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India Has Made Significant Progress In Many SDGs: Finance Minister

The efforts of the government since 2014 have ensured better quality of life for citizens of the country, Sitharaman added India has made significant progress in many sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the per capita income has increased to Rs 1.97 lakh, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday. She also said that the Indian economy has increased in size from being 10th to fifth largest in the last nine years. The efforts of the government since 2014 have ensured better quality of life for citizens of the country, Sitharaman added. According to the Centre for Science and Environment's State of India's Environment Report, 2022, India's overall Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) score was 66 out of 100. The 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. There are 17 sustainable development goals which are an urgent call for action by all countries in a global partnership. Some of these goals are no poverty, zero hunger, good health and wellbeing, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure. It also includes, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace, justice and strong institutions and lastly strengthening global partnerships for the goal.

India has made significant progress in many sustainable development goals: Finance Minister

India has made significant progress in many sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the per capita income has increased to Rs 1.97 lakh, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday. She also said that the Indian economy has increased in size from being 10th to fifth largest in the last nine years. The efforts of the government since 2014 have ensured better quality of life for citizens of the country, Sitharaman added. According to the Centre for Science and Environment's State of India's Environment Report, 2022, India's overall Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) score was 66 out of 100. The 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. There are 17 sustainable development goals which are an urgent call for action by all countries in a global partnership.

Budget 2023: India has made significant progress in many Sustainable Development Goals, says FM Nimala Sitharaman

Budget 2023: According to the Centre for Science and Environment's 'State of India's Environment Report 2022', the country's overall SDG score was 66 out of 100, pointed out FM Sitharaman. Budget 2023: India has made significant progress in many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the per capita income has increased to Rs 1.97 lakh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday. She also said the Indian economy has increased in size from being the 10th largest to the fifth largest in the world in the last nine years. The efforts of the government since 2014 have ensured better quality of life for citizens of the country, Sitharaman added. According to the Centre for Science and Environment's 'State of India's Environment Report 2022', the country's overall SDG score was 66 out of 100. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 SDGs and other components, was adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.

Biomass burning main culprit, accounts for one-fourth of Delhi’s pollution in last 3 months

NEW DELHI: In the past three months, secondary inorganic aerosols were the highest contributor to Delhi’s air pollution, at 33%, according to findings of the real-time source apportionment study. While the share of biomass burning, i.e., burning of wood, dung and agriculture residue, was 24%, vehicles contributed 17%, cold and fly ash 7%, and soil and road dust and waste and plastic burning 2% each during the period from November 1, 2022 to January 29, 2023. Track the pollution level in your cityThe findings were shared by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who inaugurated a supersite and mobile van for the study at Rouse Avenue on Monday. Officials said particles such as sulfate, nitrate and ammonium are formed in the atmosphere from the interaction of various gases. Potential sources include power plants, refineries, brick kilns, vehicles, agriculture, organic waste decomposition and open drains. The data showed the contribution of domestic use was 3% and of others, including tire and brake wear, paints, and plastic processing and melting, was 12%. delhi_pollution “Analysis shows outer-state pollution accounts for one-third of Delhi’s pollution while biomass accounts for one-fourth and vehicles for 17-18%,” said Kejriwal. The project was started by Delhi Pollution Control Committee in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi and TERI. The study will also forecast hourly air quality for the next three days. “Until now, we have been reliant on studies conducted as a one-off analysis. For instance, a study might have been conducted in June 2014 and over the next one month or more, data must have been collected from various places. Based on this, the policies of the state government have been planned. The issue with such an approach is we plan the policy to curb pollution throughout the year based on the data from June. Pollution data changes daily, which is not factored in,” said Kejriwal. Environment minister Gopal Rai said the mobile van will visit hotspots to find out the causes of pollution. Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment, said the data set has many takeaways for policy action. “Stringent action is needed for all combustion sources and solid fuels must be substituted with cleaner ones for domestic cooking,” she added. Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said any step in the fight against pollution is welcome but the experience of the last eight years shows the government is not serious. “When we know pollution peaks in places like Anand Vihar, Old Delhi, Okhla, Delhi government chooses Rouse Avenue, which has comparatively cleaner air, to set up a study centre,” he pointed out.

Cash from trash: Women waste pickers are upcycling their lives

Chanakyapuri, the Delhi enclave of embassies and fancy hotels, is where Sarita* is a waste picker with an ambition. She operates a government-allotted material recycling facility or MRF. It is just a five-minute walk from where she lives, but it seems like a world away from Sarita’s way of life for now. Sarita’s mere presence at the MRF, a plant that separates and prepares recyclable waste in a way that it can be sold again, is like an act of defiance. “The people in my community and the big scrap dealers here have questioned how I got here. They demeaned my character and used sexual slang,” she says. Like most professions, men dominate waste picking. In India, 49% waste pickers are women, but they make 33% less money than men, according to a study by the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. There is an undeniable question of safety. Collecting and segregating waste is mostly done in isolated, open spaces. This increases the chances of sexual harassment and assault for women and children. Plus, the health risks from exposure to toxic elements. For Sarita, the MRF is generally a safer place. She manages the facility with her husband, who works it in the evening as it gets dark. Her income has also doubled to Rs 20,000 a month. Procuring land from a municipal body to set up an MRF plant is an uphill task but the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group is helping out Sarita and other women waste pickers with acquisition. For these women, it’s a big step from helping male partners with segregating waste to running a material recycling facility. “When we met these women and conducted peer group sessions, they realised they were participants in the waste management sector. Till then, most of them hadn’t even met godown owners as their families did not let them interact with men outside their household,” says Shruti Sinha, a lead researcher with Chintan who is studying the lives of women waste pickers. Paradeep, a port city in Odisha, has adopted a more community-driven model focusing on micro-composting centres and MRFs. With the involvement of self-help women’s groups, transgender groups and ragpickers’ associations, it has increased revenue and successfully processes 100% of the waste it generates. Similar experiments by women-centric self-help groups in Indore and Ambikapur have been successful in improving their financial condition. The Nudge Institute in Bengaluru is on a mission to make waste management models more gender inclusive. In 2020, Nudge and eight partner organisations launched the Saamuhika Shakti campaign to ensure that informal waste pickers in the city and their families have greater agency in leading secure and dignified lives. “We take a zoomed-out view and ensure that multiple collaborations and interventions happen among the organisations,” says Akshay Soni, executive director of the Saamuhika Shakti campaign at Nudge. Hasiru Dala (meaning ‘Green Force’ in Kannada), a local social impact organisation, is a key part of the campaign. It aids waste pickers in gaining access to government schemes, trains them in financial planning and conducts health camps. About 70-80% of stakeholders that Hasiru Dala works with are women. It also provides them counselling on domestic violence and substance abuse. Another area of focus is on skilling the workers so that they can explore alternative livelihoods. Social Alpha, an incubation partner that supports social impact start-ups, aids the hiring of women waste pickers by companies. Several women have been hired by Phool, which focuses on collection of flowers and other waste from temples and processing them into products like incense sticks and essential oils. Some women are exploring ways for additional income, such as beautician training and stitching. For women, small changes can bring transformation, says Rashi Rathi, gender lead at The Nudge Institute. “A lot of women waste pickers told us that they are not as mobile as men and need to travel back home to do caregiving work,” she said. So, the partners provided them with cycles, which now enables them to travel greater distances from home. For large-scale transformation, clarity in policy is crucial, says Mou Sengupta, deputy programme manager at the Centre for Science and Environment. “The Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, instructed state municipalities to design policies for the inclusion of women and facilitate the formation of SHGs.” However, implementation remains a challenge. “Only 20-25% have put this mandate in their by-laws. Hardly 5-10% have actually implemented it,” she adds.

Travel time has gone up, say commuters

Kolkata: Bus operators are wary of making fresh investments, as the returns are too low. “I bought a BS-IV bus in 2017 at Rs 11 lakh. If I want to buy a BS-VI bus now, it will cost Rs 19 lakh. There is no certainty of even recovering costs,” said Titu Saha, general secretary, City Suburban Bus Services. The last time bus fares were officially revised was in 2018, when diesel price was Rs 68.60 per litre. Diesel now costs Rs 92.76 per litre, but fares are the same. Over 2021 and 2022, as many as 1,313 buses were phased out for crossing the 15-year age limit. This year and 2024, as many as 2,729 buses will meet the same fate. “With no replacement, the situation is getting worse,” said Tapan Banerjee, general secretary, Joint Council of Bus Syndicates. Transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty said the government, especially CM Mamata Banerjee, was averse to passing on the fuel hike burden on to citizens. “State transport undertakings (STU) are increasing the number of buses quite rapidly. Shortly, nearly 1,200 e-buses will ease the trouble faced by commuters,” he added. STUs have also reduced the number of buses on the road by a significant number. Non-availability of alternative, cheaper fuel through a robust supply chain has also made the bus trade unattractive. CNG is still being brought in caskets, limiting its availability to a few stations, Saha said. The end sufferers are commuters. “We are now spending nearly three-four times what we used to in early 2020,” said Aniket Banerjee, founder of Kolkata Bus-o-pedia, an online resource about bus-related information. “Travel time has gone up significantly,” he added. “After 9pm, it is impossible to find a bus,” said Amardeep Singh, who works at a medicine shop. Transport expert Anumita Roychowdhury, who’s the executive director of Centre for Science and Environment, said Kolkata was fast losing its status of a “public transport city”. “The city will face the same fate as of Bengaluru, where a sea of cars gets city traffic choked. Kolkata is adding around 86.6 thousand vehicles every year.”

Kejriwal unveils study, devices to help combat air pollution in Delhi

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday unveiled a critical scientific study and a comprehensive set up commissioned by the state government to identify various sources of air pollution in the city as well as record their contribution in real time. Described by the chief minister as an “important leap” in the state’s fight against pollution, the study will help the government plan short-term and long-term measures to combat bad air. Kejriwal inaugurated the “Supersite” -- a scientific data gathering and analysis set up -- as well as an air quality monitoring van at the Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in central Delhi’s Rouse Avenue. The site and the van will help carry out a real-time source apportionment study on air pollution, providing details of the contribution of each different sources, scientists involved in the study said. They added that there will also be a forecasting system giving pollution load for the next three days. “Now we will be able to determine pollution sources on an hourly basis and forecast hourly air quality data for the next three days. With this, we will find how much of the pollution is caused by vehicles, industries and biomass burning and make anti-pollution strategies accordingly,” Kejriwal said. The study is centred on gathering data on emissions leading to PM2.5 pollution. Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) are ultra fine particles that can embed deep in human lungs and cause a variety of lung and heart diseases. PM2.5 is the primary pollutant in Delhi’s air, according to Central Pollution Control Board. Explaining the importance of gathering data in real-time, Kejriwal said, “The key reason for pollution on Monday may differ from the reason on Tuesday. Until we calculate the impact made by a source of pollution in real-time, we cannot have an effective policy. Therefore, we have asked these bodies (agencies who will carry out the study) to help us carry out real-time source apportionment. Besides this, it will also provide us with a forecast of what the major factors of pollution in the coming days could be,” he added. The study is being led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, with IIT Delhi and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) both involved in providing insights and technical assistance. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) is the nodal body for the project. Prior to this, Delhi had experimented with the concept thrice. The first source apportionment study was conducted by IIT-Kanpur in 2016-17, and then by The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) in 2017-18. The state government then asked the Washington University in 2019 to carry out the study. However, it was scrapped in 2020, with the government saying the study was “unsatisfactory”. The programme was revived again, with the Delhi Cabinet approving the study in October 2021. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was subsequently signed with the three technical bodies. Kejriwal cited how steps to tackle pollution were based on years-old studies and said, “Those have no relevance. The real-time apportionment study has shown that the sources of pollution change on an hourly basis,” he said. The AAP government has taken several steps to reduce pollution in the national capital, the chief minister said. “We introduced the Electric Vehicle Policy in 2020 and electric vehicle sales are the highest in Delhi. We have procured several new buses and, by 2025, 80% of Delhi’s bus fleet will be electric. We have a tree transplantation policy and Delhi’s tree cover has risen to 23.6% higher than the national average of 20%,” he said. Besides the Supersite, the van and the forecasting system, the chief minister also launched the r-aasman portal where the general public can access the real-time data. The dashboard can be accessed at http://raasman.com/dashboard/realtime_source. Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai, who attended the inauguration, said the government will work on NCR-centric pollution action plans using data gathered through the mobile van and the Supersite. “We will move ahead based on the advice and guidance of the scientists of IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi and the data they gather. We will discuss the data with the governments of NCR and plan to control pollution accordingly,” Rai said. Experts said the study will help the government plan long-term solutions to combat pollution. “Such a real-time source apportionment study, if executed accurately, can allow long-term strategies to be tailored around it. Based on the data gathered, action on the ground, including localised plans can also be made,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy at the Centre for Science and Environment. Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said that any step in the fight against pollution is a “welcome step”, but the experience of the last eight years shows that the Delhi government is not in fighting air pollution.

Covid-finance knockout combo cripples Kolkata's private bus sector

KOLKATA: Fewer than half the number of buses sanctioned for Kolkata are presently on road, making daily commute not only more expensive, but also more time-consuming for the average Kolkatan, especially during the morning and evening peak hours. Kolkata private bus GFX Two factors, taken together, have made the business unviable for bus operators, said experts and operators alike: the first is stricter pollution control norms, which necessitates replacing more-than-15-year-old public transport vehicles with more expensive BS-VI buses; the second is an absence of a fare hike, in spite of steep, multiple revisions in fuel price. Of 5,583 buses sanctioned on Kolkata's 303 routes, only 2,757 (or 49%, less than half) are plying, with several routes left without a single bus. "Kolkata is a bus city the same way Mumbai is a train city," said transport economist Aniruddha Kar, adding, "The city's public mobility is bound to get crippled if everything's not alright with the bus system." Kolkata's key public transport suffered its worst blow during the pandemic, and the ensuing restrictions. And even as life swung back to normalcy, 50% of the city's bus fleet failed to come back. Things have come to such a pass that there was only one bus registered with the Public Vehicles Department (PVD) in 2022. Private bus operators have lost the confidence to make fresh investments, as the retu-rns are too little. Travel time has gone up, say commuters Bus operators are wary of making fresh investments, as the returns are too low. “I bought a BS-IV bus in 2017 at Rs 11 lakh. If I want to buy a BS-VI bus now, it will cost Rs 19 lakh. There is no certainty of even recovering costs,” said Titu Saha, general secretary, City Suburban Bus Services. The last time bus fares were officially revised was in 2018, when diesel price was Rs 68. 60 per litre. Diesel now costs Rs 92. 76 per litre, but fares are the same. Over 2021 and 2022, as many as 1,313 buses were phased out for crossing the 15-year age limit. This year and2024, as many as 2,729 buses will meet the same fate. “With no replacement, the situation is getting worse,” said Tapan Banerjee, general secretary, Joint Council of Bus Syndicates. Transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty said the government, especially CM Mamata Banerjee, was averse to passing on the fuel hike burden on to citizens. “State transport undertakings (STU) are increasing the number of buses quite rapidly. Shortly, nearly 1,200 e-buses will ease the trouble faced by commuters,” he added. STUs have also reduced the number of buses on the road by a significant number. Non-availability of alternative, cheaper fuel through a robust supply chain has also made the bus trade unattractive. CNG is still being brought in caskets, limiting its availability to a few stations, Saha said. The end sufferers are commuters. “We are now spending nearly threefour times what we used to in early 2020,” said Aniket Banerjee, founder of Kolkata Bus-o-pedia, an online resource about bus-related information. “Travel time has gone up significantly,” he added. “After 9pm, it is impossible to find a bus,” said Amardeep Singh, who works at a medicine shop. Transport expert Anumita Roychowdhury, who’s the executive director of Centre for Science and Environment, said Kolkata was fast losing its status of a “public transport city”. “The city will face the same fate as of Bengaluru, where a sea of cars gets city traffic choked. Kolkata is adding around 86. 6 thousand vehicles every year. ”

Indian industry turns to biomass as capital bans coal in pollution fight

A TOXIC smog engulfs India’s capital every winter, as particles from bonfires of crop stubble and vehicle exhausts hang in the air, but New Delhi is enforcing a ban on coal burning from this month that is forcing industry to shift to biomass. The drive has pushed about half the 1,695 units in a cluster of small industries around one of the world’s most polluted capitals to use biomass, regulators told Reuters, up from fewer than 15 per cent counted in a 2020 study. “You can tell the fuel being used by the colour of the steam and the smell in the air,” said a manager at a small unit in the global cloth recycling hub of Panipat, about 100 km from New Delhi, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The air has improved since we shifted to biomass.” The change in air quality is as yet hard to quantify. But in Panipat, for example, a 2020 study by think-tank the Centre for Science and Environment estimated a fall of 70 to 80 per cent in sulphur oxide emissions, and a drop of 40 to 60 per cent in nitrogen oxides, if all coal-based industries switched. Textile recyclers, dyers and food processors in the city in the northern state of Haryana, along with those in neighbouring Sonipat and Faridabad, have quickly switched away from coal, the previous fuel of choice. The change to biomass, which usually consists of pellets or briquettes of farm residue, promises to slash emissions and spur farmers to sell such residue instead of burning it, say industry officials and regulators. The switch could also bring lower costs, since biomass is 14 per cent cheaper than coal, a 2021 study sponsored by the British government showed. King coal Coal was “king” of fuels in India’s National Capital Region after the South Asian nation banned petcoke – a polluting, energy-intensive alternative – in 2017, the CSE report showed. It was the primary fuel for about a quarter of all industries in Haryana’s three major clusters near New Delhi. Now coal is losing out to biomass. “Many petcoke traders became coal traders after a ban on petcoke in 2017,” said Kamaljeet Singh, a senior pollution control official in Panipat. “Now hundreds of coal traders have become biomass traders.” About 27 per cent of the region’s companies use natural gas, while more than 250 units, or 15 per cent, use electricity, the regulators said. “It has been easier for small industries to convert to biomass instead of converting to natural gas because of lower prices,” Monish Ahuja, chairman of the Confederation of Biomass Energy Industry of India, told Reuters. About 81 per cent of the 398 industrial units operating in Panipat alone have converted to biomass, Singh added, devouring coal’s share of 56.2 per cent in 2020. Industries are experimenting with agricultural waste such as rice husk, groundnut and mustard briquettes as fuel, regulators and owners of small textile and recycling mills in Panipat said. Rising prices But biomass traders and consumers are voicing concern about rising prices after the coal ban and seasonal fluctuations in the supply of crop residue, citing these as factors limiting wider national use of the fuel. Average prices of biomass briquettes rose 36 per cent to 7,711 rupees (S$124) a kilogramme by the end of 2022, versus 5,677 rupees at the end of 2021, on online marketplace BiofuelCircle, based in the western city of Pune. But owners of industrial units in Panipat said the local nature of New Delhi’s coal ban confers a cost advantage on similar industries elsewhere in India, as they can continue using coal. “Because of these restrictions, Panipat industries are finding it extremely difficult to compete,” said Bhim Rana, president of a dyers’ association in the city. Higher costs fuelled by taxes and a ban on exports of biomass briquettes were among factors attributable to policy that limit supply, the British study said. “Supply is about a third or fourth of total demand currently,” said Suhas Baxi, chief executive of BiofuelCircle. The study recommended developing a biomass trading platform, better storage, concessional loans and lower interest rates for investors in manufacturing. “Explicit government policy support will be needed to overcome the constraints,” it added. REUTERS

From the India Today archives (2022) | E-waste: The mounting threat

With prime minister Narendra Modi reminding Indians of the need to properly dispose of e-waste in his latest Mann Ki Baat radio address, INDIA TODAY looks back at when we flagged this growing threat in our September 12, 2022 issue Just think of the number of times you change your cellphone. Or buy yourself a new TV, computer or air-conditioner. But do you ever stop to think what becomes of the old gadgets that you are replacing? You only have to visit Mustafabad in northeast Delhi to find that out. One of India’s largest electronic graveyards, shops and godowns here exist cheek by jowl in narrow, densely populated bylanes. Enter one, and you will find green, fully-wired printed circuit boards stacked to the roof and consoles of TV sets overflowing into the street. In another, air-conditioner compressors and other parts are being stripped of their metal. A third bylane is full of copper wire jutting out of white gunny sacks. An orchestra of grinding, crunching or soldering sounds plays all around you, even as the putrid smell of burning plastic hangs permanently in the air. Every part of an electronic device comes apart here, yielding not just iron, copper or aluminium but also precious gold, silver and platinum, every last bit extracted to be sold. There’s a hundred times more gold in a tonne of electronic waste than in a tonne of ore—or so they say. It’s a fact that a tonne of discarded cellphones or PCs can give you 280 grams of gold, worth Rs 16 lakh. That’s the loot your local kabadi centres are probably after. Electronic or e-waste has become a big business and a big threat in India in the past few decades. It covers the three broad categories of electronic goods—white (think refrigerators, washing machines and air-conditioners); grey (desktop computers, laptops, cellphones and printers); and brown (television sets, cameras and recorders). Half of the e-waste these products generate is iron and steel, 21 per cent plastic and 13 per cent copper, aluminium and precious metals. In addition, there are hazardous substances like mercury, lithium, lead and cadmium, which, if not handled carefully, can be toxic or carcinogenic. India is now the world’s third-largest source of e-waste, generating around 3.2 million tonnes annually (2019), behind only China (10 million tonnes) and the US (6.9 million tonnes),according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2020. The situation is only likely to worsen, with the boom in the consumption of such goods threatening to add to the tonnes of waste India already generates. We sell over 150 million smartphones a year, 17.5 million television sets, 20 million pieces of audio equipment, 14.5 million refrigerators and 7 million washing machines. With an average product life of 9-10 years, the Delhi-based research and advocacy non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) estimates that, by 2030, India will generate 14 million tonnes of e-waste, or four times the current volume. The explosion in e-waste has seen a formalisation of the recycling industry, with over 472 units in the country currently. But they are estimated to be handling a mere 15 per cent of the total e-waste generated. It’s the informal chain, starting with the friendly neighbourhood kabadiwala, that processes the rest, taking what they need and discarding the rest, posing a hazard for the environment. That is the threat that the country needs to address. The hazards of e-refuse “You can’t have e-waste without mercury and lead. It’s there in every device,” says Asif Pasha, who runs EwaRDD Recyclers in Bengaluru and has seen both the informal and formal side of e-waste recycling. Back in the late 1990s, when e-waste was still a foreign concept in India, Pasha dropped out of college following his father’s death to take up the family business of extracting metals from electronic devices, informally, like many others in the Goripalya locality of old Bengaluru. In 2009, Pasha set up an industrial unit, as a formal recycler—the first from his locality to make the transition, fitted out with safety gear, dust collectors and fume scrubbers. By the end of that decade, e-waste had become a buzzword—and a growing concern. “The amounts of e-waste in the informal sector have not really come down much, which means these processes still continue,” says Priti Mahesh, chief programme coordinator of Delhi-based environmental NGO Toxics Link, which has been working on e-waste for two decades. “There are a lot of primary studies outside India that show the kind of impact e-waste can have. So, we know the kind of hazard and environmental pollution e-waste ends up causing.” Electronic waste recycling involves handling heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium besides organic pollutants such as dioxins, and other air pollutants emitted during burning. A 2021 World Health Organization report identified more than 1,000 harmful substances as being either components of e-waste or artisanal processing systems.

India's sinking hill town, a casualty of the warming Himalayas

On the slopes of the Himalayas, nearly 2,000 metres above sea level, the hill town of Joshimath is sinking. Experts fear it's one of many settlements in the ecologically fragile region in danger of being wiped out because of subsidence worsened by large-scale construction and climate change. Satellite images of Joshimath, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, show that the town sank by more than five centimetres in just 12 days earlier this month, according to a preliminary report by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The images, released by ISRO's National Remote Sensing Centre, indicate rapid subsidence of 5.4 centimetres between 27 December last year and 8 January. It comes after the town, located at an altitude of 1,875 metres, sank by 8.9 centimetres over the seven months between April and November 2022, said the report. Residents evacuated Over 280 buildings in Joshimath, including a local temple, have developed cracks since the first week of January due to land subsidence, according to government data. The total number of buildings affected is now 849, the figures show. The damage led authorities to begin evacuating hundreds of Joshimath's roughly 25,000 residents earlier this month. “Cracks have developed on our walls of our courtyard and now the administration has shifted us temporarily to a primary school,” Pradeep Lal, a shopkeeper told RFI. “We might be safe, but we worry for our cattle after the cowshed was also affected.” The Uttarakhand government has also promised compensation for the families affected. Extreme weather Residents fear further damage as the meteorological department predicts rain and snowfall in the region. Joshimath's location, on steep slopes in a seismic zone, makes it naturally vulnerable to erosion and landslides. But experts say that climate change is aggravating the situation. Himalayan snows set for massive melt by 2100 Climate-vulnerable India struck by natural disasters 'almost daily' “The added factor of climate change is bringing more volatility because of unseasonal and extreme rain events,” Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment think tank, told RFI. “The bottom line is that this region is different – it is not the plains of India which are situated on alluvial soil; it is not the Indian peninsular region where there is hard rock; it is not even the slopes of the Alps, where mountains have aged,” said Narain. Various studies have found that glaciers in the Himalayas are melting dramatically, potentially increasing the risks of floods and landslides. Unchecked development Experts say that rampant development is making the fragile Himalayan ecosystem even more vulnerable to the changing climate, warning that Joshimath may be just one of many towns affected. Years of unbridled construction, hydropower projects and the lack of a proper drainage system have all contributed to the current situation. The Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti, an activist group agitating for the welfare of the town's residents, has accused the state government of ignoring its warnings for months. “The crisis has endangered the very existence of a historic town, but the relief and rescue operations being carried out by the state government are devoid of any urgency,” it said in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was only in late December, when hundreds of houses were affected, that the state authorities began evacuation measures and deployed scientists to evaluate the effects of subsidence. Activists point out that experts have been warning of subsidence in the area since at least 1976.

W Ghats spring a surprise again

A few months back, the Supreme Court had rejected a public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the study report of the renowned Madhav Gadgil Committee and K Kasturirangan Committee, on the Western Ghats that run through six states; which have demarcated an area of about 57,000 sq kms as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA), where no development can take place. The acknowledgment of the Western Ghats as our environment’s precious treasure was reinstated recently, with the discovery of 76 plant species and a new rock formation that has appeared about 150 kms from Pune in Manjare village. The details of this exciting development were published in the December 2022 edition of the National Academy Science Letters. As per a news report in Down to Earth magazine, researcher Aboli Kulkarni and her team “have discovered a low-level basalt plateau, an isolated flat-topped steep hill, in the Western Ghats in Maharashtra. The researchers have registered a floristic inventory which they claim to be important from the conservation point of view, considering the rampant urbanisation.” The report further states that the biodiversity hotspot of the Western Ghats is known for certain kinds of outcrops, which, in layman’s terms, mean ‘large rock or group of rocks that sticks out of the ground.’ The researchers have found a low altitude basalt outcrop. Such outcrops emerge when the surface soil and other matter present there wear off, and expose the hidden rock surface. Besides the outcrops, the researchers also recorded plant species, mainly from Poaceae, Leguminosae and Cyperaceae ranges. This goes to show that the natural treasure that is still hidden in the Western Ghats. Interestingly, this is the first time that these plant species were found on floral biodiversity. And they have thrived, despite harsh surroundings. The locals, with whom the researchers interacted, mentioned that they are similar to the flora on Kas Plateau, which is a UNESCO world natural heritage site in Maharashtra and hosts many endemic wild flowering plants. In fact, it is tourists’ delight post monsoons, and the authorities were compelled to bring in certain restrictions so that the fragile plateau with a myriad of blossoming flowers is not threatened due to human interference. No wonder, the Madhav Gadgil Report of Western Ghats Ecology has stated that, “the Western Ghats are second only to the Eastern Himalayas as a treasure trove of biological diversity in India. Originally recognised to be among the several global ‘hotspots of biodiversity, the Western Ghats, along with the geographical extension in the wet zone of Sri Lanka, are now also considered to be one of the eight ‘hottest hot spots of biodiversity’ (Myers et al. 2000). At the same time, the high human population density and major transformation of the landscape since the mid-18th century also emphasises the urgency of conservation of the Ghats, and sustainable use of its resources.’’

Track record: Stories from 20 years of the Delhi Metro

The Delhi Metro is more than a system of public transport: it represents refuge, privacy, freedom and a slow change in the city’s cultural fabric Namita Narula Gandhi lives by the clock. Every workday, she wakes up at 6.30am, gets ready, packs the breakfast and lunch she has prepped the night before, feeds her one-year-old child, and is in her car at 7am. Within 30 minutes, she is on the Delhi Metro’s Yellow Line, travelling from the Haiderpur station to Huda City Centre in Gurugram. An hour and 50 minutes later, she is hailing an auto for the 10-minute ride to her office, a private hospital, where she works as the head of corporate communications. That’s two-and-a-half hours of travel every morning. It’s the same on the way back. Gandhi doesn’t mind those five hours on the move, for the Metro allows her to be independent. Also Read: Back on track with the Metro? “I moved to Sonipat in 2017 after getting married,” explains the 35-year-old, who was born and brought up in Delhi. “The Metro is the reason I can still hold my job. Imagine how much it would cost me in petrol to drive all the way.” She estimates that it would be over ₹10,000 a month; using the Metro cuts it down to ₹1,500. Travelling in a bus feels unsafe to her. Shifting to Delhi is not an option since her husband works in Sonipat. Plus, there’s family to take care of her baby at home when she’s at work. The Metro means different things to different people, whether you are in New Delhi, New York, London or Paris. It can just be another mode of public transport that takes you from point A to B. It can be a place where you indulge in some innocent people-watching. You can enjoy the air-conditioning while the sun blazes outside, try not to overhear an argument, discuss existential questions with friends, meet your sweetheart, read that book that has long been sitting in your bag, talk yourself into writing that complicated article. Or just watch the city through the glass windows. You can do pretty much anything and everything while on the move. There’s another reason Gandhi prefers the Metro. It offers her “bliss time”: 50 minutes of patchy internet between stations in north and south Delhi, when calls drop every second or messages don’t get delivered on time. That’s when she tunes out from the outside world to listen to music. “In the morning, it’s a bhajan (either Gayatri Mantra or something on Sai Baba). In the evening, trending music; these days, it’s Koka (by Diljit Dosanjh and Sargi Maan). I know, I need to update my list,” she laughs. On days she doesn’t feel like plugging in her earphones, she likes to see what people are wearing. “We all do that, no?” she says. “With the baby, family and work, I hardly ever get time to read up what’s in fashion. During those two hours inside the train, I learn all about the trendy stuff.” Small beginnings It was on 24 December 2002 that the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, inaugurated the first Metro corridor, an 8.2km stretch spanning six stations on the Shahdara-Tis Hazari corridor of the Red Line. A mass rapid transit plan, first conceived in the 1960s and formally sanctioned in 1996, had finally come to life six years later following a political push. Vajpayee said it would eventually create a safer, less congested and less polluted Delhi (on a good air index day, Delhi’s reading continues to be poor). The next day, about 100,000 people used the Metro, while several non-users dismissed it as another government project built to tank. But there was no denying the fact that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had built an engineering marvel to navigate a high-density metropolis. Other public transport lifelines at the time—buses and autos—didn’t offer as much safety or the luxury of air-conditioning at a cost of ₹10 (for 2km or less). For 5-12km, it was ₹30. And the trains ran on time. Travelling by the Metro meant you didn’t have to haggle with auto drivers, suffer harassment in packed buses, or get stuck in a traffic jam in sweltering weather. Areas in the vicinity flourished. In the early years, one restaurateur in Connaught Place said it had revived business, particularly on weekends, as crowds from relatively distant areas poured in. It has also enabled easier access to heritage areas like Chandni Chowk. Twenty years later, the Delhi Metro is an integral part of life in the city, with close to 400km of tracks shooting out in every direction, connecting 286 stations across the city and neighbouring states—a network no other Metro in India has built till now. Each day, it ferries close to six million people in the world’s second most populated city of 31 million. So impressed are other states by the DMRC’s efforts that they have roped them in as consultants to build Metro projects in Mumbai and Patna, and Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. “We are also bidding for consultancy of international Metro projects such as Tel Aviv (Israel), Alexandria (Egypt), Mauritius, Bahrain and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam),” says Anuj Dayal, principal executive director and official spokesperson of Delhi Metro.\ He believes the success of the Delhi Metro can be attributed to “various factors ranging from planning, execution, efficient workforce and technological advancement. Our Metro lines connect almost all the important residential areas, major markets, other modes of transport systems such as railways and inter-state bus services, educational and healthcare hubs, and IT corridors in entire Delhi-National Capital Region. We are further expanding the network under Phase 4 project to connect the uncovered areas in Delhi to improve mobility.” While recovering from the loss of over ₹3,800 crore in March 2022, owing to reduced ridership during the pandemic-induced lockdowns, the 15,000-workforce at DMRC is working to add three more corridors in and around the city, stretching the network another 65km with an extra 45 stations. Advertisement Niggling issues Despite this massive web, it’s not all hunky-dory. Land acquisition issues have dogged it on occasion. Dayal merely says they were able to acquire land as per the law. By the time work began, Delhi had changed completely; the alignment had to adjust to what was possible underground or overground. Last-mile connectivity remains a big issue, pushing up commuting costs and posing a security challenge for people returning late at night. Fare increases over the years have pushed out lower-income passengers. Many stations don’t have parking facilities, discouraging people who would prefer to use the Metro. Long walks and stairs within stations are not easy to navigate, especially for the elderly and the disabled. On some lines, rush hour is an unbearable crush. Advertisement Any city needs good public transport, says public mobility expert Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (research and advocacy) at the Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). “A lot of people have to use cars, cabs or autos to reach a Metro station in Delhi. That discourages them from using the Metro. Last-mile connectivity is one of the most crucial aspects we need to focus on. We need to give people the right options. Nobody likes to waste time in a jam with bad air.” The capital city of one of the world’s biggest economies is also among the most polluted. At the time of writing this article, the city’s AQI was swinging between “severe” and “very severe”, a familiar trend over three years that leads to temporary shutdowns of schools every year. Advertisement A November study by the CSE found that vehicles, including private cars, are one of the biggest contributors to particulate matter (PM10) in Delhi. Towards late October, vehicular emissions accounted for 51% of the concentration of PM 2.5, inhalable microscopic materials less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter. What makes this data more concerning is that only a small number of families in the city own cars—19.4%, according to the latest data from the National Family Health Survey. Shreya Johri has travelled by the Metro since she was in class XI because it’s right outside her east Delhi house. As her grandparents grew too old to drop her, and pick her up, from school, they encouraged her to use a “safer” mode of public transport. Soon, it became her ride to a nearby Noida market, where, along with friends, she would drink banta. “It was all like ₹25, coming, going and drinking,” recalls Johri, 27. “We talked on the way, in the market, and saved money—it was just so easy.” It was where she had her college “Metro romance”. For one-and-a-half years of the three years she studied in Delhi university’s north campus, she used to take the Blue Line from her home in Mayur Vihar to Rajiv Chowk station to meet her crush-turned-friend-turned-boyfriend. Together, they would board the Yellow Line, not for college, but to the Huda City Centre. They would get something to eat at a street food joint and return to the Metro platform to continue chatting, about their dreams, their friends , their lives, and their next date. By evening, they would ride same the route back home. Even after they broke up towards the end of college, they continued travelling in the Metro together as friends to go to college. “We used to forget checking our phones, sometimes we even missed stations. It was such an easy way of sitting in a clean, air-conditioned place, and nobody disturbed you,” she recalls. “Those Metro rides gave us the confidence to be free, to be like proper adults who could take their own decisions. It might sound like an exaggeration but it really did teach me how to be independent—and more than anything, it was safe.” Gandhi doesn’t agree entirely, though she is a devoted Metro user. She has been robbed twice. The first time, the thief slashed her mother’s purse and took out ₹15,000 they were carrying to go shopping in west Delhi. Since then, her mother, who had used the Metro for 15 years, has stopped travelling on it. A few months earlier, when Gandhi was returning from work, someone took her iPod—her first luxury purchase—from her pocket. Cases of crime and theft are common on the Metro. A December 2021 Times Of India report states that till 7 November, of the 2,174 crimes that were reported in the year, 80% were of theft. The police said 1,380 were solved and 564 people were arrested. The previous year, the report states, “2,113 cases were reported, 1,170 solved and 204 people arrested”. As of December 2022, each station has at least over 10 theft cases, shows the Delhi Metro site. The super-crowded Kashmere Gate has the most, at 132, followed by Rajiv Chowk, 44, and Netaji Subhash Place, 42. Okhla Vihar has the lowest, at 10. Dayal says: “The security and law and order in Metro premises is handled by CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) and the Metro units of local police in Delhi-NCR. These forces have adequate presence of their personnel in Metro premises and have been doing excellent work.” Aditya Sharma differs and says one has to be cautious while travelling in the Metro. One December morning last year, when the west Delhi resident was taking the Metro from Uttam Nagar to feed stray dogs in areas near the next two stations—something he had been doing daily for a year after losing Pluto, his first pet dog—a thief stole the only ₹500 note in his pocket. “I informed the authorities but nothing happened,” he says., though he still considers the Metro the most convenient and fastest mode of transport. “I can walk to the station from my house, carrying the food for the dogs I feed,” says the 65-year-old. It’s this convenience that makes the Metro everyone’s darling. According to an estimate by The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), the Metro will help passengers save an annual 572.5 million hours in 2031. For Sharma or Johri, the nearest station is less than a minute from home. This is exactly why Suvina Rai, a north Delhi resident, used to prefer the train to reach her office in Gurugram, south of south Delhi. Every Monday-Friday, she would find a quiet corner and immerse herself in the world of P.G. Wodehouse or Harry Potter. “Those 60 minutes felt like meditation,” recalls Rai, now based in Bengaluru. “Whenever I am in Delhi, I prefer the Metro.” Challenges remain One of the big challenges to last-mile connectivity is the Capital’s population. “Delhi is a challenging city because of its huge population. Secondly, economic growth is so high that it encourages owning private cars,” says Roychowdhry, who, too, ends up using her private vehicle to travel from her house on the outskirts of Delhi to her office in the city’s southern parts. “The Metro station is far from my house. It will take me more time to reach office if I use it,” she says. That’s why Mohd Shamim Ansari uses a motorcycle to reach his office in Okhla from Jamia Nagar. When he first arrived in Delhi in 2017 and was working further away in Gurugram, the train was his go-to. Those two hours in the train were like a peek into Delhi life. Ansari couldn’t help but overhear stories of someone’s house help not showing up for work, or a boyfriend checking whether their significant other had had breakfast before leaving for work. On the same train, colleagues became his best friends. On weekends, he would take the train to Lodhi Gardens or Qutab Minar, familiarising himself with the city on his own. Nowadays, his wife, Tahseen Shaikh, accompanies him. “I would have continued using the Metro for work but the station is too far from the office,” he says. “Just doesn’t make any sense wasting time.” A train station should ideally be within a 200m radius to compel residents to use it over personal vehicles or commercial personal vehicles such as cabs, says Roychowdhry. “Public transport is all about convenience. It’s a nightmare getting cabs, autos, or even walking if the station is far. Let’s not forget that our Delhi roads are made for cars, not for pedestrians,” says Roychowdhry. “Public transport has to come to people.” She cites the example of Kolkata. “You just need to get out of the house and there’s something available for you to navigate the city, whether it’s a bus or an auto. Kolkata’s public transport system is one of the country’s oldest networks Delhi can learn from,” explains Roychowdhry. “We also need to realise that just offering world-class transport is not enough. There need to be systems in place to ensure there are no traffic jams because of the extra buses, rickshaws, autos on the road.” That’s part of the Delhi government’s plan. As the fourth phase of Delhi Metro commences, the aim is to expand other modes, including buses and autos, to reach the last mile within the city at least. “If Delhi wants to be the clean national capital of the country, we need to clean up the pollution and give more people the option to use the Metro,” says Roychowdhry. “Otherwise, it won’t be liveable in the next 10-20 years.” Namita Narula Gandhi would like the Metro to be closer to her house. It would mean more me- and-we-time for herself, her child and family. “I don’t know life beyond work and family right now. Metro is my refuge, where I get time to be with myself,” she says. “And 30 minutes more of that would be more than welcome.”

Who Is Gautam Adani, The Indian Billionaire That Short Seller Hindenburg Says Is Running A ‘Corporate Con’?

Asia’s richest man amassed billions thanks in part to his longstanding ties to Prime Minister Modi. Now his fortune is falling amid allegations of widespread corruption and stock manipulation. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani lost $6.5 billion on Wednesday, January 25 after activist investment firm Hindenburg Research published a scathing 100 page report on Adani and his group, alleging massive fraud and stock manipulation. Hindenburg, which disclosed a short position against Adani Group companies, accused Adani of “pulling the largest con in corporate history.” Adani Group responded with a statement from Chief Financial Officer Jugeshinder Singh that denied the allegations, saying they are “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts” and that Adani Group had not been contacted by Hindenburg. A college dropout who spurned his father's textile shop to set up a commodities export firm in 1988, Adani, age 60, has been a longtime ally of India’s Prime Minister Narenda Modi. As Modi has solidified his power, so too has Adani, who now controls key parts of India’s economy, including Mundra Port, India’s largest. He is also the country’s biggest airport operator and, through his seven publicly traded companies, has interests in power generation, cement and green energy. Last year, when many fortunes around the globe fell as a result of tumbling stock markets, Adani’s fortune soared by $55 billion, making him 2022’s biggest billionaire gainer. Even after his recent tumble, at the end of Wednesday he was worth $119.1 billion, $112 billion more than he was worth in 2014, when Forbes first dug into his ties with Modi, then the chief minister of Adani’s home state of Gujarat. Here is Forbes Asia’s’ 2014 story on Gautam Adani, “Doing Big Business In Modi’s Gujarat,” republished in full. When his son was married in the coastal state of Goa last year, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani's guest list included the richest man in the country and many a chief executive and top banker and bureaucrat. Most, however, just stopped by the night before to bless the happy couple and skipped the actual wedding. But one prominent friend stayed through all the ceremonies over a couple of days, genial and relaxed like a favorite uncle. It was Narendra Modi, chief minister of Adani's home state of Gujarat. Ranked No. 609 in the world with an estimated worth of $2.8 billion, Adani runs India's largest port, a power company and a commodities trading business. A large chunk of his business is located in Gujarat, and the government under Modi, who has been running the state since 2001 and now is the favored prime ministerial candidate in the national elections this spring, has been more generous to Adani than to any other industrialist there. Adani has, over the years, leased 7,350 hectares—much of which he got from 2005 onward—from the government in an area called Mundra in the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat. FORBES ASIA has copies of the agreements that show he got the 30-year, renewable leases for as little as one U.S. cent a square meter (the rate maxed out at 45 cents a square meter). He in turn has sublet this land to other companies, including state-owned Indian Oil Co., for as much as $11 a square meter. Between 2005 and 2007 at least 1,200 hectares of grazing land was taken away from villagers. Under Indian law land meant for grazing cattle can be used for something else only if it's in excess. There's a formula applied to calculate. Even then the village chief has to give permission to take the land. Villagers in Adani's SEZ say their grazing land was signed away by earlier village chiefs without their knowledge. They have filed multiple cases in the Gujarat High Court to contest the government's actions, going back to 2005 and even earlier. Several cases are still pending. On that cheap land Adani has built his cash cow—the country's largest private port by volume—as well as a 4,620-megawatt coal-fired power plant. Anand Yagnik, a lawyer representing some of the Mundra villagers, says, "The basic philosophy of a liberal economy is to allow market forces to play its role. Then why do you have to allocate scarce resources to industrial houses at throwaway prices when they have sufficient capital to pay market rates?" Modi, it should be noted, is posed as the candidate of Indian economic revival in the national race on the basis of his Gujarat record. In February he gave a speech touting the benefits of more open business competition in India. On the surface the busy Adani port exemplifies such commerce. On an earlier February day two tugboats were guiding a loaded ship toward the jetty even as another ship was being loaded with containers. In one section of docks, new Maruti Suzuki cars were being cleaned for shipment. In another, commodities excavated from the region—bauxite, bentonite, iron ore—lay in individual piles, waiting to be loaded for export. In the most recent available data, Gujarat's GDP shows a compounded average growth of 13.4% during Modi's tenure, outstripping the national rate of 7.8% for the period. Thanks to Modi's policies it has attracted investment in sectors like auto manufacturing and solar power. It has made advances in rainwater harvesting and irrigation, and offers a near 24-hour electricity supply statewide. (In contrast, the country has averaged a power deficit of up to 9% for the past three years, though that has improved much of late.) Miles of smooth roads, occasionally lined with pink, orange and white bougainvillea and kept clean by sweeping machines, let you zip around the massive city within a city that is Adani's special economic zone. The idea is to have export-focused companies set up their factories in the SEZ, close to the Adani port. As additional incentives the billionaire has built a 40-mile railway line, linking the port to the national railway network, as well as a 1.1-mile-long private airstrip that SEZ tenants can use for their chartered flights. So far 23 companies have signed up. Thus Gujarat has gained some output and employment, but Adani has captured the rents. The Adani Group was established in 1988 and became publicly traded in 1994. But its real rise happened under Modi's reign in Gujarat. From 2002 to last March the group's revenue rose from $765 million to $8.8 billion while net profits climbed even faster. During this period it constructed its SEZ, bought mines in Indonesia and Australia to ensure it had a steady supply of coal for its thermal power plants in India and launched Asia's largest coal import terminal in Mundra. In 2011 it further expanded in Australia, buying for $2 billion Abbot Point, a coal terminal in Queensland. It also tacked on a hefty amount of debt—$13 billion—more than doubling since 2011. While none of the other companies in Kutch, or the rest of Gujarat for that matter, have received the kind of largesse on land rates as Adani, they, too, have benefitted from the Modi government's bent. It is one that, whatever Modi may now be saying on the campaign trail against crony capitalism and on behalf of the downtrodden, is even less mindful of environmental damage and villager prerogatives than are Indian land-use practices in general. At a political rally in distant Lucknow in early March, Modi said farmers were his friends and he would stand by them. He also said he would "not allow anyone to loot the exchequer." But spend time around the villages of Kutch and a vastly different picture appears. This region was famous for its crops of sapodilla, a brown, fleshy fruit slightly smaller than a tennis ball, as well as dates, coconuts and castor. Area farmers say that that's no longer the case. (Official stats seem to end in 2006.) Fly ash and saline water from Adani Power and a nearby Tata Power Co. Ltd. plant are spoiling the crops and making the soil less fertile, they say. For miles at a stretch the chimneys of the two power plants are visible against the horizon. Gajendra Sinh Jadeja, the 28-year-old head of Navinal village, says the Gujarat government took some 930,770 square meters of his village's grazing land for Adani's SEZ. Adani got it for 19 cents a square meter. Traversing a couple of nearby barren fields, Jadeja says he had been growing alternately cotton, millet and castor there. Now patches of white salt are easily visible across stretches of the fields and have become a common sight across farms. "The saline water ruined the soil, and the poor production now is just not worth it," he says. On another field there is a scraggly growth of castor, no comparison to the tall, lush green field that he remembers. The village of Zarapara with its 15,000 residents is one of the largest in the area. When the government allotted a thousand acres of its grazing land to the Adani SEZ, at roughly 19 cents a square meter, the villagers filed a case that reached India's highest court, the Supreme Court. Before judgment there, an out-of court settlement was reached under which Adani Group was to offer villagers 400 acres of grazing land. The company says it has offered the land while the villagers say they haven't received any so far. Zarapara was once famous for its sapodillas. "In season five trucks filled with [sapodillas] would go every day to the market from this village," says Zarapara resident Naran Ghadavi, whose farm is 3 miles from the Adani power plant. "Now we only produce enough to fill one small van." Ghadavi, 30, blames the decrease in output on the saline water and the fly ash from the Adani power plant that has polluted the groundwater tables and broken the pollination process. Pointing to his white shirt, the small, wiry man says, "Earlier our clothes used to turn yellow [from the pollen]. Now when the morning dew drips from the tree leaves, the ground turns black from the fly ash." The villagers' lawyer Yagnik argues that Modi, by giving away land so cheaply, is depriving the state treasury of funds. "This kind of subsidization of scarce resources eats away at the public exchequer, and that has a direct impact on distributive justice because then the state doesn't have enough resources to deal with this inequality," he says. After years of receiving complaints of environmental abuse, the federal environment ministry finally, in 2012, named a panel—known as the Sunita Narain Committee after the woman chairing the process—to look into them. In a report last April Narain's group confirmed the villagers' complaints—and fears. It said the Adani SEZ had violated multiple green rules at different points of its mammoth project—destroying mangroves, filling creeks and causing land and water degradation by dumping fly ash. At the power plant thousands of gallons of water sucked in from the sea through one channel are let out through a pipeline. Once sucked in it's kept in a reservoir from where it's pumped into the turbines to generate electricity and eventually is pumped back out. The panel found that the reservoir didn't have any lining to protect the groundwater. "The examination by the committee shows that the soil in the area is permeable and without safeguards it will lead to contamination. This is a clear violation of the environmental clearance condition," its report said. The committee recommended that Adani create a fund that was either 1% of the entire project cost or $37 million, whichever was higher. It also said the company should reconstruct both the channels that are used to take in and send back the water, as well as repair or construct anew the reservoir with impervious lining at the bottom and sides. But almost a year after the recommendations were made the company appears to have done nothing. Meantime, it has plans to expand its 7,350-hectare SEZ to 18,000 hectares. In an e-mailed response to questions, a spokeswoman for Adani Group said it had been allotted government land after following all established processes and used valuations applicable at the time, ahead of subsequent improvements. "It will be completely misleading if we compare the price of the land before development and after development as an entrepreneur takes risk of investing a large amount to develop this land, and if the commercial venture fails, the consequences are only to the developer," the company said. Adani Group said salinity ingress was a local phenomenon and that its power plant used technology to ensure that there was no stray fly ash. It also refuted the observations of the Sunita Narain committee and said while any large development would affect the environment, it was certain that its net impact was positive. Also, all government requirements were followed in setting up its various projects. The Modi administration did not reply to repeated interview requests. In today's India and elsewhere, it is not unusual for governments to offer benefits to powerful private interests, especially to attract investment in remote areas. And as noted, Adani is not the sole beneficiary of Modi's blessings. "But what is unusual—and where the problem arises—is when you set something up on this scale without competitive bidding," says Aakar Patel, a columnist at Indian newspaper Mint and a longtime Gujarat observer. The social dynamics are much the same at the 4,000-megawatt power plant of Tata's wholly owned subsidiary Coastal Gujarat Power, a few miles down the coastline from the Adani plant. It opened in March 2012 under a different arrangement, this one a federal initiative to spur big energy plants. Several of them have been announced, but this one from Tata is the first to go live. Under the deals, the federal government provides the operators with the land and all clearances. However, land is a state subject, so it is the state government—Modi's in this case—that had identified and allocated the land. In Kutch fishermen and their families set up camp on the beach. Tagadi fishing village is one such camp on the banks of what is now the Tata plant's outflow channel. Dawood Umar Jaam, 43, has been fishing in the area for the past five years. He has seen a 60% drop in his catch in the last few months and blames it on the plant. As the plant takes in seawater, it also sucks up fish that are still small, killing them instantly, says a fishermen's trade union known as MASS, active in the area. The plant releases hot water back into the sea, raising temperatures in the immediate vicinity, killing more fish and changing migratory patterns. Jaam, who has a family of six in Tagadi, takes a loan of maybe $2,000 prior to the fishing season to repair his nets and otherwise get ready. He would earn enough to pay off the loan and save up to about $750 each year, he says. Not anymore. He doubts he'll be able to repay more than $350. Just before he sets off to fish, he points to the boundary fence of his makeshift house, constructed on three sides using bamboo sticks. Those sticks used to be covered with fish put out to dry. Now, only a quarter of the sticks are covered. The Tata unit says the outfall channel is specially lined with stones to extend the surface while the water is being discharged so it can cool. "The outfall channel, which is [4.5 miles] long, ensures that the temperature of hot water at the discharge point meets the environmental stipulations," the company said in an e-mailed statement. In addition, it says, it's teaching Tagadi fishermen better practices and is distributing nets to enhance the catch and providing clean drinking water. Back in his adjoining SEZ, things have gotten legally dicier for Adani of late. Residents of Navinal Village, including the head Jadeja, filed in 2011 a petition in the Gujarat High Court after they lost their grazing land to the SEZ. In January the court declared the SEZ illegal and ordered the companies that had set up factories in there to stop all work. Reason: The SEZ had been built without getting an environmental clearance. Under Indian law a project the size of the SEZ would need one from the federal environment ministry before it can lay a brick. (This judgment is pertinent only to the SEZ and not to the port or the Adani Power plant. The company had applied for—and received—separate environmental clearances for those, and that lets them operate legally.) The Supreme Court, India's highest, has refused to stay the lower court's decision, although it said existing tenants in its SEZ could keep operating. With hundreds of millions of dollars already invested—albeit in a project now in legal limbo—the question now is if Adani's effort has become too big to shut down. The Gujarat High Court passed the ball on that decision to the federal government, asking if the project could be granted a belated environmental clearance. New Delhi in turn asked for a couple of months to ponder that decision. Now that India's election has been set to begin Apr. 7, the federal government is effectively blocked from taking this decision. As a result the fate of this project will likely be decided by whoever comes into power next, and that could easily be a government led by Modi. This story has been revised to correct a statement concerning the proceedings brought by the villagers.

CSE lays out strategy to manage water quality in Tanzania

One of the largest lakes in the world, Lake Victoria, has been suffering from a variety of unsustainable human activities over the last five decades. Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment and National Environment Management Council (NEMC), Tanzania have jointly released a report on managing its water quality. The report Lake Victoria: Roadmap for Management of Water Quality in Mwanza City-Tanzania was released on January 25, 2023 by the Permanent Secretary, Vice President’s Office, Mary N Maganga. The report is the final outcome of an earlier discussion paper — Development of an Environmental Management Strategy for Lake Victoria — that was released in July 2022. Lake Victoria and its flora and fauna support the livelihoods of about 45 million people. The ecologically unique water body is shared by three countries — Tanzania (51 per cent), Uganda (44 per cent) and Kenya (5 per cent). A research team from CSE, headed by its Executive Director Anumita Roychowdhary, is in Tanzania to conduct and coordinate the release meeting in association with the Director General of NEMC, Samuel G Mafwenga. The discussion paper released in July 2022 identified Mwanza city as a hotspot, contributing a substantial pollution load in the form of industrial effluents, domestic sewage and dumping of solid waste. It also recognised two rivers — the Mirongo and the Nyashishi — as the major water bodies carrying domestic and industrial pollution loads, respectively. A team of CSE and NEMC conducted a sampling exercise in November 2022 to gauge the pollution situation in these rivers. The results showed substantial pollutant load in the rivers, which may be getting discharged in the lake. The water from the Nyashishi is extensively used for agricultural purposes before it meets the lake. “The focus on the Nyashishi should now be doubled as any pollutant in the river, along with affecting the water quality of Lake Victoria, may also adversely impact crops and human health,” said Nivit Kumar Yadav, programme director, industrial pollution in CSE. Roychowdhury added: The approach to improve Lake Victoria’s water quality, in addition to treating pollution sources, should include aspects such as management of existing wetlands, development of waste management practices and pollution control systems, along with continuous monitoring of water bodies entering the lake. Only 3 per cent of households are connected to sewer lines managed by the Mwanza Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Authority (MWAUWASA), while 93 per cent — especially those living on the hills — are dependent on onsite sanitation (pit latrine and septic tanks), the report highlighted. The city’s waste management practices have 70-80 per cent waste collection efficiency and there is no segregation of the garbage. MWAUWASA has initiated the process of connecting these households to the main sewer lines through a simplified sewerage system, but this could be a challenge considering the area’s landscape, CSE found. CSE and NEMC are also working towards strengthening the environmental impact assessment regime in Tanzania — a ‘Terms of Reference’ (ToR) for mining and industrial development projects was released during the meeting. “The purpose of these ToRs is to enable the project proponent, with environmental experts’ support, to plan and design an EIA properly. A ToR is designed to provide a format and structure for the EIA report, especially on the data required, to ascertain the impacts of the project on people and the environment,” Mafwenga said.