of this--or perhaps because of it--Peepli [Live] looks nothing like an amateur production.  The reviews that I've seen so far have been positive.  (See this one by Suparna Sharma in the Asian Age, for example.) In the end, though, one is left with the impression that this film deserves a deeper reading than it is likely to get initially.  Like most good art, it works on many levels;  and there references and iconic figures that need to be decoded. There is no doubt in my mind that Peepli [Live] will be taught in universities for years to come--it deserves that level of analysis.

A film like this is bound to come under fire from all corners. Peepli [Live] will not please politicians of any party and certain members of the media will no doubt squirm.  At least one farmer organisation has already objected to it for not being "realistic" enough. Next thing you know, the media will be calling on Aamir Khan to set up a foundation to solve the farmer suicide problem.  But let's be clear about this: it is not the job of socially conscious artists to solve the problems of the world.  It is not even their job to report on those problems "realistically"--unless they choose to be documentary film makers.  It is enough that they honestly and seriously engage with those problems--and help us to engage with them.

Which brings me back to the last shot in this film.  When we watch any film--even a film like this-- we are trained to expect a conventionally satisfying ending.   Rizvi could have given us this. She could have cued the right music, tweaked the plot just so, and let us leave the cinema hall laughing or crying or just feeling uplifted.  But here again, Rizvi has refused to follow the typical script.  

Instead, of satisfying, she has given us unsettling.  I saw this film last night, and all day today, that last scene has been working at me. It's a little like the feeling you get when you have a stone stuck in your shoe and can't stop to take it out.  But it's the feeling is not in my feet, it's somewhere behind one of the middle buttons of my shirt.  

This is a film you must see.

Reviewed: Our Toxic World

Our Toxic World

Project by Toxic Link

Script by Aniruddha Sen Gupta

Illustrations by Priya Kuriyan

Sage Publications (2010)

Four Green Stars (very good indeed)

Most of us don’t like to think about the poisons that surround us.  Oh sure, we may get worked up about radioactive material being sold in the scrap market.  But the stuff that kills us slowly is somehow easier to ignore.  As dirty as Delhi’s air is, we have to breathe, after all.  And even though we know that all kinds of toxic substances can be fatal, the ways in which they kill are typically not as easy to identify or understand as, say, a swift blow to the head with a blunt object. 

No, toxics are not exciting; they do their damage over a long period of time, through complex chains of events and interactions.  Because of this, they provoke both anxiety and boredom: a deadly combination for those trying to educate the public on the subject.

Toxic Link, a Delhi based NGO, has used a novel approach to confront this problem.  Working with Sage Publications, they’ve come out with Our Toxic World: A guide to hazardous substances in everyday life.  Our Toxic World is part informational text, part graphic novel. The narrative follows the Sachdeva family and other residents of Rohini East as they confront, in different ways, the toxins that surround us all.  From air pollution to heavy metals, from household waste to industrial pollution, this book covers a lot of ground. 

I read Our Toxic World in one sitting—it took just about two hours. It probably won't win the next Commonwealth Writers' Prize, but it held my interest throughout, which is quite an accomplishment, given the subject.  And I learned a lot.  Did you know that washing your vegetables thoroughly in running water is the best way to deal with the high level of contaminants they almost certainly contain? It's nice to know there are some things we can do that will help. I also learned that by the year 2050, residential, commercial and institutional buildings are expected to account for up to 38 percent of global energy consumption. Investing in green buildings makes more and more sense.

Our Toxic World is organized into sections that cover broad topics. Most include a short narrative, followed by some condensed informational text. Honestly, when I saw this book’s subtitle, “a guide to hazardous substances in our everyday lives,” I expected the stories in it to be…painful.  Fortunately, I found Aniruddha Sen Gupta’s script surprisingly effective.  The stories make sense; the dialogue works.  And the book is populated with a large cast of interesting characters.  They include a government factory inspector, an environmental activist, a housewife, an architectural apprentice, and a high school student. We get cameo appearances from a thoughtful auto rickshaw driver, a clean cop, several waste pickers, and many others.

Part of what makes this book work as well as it does is Priya Kuriyan’s art.  Without the illustrations, Our Toxic World would be nowhere near as interesting or easy to understand as it is.   I love the opening “City of Bones” sequence and the panels that show the widow of a construction worker remembering a visit with the Doctor who had treated her dying husband.  "Dust had eaten him away, transforming him into itself." This is powerful stuff.

I attended the Delhi launch of Our Toxic World back in April.  There was some debate about whether the book could be used in schools, and about whether it would be helpful to students.  I find myself agreeing with the people who said that it would work for children, if presented in the right way.  As one woman said, none of us understand everything we read, but we can all learn a lot by reading challenging things anyway.That includes children.

I suspect that many children will find the illustrations simply irresistible.  Though this book would probably be most effective for students 12 and up,  my own ten year old read it on his own,  just because he liked the pictures.  Later, when I asked him about it, he admitted he’d skipped most of the “complicated stuff” and “just read the stories.” But he volunteered several important things he’d learned, including three ways toxics can make kids sick (pesticides get into rivers and poison the fish people eat; children eat lead paint dust; and children suck on toys made out of poisonous stuff.). 

And if that’s not proof enough that this book can work with children, last night I overheard my sons debating the mosquito coil I offered: “No way, it’s toxic!” said one.

“That’s easy for you to say,” said the other.  “The mosquitoes don’t bite you!”  Yes, life confronts us with many difficult questions.  Our Toxic World won’t answer them all.  But it will get you thinking!

 ***

Buy Our Toxic World at Friends of Books 

To learn more about the things that poison us, check out the Dhaba's brand new Toxics & Trash page.  And do check out theToxic Link website.  It's full of detailed, helpful information from people who have been working on this issue for years.

Reviewed: The Caravan, A Journal of Politics and Culture

It seemed for a while that I kept running into people who wrote for Caravan, a relatively new, Delhi-based 'journal of politics and culture'.  Caravan writers seemed interesting, intelligent, and generally excited about their work—so much so, that I eventually asked my newspaper delivery man for a subscription.  

Overall, the writing is good—and in places, excellent.  Take Trisha Gupta’s review of Sukhnandi Vyam’s art, which was recently shown in Delhi.  Gupta gives us insight into the subject under review, written in prose that is itself a pleasure to read. What more can one ever really ask for from a reviewer? 

Maybe I liked this review so much because Gupta asks the same question I had when I saw this exhibit, only she asks it more articulately:

What happens when an artist’s ‘exterior visualisations’ cannot be mirrored in the minds of his public, because they share with him almost none of his cultural context? I do not know.

I don’t know either, but I wish I’d read this review before seeing the exhibit, which was, by the way, extraordinary.  

I wasn't able to make it to the exhibit of Adivasi art at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, but I did very much enjoy Mira Kamdar's review of the show.  Kamdar looks at some of the same themes we see in Gupta's review, but from a different angle:

In the contemporary Adivasi artist’s vision, it is the West and, more specifically, Westernised India—urban, rapidly industrialising and privatising, globally connected and whose Promethean trajectory is ruthlessly enforced by the police and security forces—that is the object of an active subject’s representation. In the Adivasi artist’s world, we are among the observed, the depicted, the represented, as our world crashes into theirs. The art in the exhibition presents us with our own violent reality as seen by people who live at once on the margins of this reality and at its epicentre.

It is ironic, of course, to see Adivasi art celebrated abroad while Adivasi land and people are under attack here in India.  This irony is not lost on Kamdar:

The list of peoples who no longer exist but for what is exhibited of their culture in museums is very long. In its campaign to ‘pacify’ large tracts of land, now teeming with Maoist revolutionaries, where Adivasis have lived for millennia, in order to make that territory safe for lucrative mining and industrial ventures that involve the wholesale destruction of their land and way of life, the Indian government seems to be doing everything it can to make sure that the Adivasis join this list.

Kamdar's discussion of the art itself is compelling.  But what impressed me most is her willingness engage with the questions relating to the position of this art--and the artists who created it--in world beyond the exhibit hall.  


There is a lot more packed into this issue of Caravan, including a sympathetic but critical review of Zizek's First as Tragedy Then as Farce and a photo essay from behind Maoist lines. By the time I saw this new poem by Jeet Thayil, I'd pretty much decided that my forty rupees had been well spent.


But before I sound too enthusiastic, I must say that two stories which deal with issues of central concern to environmentalists are more problematic.  One of the headlines on the cover asks: “NREGA, 4 Years. 784 Billion Rupees.  Where is India’s Landmark Welfare Scheme Taking Us?” Also on the cover, we read: “Inside the Carbon Trading Shell Game.” 

Those headlines made me cringe.  Both play on themes commonly used by right wing media: NREGA is a waste of money, and efforts to fight climate change amount to “scams.”  After the hack job Open Magazine did on climate change back in February, I was ready for the worst.

As it turned out, neither article was offensive.  In 'NREGA'a Reality Check', Mehboob Jeelani rightly criticizes NREGRA for not going far enough and for being corrupt in many places, but the article also acknowledges that the program has ‘vastly improved rural infrastructure’ and ‘still means a lot in rural India.’  In other words, a good idea that has been poorly implemented.  Or as welfare economist and activist Jean Dreze is quoted as saying, ‘NREGA is a pro-people law implemented by an anti-people system.’ That conclusion is hard to argue with, and it's implication is clear: we need to expand and democratize NREGA, not abandon it.  But you wouldn’t know that from the cover of the magazine—which is too bad, since the cover of a magazine like this is all many people will ever see.

'The Carbon Trading Shell Game' that we read about in Mark Schapiro's 'Conning the Climate', refers to the cap-and-trade system and the related 'carbon trading' and 'carbon offset markets that cap-and-trade engenders.  The article does a reasonably good job exposing the many problems with carbon trading markets, which are difficult to regulate and open to manipulation and corruption.  But aside from a passing mention of a carbon tax, Schapiro fails to look at alternatives to cap-and-trade.  As a result, the article feeds the idea that far reaching government-led action against climate change is futile.

Another thing that seemed strangely absent in this piece was a South Asian focus.  This seemed odd, since so much is happening right here in India—both in terms of climate change and carbon offsets.  In the end, the lack of a sustained local perspective was explained by the tag line which followed the piece: “Asia Features/Harper’s Magazine.”  Apparently, here is an example of Indian media outsourcing analysis to the US.

For a simpler, better explanation of cap-and-trade, watch Annie Leonard’s The Story of Cap and Trade.  And for a more in-depth look at the alternatives to cap-and-trade—as well as a local perspective on related issues—you’d be better off reading some of the posts on the Dhaba’s own climate page, here, if I do say so myself.

Unless a magazine is exceptionally good or bad, any judgments based on one issue only are bound to be provisional.  From what I've seen, the writing in Caravan ranges from fair to excellent.  And there's certainly a lot in it to choose from.  So far, I think I like it.  If the editors could only find a way to sell the magazine without resorting to misleading, right-wing sounding headlines, I’d feel a bit less…provisional about recommending it.

Reviewed: An India That Can Say Yes

An India That Can Say Yes: A Climate Responsible Development Agenda for Copenhagen and Beyond

by Praful Bidwai

Heinrich Boll Stiftung (2009)

I've been reading and appreciating Praful Bidwai in Frontline for a long time;  just this week, I cited him several times in a post about the Nuclear Liability Bill.  But I didn't realize he'd written an important book about climate change, until Nagraj Adve sent me this review, a version of which was first published in the Economic and Political Weekly, 1 May 2010.

The review is well worth reading--and it sounds like the book is too.  And the price is right: you can get a free copy by contacting Mr Raghavan (k.v.raghavan@hbfasia.org) of the Heinrich Boell Foundation.  
 

India's Climate Policy: Development and Equity

by Nagraj Adve 

Global warming underlines myriad, interlinked issues, which play out at different levels. It’s a product of the logic of industrial capitalism. It will worsen by recent neoliberal development trajectories that rely hugely on the market. It’s enriched debates around equity and exposed the limits of nation-state frameworks in dealing with global ecological crises that have systemic roots. Given the absence of equity and justice therein, it’s exposed the poverty of both the development trajectory and climate policy of major governments. Its already severe impacts on ecosystems and people, in India (and beyond), and feedbacks at merely 0.8 degrees C of average warming, not merely exacerbates already existing crises faced by the poor but also highlights the dangers and possibility of runaway, dangerous levels of warming, and therein lies its urgency. The book under review deals for a good part with the hollowness of India’s climate policy, offers rich insights into notions of equity, comments on alternative climate proposals that have been discussed internationally, suggests low-carbon development strategies specifically in the Indian context, and much else. No secondary book on climate change and India can henceforth be written satisfactorily without reference to this one.

A nice overview of recent scientific developments is provided in chapter 1. Not so much in the Indian context – for which Sushil Kumar Dash’s Climate Change: An Indian Perspective (CUP, 2007) is a useful but more technical read – but a more general overview, one that is refreshingly up-to-date. It has few, if any, slippages: occasionally, it uses both CO2 and CO2-equivalent interchangeably, a common error; the 350 ppm target, which many countries and NGOs pushed for before and during Copenhagen as the safe level of atmospheric CO2, and which was the focus of a major demonstration worldwide in October 2009, refers not to CO2-eq but CO2.  

What’s more, though accepting 350 ppm as a safe cut-off target has James Hansen’s imprimatur, and one that many of us have endorsed in the recent past, as does Bidwai, it would be fair to say it is very much a minority view among climate scientists.

The chapters that follow subject India’s climate policy and public positions to relentless scrutiny from numerous vantage points. Bidwai analyses how the evolution of India’s climate policy has been influenced by domestic practices that recklessly promote natural resource extraction, and how it evolved within the larger frame of India’s shifting foreign policy, one that increasingly seeks a larger role in world affairs while cosying up to the world’s richer and most powerful nations particularly the United States. He points out anomalies in its strands, particularly in relation to equity. He reveals how it was arrived at completely undemocratically with little wider consultation. He demolishes the reliance on the market, both in the foregrounding of a market-led growth linked to a development trajectory that marginalizes millions and promotes deep social and regional inequality, and, more specifically, in terms of market mechanisms such as the CDM, actively being promoted in India, which do nothing but fraudulently enrich actually polluting industry.

Other parts examine specific missions that are part of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), particularly the National Solar Mission and the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency. He points out that the proposed massive expansion of solar power assumes huge unit cost reductions in photovoltaic power generation and technological breakthroughs. A penultimate chapter argues, rightly, that the only way of promoting an inclusive society in India free of hunger and gross injustice is through low-carbon, equitable development. Additionally, the preceding chapter, in the pre-Copenhagen context, which was when this book was being written, discusses various alternative proposals that have been put forward by numerous NGOs, activists, intellectuals and other, mostly non-state actors. Finally, it speaks as much for the myriad themes that global warming touches upon as for the width of Bidwai’s scholarship that the book contains a number of boxes on varied issues: looking critically at plans for carbon capture and storage; the flaws and dangers of nuclear power in India; the threshold temperature rise of 2 degrees C and the political controversy that then arose in India; the whackiness of geoengineering solutions being proposed and tested, including iron fertilization of a large patch of the southern oceans by the Indian government; why nuclear power is not a solution; the varied positions taken by different NGOs on climate change, and yet more. The extraordinarily wide range of issues discussed within makes this book an enriching one to read, but a difficult one to review. A short review can only touch upon a couple of important themes and ideas, and runs the risk of passing over others.

The only parts a bit thin on the ground were those that dealt with impacts in India. For instance, climate change impacts on agriculture, a hugely significant area, are discussed in one brief paragraph on page 27, and one wonders why. For one, some published scientific literature is available.(For example, this article by PK Aggarwal and The Hindu Survey of Indian Agriculture 2009.) 

Two, given the relative paucity of studies of impacts, there is a need to incorporate people’s perceptions of climate change and its impacts on their lives. This latter is a vast and tricky project, and obviously cannot be the burden of one writer alone, however accomplished. Here again though, published literature is beginning to emerge, though it is possible some of it has come out after Bidwai’s book was written. See for example, Jalvayu Parivartan, SADED and Oxfam, 2009, a compilation of testimonies at a public hearing on impacts of climate change on arid zone areas.

One of the key issues discussed, while critiquing India’s climate policy, is equity. India’s stand, he argues, is extremely limited in focusing merely on per capita emissions norms. A policy frame with a more rounded conception of equity would focus on ends, on equitable human development, on the right to live with dignity, and “therefore entitlements to the basic necessities of life”. Taken in the context of India’s climate stands, one couldn’t agree with him more. But here and at different points in the book he stresses the limits of emissions rights itself: “an equal right to emit GHGs can only be a means to a higher end”. The point is well taken, but on the other hand, while discussing climate change with college students and others, we have found some merit in talking about the Earth’s absorption capacity (roughly 16-17 billion tonnes of CO2 per year currently and stagnating) and the need to divide that equitably among every person on this planet, resulting in each person being entitled to about 2-2.5 tonnes per year, thereby arguing that the poor everywhere are not the cause of the problem, but are actually entitled to more, to the very basic necessities of life that Bidwai talks about.

This also enables us to question nation-state frames of looking at and dealing with the problem, which is another key, linked issue Bidwai brings up. He discusses, rightly (pp. 65-68), how production itself has gotten fragmented and internationalized, how trade and exports make it difficult to accurately quantify ‘national’ emissions, how ecosystems – and impacts on them, one might add – transcend formal national boundaries, and, most of all, the key issue of equity within nations, not merely, as the Indian government is arguing, between nations.

This combination of the notion of foregrounding the right to development and many notions of equity, including intra-national equity is brought together in some superb passages while concluding the discussion on alternative proposals (chapter 6). A desirable alternative conceptual approach “must give primacy to the right of development … stress historical responsibility … must include intra-national equity … set clear targets for GHG reductions and peaking … explicitly recognize the importance of preventing the overuse of natural resources” (p. 102).

Given all this, I’m a bit puzzled by two things: one, the foregrounding once again, at the end of the book, of the nation-state, in discussing the impasse that preceded Copenhagen. By foregrounding this very frame, political elites have ensured not just that Copenhagen was an abysmal failure but that climate negotiations have gone nowhere in 15 successive COPs, even as the Earth hurtles towards dangerous climate change. The problem is a global one, but the nation-state is a very alluring and powerful frame, and Bidwai, like most of us, at times gets caught between the two.

And two, despite a nuanced presentation of its neoliberal variant, one’s struck by the limited discussion of the centrality of capitalism and its logic, both as the cause of global warming and in limiting what might emerge as solutions to it. It is this ecologically destructive logic of capitalist growth and accumulation, to “expand without end in order to exist” that prompted Joel Kovel to write that “a remarkable yet greatly unappreciated fact (is) that the era of environmental awareness, beginning roughly in 1970, has also been the era of greatest environmental breakdown”(Koval, 2007, pp. 3, 38).  It’s debatable whether lasting solutions can be implemented on the scale necessary as long as that pernicious system holds sway.

Which does not take away from the relevance of proposals for low-carbon development and mitigation that Bidwai puts forward for India in chapter 7 – the need for decentralized energy generation that prioritizes basic needs of communities and local resource endowments, promotion of public transport, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), the use of locally available material and biomass, among others. Some folks may wince a bit at his mentioning run-of-the-river projects, given the considerable damage they are already causing in some Himalayan states. And there are many suggestions for energy efficiency in different contexts, though he seems to have been much more critical of energy efficiency in some earlier writing. (In passing, I’m surprised, given how much he discusses energy options, present and future, that peak oil is not mentioned even once, an issue that is discussed in a recent book by another eminent writer.

But in general, not just do most of his proposals have huge relevance for sustainability and more equitable development irrespective of climate change, they are issues that those involved in the incipient climate justice movement in this country have begun to articulate and campaign for. Or should. One is struck by how many of his positions are mirrored by stands taken by organisations, some of which were articulated in a memorandum in late November 2009 to the government of India in the context of the Copenhagen meet and endorsed by 195 organizations and a number of individuals from all over India: that the NAPCC was arrived at undemocratically and with little discussion (p. 62); that the NAPCC ignores the key issues of equity and redistribution (p. 75); the many dangers of market mechanisms such as the CDM (p. 16); that much of what the government claims as adaptation is merely a repackaging of existing programmes (p. 31); the dangerous advocacy of large dams as part of the National Water Mission (p. 85); why nuclear power is a hazardous non-solution to climate change (p. 103); the need for a more decentralized generation and use of energy, particularly in villages that have no electricity (p. 119), and that India’s growing emissions cannot be curtailed “unless India’s development model is radically restructured along egalitarian, balanced and sustainable lines which put people, not markets, at the centre” (p. 59). Praful Bidwai deals with all these and other complex themes with a lucidity, rigour and thoroughness for which he is so well known. I’d wager that no reader can come away from reading this book without being better informed or gaining deeper insights into climate change, India’s policy and development trajectory in general.