Guardian - IPCC's report - carbn budgeting

The world's leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up.

If people continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere could mean that within as little as two to three decades the world will face nearly inevitable warming of more than 2C, resulting in rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts and more extreme weather.

This calculation of the world's "carbon budget" was one of the most striking findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the expert panel of global scientists who on Friday produced the most comprehensive assessment yet of our knowledge of climate change at the end of their four-day meeting in Stockholm.

The 2,000-plus page report, written by 209 lead authors, also found it was "unequivocal" that global warming was happening as a result of human actions, and that without "substantial and sustained" reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we will breach the symbolic threshold of 2C of warming, which governments around the world have pledged not to do.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, urged world leaders to pay heed to the "world's authority on climate change" and forge a new global deal on cutting emissions. "The heat is on. Now we must act," he said.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said in a statement: "This is yet another wakeup call: those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire."

Credit: Guardian graphics

"Once again, the science grows clearer, the case grows more compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or commonsense should be willing to even contemplate," he added.

The IPCC also rebuffed the argument made by climate sceptics that a "pause" for the last 10-15 years in the upward climb of global temperatures was evidence of flaws in their computer models. In the summary for policymakers, published on Friday morning after days of deliberations in the Swedish capital, the scientists said: "Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850. In the northern hemisphere, 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years."

Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the report working group, said measuring recent years in comparison to 1998, an exceptionally hot year, was misleading and that temperature trends could only be observed over longer periods, of about 30 years.

Natural variability was cited as one of the reasons for warming being less pronounced in the last 15 years, and the role of the oceans in absorbing heat, which is still poorly understood.

"There are not sufficient observations of the uptake of heat, particularly into the deep ocean, that will be one of the possible mechanisms that would explain this warming hiatus," said Stocker.

Credit: Guardian graphics

But the most controversial finding of the report was its "carbon budget". Participants told the Guardian this was the last part of the summary to be decided, and the subject of hours of heated discussions in the early hours of Friday morning. Some countries were concerned that including the numbers would have political repercussions.

The scientists found that to hold warming to 2C, total emissions cannot exceed 1,000 gigatons of carbon. Yet by 2011, more than half of that total "allowance" – 531 gigatons – had already been emitted.

To ensure the budget is not exceeded, governments and businesses may have to leave valuable fossil fuel reserves unexploited. "There's a finite amount of carbon you can burn if you don't want to go over 2C," Stocker told the Guardian. "That implies if there is more than that [in fossil fuel reserves], that you leave some of that carbon in the ground."

This raises key questions of how to allocate the remaining "carbon budget" fairly among countries, an issue that some climate negotiators fear could wreck the UN climate talks, which are supposed to culminate in a global agreement on emissions in 2015.

Their other key findings in the report – the first such assessment since 2007 and only the fifth since 1988 – included:

• Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now at levels "unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years".

• Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3C to 4.8C by the end of the century depending on how much governments control carbon emissions.

• Sea levels are expected to rise a further 26-82cm (10-32in) by 2100. The wide variation in part reflects the difficulty scientists still have in predicting sea level rises.

• The oceans have acidified, having absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted.

New Indian Express - NOTA option in secret ballot

The NOTA option is an important innovation. It could spur political parties to step up their game.

The Supreme Court has ruled on the introduction of a "none of the above" (NOTA) option at the election booth, accepting the principle that withholding consent is also an active choice that must be registered. This has been a long-sought change, part of election reform recommendations since the 1970s, and India is now one of a handful of countries to offer it. While Rule 49-0 of the Conduct of Election Rules already allows voters to reject all the contenders, this decision had to be reported to the election officer, and was not part of the secret ballot.

This option will not have any destabilising effect on elections, since the petition did not challenge the rule that the highest polling candidate will be declared winner. And so, as in certain other contexts where this option operates, the presence of the "none of the above" button does not invalidate the election. While some worry that this option plays into a sapping anti-politics sentiment, Indian democracy can accommodate this dissent, and will in fact be enriched by it. The recording of it will have a cautionary effect on parties and their candidates, showing them a constituency of voters who care about politics, are invested in its outcomes and could have been mobilised, but remain unsatisfied with them and their rivals. It could be a spur and a goad for parties, a constant reminder of how they derive their legitimacy, and how many people they are leaving out of their pitch.

It will finally provide a relative measure of people not voting because they couldn't be bothered, and those who have a grievance against the political choices they have. While there is much talk of election-day slackers, or of citizens who feel alienated from the political system, India's voter turnout figures have held strong through the decades, unlike in other countries that have experienced a steady falling off. NOTA could also help in other ways — in situations where a person is being intimidated into voting, this button could make sure there are no forced decisions. By encouraging people to show up at the booth even if they don't choose any candidate, it could prevent others casting votes in their name. "None of the above" places the voter at the centre, unlike much electoral reform that focuses on parties and their processes.

DNA - Obama - Manmohan talks in US

- Reuters

Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama vowed to make the next decade "equally transformative" for their relations as the last one, for India the focus at their third summit was unmistakably on terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
Meeting under the shadow of a terrorist attack in Samba in Jammu and Kashmir on the eve of the summit, Obama acknowledged India's concerns over the menace of terrorism as Manmohan Singh lowered expectations from his upcoming meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz.
While he looked forward to meeting Sharif in New York Sunday, he told the president "the expectations have to be toned down given the terror arm which is still active in our subcontinent" and terrorists' presence "still remain focused in Pakistan"
Affirming their deep concern over the continuing threat posed by terrorism, a joint statement not only "strongly condemned" the Sep 26 attack, but also called for Pakistan to work toward bringing the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice.
The two leaders also stressed the need "for joint and concerted effort, including dismantling of terrorist safe havens, and disrupting all financial and tactical support for terrorism."
They "decided to significantly expand information sharing and intelligence cooperation to address threats to their respective nations including strengthening the bilateral relationship to exchange information on known and suspected terrorists."
Amid perceptions of a drift in their relations, the two leaders also notched up a couple of other successes with the first commercial agreement signed under their landmark civil nuclear and a pledge to expand defence relationship. Both governments, the joint statement noted "are committed to reduce impediments, ease commercial transactions, and pursue co-production and co-development opportunities to expand this relationship."
Noting the transformation of US-India relations during the last decade, the two leaders pledged to "make the next decade equally as transformative, challenging their governments to reach the full potential of this partnership." The joint statement specifically highlighted areas of security cooperation, bilateral trade and investment, energy and environment, higher education, and global architecture.
The Leaders called for expanding security cooperation between the US and India to "address 21st century challenges in the areas of counter-terrorism, cyber, space, and global health security," the joint statement said.
Noting that two-way trade has increased fivefold since 2001 to nearly $100 billion, Obama and Manmohan Singh agreed that "there are no insurmountable impediments to bilateral trade increasing an additional fivefold."
Acknowledging corporate America's concerns about what they called India's "unfair trade practices" they reaffirmed their commitment to concluding a high-standard Bilateral Investment Treaty. Such a treaty will "foster openness to investment, transparency, and predictability, and thereby support economic growth and job creation in both countries," they said. Both sides also agreed to consider establishing a Joint Committee on Investment in Manufacturing "to address all trade and investment policy issues of bilateral concern so as to remove obstacles and improve the business environment in both countries."
Given their "shared democratic values and the capabilities the United States and India have to work together across Asia and around the globe," the joint statement said stressin that the "two countries have crossed a threshold in their relations where both recognise that successes at home and abroad are further advanced by their cooperation."
Friday's summit, the joint statement said "demonstrates that the interests of the United States and India continue to converge, and this partnership will indeed be a defining one for the 21st Century."

The Hindu - National Manufacturing Policy

TOPICS

economy, business and finance

manufacturing and engineering

politics

interior policy

It is the only sector that can create jobs and prevent the economic crisis from deepening

In the last two decades, the Indian economy has witnessed a transformational change to emerge as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Economic reforms unveiled in 1991 have brought about a structural shift enabling the private sector to assume a much larger role in the economy. GDP growth has largely been enabled by growth of the services sector. The worry is that India’s manufacturing sector has stagnated at about 16 per cent of GDP, with India’s share in global manufacturing at only 1.8 per cent. This is in stark contrast to the experience of other Asian nations at similar stages of economic development, particularly China where manufacturing constitutes 34 per cent of GDP and 13.7 per cent of world manufacturing — up from 2.9 per cent in 1991.

Socio-political consequences

The Institute of Applied Manpower Research estimates that 8 to 9 million additional young persons will join the labour force annually, between 2012 and 2022. Additionally, with productivity improvement jobs in agriculture are declining. Therefore, India must create over 200 million jobs outside agriculture by 2025. A large burden of this job creation must fall on the manufacturing sector which has so far been a laggard. Failure to create the jobs required will have serious socio-political consequences.

Besides the employment imperative, growth of the manufacturing sector is also critical for ensuring that India’s trade balance is corrected. The country has been happily importing large volumes of manufactured goods as its economy has grown, which has pleased citizens no doubt. But it has not been able to develop a large, competitive manufacturing base to dampen the need for imports and to export.

There are two broad failures in India’s development since the 1990s which explain why India’s manufacturing sector has languished while high-end information services have grown. The first is the glaring failure to develop power and transportation infrastructure commensurate with the needs of the economy. IT industries are far less dependent on this infrastructure for their operations than are manufacturing units. The second is the absence of an industrial policy, an idea that Indian economists and policymakers threw out of the window when they dismantled the stifling controls of DGTD (Director General of Trade and Development) on industry and lowered duties on imports in 1991. Both these were welcome steps. But the baby was also thrown out with the bathwater. For the last 20 years, even the mention of the need for a concerted industrial policy for India has been taboo.

The National Manufacturing Policy which was introduced in 2011 is a belated departure from the policy neglect of earlier years. It must address the challenges of rapid job creation and expansion of domestic production. It has ambitious goals. These are to create 100 million additional jobs in manufacturing by 2025 by accelerating the growth of manufacturing to exceed the overall growth of the economy by an additional 2 per cent to 4 per cent annually. Thereby the share of manufacturing in the overall growth of the economy will also increase from 16 per cent, where it has been stagnant, to 25 per cent.

Two points must be made here while mentioning these goals. The first is that the summation of the bottom up plans made by the producers and policymakers associated with the various manufacturing sectors results in the same numbers. Therefore they can be achieved. The second point is that these plans were made when the forecast of growth of the economy was 8 per cent in the 12th Plan and faster growth thereafter. The 2 per cent to 4 per cent growth is over and above the base level growth. If the base falls due to other macro-economic problems and policy log-jams, which has happened, the growth of the manufacturing sector will be lower and it will not meet its employment targets. However the need to create jobs will not reduce. Young people will continue to pour out of schools and colleges and many with better skills too. They will be very disappointed if they do not get jobs.

New Manufacturing Policy

It is imperative that three sets of actions are taken simultaneously to prevent a socio-political crisis. One is the stimulation of overall economic growth which the new Governor of the Reserve Bank, the Finance Minister, and the Prime Minister are focussed on. The second is the sorting out of the multiple policy and implementation problems besetting India’s power and transport infrastructure that are now receiving high level attention in the PMO and the Cabinet. The third is the implementation of plans to convert the New Manufacturing Policy to results.

The implementation plan to convert India’s Manufacturing Policy to results has been drawn up by 26 working groups: 16 working on specific industries’ plans, and 10 working on cross-cutting issues that affect all industries, such as the business regulatory environment and human resource and labour issues. Steered by a systematic process, the plans of these working groups converged on five major strategic thrusts to grow Indian manufacturing.

1. Improving the business regulatory framework

2. Human asset development

3. Improving technology and value addition in manufacturing

4. Developing effective clusters for growth of SMEs (small and medium enterprises)

5. National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZs)

Effective strategies for boosting the manufacturing sector and employment growth must satisfy three important criteria:

i. Immediate impact on growth of employment: effectiveness in creating jobs without prolonged gestation periods is an important criterion in determining which strategies should be given the most attention now.

ii. Countrywide applicability: This will ensure livelihood opportunities are provided to people all across the country, not just in select industrial pockets.

iii. Growth of the MSME (micro small and medium enterprises) sector: This sector has emerged as a vital sector of the Indian economy. It not only plays a crucial role in providing large employment opportunities at a comparatively lower capital cost, it also contributes substantially to manufacturing output. It is estimated that the MSME sector contributes about 45 per cent of manufacturing output and 40 per cent of total exports of the country.

The NIMZ strategy in the National Manufacturing Policy has captured the imagination of the country. This is a big, audacious strategy and will no doubt have a substantial impact on India’s manufacturing when these zones are up and running. They require acquisition of large pieces of land and the building of modern infrastructure. The large urban-industrial estates along the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), approved in 2007, are fore-runners of the NIMZs. The first DMIC zones are expected to be ready in 2019. The first NIMZs are likely to be ready even later.

Accelerate action

Since we must stimulate manufacturing growth much faster and across the country too, we must turn to the other four strategies listed above. Not only can these be implemented immediately; they require hardly any money to implement which is a great advantage when the Finance Minister is constrained to squeeze plan funds to reduce the fiscal deficit. Action on these four strategies has begun, but it must be accelerated. To put more force behind these strategies, the following actions are required.

1. Communicate the essentials of the Manufacturing Plan widely to politicians, policymakers, the public, and to industry associations. (Sadly, even many industry leaders think the National Manufacturing Policy is only about NIMZs!)

2. Focus action in the States. Eighty per cent of the action for improving the business regulatory environment, human asset management practices, and quality of clusters is in the States. States must be alerted to what they can do, the benefits of which will be more investment in the States and more jobs.

3. At the Centre, resolve inter-ministerial issues fast to facilitate induction of technology and increase value addition in several sectors, including electronics, defence and capital goods.

The Economist - why chemical weapons taboo?

ON AUGUST 21ST almost 1,500 people were killed in a nerve-agent attack in Syria. It was not just the scale of the atrocity which caused international outrage, but the fact that chemical weapons had been used. This crossed a "red line" previously defined by Barack Obama, prompting America to consider intervention against the Syrian regime, which is assumed by most observers to have been responsible for the attack. But then John Kerry, America's secretary of state, suggested on September 9th that military intervention could be avoided if the Syrian regime placed its entire chemical stockpile under international control. Syria's ally Russia backed this suggestion, and on September 11th Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, announced that he was prepared to go along with it.On September 14th a joint Russian-American framework was agreed to eliminate the weapons. But why is the use of chemical weapons especially taboo?

The first ban on chemical weapons was actually introduced before they had even been used. At the Hague convention in 1899, projectiles “the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gasses” were prohibited from international use. Even so, chemical weapons were deployed in Europe during the first world war by both sides. But they were not turned against civilians, unlike aerial bombardment and submarine torpedoes. When the Geneva protocol was agreed in 1925 the ban on chemical weapons was reiterated. During the second world war the taboo against them became stronger. Political leaders discussed their use at length. America decided not to use gas in its attack on the island of Iwo Jima. Adolf Hitler used Zyklon B poison gas in concentration camps, but refrained from using chemical weapons on the battlefield. Being the weapon that not even Hitler would use increased the stigma.

The taboo against the use of chemical weapons arises, in large part, from the shocking scale on which they can kill and the insidious and indiscriminate way they spread. But it also stems from the infrequency of their use. Because the ban on their deployment has mostly been observed, political leaders are, by and large, even less willing to flout it, thus reinforcing the taboo. The most notorious exception after the second world war was when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, and against Kurds and other minorities in Iraq. Then in 1995 Aum Shinrikyo, a cult group, attacked the Tokyo metro system with a home-made nerve-gas, killing dozens of commuters. That attack heightened fears that terrorist groups might employ chemical weapons, further strengthening the taboo. That said, in many respects chemical weapons are no worse than other means of killing people. Mr Assad has shelled, bombed and beheaded his citizens too. Yet it was his use of chemical weapons that was considered intolerable and has prompted international action.

The Syrian armed forces have one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons: around 1,000 tonnes, including the nerve agents Sarin and VX. Getting rid of the weapons, assuming the Russian-American deal can be made to stick, will take considerable time. As Syria's civil war continues, it will be difficult for United Nations inspectors to reach all the sites where the weapons are stored, many of which are in areas where heavy fighting is under way. And despite the deal, Mr Assad may not keep his word. The exceptional taboo that surrounds the use of chemical weapons has contributed to a diplomatic breakthrough, but dismantling Syria's deadly chemical arsenal will be hard, if not impossible, without a wider ceasefire.

The Hindu - capital punishment

Not only is the death penalty barbaric and immoral and its deterrent effect unproven, it also contradicts the core objectives of the criminal justice system

Advocating for the abolition of the death penalty in the immediate aftermath of the sentencing in the Delhi rape case may appear morally dubious. What rights do people guilty of so heinous a crime lay claim to, and what do they deserve but death, you might be inclined to ask. But when you apply an immoral law to monstrous criminals, it becomes easier to make comparably iniquitous laws for the rest of us. Capital punishment, perfectly legal as it may be under India’s laws, even if only in a prescriptive sense, runs counter to the core objectives of the criminal justice system. Equally, its application in the “rarest of rare cases”— as mandated by the Supreme Court — speaks to a larger, underlying incoherence in India’s penology.

BECCARIA’S TREATISE

Today’s debate over capital punishment has its broad genesis in 1764 when the Italian jurist, Cesare Beccaria, published his treatise, “An Essay on Crimes and Punishments.” In it, Beccaria argued that abolishing the death penalty was crucial to a society’s progress from barbarity to civilised refinement. “Is it not absurd,” he asked, “that the laws, which detect and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?”

Beccaria’s thesis was founded on two central arguments. One, that the objectives of punishment were dual: to deter the future commission of crimes, which the death penalty decidedly did not achieve, and to reform the offenders, which the death penalty decidedly cannot achieve. And two, that the state’s right to take the life of a citizen was illusory, and opposed to the social contract from which it derived its sovereignty.

Beccaria’s assertion at the first level, therefore, comes down to whether capital punishment, by a measure above common imprisonment, deters people from committing crime. “Every act of authority of one man over another that does not derive from absolute necessity is tyrannical,” he wrote. “For punishment to be just it must have only that degree of intensity that suffices to deter men from crime.”

After centuries of debate, the answer to Beccaria’s question remains as clear as it did when he published his thesis. There is no empirical evidence evincing the death penalty’s ability to deter crime; if anything, the converse has been shown to be true. In the United States, for instance, death penalty States have far worse homicide rates than abolitionist States. So given that capital punishment does not act as a deterrent, and given that it cannot reform an offender (who will be too dead to be reformed), the only logical argument in its favour is on retributive grounds.

Yet it wasn’t for such objectives that the death penalty was instilled as punishment for some offences (viz. murder and the highest offences against the state) under the Indian Penal Code 1860. In fact, the only reason murder was punishable with death, while rape was punishable with mere imprisonment, was on deterrent grounds. Lord Macaulay, who drafted the code with painstaking precision, wrote in his notes to the statute that “no argument that has been brought to our notice has satisfied us that it would be desirable wholly to dispense with [the death penalty].” But, according to him, while many were of the opinion that gang-robbery and rape were offences that ought to be punishable with death, atrocious as the crimes may be, they cannot be placed on the same class with murder. These offences, he wrote, “are almost always committed under such circumstances that the offender has it in his power to add murder to his guilt.” If the punishment of the crime already committed were the same as the punishment for murder, the offender, said Macaulay, would have no restraining motive. “A law which imprisons for rape and robbery, and hangs for murder,” he wrote, “holds out to ravishers and robbers a strong inducement to spare the lives of those whom they have injured.”

Macaulay’s argument, in spite of its chilling moral nuances, is lucid and logical assuming the death penalty acts as a deterrent. But in the several decades since the Indian Penal Code’s drafting, capital punishment’s deterrent effect remains, at best, unproven. Yet, India continues to retain the punishment. And in doing so, it has muddled a largely rational penology that stood as the basis for its substantive criminal law.

Retaining the death penalty on grounds of retribution alone is flawed at many levels beyond its inherent immorality. In India, while murder is punishable with death, theft is not punishable with a corresponding theft nor is rape punishable with rape. Although retribution does not always envisage an eye for an eye, we see it used as the theoretical basis for the punishment of some offences, while for others the law reverts to deterrence and reformation for justification.

“RAREST OF RARE” CASES

Further widening this penological schism is the Supreme Court’s dictum that the death penalty be applied only in the “rarest of rare cases.” In 1982, a bench of five judges, in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, upheld the constitutionality of Section 302 of the IPC, which prescribes the death penalty as punishment for murder. And in so upholding its validity, the court prescribed that the penalty be accorded only in the “rarest of rare cases.” The Court referenced Macaulay, who in drafting the code said capital punishment ought to be sparingly inflicted. But his intentions weren’t to instil in judges discretion in determining which were the “rarest of rare cases.” On the contrary, he was providing a rationale for why the death penalty was restricted only to murder and the highest offences against the state.

Justice Krishna Iyer’s concern, expressed in Ediga Anamma v. State of Andhra Pradesh, that “… it is unfortunate that there are no penological guidelines in the statute for preferring the lesser sentence, it being left to ad-hoc forensic impressionism to decide for life or for death,” went unheeded in Bachan Singh. The “rarest of rare cases” doctrine has, on the other hand, exacerbated the confusion over which cases merit the death sentence. By its fundamental ethos, as Justice P.N. Bhagwati put it in his dissenting opinion, the doctrine is constitutionally flawed. “The question may well be asked,” wrote Bhagwati, “by the accused: Am I to live or die depending upon the way in which the Benches are constituted from time to time? Is that not clearly violative of the fundamental guarantees enshrined in Articles 14 and 21?”

IRREVOCABILITY

The strongest, practical argument, however, against capital punishment is its irrevocability. The dangers are most evident from the Supreme Court’s judgment in 2009 in Santosh Kr. Bariar v. State of Maharashtra. Here, a bench comprising Justices S.B. Sinha and Cyriac Joseph ruled that previous judgments of the Court, in which 13 death sentences were validated, were rendered per incuriam, or in other words were rendered in ignorance of the law laid down in Bachan Singh’s case. Out of these 13 convicts, whose sentences were confirmed by a decision that was admittedly incorrect, two have already been hanged. Such episodes are too high a price to pay for a punishment that, all else apart, is ineffectual. What’s more, in a country where an accused’s right to free legal counsel is, at best, a mockery, retaining capital punishment sounds a virtual death knell to the Constitution.

That this debate is still alive in India, however, speaks to an even broader problem: an underlying incoherence in the country’s penology. Hang the murderers and the rapists and we will deter all future crime, seems to be the attitude. “I have raised the demand to award capital punishment to these four convicts,” said the Leader of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, after the four men were found guilty in the Delhi case. “If they are awarded the death sentence, it would become a model for the country and effectively curb incidents of rapes.” Such demands for the guillotine shift the focus from far more significant considerations: the maintenance of law and order through better policing, effective, efficient prosecutorial conduct and, most importantly, the need to reform the country’s prisoners. The death penalty is not only barbaric and immoral, it also contradicts the criminal justice system’s core objectives: to reform and rehabilitate offenders while ensuring that the accorded punishment deters others from committing crime.

(The author is an advocate practising in the Madras High Court)

Keywords: Delhi gangrape, death sentence, Dec 16 gangrape, death penalty debate, human rights

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The Hindu - Voyager breaches solar system

On August 25, 2012 and around 18.78 billion km from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe became the first human-made object to breach the interstellar medium (ISM), the matter that exists between stars in the universe. The primary reason it has taken a year for astrophysicists to deem this event as having happened is that the signs of breaching the ISM were not all detected simultaneously nor have they been understood fully. In fact, as if playing on their confusion, Voyager 1 beamed home a series of signals in October-November, 2012, that have been studied for their meaning since then. In three papers published inScience in June this year, scientists deduced that the probe had stumbled into a region — lying on the cusp of the ISM — astronomers didn’t know existed. Finally, and with the help of a natural disturbance promulgated by our Sun, astronomers from NASA and several universities, led by the University of Iowa, detected signals from Voyager 1 in April, 2013, that implied the incidence of cosmic rays and the density of ionized gas around the probe had increased, and the direction of the magnetic field in the space around the probe had changed: all signs of Voyager 1 becoming humankind’s first eyes and ears in the world between stars.

When the twin Voyager probes were launched in 1977, the space age was only two decades old. Those who built and now operate them, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, had the audacity to equip the probes to function for almost four decades (Voyager 2 is currently 15.3 billion km from Earth). The durability of the probes and the careful management of resources have awarded us with the chance to directly study the outermost reaches of the Solar System, within which great astronomical observations are being expected. This attitude of careful management has also paid off with other NASA missions, such as the WISE asteroid-hunter and the Spitzer space telescope before, and should once again with the Kepler space telescope. And while nobody is sure of what to expect from Voyager 1, that the probe is now bathed in particles arising from stars other than just the Sun is opportunity enough. Its particles and fields science experiment will function till 2020, until when the small nuclear battery on-board will be able to power them. After that, the Golden Record, a gold-plated disc containing photos of and sounds from Earth, added to the payload just in case other life-forms encounter the probe, will preserve Voyager 1’s ambassadorship. This second Sputnik moment in the history of human exploration has rightly rekindled the awe humans felt when they first looked into the night sky.

The Hindu - IWT and J & K

TOPICS

diplomacy

India-Pakistan

natural resources

rivers

water (natural resource)

water

water rights

The Indus Water Treaty must move beyond its logic of compensation and water sharing between India and Pakistan to address the energy and ecological concerns of Jammu & Kashmir

Much of South Asia is now haunted by the spectre of hydro-electricity. At heart remains the sub-continent’s unsolved riddle of trying to ‘meaningfully share’ its many trans-boundary rivers. Existing river development models, as all governments have learnt, are indeed a zero sum game: in which a benefit extracted from one point of the river’s stem will inevitably involve a cost at another point in the flow. For all the careful wording that has gone into framing water treaties, sharing agreements or cooperation models, the overwhelming fact remains that every country in the region is energy starved, politically impatient and is compelled to tap rivers for hydropower.

CLAIM FOR ‘COMPENSATION’

In April of this year, the government of Jammu and Kashmir loudly restated an earlier claim for ‘compensation.’ This demand for financial reimbursement was made not only upon the government of India but in an equally emphatic tone on Pakistan as well. And the source of this twinned nature of J&K’s grief, as they dramatically point out, is the Indus Water Treaty (IWT). Signed in 1960 between India and Pakistan, the IWT, ironically enough for J&K, continues to be celebrated as a diplomatic-legal-technical success story in the region. The consensus over the IWT, in fact, has not only held and endured wars but arguably, as well, offers one of the most substantial set of protocols for addressing disputes and disagreements that may arise over water sharing. But clearly this curriculum vitae of the IWT has failed to impress the J&K government, which has even gone on to hire the services of a private consultancy firm — M/S Halcrow India Limited — and tasked it to assess losses that have ostensibly been incurred by the State in the past five decades on account of the IWT.

According to one such estimate, J&K suffers an annual loss of Rs.6,000 crore; a calculation based on the perceived benefits that are denied to the State from clauses in the IWT that prevent the former from storing water (for generating electricity) and from diverting flows for irrigational needs. Jammu and Kashmir is, in fact, energy-deficit and according to the latest Economic Survey (2012-13), only 23.22 per cent of the required power was generated within the State while the rest had to be imported. As of now, J&K purchases around 1,400 MW of power from the northern grid and spends Rs. 3,600 crore annually on meeting its growing demand which peaked at 2,600 MW. This, given the fact that ‘potentially’ it can generate 20,000 megawatts from the rivers and many cascading tributaries that run through its valleys and hills. In effect, J&K‘s hydro-electricity dilemmas have turned into a hard rock that the State government is now continually hurling against the IWT and battering the delicate water sharing agreement between India and Pakistan.

But if the IWT appears to be failing the people of J&K who, geographically speaking, inhabit the head-reaches of the Indus system, what does one make of the environmental mess that has come to afflict the Indus delta? Historically, the estimated total water available from the Indus catchments has been calculated at being approximately 150 Million Acre Feet (MAF) (181 billion m3), a large portion of which then hurtled as fresh water flows into the sprawling edges of mangroves and estuarine ecologies of the delta. Over the past 60 years or so, however, the quantity of sweet water flows has been reduced below Kotri (in Sindh Province) to a peak (in the three monsoon months) of about 34.8 MAF (43 billion m3), with barely 20 MAF reaching the mangroves. In effect, fresh water flows have been steadily slurped off in the flood plains, with diversions for agriculture and industry and reservoirs holding back volumes for power generation. Importantly as well, instead of the 400 million tonnes of nutrient rich fine grained soil that used to annually nourish the delta, there is now barely a 100 million or so tonnes of soil washing up along the coasts.

DISASTROUS IMPLICATIONS

The long-term consequences of this water and soil squeeze on the delta are yet to be fully understood as an environmental phenomena. In fact in 2000-01, the flow downstream of Kotri (Sindh Province) was recorded as an unprecedented ‘nil’. Only a few recent studies (such as A. Amjad et al, ‘Degradation of Indus Delta Mangroves…’ International Journal of Geology, 2007) have taken note of the potentially disastrous implications from dying fisheries, coastal erosion, mangrove destruction and an increase in sea water ingress into the coastal regions.

What does one make of this simultaneous failing and success of the IWT in the head-reaches and tail ends respectively of the Indus system? And equally, as well, how will this perplexing developmental and environmental conundrum impact future India-Pakistan dialogue and the peace process in the region? This riddle, it could be persuasively argued, has been, paradoxically enough, constructed not only by the context of the IWT but, significantly as well, by the peculiarities of the ‘knowledge regime’ that has largely informed trans-boundary river management in the subcontinent.

The IWT was too simplistically (though perhaps appealing in its time) based on an engineering formula which ‘divided’ the Indus rivers (Western streams to Pakistan and Eastern branches to India), rather than treating the river system as an organic entity that was ecologically linked and environmentally viable only as a connected phenomena. Secondly, managing the IWT has been kept confined to the limited knowledge resources generated by a thin sliver of civil engineers, state managers and ideas borne out of diplomatic intrigue.

Thus, if the IWT is to be saved from a political cul de sac, as far as J&K’s energy crisis is concerned and from a potential environmental collapse in the delta, the treaty and its weighty technical arrangements have to be moved beyond the zero sum logics of dividing waters. Instead, a policy architecture needs to be designed that allows and enables economic and environmental ‘transactions’ within the Indus system. Put differently, rather than stoking a politics of compensation based on narrower or opportunistic readings of the IWT’s many clauses and annexures, the way ahead would be to craft a credible ecologically based cost benefit model that acknowledges the Indus rivers as an organic hydraulic system: made up of fluvial interconnections.

Thus, if the head waters need to be preserved to sustain ecological functions within the flood plains and the delta, a case could be made to pay-off sections in the head reaches either through the transfer of hydro-electricity or commensurate financial packages. Similarly, if the head reaches or catchments of the Indus system are recognised for the range of ecosystem services that they deliver lower down the system then the latter must be expected to be conserved as a viable environmental entity.

EXCELLENT CASE FOR REWARD

Put differently, the government of J&K could make an excellent case for being ‘rewarded’ for preserving its rivers for their potential eco-system services enjoyed by downstream users rather than having to claim compensation for presumed ‘lost’ development benefits. The model of development, hence for the catchment, would be recognised as involving different priorities than the flood plains and the delta.

By allowing such kinds of ecologically calculated cost-benefit transactions across the Indus system, India and Pakistan can turn volatile environmental limits into both economic opportunity and political possibility. The way forward is to harness new knowledge on river ecology, de-centre the civil engineering mindset and craft fresh decision-making collectives that draw upon cultures and traditions of river management in the region.

The Hindu - HPV faux trial

When regulators become violators, who is to regulate them? That perplexing question is what arises from the damning report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee that investigated alleged irregularities in the conduct of the human papilloma virus vaccine trial on nearly 23,500 girls in the 10-14 age group in Vadodara, Gujarat and Khammam, Andhra Pradesh. But more importantly, the report provides a rare glimpse into the murky ways in which certain policy decisions that affect a large number of people are taken by nodal agencies with utter disregard to propriety. The vaccine given to young girls for preventing cervical cancer was approved for use in India in October 2008. But an MoU was signed as early as February 2007 by the Indian Council of Medical Research and an American agency, Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health, wherein the regulator committed itself to “promote the drug [vaccine] for inclusion in the universal immunisation programme” well before the “utility and rationale” of inclusion was studied. Incidentally, the ICMR is not the body that takes a call on introducing a vaccine in the immunisation programme. Thus, by entering into an agreement, the ICMR abdicated its responsibilities of being a watchdog and instead became a “willing facilitator [that] acted at the behest of PATH in promoting the interests of the [vaccine] manufacturer.” The Drug Controller General of India is equally culpable for being a mute spectator when clinical trial rules were “flagrantly violated.”

If the nodal agencies bending over backwards to facilitate the introduction of the vaccine is shocking, the Union Health Ministry’s role in scuttling the truth-seeking process is alarming. The ministry has made a mockery of the trial subjects by choosing people with well-established conflicts of interest to be a part of the inquiry committee to look into the irregularities. The DCGI, on its part, ensured that “no accountability was fixed” on the erring officials and no definite steps were taken to improve the trial process. The collusion of the agencies and the ministry turns the spotlight on the government’s intent in removing the obstacles for multinational drug companies to undertake human clinical trials. The conduct and investigation of one of the country’s notorious trials clearly demonstrates that the government showed no interest in protecting its people, choosing instead to abet the criminal acts of private companies and safeguard itself. If the very design of a trial that involved ICMR could be faulty, one is left wondering what the status of other trials would be. How safe are people who knowingly or unknowingly volunteer for trials in India?

The Hindu - India's Mars Orbiter Mission

Spacecraft, weighing 1,350 kg, is about the size of a large hatchback car

India’s very own Mars excursion — a journey of over 385 million km — is just over a month away as the Indian Space Research Organisation prepares to launch the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft between October 21 and November 19 from Sriharikota.

The MOM spacecraft carries five instruments or payloads to study as many aspects of Mars, including the detection of methane in its atmosphere.

Director of the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) here S.K. Shivakumar said at a news conference on Wednesday that the spacecraft and its support elements were completed within a year — a very short period — of its approval.

“Things are in final shape. All tests for achieving this and everything that’s required have been done. The ground station network is upgraded and the reception centre reconfigured. We are pretty confident that the PSLV takes this satellite to the right orbit.”

Programme Director M. Annadurai and Project Director S. Arunan said the spacecraft would be shipped to Sriharikota’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre on September 27, a day after the pre-shipment review and a national committee review on September 19.

Mr. Arunan said non-readiness of the larger GSLV had forced India to use a light-lift, low-cost rocket such as the liquid-engine-powered PSLV for propulsion.

As a result, the spacecraft will take over 20 days to get on to the path to Mars and require six orbit boosts whereas other Mars missions take just a day.

As communication with the spacecraft takes 20 minutes each way, it has many components of in-built autonomy to correct itself. The ISRO has developed its own navigation software.

Asked if this costly “me-too” mission would not merely be a duplication of other Mars probes, Dr. Shivakumar said the new instruments were technological gains and India would also benefit from its own experience and perspectives on Mars.

NASA SENDING MISSION

National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) would provide support to the ground-segment operations from the Deep Space Network.About the same time the Indian spacecraft takes off, NASA too will send up its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) mission to Mars. But the two will work independently, Dr. Shivakumar said.

“MAVEN is scheduled to leave on November 18 and reach the red planet two days ahead of ours, by September 22 next year. MOM will have an elliptical orbit of 375 km x 80,000 km; MAVEN will take a very close look at its subject from about 50-75 km.”

The Hindu - Pressure over India to phase out HFCs

International treaties, environment, science and business interests converge on the use and replacement of refrigerant gases.

The issue of refrigerant gases is covered by two international agreements Montreal Protocol (MP) and the U.N. Framework Contention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The MP is meant to reduce or do away with gases that cause a hole in the ozone layer that envelopes the Earth — mostly refrigerant gases and solvents. The UNFCCC is meant to bring down emissions of greenhouse gases that warm up the planet.

Under the MP, rich countries began migrating from the earlier ozone-depleting refrigerant to costly HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons). HFCs do not cause any harm to the ozone layer but have very high potential to raise global temperatures.

Unwilling to pay the price for the same technology transition in poorer countries, the MP agreements ensured India and other emerging economies transit instead to HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) — a family of gases that has lesser impact on the ozone layer but are dangerous for the climate too. There were large financial gains for the industrialised countries then too as HCFCs were also patented products.

As of now, between 2013 and 2030, developing countries are slated to make a second transition under the MP, phasing out from HCFCs to HFCs.

But the U.S. now wishes that India leapfrog to the most advanced, least impacting, costly and patented technologies bypassing the HFC phase. One of the alternatives being proposed is produced jointly by DuPont and Honeywell, two U.S.-based multinationals, and the other by the Japanese company Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited.

India holds a large business potential. It is one of the fastest growing markets in the world for refrigeration business.

But developing countries have long argued that HFCs — being greenhouse gases and not ozone-depleting substances — should be covered under the basket of gases that UNFCCC seeks to reduce. Under the UNFCCC, in principle at least, the developed world is required to fund the entire additional costs of developing countries making a technological transition for reduction of greenhouse gases. But these costs — they are high because proprietary technologies are involved — are not covered comprehensively under the MP.

The MP does have a mechanism to defray the costs for the transition but India has contended that an option for a prolonged period of transition and a cost-sharing formula in the MP will not cover the investments India would have to make.

Besides a direct business proposition, there is another strategic advantage that the U.S. and other developed countries gain on the climate change front.

The refrigerant gases to be phased out are short-lived in the atmosphere and contribute very little at the moment as compared to carbon dioxide to the accumulated problem. But the emissions of these gases are growing at a fast pace and these gases do have much higher climate impact per unit than carbon dioxide.

By pushing for an early phase out of the short-lived HFCs instead of focusing on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the U.S. also gets a chance, India contends, to pass the buck for action to emerging economies while claiming it is a global leader on the issue. It also is able to buy time for the more troublesome and difficult reduction of its carbon dioxide emissions.

Recently the U.S. and China have signed an agreement to phase down the HFCs using the financial mechanisms of the MP but accounting for them under the U.N. climate convention. The U.S. has demanded that India agree to starting multilateral discussions under the protocol and to move along the same route before Manmohan Singh lands in the U.S. So far Indian officials have noted that the Chinese refrigerant business is at a different technological and operational level and just because China has signed a deal does not mean India should too.

The Indian negotiators have also told the U.S. envoy that there is no advantage in working on a bilateral basis on the subject if the only objective of the U.S. government is to push for bringing the issue under the Montreal Protocol.

The final word on this controversy is yet to be heard with the negotiations for Manmohan Singh’s U.S. visit still continuing.